Hidden Falls (52 page)

Christopher thrashed against his mother’s hold, and Ethan turned rapidly, thinking the child’s condition was worse than he’d realized.

“I don’t want another shot!” Christopher shouted.

Molly tightened her grip. “Sorry. We were here a few minutes ago.”

Ethan put up both hands in a stop gesture. “Then let’s not torment him. I just want to talk to the nurse. You can wait here if you’d like.”

Molly nodded.

Ethan waited for the nurse to finish an injection before interrupting the flow of the line. He introduced himself and explained what he needed.

The nurse shook her head. “There’s Dr. Glass, but he’s mostly retired. We don’t have as many neurologists around here as we could use, and none of them are pediatricians.”

“I need to give her a name.” Ethan was almost certain Christopher was having seizures that lasted a few seconds at a time and needed an EEG.

The nurse reached for a scrap of paper and wrote on it. “She could try this place in Birch Bend. If nothing else, they’ll give her a good referral.”

“Thank you.” Ethan turned around and found the spot where he’d left Molly empty.

“Did you see where they went?” The man behind the table looked vaguely familiar.

“Who?”

“The young woman who was standing right here.”

“Oh, the one with the kid who screams.”

“I don’t know if he screams or not, but I need to find them.”

“He saw Lauren Nock and took off like she was his long-lost friend.”

Ethan glanced back at his own station. Nicole was upright on her crutches talking to a couple of families and handing them forms. That would give him some time.

“Which direction?” he asked.

“Toward the church. I think they went inside.”

Ethan pivoted and faced the brick structure of Our Savior. He hadn’t been inside the church—or any church—for ten years.

But that little boy needed to have a workup.

And it was just a building.

Ethan crossed the lawn, smiling vaguely at a couple of people who seemed to recognize him and trying to recall how well they knew his parents. He entered the side door of the church.

“Would you like to use the prayer room?” a woman said. “We have someone available to pray with you, if you like.”

“No thank you.” Ethan looked past the woman into a dimly lit room with a makeshift altar and candles. “I’m just looking for a woman with a little boy. Five years old, blond hair, skinny. Have you seen them?”

“Molly and Christopher?”

“Yes, that’s right.” Ethan scanned the hall.

“They’re right inside.” She gestured.

“In the prayer room?”

“You’re welcome to quietly step inside and have a seat.”

Ethan pressed his lips together and looked away. He didn’t see another place to sit, and he didn’t want to risk losing track of Molly altogether. He sucked in his breath and slipped into the prayer room, where he found a lone chair against a back wall. Other chairs were arranged in pairs or trios around small tables with Bibles opened.

Molly was there, with Christopher on her lap and both their heads huddled with Lauren’s. Wondering how many more parents were at his booth, Ethan waited for Lauren to finish praying aloud.

When she looked up, Molly saw Ethan. “I’m sorry. Christopher wanted to see Lauren, and then we stayed to pray.”

“It’s all right.” Ethan stood up.

“I admit I got scared when you said something was wrong.”

“I have the name of a practice for you.” Ethan handed her the scrap of paper the nurse had written on. “You can tell them I said Christopher
may
have a seizure disorder. If I’m right, it’s very treatable.”

Lauren stood with an arm around Christopher’s shoulders. “Thank you, Ethan. There’s no telling how long it would have been before another doctor noticed something. I’ll make sure Christopher gets an appointment.”

“Good.” Ethan turned to leave. “Nice to meet you, Molly.”

He walked across the grass, which now had the beginnings of trodden paths as the size of the crowd increased. Back at his paisley screen, three families waited.

Nicole waved a sheet of paper at him.

“Did you find something more?” he asked.

“It says,
this matters.
It was next to a notation about a death in the Tabor family in the 1930s.”

Her green eyes captured sunlight and spun it back out of her face. Ethan was going to have a hard time getting in his Lexus and driving away in a few hours.

11:02 a.m.

Jack saw the little fist on a trajectory that would take it not only to the table but straight into a small square pod of purple face paint.

