The Missing Place Read Online Free PDF Page B

after that.
    Now she considered Shay’s sleeping form while she slipped her boots on, pulling up the zippers slowly so as to make no noise. She wondered if Shay had looked through her suitcase or her purse. Had it been her, she wouldn’t have attempted the suitcase, mostly because it would be hard not to muss the contents yet leave no evidence that she’d been snooping. But she might have looked in the purse to see if there were any obvious clues. Shameful, but true.
    Shay’s purse, if she had one, was nowhere to be seen. Besides the bottle of whiskey, the cigarettes, and the small CorningWare ramekin she was using as an ashtray, there was a mound of folded clothing, a laptop plugged into the only outlet in sight, two Mountain Dew cans, and a stack of magazines.
    Colleen tiptoed to the narrow counter and dug her phone from her purse. There were three calls from Andy, but just one voice mail. Colleen hesitated for only a moment before taking her coat from the foot of the bed and slipping it on, winding her scarf around her neck.
    Despite her caution, the door squeaked and rattled. Colleen didn’t look at Shay; if she’d woken the woman, she hoped she’d havethe courtesy to feign sleep until Colleen got outside. Just these few moments of privacy, just long enough to talk to Andy.
    As she eased the door open, she spotted something she’d missed the night before: tucked into the window, curling from the moisture condensing on the glass, was a photograph of a young man. Colleen’s breath caught in her throat: Shay’s son, Taylor, was beautiful, broad-shouldered and strong-jawed, with the same startling blue eyes as his mother. His dark blond hair was so thick it refused to stay flat. He had a tan and a smattering of freckles across his nose, which, combined with the dimple at one corner of his confident grin, gave him an air of wholesome mischief. He was the sort of boy you wanted to believe in, the boy who was a shoo-in for class president and dated the prettiest girls.
    As Colleen slipped out the door, pulling it gently shut behind her, her heart withered as it had a thousand times before. You’re every bit as good as him , she whispered to the wind, to her lost boy, and deep in her weary heart she waged her forever battle to believe it hard enough to make it true.

    THE COLD WIND hit her like a sheet of metal, slamming into her lungs, crackling her nostrils, and assaulting her bare hands. Despite Shay’s prediction, only another inch or two of snow had fallen since her arrival; she could still make out her footsteps and Dave’s larger ones. Light peeped between blinds in the house’s front windows. A gust lifted snow from the ground and swirled it around her face, stinging her cheeks, and Colleen hurried around the corner of the trailer, out of the wind. From this vantage point, she faced the side of the house as she made her call.
    â€œCol, what happened?” Andy said before the phone finished the first ring. “I called you half a dozen times.”
    â€œYes, sorry, I’m fine,” Colleen said, thinking, Three, it was only three. “I didn’t—it got so late and . . .”
    â€œWhere are you? Did you find a room?”
    â€œWell, not exactly. I mean, yes, I had a place to sleep last night.” It occurred to Colleen that Andy didn’t know about the other boy, the other mother.
    â€œYou didn’t call, and I got up this morning and there wasn’t a message. I was about to call the airline.”
    â€œOh, Andy.” Something crumpled inside Colleen, and she felt like she might cry. But her first day in North Dakota had barely begun, and she couldn’t afford tears. So she rubbed her eyes and focused on the cold leaching through her boots and freezing her ears and nose. “There’s another boy. They went missing together. He’s also twenty, and his name is Taylor, and he and Paul worked on the same rig