Free The Missing Year by Belinda Frisch Page A

Yes, he had taken a temporary position at Lakeside, but that he and Sarah had started their life together in New York, that he hadn’t been back since her burial, and that he seemed to have returned at a time when she was the only thing on his mind was coincidental, even to him. He sent the call to voice mail and waited until the screen cleared to listen to what Mattie had to say.
    “Ross, it’s me. I’m sorry about the other night. I shouldn’t have come to your house, or pushed you to choose … to make an impossible choice. I don’t blame you for lashing out. I … I miss you. And I’m worried. Where are you? Please call me when you get this message.”
    The voicemail was the opposite of what he was expecting, but that was Mattie. She had her own way of handling things.
    Ross’s, for now, was avoidance.
    He exited the car, took a cart from the corral two spaces away, and went inside.
    Five years was a long time to be away from a town as small as the one he and Sarah were from. He wondered what kind of conclusions people had drawn in his absence. Rural communities specialized in milling gossip.
    Entering the supermarket, Ross considered his limited dinner options, mentally listing the meals he could make with one pot, one pan, a spoon, a spatula, and a strainer. He grabbed a loaf of bread from the bakery, spaghetti sauce, ziti, and was headed for the meat case to get a pound of ground beef when someone called out to him.
    “Ross? Ross Reeves, is that you?”
    He froze, not immediately turning around.
    “It is you,” the woman said in one of her many theater accents.
    “Hello, Camille.”
    Of course he’d run into Sarah’s best friend since grade school.
    The wheels of Camille’s cart thudded against the tile floor fast enough that he knew better than to try and evade her. She was in full costume, her claim to fame being performing as a community theater regular. The woman was addicted to assuming alternate personalities.
    “Camille Grant, as I live and breathe.”
    The mid-forties blond held up her empty left hand and pointed at her ring finger. “I’m back to McKenzie,” she said, tugging at the hem of her dress in a way that emphasized what appeared to be a set of enhanced breasts. “Sounds better on stage, anyway.”
    “Then I guess I won’t ask how Adrian’s doing.”
    “I couldn’t answer you if you did.”
    A young boy, who Ross guessed to be about three-years-old, grabbed Camille’s hand and hid behind her.
    “Cute kid,” Ross said, at a loss for anything else.
    “Oh, thanks.” Camille pulled a face. “But he’s not mine. He’s Viv’s. I’m watching him until she gets off work. She should be here any minute.”
    Vivian McKenzie, Camille’s sister, would have been voted the one least likely to reproduce had year book committees been more forward thinking. Instead, she’d been labeled “Most likely to be incarcerated,” a title Viv proudly accepted.
    “Viv’s married?”
    Camille rolled her eyes. “No. It’s a long story.”
    With Viv, it almost always was.
    Ross shook his head, unable to digest the news. “Viv, huh? I wouldn’t have guessed.”
    “I know, right?” Camille smiled, her teeth as white as the sash on her v-neck blue dress. Her long hair was the exact shade of blond Ross remembered her bleaching it to in the seventh grade. A lot of changes had taken place over that summer, not just for Camille, but for Sarah, too, who had been the first girl to attract his attention. “Not that I’m not happy to see you, but what are you doing back?” she said.
    Ross shrugged. “I’m helping with a patient at Lakeside.”
    A psychiatric facility in a town as small as Mirror Lake didn’t need more than a mention. People knew well what and where it was.
    “Are you here for good?”
    “No. Definitely not. Six weeks max, depending. I’m staying at Peak View.”
    Camille wrinkled her nose. “Eww. What about Chicago? You work for a hospital there, right?”
    “It’s a