Page 44 of Is Anyone Listening?
"You sound surprised."
I shrugged. "I guess I am."
"How's Tessa?"
"She's hanging in there, but she won't be walking for weeks."
"What happened?"
"I'm not sure. Tessa had a lot to drink yesterday. She might have slipped or maybe someone pushed her. She doesn't know."
"That's disturbing. Didn't you tell me yesterday that she was out with Finn Kelly?"
"Yes. They went to lunch and then out on a boat owned by Finn's friend, Nathan, who apparently was the one who found Jessica's boat. At least, that's what Tessa remembers, but her memory is very fractured and hazy."
"Nathan Carmichael is the one who discovered Jessica's boat," Tyler confirmed. "He's a fisherman and charter boat operator out of Cork Harbor. That's in the police report. I went there to talk to him a few days ago, but he was on an overnight fishing trip, so I couldn't connect with him."
"Well, apparently, Nathan took Finn and Tessa to the spot where he found her boat."
"And…"
I shrugged. "That's all I know. I think it was by a cove, a small beach. You probably know more."
"That's the way it was described in the report," he confirmed. "Since there was no body found, there's speculation that she either drowned at sea or found her way up to the road from the cove. But if she did that, she would have walked to the closest place and asked for help. That didn't happen."
"Maybe she made it to the road, and someone picked her up."
"But she didn't resurface anywhere. She didn't take out any money from her bank account, didn't use her charge cards, nothing."
His flat voice didn't give me a lot of clues to his emotions. "What do you think happened?"
"I want to think she got off that boat, made it to land, and is safe somewhere."
"That seems overly optimistic based on what you just said."
"I have to hold on to hope as long as I can."
"Does that hope spring from the idea that maybe she wanted to disappear? Because that's what people suggest about Natalie, too, that she wanted to start over in her life. Maybe Jessica wanted to do the same thing. You said she'd had a bad breakup with her husband. Natalie also had an ex in her life."
"But people don't just disappear after bad breakups," he said.
"Only if they're desperate. Do you believe Jessica was desperate?"
"It's a possibility," he conceded.
"How long are you going to pursue this? She's been gone for three months. Don't you eventually have to go back to work?"
"Eventually, but I'm not ready to leave yet. I'm actually more hopeful now that you're here asking questions, shaking things up. Maybe that will get someone to talk who has previously been silent."
His phone buzzed, and he immediately pulled it out.
"Do you have to take that?" I asked.
"No." He put the phone away.
"Really? Every time we're together you get a call and you rush to answer it."
"It's fine. Just work."
