He looked up at her, and she didn’t like the expression of relief she saw in his eyes. “I agree.”

“But only for a few weeks. Only until it’s safe, right?”

He rose back to his feet without answering and went to the door.

“Jack? You know I’ll wait for you. As long as it takes.”

He didn’t look back at her. “I’ll call you.”

AFTER

CHAPTER 25

FRANKIE

Flanked by boxes filled with her dead daughter’s belongings, Brenda Moore looks as worn down and used up as the sofa she’s now sitting on. She is only forty-one, and once perhaps she was as attractive as Taryn, but life has not been kind to this woman. Her skin has the sickly pallor of a night shift worker, and judging by the length of her gray roots, it has been months since she last visited a hairdresser. Her tattered jeans and flannel shirt—practical attire for cleaning out a dead daughter’s apartment—hang shapeless on her bony frame, and her hands are raw and chapped, no doubt a consequence of frequent handwashings at her nursing home job. Everything about her radiates defeat, and no wonder. What more devastating blow can life deliver than the death of your child?

“This place needs to be cleared out and cleaned up by next week,” she says and gives a weary sigh. “The fifteenth. Or I’ll owe another month’s rent on it.”

“Given the circumstances, I’m sure the landlord will make an exception,” says Frankie.

“Maybe. But it’s not something I’m counting on.” She looks down at the box of her daughter’s clothes and reaches in to stroke a sweater, as if comforted by its feathery softness. “I haven’t even started cleaning yet. Or would you rather I not? I mean, I’ve watched those CSI shows, so I know the police like things kept as is, until they’ve finished all those tests.”

“No, we’ve finished with this apartment. You’re fine to do what you need to do.”

“Thank you,” the woman murmurs. There is no reason to thank them, but she seems like a woman who is grateful for any courtesies. “I wish I had more information for you. But my girl and I, we weren’t as close as we used to be. It kinda broke my heart, you know? You raise your kid and you love her and you want to stay part of her life. But then they grow up, and they push you away . . .” She clutches her daughter’s sweater, desperately wringing it in her fist.

Frankie cannot imagine the pain this woman is feeling, the heartbreak of collecting your dead child’s clothes, folding them, pressing them to your face. Clothes that will be hard to surrender because they still carry her daughter’s scent.

“When was the last time you spoke to Taryn?” Mac asks.

“It was a few weeks ago, I think. She hadn’t called me in a while, so I had to call her.”

“How often did you usually speak?”

“Not often enough. Not since we had that argument, back in January.”

“About what?”

“I wanted her to come home to Maine after graduation. I told her how tight the money’s been and how I couldn’t afford to keep sending her more. Oh, she got upset. So upset we didn’t talk to each other for weeks.”

“Didn’t she see your side of it?”

“No. She couldn’t. All she could think about was being with him.”

“That would be her boyfriend, Liam Reilly?”

Brenda sighs. “I knew it was never going to work out, the two of them. I’ve been telling her that for years, but she never believed me.”

“Why didn’t you think it would work?” asks Frankie.

Brenda looks at her. “You said you’ve met him.”

“Yes. We interviewed him right after Taryn died.”

“And did you think he’d ever marry a girl like my daughter?”

Frankie doesn’t know how to answer this, and she’s taken aback that any mother would have such a harsh opinion of her own child. “Taryn was a lovely girl,” she says.

“Yeah, she was pretty. Prettiest girl in town. And she was smart, so smart. But that’s not good enough for them. His mother made that plain enough to me.”

“His mother told you that?”

“She didn’t have to. In our town, there’s certain families that just don’t marry each other. Your kids may go to the same school, and you shop at the same grocery store, but there are lines you don’t cross. That’s what I told Taryn, because I didn’t want her to waste her best years hoping and waiting. Gamble your heart on the wrong boy, and you’ll pay for the rest of your life.” She looks down again at the sweater and says softly: “I sure did.”

“Tell us about him,” says Mac.

“Liam? Why?”

