Page 33 of The Guilty One
“I’ll be back, okay?” Before she can answer, before my tears start to fall, I hurry down the hallway and into the bedroom, dusting them away as quickly as I can.
I can’t fall apart right now. I have things to do.
Before I can give in to my tears, I set to work. The whole way home, I kept thinking of the photograph on Aaron’s desk, the one with the lion tattoo on full display. I wonder if Tate has any photographs of the four of them together, anything that might help me gather insight into their friendship. I can’t believe there is no connection between the men’s friendship and what is going on today, and if I can find the connection, maybe I can find my husband.
In our closet, there’s a box of old photographs I’ve been saying for years I’m going to buy albums for, yet I still haven’t gotten around to it. On my tiptoes, I grab the box from the top of the closet and place it on the floor, dropping down to sort through them. I know there are a few from his college days, just like there are old prom photos from my high school years and pictures of me working at the pizza shop alongside Mom and Dad as my first job. Most of these pictures are from the years before Tate and I got married, before our phones became the only albums that exist.
I have so many fond memories of going through old photo albums with my mom and grandma when I was a kid, and I always promised myself I’d make sure the boys had that, that I wouldn’t let their only memories become digital, but I’ve failed at that goal.
If Tate comes home, if he’s okay, I promise to do better. I’ll buy albums immediately. I’ll print every photo on my phone. Every single one.
I sort through the photos quickly, placing mine in one pile and his in the other. Mine is much larger. There’s only a small section of photos of him, with a few guys or girls in college. Tate’s parents adopted him from foster care in high school, so there aren’t any pictures of him as a child, which is another reason I’ve always wanted to make sure our children had plenty of pictures of their childhood.
Once all the pictures are sorted, I begin going through his photos slowly. There are less than fifty total, I’d guess. I stop on a photo of him with a group of boys. It’s college; I recognize the insignia from Highland University on Tate’s shirt. Their arms are draped around each other’s shoulders, with a bonfire that’s probably too large to be safe behind them.
I recognize the face of the man I saw in the photograph at the police station, and my eyes linger on him. There’s so much life behind his eyes here, it makes me sad to think he’s gone. He’s the shortest of the group, with a thick neck and wild, dark hair. His cheeks are flushed red, but aside from having fewer wrinkles and no bruises or scrapes, he looks just as he did in those photos. There’s no doubt this is Dakota Miller.
Next to him is the man I now know to be Aaron Bond. He has decidedly more hair and less pudge around his waist, but he’s still completely recognizable. Tate is at the end, his gangly arm draped over the shoulder of Bradley Jennings. I recognize his face from the photos in the obituary I found.
But there is a fifth boy I don’t recognize in the center of the photo, and it’s him my eyes go to instantly. He’s attractive, almost painfully so, even in the blurry photograph. Dark hair and eyes, and the only one in the photo not smiling.
I flip the photo over, hoping to find writing that might tell me who the boy is, but there’s nothing. He was probably just one of the kids at the party that night, but I make a mental note to keep an eye out for his face in any other photos. If he comes up again, he could be in danger just as much as the others. Or—a worse thought crosses my mind—he could be the one causing the danger in the first place.
I could see it, now that the thought is there. There’s a darkness lurking behind his eyes that makes me uncomfortable.
I scan the rest of the stack. There are a few photos of Tate at his dad’s company during his summer internship, and a few of him in class or in his dorms. I search the photos, desperately looking for the face of that boy, but I don’t find any others.
When I’ve gone through all the photos that belong to Tate, I tuck them back inside the photo box, keeping the one group photo out in hopes of asking my in-laws if they remember the boy in the middle, and make my way back into the kitchen. To my relief, my dad has just arrived with dinner. I didn’t realize until right this moment that I can’t remember the last time I ate, but it certainly wasn’t today.
Grief has replaced my hunger, but I can’t let that happen. I have to take care of myself, stay healthy for the boys’ sake if nothing else.
The dinner table is full of chatter, with the boys each telling us about their day and asking about Tate, and my parents trying their hardest to keep the conversation in positive, safe territory. It feels like a betrayal of Tate to be sitting here having a meal together, as if we aren’t missing him. As if every time I look toward his empty chair, my heart doesn’t squeeze.
But it does.
Of course it does.
We aren’t whole without him, and I’m not sure how I’ll ever recover if he chose this. If he left us without answers on purpose.
When the door opens later, and Daphne and Lane arrive, they join us at the table, though their moods are decidedly more somber. When dinner is done, my parents put the boys to bed so we can catch up.
“What did you find out at the police station?” I ask, gathering the plates and carrying them across the room to the sink.
Daphne sighs. “Nothing, really. Just more of the same. They’re working through several leads, but there’s nothing concrete to tell us. We told them about the boys and gave them their names, but I’m not sure what they’re doing with that information or if they’ll try to contact Aaron. They didn’t say.”
“Did you ask about a search party?”
“We did. Right now, they don’t seem to think it’s a good idea,” Lane says. “Apparently there isn’t enough evidence of where he might be for there to be a good enough cause to use resources on a search party.”
“Well, we could go look on our own,” I suggest, though it feels strange. The police are right. He could be anywhere. “We don’t need permission to do that. Maybe we could search around where the accident happened. Just in case he was in the car.”
Daphne pinches her lips together, looking down. She sniffles, wiping her fingers under both eyes. “Oh, I think they’re giving up on him, Celine.”
“They’re not,” I promise her, reaching across and taking her hand. I want to tell them about the missing money, but I don’t know how to without making it seem like I’m accusing Tate of something. “I promise they’re not. We won’t let them.”
She nods, drying her eyes. “Thank you. Tate is so lucky to have you.”
“I love him so much,” I tell her.