“Is Clara there?”
I stood so quickly that my chair struck the wall.
“Check with the neighbors. Shaun may have gotten sick.”
“She would’ve called.”
“Check anyway.”
***
By midnight, the police had Clara’s route and car description.
They found it below a river bridge the next day. Its parking brake had failed after Clara left it on the shoulder. Divers found no bodies, and years later, a court declared all three dead.
***
Gwen’s letter gave us the first place Clara might have stopped.
“We’re going there,” I told Jackson.
“Not until you take your medication,” Jackson said, taking my coat.
“I’ve already lost 40 years.”
“Then don’t collapse before you get an answer. I’ll drive.”
***
The motel was now an apartment building. An elderly woman in the lobby studied Clara’s photograph.
“I remember her. Her son had a fever, and she kept trying to call her husband.”
I showed her Gwen’s picture.
“Did this woman come?”
“Yes. They argued. Your wife wanted to go home and hear the truth from her husband.”
