Hidden Falls (34 page)

“Your clipboard. That’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it?”

Lauren let out her breath. “I’m so scatterbrained.” Somehow Dani remained calm and methodical after what she’d been through with her boat, and Lauren couldn’t even keep track of a clipboard.

“And while you’re at it,” Dani said, “I promised Quinn I’d do a cooking demonstration grilling lake fish.”

Lauren sucked in surprise. “He mentioned cooking, but I had no idea who.”

Dani chuckled. “And you sure didn’t think it would be me.”

“No, I suppose I didn’t.” Lauren blushed.

“Well, it is. Also, Margie Bayly plans to make little sample cups of her favorite salads and share the recipes. They’re all low-fat.”

Relief warmed Lauren’s chest.

Dani tied an extrastrength garbage bag closed. “And Mrs. Healy will answer questions about vegetable gardens.”

“I really have to write this down.” Lauren scrambled for her clipboard.

12:27 p.m.

Ethan Jordan ducked into the nearest store on Main Street. Immediately his sinuses told him the shop was full of scented candles, but he wasn’t in a position to be picky. He moved away from the door and apologized for nearly stepping on a child’s foot in his distraction. Then he positioned himself where he could see out the store’s display window. Beyond the artful arrangement of candles and baskets, Ethan found the object of his search.

Yes. It was her. Kay Jordan, Ethan’s mother, stood on the sidewalk across the street, casually gazing through the glass of a narrow electronics store and fussing with the collar of the blue jacket she’d worn forever. Though she carried a white sack, she seemed in no hurry. The hardware store was only a few doors down, Ethan realized. His mother probably was waiting for his father to emerge with supplies for a fix-it project. She turned and scanned the street before settling her eyes on the candle store. Reflexively, Ethan stepped back against the shadowed side wall of the shop. Though she seemed not to see him—which was his intention—Ethan saw his mother’s features clearly for the first time in ten years.

She hadn’t changed all that much. Perhaps Ethan had always thought of her as older than she was, and now she had finally attained the age he had assigned to her in his mind.

Did she think of him? Did she remember that day? Ethan had put on a white shirt and blue tie and waited for his parents to get ready for his eighth-grade awards program, where he would receive five different academic recognitions. His father, Richard, sat in his easy chair with the newspaper after dinner, and Kay was at her sewing machine.

She looked up at him and smiled. “You look nice.”

“It’s time to go,” Ethan said.

Richard turned the page in his paper.

Ethan hated being late. He caught his mother’s eye.

She took a pincushion out of a basket. “Your father is tired. We decided to stay home, but you go on and have a good time.”

Even now, standing in the candle store, Ethan felt the weight of disappointment that should not have surprised him. His parents had chronically disappointed him for all of his fourteen years, his father with his passivity and his mother with her reluctance to stir things up. But that day, at the end of eighth grade, was the day Ethan decided not to care. His older brother was already out of the house and out of town. Ethan was on his own.

He’d turned, wordless, and left the house. Next door, Nicole Sandquist was getting into the car with her father. She waved him over, and he rode to the junior high with them. Nicole never asked about his parents. She knew.

Now Kay Jordan stepped down the sidewalk toward the hardware store. Ethan barreled up the short aisle of the candle store, grateful that Lauren Nock’s apartment over the barbershop was in the opposite direction of his mother’s path. He shoved open the shop door without looking.

“Hey! Watch out!”

The warning came too late. Ethan collided into the form of a person whose face he hadn’t seen, a tangle of blue and khaki as she tumbled to the sidewalk. Sheets of yellow paper fluttered in three directions when a standard brown clipboard slammed the pavement.

“My notes!”

Ethan grabbed at a sheet wafting past him with one hand and offered the other to his victim. “Lauren,” he said. “I’m so sorry!”

“Just get my notes!” Lauren gripped his hand long enough to get to her feet then gently removed her glasses from her face.

After swooping in every direction, Ethan returned with five yellow sheets, two of them torn. “Are you all right?”

“Did you find all my notes?” Lauren picked up the clipboard.

Ethan handed her the pages. “Are your glasses broken?”