If his kids had moved that fast when they were this little, he didn’t remember it.

Brooke lunged too late.

The little girl pulled her fist out of the pod, spread her fingers, and wiped them with glee across her own cheek. If she had stopped there, it might have been cute, but the next landing place for her fingertips was the wobbly card table where Brooke had meticulously laid out her supplies. In one swoop of a toddler arm, purple streaked the table and four other open tubs tumbled to the ground. Two of them landed upside down. When Brooke squatted to pick them up, the contents slithered out into the grass. The little girl giggled and slapped her hands against Jack’s knees. He pushed her hands away, but not before she transferred paint to his palms.

“Kimmie!” Bruce Gallagher removed his daughter—now squalling—from the scene of the crime, leaving Jack’s daughter with her mouth hanging open and random paint splotches along the fleshy sides of her hands.

“What just happened?” Brooke stared at the tubs in her hands and the two at her feet.

Jack pulled several wipes out of a plastic dispenser and used them to salvage the pods on the ground before another child stepped in them. He set them on the table and squatted to scoop up paint from the grass, a nearly impossible task. With two fresh wipes, he took his daughter’s hands and wrapped them, pulling streaks of purple off her skin. A set of four siblings were next in line to have their faces painted. None of them looked to be older than seven. All of them creased the skin over their noses. Jack had never seen such identical consternation. When he looked at their mother, he saw where they’d learned it.

“Just give us a moment.” Jack dabbed at his jeans, uncertain whether trying to wipe the paint out of the denim would just make things worse.

“What am I going to do now, Dad?” Brooke tossed a wipe in the small trash can under the table and pulled another from the container.

“We’ll just clean things up and keep going.” Jack’s strategy was not so different from practicing law. When he worked in Memphis, messes happened every day. It was his job to clean them up—until the mess got so big that the only way to please the client was for someone to be fired.

That someone was Jack.

He recognized the dismay in his daughter’s face because he felt it every day. Careful planning and systematic arranging were not supposed to end up splattered on the ground waiting for someone to step in the mess and make it worse.

Jack picked up one of the towels Brooke had been using to protect children’s clothing from the paints and reached for her hands to dry them.

“It’ll be all right,” he said into her ear. “We still have a few good colors. Take some deep breaths.”

Brooke squeezed her eyes shut but nodded.

Jack picked up the stool children had been sitting on and repositioned it out of the path of the spilled paint before pulling the table over as well. Then he took a clean towel from the stack and picked up a large clip. With a smile, he turned toward the four children with pinched faces. “Who’s next?”

The littlest one raced forward and came to an abrupt halt in front of Brooke.

“Dad, maybe you should hold him,” she said.

“You got it.” Jack sat on the stool and lifted the squirmy boy to his lap. He held the child’s hands out of the way while Brooke fastened a towel around his shoulders.

He wished he could remember what it felt like to hold Brooke like this, or Eva or Colin. When was the last time Brooke sat in his lap? If Jack had known it wouldn’t happen again, maybe he would have paid more attention to the moment. Instead, he inhaled the shampoo scent of somebody else’s youngest child.

“A puppy!” One of the other siblings fell to her knees.

The boy in Jack’s lap tried to turn his head. Brooke had a firm grip on his chin, though. Jack looked into her focused eyes and admired her ability to resist the urge she must have felt to look at her own dog.

Gianna stood beside him with Roxie’s leash wrapped several times around her hand to keep the dog near.

“Unless you came for paw painting,” Jack said, “don’t let the dog under the table.”

Gianna leaned to one side to inspect the ground. “Looks like you’ve had some excitement.”

Brooke finished a simple red balloon on the little boy’s cheek and set her brush down long enough to snuggle Roxie.

“Is that
your
dog?” one of the kids asked.

Brooke nodded. “Would you like to pet her?”

The face painting line dismantled in favor of puppy adoration. Brooke took the leash from her mother.

Gianna turned to Jack. “How’s she doing?”

