He got up from his seat and paced across the lobby of the police station. Pacing was something he’d become an expert at lately. Walking back and forth. Thinking. Putting his hands on his waist. Eyeing the receptionist at the precinct as if to say I’m a very important person, and you need to deal with me right now. Maura was sitting three seats away from where he’d stood up. So this is what had become of them: two people who were once so madly in love, they spent endless hours together. Now they couldn’t even sit next to each other. What was taking these people so long? In what universe did three missing kids not constitute an emergency? The night before, when he and Maura discovered the kids had snuck out, they both felt an initial sense of relief. Neither of them had been looking forward to spending an entire dinner together. Gregory wanted to celebrate his daughter’s birthday and have one last night with his son before Joshua was moved into a juvenile detention center, but since they’d broken the news of the divorce, his kids looked at him like he was the sole reason their family was no longer functioning.
