This Secret Thing by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen

Author:Marybeth Mayhew Whalen [Whalen, Marybeth Mayhew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: chick lit, Fiction, Contemporary
ISBN: 9781542019477
Published: 2020-10-01T05:00:00+00:00

Nico

He stood at the outer edge, banished from the action because of his potential connection to whoever was in that body bag. They’d told him to go home and wait for a call, but he knew they didn’t really expect him to. More like they had to say it for the sake of protocol. He saw them cast sympathetic glances his way from time to time. And he tried to respond with what he hoped looked like a brave smile.

He kept a safe distance, watching the investigators in an effort to keep his eyes from straying to that body bag, to resist the temptation to run over to it, unzip it, and see who was inside. The captain told him he didn’t want to see that. Matteo or not, whoever was in that bag no longer looked human after spending time underneath the water.

When they were kids, Matteo used to put algae on his head and chase Nico around the pond near their house, moaning, his arms outstretched in a zombie-walk parody. “I want to eat your brains,” he would say. Now it felt like Matteo had eaten his heart, devoured it all for himself, leaving nothing for Nico or his wife and kids. Now it was Nico who was the zombie. He glanced over at the bag, half expecting Matteo to sit up out of it, eye sockets empty, his open mouth a permanent yawn. Nico shook his head and pulled his phone from his pocket to distract himself.

Sure enough, he had a notification. Right on schedule, his daughter had come home from school. He clicked on the camera to watch her arrival, turning to walk a bit farther away so that he could listen. She usually sang as she ambled up the driveway and let herself into the house. Since the separation, Karen had been working part-time, gone when Lauren got home from school. He felt bad about another change for the kids, worse about the fact that his daughter was home without supervision, which made his monitoring of the family’s security cameras more important, he rationalized. And that wasn’t going to change.

Karen had emailed him last night to tell him she’d been offered more hours and perhaps with “things the way they are,” it’d be best if she took the work. They were reduced to emails now. It was the safest, least emotional way to communicate. Phone calls could escalate; texts were easy to ignore. He couldn’t believe it had come to this, but he was powerless to stop it. In order to stop it, he’d have to know if it was Matteo in that bag, and if it was, he’d have to know who put him there. And then he’d have to see that person brought to justice. He knew himself, and he would not be satisfied if the mystery of Matteo’s disappearance had just been solved. One answer would inevitably lead to a whole host of new questions.

He forced himself to focus on the camera, watching as a random bird flitted across its unblinking field of vision once or twice.

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