Blessed Are Those Who Mourn by Kristi Belcamino Page B

we’re in. He wraps me in his arms and whispers in my ear. “I’m going to find her, Ella.”
    When he pulls back, the pain in his eyes nearly shatters me. He can say whatever he wants. I’ve heard and seen it before: a cop promising to find a missing child and then going to his deathbed regretting the promise he couldn’t keep.
    Donovan takes his cigarette out of his mouth and kisses me on the forehead like I’m a child. Then he turns away and heads back to the group on the beach.
    Sergeant Jackson takes my arm, and I let him guide me back to the parking lot.

 
    Chapter 14
    T HE SKY IS darkening as night falls upon the city. As we make our way to the parking lot, time becomes distorted. It feels like I’m in purgatory on this walk that seems like it is taking forever. Every fiber of my being wants to stay on this beach. The last place Grace was seen.
    She must be so cold in just a swimsuit. She must be so scared. Stop. Don’t go there. You can’t go there .
    Over the years in therapy, I’ve learned how to compartmentalize my fears and anxieties, to redirect my thoughts, but this—­this is the off-­the-­charts terror. So I chant, Grace will come home safe. Grace will come home safe. Grace will come home safe.
    Don ’t think anything else. Don’t go there. Stay strong for Grace .
    I’m not sure if it works, but it keeps me from toppling to my knees.
    I give the sergeant my keys so a reserve officer can follow in my vehicle, then I get into the passenger seat of the sergeant’s squad car. I’m a mass of mush, as if my bones had disintegrated. Another officer carrying a small notepad wordlessly hops in the backseat behind the Plexiglas.
    â€œI’ll ask you all this at your place, but just off the top of your head, has anyone threatened your mother or daughter?” the sergeant asks, staring straight ahead as he pulls out of the parking lot.
    â€œNo,” I say.
    â€œWhat about you?”
    â€œWhere do I start?” I give a strangled laugh at the irony, and the sergeant shoots me a concerned look. I tell him about my sister’s kidnapping and murder. I tell him how the FBI suspects Frank Anderson took my sister, and now I’m worried he’s back and killing women. My teeth chatter as I say this. I’m shaking.
    Even though it is seventy degrees outside and he has small beads of sweat on his brow, Jackson cranks the heat full blast, reaching into his backseat with one hand and pulling a blanket around me as his car screeches through the city streets. When I finish telling him about Anderson, he exhales loudly.
    â€œDetective Donovan mentioned this Anderson guy,” he says and quickly darts a glance my way. “He said the feds are working on it, but we need to put out the word, as well.”
    The sergeant grabs his phone and makes some other calls. I tune out, saying the chanting prayer in my head to keep it together. Please bring Grace home safe. Please protect Grace. Please help us find Grace .
    I want to get the words right, but I don’t know what to say. Protect her? Bring her home? Keep her safe? All of it.
    The sergeant hangs up. “Anything else odd lately?” he asks me while he looks straight ahead out the front windshield, hands gripping the wheel at ten and two o’clock like they taught us in driver’s training.
    I flash back to the man on the beach last weekend. I describe him to the sergeant as best as I can.
    â€œAt first he seemed young, twenties, although I think he was my age, thirties. His hair was dirty blond and cut like a little boy’s in a sort of bowl haircut. I think that’s what made him seem boyish. And his sort of effeminate facial features, like pink lips. And his eyes. They were weird. Icy blue. They weren’t evenly spaced. It’s hard to describe, but there was something odd about them.” My voice is shaky.
    â€œYes, your husband mentioned that