“We understand they were together a long time.”

“Since they were kids. The only reason she applied to Commonwealth was because he was coming here. Everything she did was for him.”

“Did he ever hurt your daughter?”

“What? No.” Brenda is clearly startled by the question. “At least, she never said anything.”

“Would she tell you about it? If he had hurt her?”

She looks back and forth at Mac and Frankie, trying to understand why they’re asking these questions. “I don’t know that she would tell me,” she finally answers. “These last few weeks, she didn’t speak to me at all. If only I’d stood by her. If only I’d supported her, no matter what. I could have scraped together more money. I could have—”

“This is not your fault, Brenda,” Frankie says gently. “Believe me, her death had nothing to do with you.”

“Does it have to do with Liam?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out. Did you know they’d broken up?”

Brenda shakes her head and sighs. “I’m not surprised.”

“So she didn’t tell you about their breakup.”

Brenda looks down again at the sweater she’s been obsessively stroking. “It seems she didn’t tell me a lot of things.”

“Liam said they broke up months ago,” says Frankie. “He said Taryn was upset and she had a hard time accepting it.”

“And was he upset?” Brenda snaps. “Did it bother him at all that my girl was dead?”

“He did seem shaken up by the news.”

“But he’ll move on. Men always do.”

“Mrs. Moore,” says Mac, “was there anyone besides Liam in your daughter’s life? Another boyfriend, maybe?”

“No. He was the only one.”

“Are you sure of that?”

Brenda frowns. “Why are you asking about other boyfriends? Is there something you know that I don’t?”

Mac and Frankie look at each other, neither one wanting to break the news.

“I’m sorry to tell you this,” says Frankie. “But your daughter was pregnant.”

Brenda cannot speak. She presses her hand to her mouth to stifle the sob, but the sound spills out anyway, a high, keening wail that breaks Frankie’s heart because she is a mother, too, and this is a mother’s shriek. Brenda rocks forward and hugs herself, her body shaking with quiet sobs. It is terrible to watch, and Mac looks away, but Frankie does not. She forces herself to bear witness to the woman’s agony, waiting silently, patiently, until Brenda’s sobs finally fade away.

“Then you didn’t know,” Frankie says.

“Why didn’t she tell me? I’m her mother! I should have known! Whatever she wanted, I could have helped her. We could have raised that baby together.” Suddenly she lifts her head and looks at Frankie. “What did he say about it?”

“We haven’t asked Liam yet. We wanted to talk to you first.”

“I can just imagine how he would take the news. And his parents? Their precious son marrying a girl just because he got her pregnant? Certainly not if it’s my daughter.” Brenda sits up straight, anger stiffening her spine. “So that’s why she killed herself. Because that boy wouldn’t marry her.”

Frankie doesn’t immediately respond, and the silence makes Brenda frown.

“Detective Loomis?”

“There’s a great deal we don’t know,” Frankie finally says.

Brenda looks at Mac, then back at Frankie. The woman is not clueless; she understands there is something crucial they haven’t told her. “Earlier, you asked me about Liam. About whether he’s ever hurt Taryn. Why?”

“We’re looking into every possibility.”

“Did he hurt her? Did he? ”

“We don’t know.”

“But you’ll find out, won’t you? Promise me you’ll find out.”

Frankie looks her in the eye and says, mother to mother, “I will. I promise.”

CHAPTER 26

FRANKIE

Golden boy Liam is not looking so golden this morning. Only a week ago, Frankie considered this aspiring lawyer a nice catch for anyone’s daughter. Now he is squirming in his chair and avoiding her gaze, proving he is every bit as flawed as any of the boys her own girls bring home. Maybe even worse.

“I swear I told you the truth. I did break up with Taryn back in December,” he says. “But she wouldn’t accept it. I showed you my phone. You saw how she kept calling me, texting me. Sometimes she’d just pop up without warning, wherever I happened to be. I’d turn around and there she’d be. She kept stalking me, until that blowup in the restaurant I told you about.”