MARY CLARK - Piece of My Heart

“Okay,” she said, “I’ll let Leo hang up the phone before you two give him an earache with all that yelling.”

In addition to wanting to hear their voices, Marcy had called to make sure that Leo knew they were about to go live with the press conference, not to mention the various search groups that the police department had already organized around the area. On Marcy’s drive back from the print shop, she had noticed a group of upper-middle-aged women slowly walking through a nature preserve at the edge of the village. Wondering if they might be some of the volunteers Detective Langland had mentioned, she pulled over. It turned out they were a group that usually did a morning water aerobics class together at the YMCA pool, but had decided to spend their time helping with the search for that “cute little boy” instead.

As Marcy had driven away from the scene, all she could think about was the fact that the women had been looking down on the ground and behind the bushes as they walked. They weren’t looking for a boy who was playing or running or looking for his way back to the hotel. They were looking for a body.

She didn’t want the girls to overhear their brother’s name out in public, and couldn’t exactly warn Leo while his phone was on speaker with the girls in the car. She told the girls she loved them and thanked Leo again for entertaining them. Once she’d hung up, she sent a quick follow-up text to Leo that he would see once he was out from behind the wheel.

As she set her phone down, she saw her husband through fresh eyes. They’d known each other ten years, but in her mind, it had whizzed by in a flash, and he hadn’t changed one bit. Same wavy head of dark hair and steely blue-gray eyes. He had a fuller face than his more famous older brother, but to her, he was even more handsome. She suspected that if she and Andrew were lucky enough to turn one hundred together, she’d still see him as a young man.

But in this single moment, she saw the strands of gray peering out from his temples, and the lines that had formed around his eyes and lips. And, more than anything, he looked exhausted. Of course he did. So did she.

And in ten minutes, they were expected to step in front of the camera crews assembling in the parking lot outside the hotel. They would lay their pain bare for public consumption—for strangers to suspect them of harming their own son, to judge them for losing sight of him, to feel grateful they weren’t the ones begging to see their child again—all in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, one person would recognize Johnny from a picture and help bring him home.

Her phone buzzed with a new text from Detective Langland. We’re all set up outside. Let me know when you’re ready. I’ll walk you from your room. There’s quite a crowd gathered.

She thought again about the booklet’s mention of the number of parents who divorced after a child went missing. Those irreparable fractures had to start somewhere, maybe with the tiny little crack of one parent speaking to the police without the other.

“I have to tell you something before the press conference,” she said.

Andrew immediately closed his laptop and looked up at her with his full attention.

“This morning, I didn’t only go to the print shop. I met Detective Langland at the coffee shop.”

“Okay,” he said tentatively.

She explained to him that she had wanted Langland’s unvarnished views of the case, including Leo and Laurie’s theory about Darren Gunther. “And maybe because she was a woman, I thought it would somehow help if I met with her, one-on-one—to make sure Johnny wasn’t just a case number to her. But I’m sorry. I should have told you.”

He rose and made his way toward her, setting his laptop down on the coffee table. “You don’t have to apologize, babe. I would literally do anything— anything —if I could take this pain away from you and carry it for both of us.”

“But that’s why I owe you an apology. All I’ve been thinking about is my own pain—my special bond with Johnny, the way my body somehow felt different once we brought him home, as if nature was telling me that he was mine, just as if I had carried him myself. But I’m not his only parent.”

“No, but you’re his only mother.”

“You were the one who could always sense if he was fussing in his crib, even if we couldn’t hear it over the baby monitor.”

He smiled sadly at the memory. Johnny was the only baby they’d ever seen who could be red in the face from fretting, his little hands balled into fists, without making the slightest sound.

“Well, I don’t know if this helps, Marcy, but you’re right: I have always felt that kind of psychic connection to Johnny. And, somehow, I just know that he’s out there, waiting for us, alive and alert and trying to get home.”

“But how much longer can he wait?”

She sent a text to Detective Langland to say they were ready. They were about to be those poor parents you see on the news.

Chapter 26

Laurie felt the heavy weight of her assignment as she stepped out of the elevator into the offices of Fisher Blake Studios. If everything had gone according to plan, she would not have set foot in 15 Rockefeller Center for another two and a half weeks, the longest she had ever been away from work other than after Greg’s murder. Now here she was, trying to launch a new investigation in the hopes that the trail would somehow lead to Johnny.

When she arrived at the entry to her office, she saw that Grace Garcia was away from her desk, but then quickly heard her assistant’s distinctively throaty but upbeat voice emerge from Jerry’s office next door.

“I’m telling you, Jerry, you would love it. I’ve seen you at your dance parties. Come with me next week and try it out.”

“Me? Absolutely not.” The tone of Jerry’s voice suggested less resistance to the idea than his words did. “Goofing off at a party with friends is one thing. A public workout class based totally on Beyoncé’s dance moves? I’d land flat on my face before a room full of strangers by the second chorus.”

A smile broke out across Laurie’s face and she had to stifle a giggle. She was about to interrupt, but gave herself a moment to enjoy another brief bit of workplace banter before she’d have to pull Grace and Jerry into the darkness with her.

Grace suddenly broke out into song, bending her knees and swaying low to the floor. “Six-inch heels,” she crooned. “She walked in the club like…”

“Are you kidding me?” Jerry balked. “My knees would quit in protest if I tried to make them do that!”

Laurie stepped into the office and gave Grace a short round of applause. “Nice moves. But you’re probably the only person in the class who wears six-inch heels when it’s snowing outside, so I imagine you have a leg up on everyone. Pun definitely intended.”

Grace suddenly stood upright. “Sorry, Laurie. I didn’t expect you to get back to the city so fast.”

She had called them as she was leaving the Hamptons so they could prepare for a brainstorming session about Darren Gunther.

Grace pulled Laurie into a hug that was followed by another from Jerry.

“I’ve been praying for little Johnny all day long,” Grace said. “We watched the press conference. Poor Marcy and Andrew. They must be absolutely beside themselves.”

“Are you okay?” Jerry asked. “How are you holding up?”

How am I feeling? she thought. Anxious. Overwhelmed. Terrified that violence may have struck Alex’s family— my family, once again.

Jumping into Darren Gunther’s case as a way to find Johnny felt like such a shot in the dark, but she reminded herself of her father’s reasoning. He had been absolutely certain that Gunther wouldn’t use his one chance at a court’s exoneration without somehow trying to cheat during the process. So far, Leo had been unable to figure out what Gunther might have done to try to stack the deck in his favor. Now that Johnny was missing, Leo believed he had found the answer to his question.