Page 10 of The Woman Left Behind

“And they didn’t come back.”

“They didn’t come back,” I confirmed.

“And you never heard from them?”

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

I was beginning to feel sick.

“No, I never heard from them,” I told him.

“And you didn’t report them missing?”

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

“Until recently,” I began to remind him, “you weren’t the sheriff, Sheriff Moran.”

Understanding dawned on his face.

“They were being framed,” I stated. “I know it.” I didn’t, but I was pretty danged sure of it. “Dern had a thing for Mom. Mom only had eyes for Dad. I don’t know if he ever tried anything with her, but I sense he did, because she was really afraid of him. Dad was super ticked about it, but he was a handyman, not the county sheriff. And Dern was the kind of man you didn’t pick a fight with, even if you were in the right. He was also the kind of man who got what he wanted, even if he had to deal dirty to get it.”

“I know, Lillian,” Harry said soothingly.

“I think,”—I lifted my chin—“I know that they’re good no matter where they are because they’re together. They might not know Dern isn’t sheriff anymore. They might not know it’s safe to come back.”

This was all lame, and I knew Harry knew it by the look he was trying to hide on his face.

“And I’ve never had the money to hire a private investigator to find them,” I declared.

That was an outright lie.

I didn’t want to know what such a person would find.

My parents…they’d call.

They’d write.

I was in denial.

Epic denial.

Today, I had a feeling, I wasn’t going to be able to inhabit that space any longer.

“We did it before,” I said this defiantly, determined to hold on to hope until the bitter end. “We lived in LA before we moved here. We loved it there. Mom and Dad, they’re both from the Midwest. They met when Mom accidentally rear-ended Dad. They got out of their cars, took one look at each other, and they were married a week later. They call it instalove these days. And it was. Mom would dig that term. She’d get a T-shirt with it and Dad’s face on it, she’d loved it so much. After they got married, they moved to LA , had me, and it was all Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm and Mom always getting excited because we could go see a movie in the Chinese Theater like it was any ole movie theater.”

“That’s sweet, Lillian, but I’m not sure what you meant when you said, ‘we did it before,’” Harry noted.

“Upped stakes and left,” I explained. “One day, in LA, we just upped stakes and left. Came up here. Dad almost immediately sold our car. I think they bought this house in cash. I was ten. They said it was time to slow down, find the quiet life. They didn’t want to raise their daughter in the mean city.”

“But you suspect different?”

I shook my head, but said, “I don’t know. It was just so sudden. At first, I was mad about leaving California and my friends. But then we were here and it’s so beautiful here, and they were so happy. It was impossible not to be happy with them.”

Harry said nothing to that.

“What I’m trying to get at is, this isn’t out of the norm for them. To decide to go and then just go.”

Again…lame!

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