Officer Daniels was maybe fifty. Gray mustache. Broad shoulders. A face that looked like it had been kind once and then had seen too much.
Officer Cooper was younger. Thirty, maybe. Short dark hair. A woman. She was holding her hat in her hands.
Neither of them looked angry.
But neither of them was smiling, either.
“Julian?” I said. “What—why do you need to talk to Julian?”
Before they could answer, I heard footsteps on the stairs behind me.
“Mom? What’s going on? Who’s at the door?”
Julian came down the stairs. Thirteen years old. Still in his pajama pants and his old Nirvana T-shirt. His hair wet from the shower and sticking up in the back.
He reached the bottom step.
He saw the officers.
His face went completely white.
I reached back without thinking.
I took his hand.
His fingers were cold.
“Officers,” I said. “Please. Tell me what this is about. Has he done something wrong?”
Officer Daniels looked at Julian.
He looked at him for a long time.
Then he looked back at me.
“Ma’am,” he said quietly. “There’s something about yesterday that you don’t know yet.”
I turned toward Julian.
His face was gray. His eyes were wide. He was holding my hand so tight it hurt.
And in that moment, standing in my front hallway in my bathrobe with two police officers on my porch, I realized that the missing guitar might only be part of the story.
I need to go back.
To the guitar.
Julian loved his custom Fender Stratocaster from the moment we gave it to him.
His twelfth birthday. Last March.
He’d wanted it since he was nine. Since the first time he heard Jimi Hendrix on his grandfather’s old record player. He used to stand in front of the guitars at Westbrook Music Exchange on Main Street with his nose practically pressed against the glass.
There was one in particular. A Stratocaster. Sunburst finish. Rosewood neck. Hand-wired pickups. Custom built by a luthier in Nashville.
Two thousand, one hundred dollars. 