Page 138 of Save the Date
“Exactly.”
“They look awful, I know. But I swear to God, it was just a lap dance. Okay, two. Maybe more. I can’t remember. I got so drunk I passed out in the back of the van after the third or fourth club. That’s why I didn’t come home until last night. I didn’t want Brooke to see me until I got sobered up.”
“Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”
“I’ve called everybody we know. Nobody’s seen or talked to her. Wherever she went, she took her car. Marie told me you were asking about that.”
“Did she pack any bags? Take a lot of clothes?”
“I’m walking in the bedroom now to check.” Cara heard footsteps, and the sound of a door opening.
“She’s got this duffel bag she takes when we go over to my folks’ house for the weekend. It’s not in the closet.”
“What about clothes?”
She heard the sound of hangers on a wooden rod, of drawers being opened and closed.
“It’s hard to tell with her clothes. Wait. Yeah, her favorite jeans are gone. Maybe some shorts. Definitely her running shoes, although she sometimes leaves those in her car if she’s working out at lunch.”
There was a long silence at the other end of the phone. Had he hung up?
“Harris? Are you still there?”
She could hear him breathing heavily. And then, a sort of muffled sob.
“Harris?”
“I should never have gone. I knew she didn’t want me to go. We had a fight about it. And we almost never fight. I never should have gone to those stinking clubs.”
“Maybe it wasn’t about that,” Cara said. “Was there anything else worrying her, something she was upset about?”
“Not that she talked about,” Harris said. “Brooke was… moody sometimes. She needed her space. I tried to give it to her. I love her, you know?”
“I know,” Cara said. “And she loves you. She told me so.”
“Then why would she leave? Where would she go?”
“We’ll find out,” Cara said soothingly. “Brides… sometimes it all becomes too much for them. Sometimes they just have these little meltdowns. That’s probably all this is. Like you said, Brooke needs her space.”
“You really think so?”
“I do,” Cara lied.
56
“Holy shit,” Bert said. “Brooke Trapnell is a runaway bride?”
“Looks like it. Harris hasn’t seen her since she left for work Friday morning. They’d had a fight, because she hated the idea of his doing the strip-club stag-night thing with his buddies.”
Before Cara could explain any more, Marie Trapnell called back.
“What did Harris tell you?” she asked urgently.
“Her car is gone, and she apparently packed an overnight bag. So we know she went of her own accord. She wasn’t abducted or anything.”
“Thank God for that,” Marie said. “I can’t tell you all the things running through my mind right now. This is just such a nightmare. Why would she do something like this? If she needed to get away, why not at least tell me? She knows how I worry.”
“I talked to Brooke Friday, to remind her about her portrait sitting, and she did seem stressed.” Cara said. “She even admitted she was dreading the bachelorette party, but she never said she was thinking of skipping it. So it looks like she probably left sometime Saturday.”
