John Saul - Perfect Nightmare

And all for Lindsay.

She fished in her purse until she found a small packet of Kleenex, pulled one out and dabbed at her eyes.

On the steps of the school, all the cheerleaders were gathered, wearing their uniforms and holding signs that bore Lindsay’s picture — the same picture Kara had been putting up on walls and lampposts and windows every day since Lindsay disappeared. “Here comes Mrs. Marshall,” she heard one of them call, and suddenly everyone turned toward her and started to applaud as Hugh Tarlington led her up the steps.

At the top, she turned around and looked out at the mass of people who had gathered, and at the television cameras, and at the candles that were already lit, and suddenly she didn’t have the slightest idea what to say. Or even what to think. Her mouth worked for a moment, and finally she heard herself utter the only two words she could possibly speak: “Thank you.”

As if sensing her inability to say anything else, Hugh Tarlington led her back down the steps, and then the crowd was all around her, everyone reaching out to her, speaking to her, gently squeezing her hand or kissing her cheek. Her mind reeled as she moved through the crowd, recognizing old friends, and neighbors and acquaintances, and people she hadn’t seen in years.

All of Lindsay’s friends, along with their parents, and their teachers, and everyone else from the school.

Even Sergeant Grant was there, wearing khakis and a golf shirt.

Soon Kara was using the last of her tissues, but the outpouring of love and support kept flooding over her, and at last she let her tears flow unchecked.

Then Dawn D'Angelo was there, and Kara gathered the girl into her arms, hugging her close. “Thank you,” she whispered. “You have no idea what—” Her voice broke as her emotions once more overwhelmed her, but Dawn obviously knew what she’d been about to say.

“We’ll find her,” Lindsay’s best friend whispered, and for a magical moment, Kara believed her.

Then Claire Sollinger appeared out of the crowd, her patrician features softened by her concern. She kissed Kara on the cheek, then held both her shoulders and looked directly into her eyes. “How are you holding up?” she asked.

Kara, choking back a sob, managed a weak smile. “Well enough,” she said. Her eyes swept the crowd. “I’m overwhelmed.”

“It’s exactly what I expected,” Claire said as she drew a man only a couple of years older than Kara forward. “I’d like you to meet my brother, Patrick Shields.”

Patrick took Kara’s hand and leaned in to gently kiss her cheek. “I’m so very sorry about what’s happened.”

Their eyes met, and Kara could see the pain of his months of grief deep in Patrick Shields’s dark brown eyes.

Exactly the kind of pain she herself was suffering.

“And I’m so sorry for your loss—” she began, then fell silent as she realized how hollow the words must sound to him and how often he’d heard them before.

Patrick gave Kara’s hand a gentle squeeze, and as their eyes met again, she knew she needed to say no more; what they were going through could never be described with mere words. But in that brief moment when their eyes met, Kara felt a glimmer of solace. He understood exactly what she was feeling.

Suddenly the crowd fell silent, then the principal began to speak. As he began his litany of thanks, first for Lindsay’s friends, who had organized the vigil, then for the people who had come, more and more candles were being lit in the gathering night, until finally their warm glow seemed to hold the darkness at bay.

“I’ve also just been told that the reward for any information leading to Lindsay Marshall’s safe return has been increased to fifteen thousand dollars.”

A murmur passed over the crowd, and Kara looked around, wondering who had put up the money. But of course it could have been anyone — maybe even a group of people. But why remain anonymous, and give her no one to thank?

Steve should be here.

The thought brought fresh tears to her eyes, but now she concentrated on the principal’s final words, refusing to let herself break down again. “All of us here offer our love and support to Kara and Steve Marshall,” Hugh Tarlington said. His eyes moved over the crowd until he found her. “Kara, please know that all of us hold Lindsay gently in our thoughts and hearts and prayers tonight, tomorrow, and every moment until she comes home. And now, let us take you home.”

As someone began singing “Amazing Grace,” the crowd moved across the lawn toward the street, and as more voices joined in, Dawn D'Angelo and Patrick Shields fell in beside Kara. Each of them linked an arm in one of hers, and the slow march from the high school to the Marshall home began.

When Steve Marshall had accepted Russ Doran’s invitation for a quick drink after work, he fully intended to take only a moment at the end of a hectic day and unwind with a good friend. But the martini had both cooled and soothed him, and when Russ ordered another one, Steve figured one more wouldn’t hurt. While they waited for the second round, he excused himself, went to the men’s room, and while at the urinal, caught sight of himself in the mirror over the sink.

He didn’t just look tired — he looked at least ten years older than he had a week ago, and in the space between his eyebrows there were deep creases that barely vanished even when he stretched the skin with his fingers.

He didn’t need another martini; he needed to go home.

The problem was, he didn’t want to go home.

Home, in the last week, had become so completely different from the wondrously happy place he and Kara and Lindsay had shared since the day Lindsay had been born that it no longer felt like a place of refuge at all. Lindsay’s absence hung over it like a suffocating blanket, and every moment he was in the house reminded him of his terrible impotence in the face of what had happened.

He should have protected his family — his little girl — and he had failed.

Failed so utterly, so paralytically, that Kara had taken charge, focusing like a laser on doing whatever she thought would bring their baby back.

But Steve had a deep, gnawing feeling about Lindsay, a feeling so bad that he couldn’t even confide it to his wife.

Instead, he had to keep it inside, where it was not simply festering, but now consuming him. And he was certain that if he breathed even a word of his feeling to Kara — that they were never going to see their daughter again — she wouldn’t simply cry or try to talk him out of it.

No, she would be furious at his lack of faith, and call him a traitor, and a bad father, and a terrible husband.

And deep down inside, he knew she was right.

He was a bad father, and he was a terrible husband, because no matter how hard he’d tried to do everything he could for them, to make their lives as perfect as possible, he’d failed.

He’d failed, and Lindsay was gone, and the part of him that didn’t already feel dead didn’t really want to go on living, either.

Russ Doran knew about Lindsay’s disappearance, of course, and he had let Russ think he was doing a nice thing by taking him out for a drink and a little distraction before he went home.

But there it was again: he didn’t want to go home. And that one simple fact left him hating himself.

He returned from the men’s room, telling himself to lay down a couple of bills, take a sip from the final drink, and go home to Kara, no matter how painful it might be. Yet by the time he reached the table, the martini looked so frosty in its fresh glass that he found himself unable to resist it.

Steve sat down.