“They’ll at least need some major adjusting.” Lauren put the glasses on, but the frame was so cockeyed that she immediately removed them and folded them closed. “Why were you in such a hurry to get out of that store?”

Ethan looked down the block. Kay Jordan walked past the hardware store and disappeared into a card shop. He blew out a long breath.

Lauren stood in front of him with her glasses in one hand and the clipboard braced against one hip as she wrestled with getting the papers back in place.

“Can you see without your glasses?” Ethan asked.

“Not very well. I hope everything is here.”

“I have my car,” he said. “I’ll take you somewhere to get your glasses fixed.”

“I have another pair in my apartment. You didn’t say what your big hurry was.”

Ethan glanced down the street again. “Um … Nicole. I was on my way to see how she is. She seemed agitated when I spoke to her on the phone awhile ago.”

“She’s frustrated.” Lauren brushed off her knees. “I’m on my way to fix her some lunch.”

“I’ll help you. I owe you.”

Lauren cocked a smile. “I’ll tell you what you can do. Help me at the health fair on Saturday.”

“That’s three days away.”

“I know! I’m frantic to pull things together without Quinn.”

“What I mean is, I don’t think I can stay in town that long.”

Even without Brinkman and Gonzalez to contend with, the longer Ethan stayed in Hidden Falls, the more likely he was to run into one of his parents. Today’s close call unnerved him. Despite Nicole’s determination, he wasn’t sure he would be much practical help looking for Quinn. When Quinn got home, Ethan would try to arrange another weekend off and come back.

“You’re a doctor.” Lauren began walking. “There must be something a doctor can do at a
health
fair.”

“I’m a neurologist.” Ethan worked on brains. Health fairs were about blood pressure and sugar screenings and heart rates and body mass index.

“Think about it.”

“I’m lucky to be here this long,” Ethan said. Saturday seemed an impossible objective.

“Everything’s a blur,” Lauren said.

“We’ll get your glasses fixed.”

“I don’t mean that—though I can’t see my hand in front of my face without my glasses. I mean, it’s hard to make sense of this whole week. Four days without Quinn is a ridiculous thought, but it’s happened.”

They reached the barbershop and entered the door beside it. Ethan pushed the button in the elevator, and they rode to the apartments above. Lauren turned the knob of her door.

Inside, Nicole sat in a small rolling office chair rather than the recliner Ethan had expected to find her in. With her good foot, she propelled herself across the living room’s wood floor.

“Nicole,” Ethan said, “you’re supposed to keep your foot elevated. The orthopedist, remember?”

Nicole scoffed. “I’ve been on the phone to every orthopedist in the county, and nobody will see me until Friday.”

“That sounds about right. I told you they’d want the swelling to go down first.”

“Excuse me,” Lauren said. “I’m going to find my other glasses.”

She went down the hall.

Nicole gave the armless rolling chair another shove.

“Maybe we should get you a wheelchair,” Ethan said.

“This works fine.” Nicole progressed toward the kitchen. “I get wherever I want to go. I don’t intend to be sidelined for two more days while Quinn is missing.”

“I don’t see that you have much choice.”

“There’s always a choice.” With another push, Nicole swiveled the chair to change directions and misjudged the stopping point. She grasped at something to steady herself, but instead, she knocked over a small accent table.

Ethan lurched toward her and intercepted Nicole’s trajectory before she went the way of the table. He held the chair, and she leaned against him to straighten herself. Her hair slid loose from the clip she had used to pile it on her head, and she snatched the clip and hurled it at the recliner.

“I hate this,” she said. “I hate that Quinn is gone, that I hurt my foot, that I’m cooped up here.”

“I know.” Ethan stroked her hair, running his fingers through it as he pushed it away from her face, away from the mole she always tried to hide in the way she let it hang. The first time he did that fifteen years ago, she had almost stopped him. But she hadn’t.

And she didn’t this time.

He wanted to kiss her.

12:47 p.m.

Lauren halted without crossing the threshold into the living room. Ethan was on one knee, leaning in toward Nicole, who had one hand on his shoulder. It didn’t seem like the kind of moment she should interrupt, but neither did it seem like the kind she should spectate.

Lauren cleared her throat.

