Free Where They Found Her by Kimberly McCreight

Barbara pulled in some air through her nose, hoping it might slow her heart. Silly that it was already beating so hard when she didn’t know what was wrong. “He isn’t being picked on, is he? I’ve been worried about that ever since the class picnic. He doesn’t always hold his own around some of the higher-energy boys.” Barbara didn’t say Will’s name. She didn’t want to go that far, but that was whom she was thinking about. Inevitably, boys like Will had a dark side.
    “No, Cole isn’t being picked on.” Rhea’s smile shrank. “I’m afraid he’s the one doing— But ‘picking on’ isn’t the term I’d use.”
    “Excuse me?” Barbara felt her face flush. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
    “Well, there have been several things in the past couple of days.” Rhea’s tone was cautious now, which made Barbara more nervous. “Things that are totally out of character for Cole.”
    Barbara dropped down hard onto a chair. Don’t be defensive , she told herself. Even if Rhea was wrong—which she was, Barbara had never been called in to speak about her children—she clearly believed what she was saying. She was trying to be helpful. And jumping on her wouldn’t be persuasive.
    “I’m sorry, exactly what is it you think Cole did?” Barbara asked, trying to sound merely interested.
    “Not listening, talking back, being disruptive.” Rhea ticked them off as though they were the tip of a much more ominous iceberg. “He wouldn’t sit for morning circle on Thursday, and then he left the classroom on Friday without permission. He was standing right outside the door when I followed him out, but it took several minutes to get him back inside. I got worried I’d have to physically carry him. With another child, I might not think much of any of it—at least not any one incident. But now it’s something of a pattern, and Cole is always so sweet and well behaved. He’s the one I count on being helpful when everyone else is falling apart.”
    “That’s certainly the Cole I know,” Barbara said, glad they were in agreement on that point.
    “Could there be maybe— Has there been, perhaps, something going on at home? A job change or a death in the family, some stressor of some kind?” Rhea’s mouth was open, her lips parted in an O. She blinked her doe eyes a few more times before looking down into her lap. “For someone as sensitive as Cole, I’m not sure it would take—”
    “Cole’s not sensitive,” Barbara snapped. She couldn’t help it. What Rhea was suggesting sounded an awful lot like a personal attack. It would make anyone defensive. “Anyway, there’s nothing ‘going on’ in our home.”
    The worst part was that there could be something: the bureau. More specifically, her and Steve’s silly fight about it a few weeks earlier.
    “How could you just forget?” Barbara had shouted when Steve got home that night. Barbara’s dad, Al, had been threatening to move an old bureau on his own for weeks, and Steve was supposed to make sure that didn’t happen. “You promised, Steve. He’ll have another heart attack if he moves that bureau!”
    Steve hung his head, eyes closed. “You’re right. I’m sorry,” he’d said quietly, hands raised in surrender. “It completely slipped my mind.”
    Forgetful, that was her husband. Ever since Steve had taken over as chief of police six years earlier, things had been slipping his mind. Barbara sometimes even wondered if Steve was using the promotion to spend less time with her. He was always kind, and they rarely argued, but lately he was so much more passionate about his work than about Barbara.
    Now, of course, Barbara worried that Steve’s distraction had nothing to do with his job. She was worried it was about her.
    Barbara had been sure she was imagining it the first time she’d spotted the woman downtown. Barbara had followed her for seven blocks to be sure she was imagining it. But no, Barbara