The Strong Silent Type by Marie Ferrarella Page B

seeing her mother.
    But she hadn’t asked him if he’d gone to see for himself, hadn’t asked him anything at all. It was as if she’d uttered a silent plea that until he was certain, she didn’t want to hear anything.
    He knew how that could be.
    And he was certain.
    But it wasn’t enough. She had to come back with him. Rose had to come back home.
    So here he was, sitting in the diner’s parking lot, steeling himself off so that he could convince her by using photographs of their life together, photographs of the children they’d had, both looking the way they’d looked when she’d disappeared and the way they looked now.
    He needed to know where she’d been for fifteen years and why she didn’t remember him.
    The pit of his stomach felt as if it were harboring a cannonball. Praying, he got out, the album and novel under his arm.
    When he walked in, the diner was empty except for the sunlight that filled it.
    Rose wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
    For a moment, his heart froze. Had she disappeared again? Had he imagined it all? Imagined her? No, the fingerprints were real. And Rayne had seen her, too. It wasn’t just him.
    Over in the corner, the cashier looked up from the magazine she was reading. “Can I help you?”
    He crossed to her, hoping she could. “Excuse me, is Rose—I mean, is Claire around?”
    The heavyset woman beamed. “No, she’s off today. Just me and my husband here today, I’m afraid.” She began to rise from her perch. “Everybody always asks for Claire. That smile of hers brings in a lot of business. What’ll you have?”
    “Do you know where I can find her?” He saw a wary look come into the woman’s brown eyes. He lowered his eyes to her name tag. “Lucy.”
    She shook her head. Her smile was sympathetic. “I’m sorry, but I can’t—”
    She probably thought he was some kind of stalker, Andrew guessed. “It’s really important I find her. I need to talk to her.” Before she could turn him down or call her husband out, Andrew opened the album and placed it on the counter between them. He pointed to the photograph of a young Rose surrounded by their children. He was standing next to her. “I’m her husband. I’ve been trying to find her for fifteen years.”
    Lucy’s mouth fell open.
     
    Half an hour later, he was standing before the door of a garden apartment, feeling as if his very life were on the line. He’d chased down dark alleys after perps with less fear than he was feeling now.
    He’d told his story to Lucy and the woman had been deeply moved. She’d pored over the photographs in the album, saying that she’d known all along that had to be more to Claire’s life than what the woman had told her. Claire had turned up at their diner fifteen years ago, looking for work, having no place to stay. She’d seemed overwrought and nervous. Lucy told him that she and her husband had put Claire up for a few weeks and when she’d gottentogether enough money, she moved into a place of her own.
    No one, Lucy said, could have asked for a better, more tireless worker. Lucy loved her like a daughter.
    At the end of her story, she’d given him Claire’s address.
    The door opened on his first knock.
    His Rose was in the doorway, her hand on the doorjamb, her body blocking any access.
    “Lucy called me,” she explained. She looked at him hesitantly. “You’re the man who came into the diner the other day.”
    They had history—years together—not just a few moments over opposite sides of a cup of coffee, he wanted to shout. Instead he whispered, “Don’t you know me?”
    “You’re the man who came in the other day,” she repeated, as if clinging to that piece of information.
    “Rose,” he began, reaching out to her.
    She pulled back, but still blocked his way into her apartment. It was obvious she didn’t want him to come in. “My name is Claire,” she insisted. “I don’t know a Rose. Please go away.”
    He’d waited too long to be sent away like this.