The pair looked up.

“Grilled cheese and fruit all right for lunch?” Lauren said.

Ethan stood up. “I’ll cook.”

Nicole laughed. She sounded nervous to Lauren.

“Nicole, how about some ice?” Lauren said.

“And a pain pill,” Ethan added.

“Yes to ice, no to pain pill.” Nicole started to push the chair toward the recliner.

Ethan put a hand on her leg. “I’ll drive.”

Nicole picked up her good foot, and Ethan rolled her back to where she belonged and helped her move between the chairs. Lauren went into the kitchen and started a gas burner under a frying pan.

An hour later, Nicole dozed off in the recliner with her foot elevated. It had taken all the time Lauren spent eating her sandwich, but Ethan convinced Nicole to take a pill and rest. When Lauren left in the morning, she had planned to meet with Pastor Matt, cancel the health fair, and come home to look after Nicole. Instead, she had walked miles around town already and now had a clipboard full of details to check on before the day was over.

“She needs you.” Lauren said.

“I’ll stay with her this afternoon,” Ethan said. “I know you have things to do.”

“I appreciate it, but that’s not what I meant.” Lauren saw the way the two of them looked at each other over cheese sandwiches and apple slices.

Ethan leaned against the refrigerator and looked across the apartment at Nicole in the chair. “How much time do you need this afternoon?”

“I just need to see a couple of people. Then I’ll do what I can by phone from here.”

“Take your time. I’ll keep the rebel forces under control.”

Nicole shifted in her chair. “I heard that.”

Lauren went down the stairs and out the back way, where she kept her bicycle tied to a pipe at the rear of the building. She pedaled down the alley, onto Main Street, and on out to the highway. If she hadn’t felt pressed for time, Lauren gladly would have walked, but today the bike would save her time reaching the community center. Hopefully someone there would know what they had arranged with Quinn, but in Lauren’s experience the phone went unanswered much of the time, instead giving callers automated options. This wasn’t a day when Lauren wanted to leave messages. She needed solid information. Lauren leaned her bike against the side of the building, straightened the cross-body bag that held her clipboard along with the usual items, and entered the building.

No one was at the reception desk. The phone rang as Lauren walked past. The exercise room had an aerobics class going, but Lauren recognized the instructor and knew she only came in a couple of hours a week. In search of the full-time director, Lauren strode down the hall. Outside the director’s office, five plastic chairs strewed the corridor. On one of them, a small boy sat swinging his feet and banging the legs intermittently.

Lauren slowed. The child didn’t look older than five, and Lauren had never seen such a somber face on a little one. When he saw her, he stilled his feet. The director’s door was closed. Lauren raised her hand to knock.

“My mom is in there.”

His voice barely rose to an audible pitch. He needed a haircut, and his T-shirt was the thinnest Lauren had ever seen.

“Has your mom been in there a long time?” Lauren asked.

His eyes lifted to a large clock on the wall. “I don’t know how to tell time.”

Lauren sat next to the boy. “Does it seem like you’ve been waiting a long time?”

He shrugged.

Lauren watched the second hand sweep around several times. She removed the clipboard from her bag and pulled out a pen. There must be something she could do now that would be more productive than waiting. Lauren took out her phone. She could at least call the rental company about the tables and chairs. Beside her, the little boy folded his hands in his lap and hung his head.

The owner of the rental store answered the phone himself. Within a few minutes, Lauren had notes on the tables and chairs, as well as the helium tank for the balloons. She hadn’t thought about that. On a fresh page on her clipboard, she started a list of items to purchase before Saturday: helium balloons, face-paint kits, sidewalk chalk, paper goods. No doubt she would think of fifty other things before Saturday. Lauren glanced up at the director’s door, still closed.

The child next to her was statue still.

“I’m Lauren,” she said. “What’s your name?”

He didn’t answer—didn’t even turn his head.

She tapped his knee. Finally, he looked up at her with eyes of dark wavy pools.

“If we’re going to wait together, we might as well get to know each other.” If he was five years old, he was a small five. Lauren was surprised his mother would have left him in the hall alone. “Maybe I can guess your name. Shall I try?”

He twisted his lips and looked away.