Hidden in the Blood: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 5)

Chapter Twenty-Three: Joe, Monday

Joe returned home from work to find the kids at home but his wife gone. The Versa had been gone when he'd pulled in, so already he knew something was up, but for a moment he thought maybe Rachel had taken it.

"What's going on?" he asked Naomi. "Where's Mom?"

Naomi shrugged. "She didn't text you?"

"No. Where could she have gone? Is she with Rachel?" He checked his phone. Rachel wouldn't be home yet if she'd taken the Skytrain, which she'd done lately because Lauren was still on sick leave, supposedly. Did Lauren decide to go into the office? He supposed she could try driving now that her neck brace was off; it might be awkward with one leg in a cast, but with an automatic you only needed one working foot. 

"Mom was home when we left for school this morning," Tosh said. "And Rachel left before we did."

Joe sighed and sent Lauren a quick text. I'm home. Where are you?

"Is everything okay, Dad?" Naomi asked.

"I hope so," he replied. "I hope there's a simple explanation for this."

"Don't get mad at her like last time, okay?"

He frowned. "What do you mean, like last time?"

"Like when her car was at Auntie Rachel's that time we went to the beach and Emma forgot her goggles," Naomi clarified. "I don't want you to go away again."

"Oh." He looked over at Emma, who sat watching TV with Naomi on the couch while Tosh sat in the armchair reading. Those goggles of Emma's had been the catalyst for the chain reaction that had nearly destroyed his marriage, and now Naomi was constantly on the watch for any sign of disharmony that could lead to him leaving again.

He said, "I assure you, I'm not mad at her, and I'm not going away again." He knew the only reason for his assurance was because he knew Al was in no condition to threaten his marriage right now, laid up as he was in a hospital bed, but he needed to make his daughter feel secure again in her family's stability; leaving her had nearly killed both of them last time, and he had no desire to do it again. Not that he could, anyway; it appeared Joanie was through with him, having kicked him out of her bed last night after finding out he'd had sex with Rachel that time with the threesome. "I'm just worried about her, that's all."

Suddenly Logan entered from the basement, and when he saw Joe he smiled. "I got a start on the mudding." They'd finished framing and drywalling the rooms in the basement yesterday, and Joe had demonstrated how to apply drywall tape and mud to the seams to make the wall a single, flat wall ready for priming and painting.

"Hey, good stuff," he said. "I'll come have a look in a minute. Now, Logan, I know you like this stuff, but I want you to make sure you're getting your school work done, too; you want to graduate with good grades if you want to go to BCIT to get a trade certificate."

Logan rolled his eyes but nodded. "Yes, I was thinking I'd get on my homework after Rachel gets home and we have dinner."

"Hey, about that. Did Rachel tell you anything about going somewhere with Lauren today?"

He shook his head. "I thought Rachel was just doing the usual today, Skytraining to work and back. Unless she came home early, and she and Lauren went to see Al."

"We saw him yesterday, remember?" Emma said. "You should go see him, you know, he's your dad too."

It was the first time Joe heard Emma refer to Al as her father, and it rattled him; normally she just called him by name, and this acknowledgement of parenthood from the one person no one had any hard feelings toward made it harder for Joe to hate Al. How could he wish him gone and deprive this sweet girl of a father, when her biological father had been so absent from her life and died an ignoble death at the hands of a drug gang?