Page 16 of Smoke and Roses

She cringes, looking around. “We went under the yellow tape.”

“Yep.”

“Gabe’s going to kill me,” she murmurs.

“Gabe’s going to yell at both of us. Then he’s going to bag this and send it to the lab.” I pick up her hand, the one holding the chain, and turn it over and kiss her knuckles. “I’ll take it to him in the morning. Come on. Let’s get you home.”

Chapter Six

My hand stops with a carnation hovering above the vase I’m working on that’s now forgotten.

“Portland,” I say, and I sound ancient to my own ears.

Gabe nods. He’s just laid a plastic evidence sleeve in front of me. Inside is a ticket stub, faded and water-stained, with the ink half gone.

GREYHOUND. SALT LAKE CITY, UT – PORTLAND, OR. MAY 16, 2009. 6:10 AM.

“Crime lab found it in the glove box,” Gabe says. “Purchase stamp says May eighth. Whoever bought it planned a week ahead. Might have burnt if they didn’t drop water on the fire, which kept the car from catching. So we’re lucky.” He gives me a look over the evidence sleeve. “Your firefighter also dropped off a piece of tow chain he had no business picking up. I chewed him out for going under my tape. Then I sent it to the lab.”

The travel date is May 16. Danielle went missing on the night of May 15. It was a Friday. She dropped me off after work and said see you tomorrow.

Gabe must see my disbelief.

“Somebody bought a ticket. I’m not saying she got on the bus. Greyhound doesn’t keep passenger records that far back.” He watches me. “Portland mean something to you?”

It means everything. “We were going to Oregon together,” I say. “After graduation. We planned it for a year.”

He waits as I pause to catch my breath.

“Suddenly in April she wanted to go right then, that week, not after graduation. It was impossible. I wasn’t quitting school and Grandma’s hip was bad. Then there was the shop, and graduation. I got scared and told her no.”

This next part hurts the worst to say, so I draw a breath before. “Danielle said, ‘Fine. Stay. I’ll send you a postcard.’ Three weeks later she was gone.”

Gabe is quiet as he gently puts his big hand over mine.

“You were seventeen,” he says. “Whatever happened, it’s not on you.”

I nod, but deep down, I don’t believe him.

He takes the ticket back, says he’ll call Portland PD, tells me not to get my hopes up.

There’s nothing to do but watch him leave.

Travis comes in the back door twenty minutes later, fresh off shift. He takes one look at my face and sits down across from me without being asked.

I tell him about Portland. The plan. Lying on the hood of Danielle’s Civic by the Hollister meadow at midnight, the summer before senior year, deciding everything. We were going to get a little apartment. A flower shop for me, nursing school for her.

Shaking my head, I say, “We were so ridiculous, we carved it into the wall of the Hollister barn with her car key: D.H. + L.N. PORTLAND, with a lopsided heart. But then April came and she wanted to go early. I backed out.”

Travis is like a mountain. He’s solid. He’s calm. I have a sense I can count on him being the same. It’s immensely comforting in a time where everything I thought is upside down.

He doesn’t hurry me. He sits there with his big scarred hands folded on my table and listens to every word.

When I run out, he says, “Does her mother know about Portland?”

“Gabe told her about the car. Not the ticket yet.”

He nods once. “Somebody needs to tell her before Betsy does.”