Things You Won't Say Read Online Free PDF Page A

but not locking them. Sometimes during the day, they let Sadie out in the backyard and didn’t bother locking up, especially if the kids were running in and out to the play set. It was possible—natural, even—that he’d forgotten at a time like this, when their lives had been upended.
    But why had Mike immediately grabbed his gun and assumed the worst?
    “Anything missing?” Stu asked.
    “Not that I can tell,” Mike said.
    “Our electronics are still here,” Jamie added, gesturing to Henry’s computer.
    Stu cleared his throat and glanced at his partner, then looked down at his feet. “Probably some teenagers playing a prank,” he said. “Summer vacation’s just about here. They’re getting antsy.”
    “One of them stole a street sign a few miles away this week,” the other cop added.
    Stu was a terrible liar. He’d come to the same conclusion she had: Mike had forgotten to lock the doors, then overreacted. Jamie was just glad the officers hadn’t seen Mike cutting through the house in his boxers, aiming his gun at the squeaky Elmo doll. He never would’ve lived it down at the station.
    But the way the officers weren’t looking at Mike was almost worse than teasing. Mike reached out and pulled the sliding doors closed, then locked them, the clicking sound echoing in the sudden stillness.
    “Teenagers,” Jamie said, nodding. “We’ve got a fourteen-year-old here tonight, so maybe they were planning a prank like you said.”
    She’d made it worse, Jamie realized. She’d been the one who’d suggested it was Sadie, and her sudden reversal was too obvious.
    “Can I get you guys a cup of coffee?” she offered quickly and was relieved when they shook their heads and said they needed to get going.
    “Let you two get some sleep,” Stu said. Mike reached out and slapped his palm.
    “Thanks for coming,” he said. “Sorry my wife called you in. I figured it was nothing.”
    Jamie could feel her cheeks heat up, but she kept quiet. She knew Mike needed to save face. She closed the front door behind the officers and locked it, then turned to her husband. He looked a little dazed, as if he’d just awoken from a vivid dream and felt disoriented.
    “Coming to bed?” she asked. She knew she probably wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep tonight, but maybe Mike could. And she’d welcome the chance to lie beside him and feel his warmth, to try to get physically close to him to compensate for the emotional distance that had begun to creep between them, like a fog, since the shooting.
    But he shook his head. “I’m going to get some cereal.”
    “Okay.” Jamie waited until he’d turned and walked toward the kitchen, then she headed upstairs. She stopped in eachof the children’s rooms again, putting her face close to Eloise’s head so she could inhale her daughter’s sweet smell and picking up the doll on Emily’s floor and placing it on top of her bureau. Sadie was curled up in the crook of Sam’s knees, and Jamie gave both of their heads a stroke. She stopped in at Henry’s room and pulled up the covers he’d kicked off.
    Finally she went into her own room and climbed into bed. She lay there for a moment, then she got up to do something she never had before in all the years she’d known Mike.
    She pulled on the safe’s door to make sure he had locked it after putting away his gun.
    •••
    Lou’s weary body craved a long, hot soak in the tub. She’d worked at the zoo that morning, then hurried to the apartment for a quick shower and change, then she’d caught the Metro to the coffee shop, where she’d stood for a five-hour shift, steaming endless stainless-steel carafes of milk and dousing iced drinks with whipped cream and caramel sauce. After her bath, she’d make a thick sandwich, then collapse in front of the television. Maybe an old black-and-white movie, or the History Channel, she thought as she fit her key into the apartment’s lock.
    She inhaled the scent of roasted garlic