“Very well, actually. She’s pretty good drawing the animals.”

“Considering how much she doodles, I’m glad to see the skill put to good use.”

“We should get her some lessons.”

“I’m sure she’d like that.” Gianna ran her hands through her loose hair. “Thank you, Jack.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Brooke really wanted you to do this, and here you are. I just want you to know I appreciate the effort you’re making. And not just with Brooke. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Other than the flash with the two-year-old in the paint, it had been a nice morning. And Jack hadn’t seen that look in Gianna’s eyes in a long time.

“Would you be willing to keep the dog for a few minutes?”

Jack glanced at the puppy in the middle of the cluster of children. Brooke would probably like to have the dog around, and Jack would enjoy the way Roxie lit up his daughter’s face.

“Sure,” he said.

“I won’t be long,” Gianna said. “I’m only going over to the silent auction.”

How much would this cost him? he wondered.

“I’ll keep the bidding reasonable.” Gianna seemed to read his mind. “There’s a gorgeous red silk dress that has to be thirty or forty years old, but I couldn’t get a good look while I was watching the dog.”

Jack supposed Gianna wanted to buy an old dress to go with her old house. When he caught himself wondering if she planned to remodel the dress beyond recognition as she had the house, he put his hands in his pockets and did his best to banish the thought before it fully formed. It would only spoil the moment between them.

“The money is for a good cause,” he said.

“I promise not to get into a bidding war.”

Gianna sauntered away, and he watched her turn her head a few times at the displays she passed, looking but not deviating from her mission. Sunlight tugged at the natural reddish highlights in her brown hair.

Jack turned to the growing huddle of children. “Brooke, let me take Roxie. You can paint a few faces.”

Brooke released the leash and her puppy into his care, and for a while Jack stood near her stool watching her interactions with the kids, some of them not much younger than she was. She had prepared a chart of the choices she could paint—a puppy, a kitty, a giraffe, a bird, one balloon, three balloons, a rainbow, a caboose. Jack listened to her negotiate with a boy who came with his own idea and decided she was managing the endeavor well. The puppy, on the other hand, was straining at the leash amid the activity of the fair.

Jack caught Brooke’s eye as she fastened a towel around another child. “I’m going to walk with Roxie.”

She nodded.

He took the dog through a small aisle between booths and out to the sidewalk that ran along one side of the lawn. People were coming and going at a steady pace. Jack was glad for a few minutes to think. He’d found something in those old files still spread around his office floor, and unquestionably Nicole and Ethan would be interested. Did Jack want them to know? That was a separate question.

The sidewalk ended, and Jack let the dog choose a route back into the main fair area, though he shortened the leash. From here Jack could see Ethan with his own line of children, and Nicole with her foot propped up and her head bent over something in her lap. Jack was too far away to know what she might be looking at. At one point, Ethan put a hand on Nicole’s shoulder and leaned in to talk to her. She raised her face and nodded. Ethan put his hands in his pocket and began to zigzag between fairgoers toward the side of the building.

Jack tugged the leash, redirecting Roxie toward a path that would intercept Ethan’s. Jack stepped ahead of the puppy to set a brisker, more focused pace. When he caught Ethan’s eye, he waved and made known his intention to catch up with him.

“We should talk,” Jack said. “I found something more in the files.”

Ethan looked over his shoulder at Nicole. “I was just getting us something cold to drink. Can you walk back with me? I’m sure Nicole will be interested.”

Roxie sniffed Ethan’s feet. They moved together toward a refreshment stand. Roxie got distracted by fallen bits of food, and Jack stooped to pick her up in order to keep pace with Ethan.

Ethan handed a couple of dollars to Gavin Owens. “Two lemonades, please.”

“It will be up to you what you want to tell Nicole, of course.” Roxie settled in Jack’s arms. “But this really concerns you.”

“You found something in your files about me?”

“Possibly.” Jack didn’t have it all worked out yet.

Brooke swooped in and took the dog from Jack’s arms. He hadn’t seen her coming from behind.

“Come on, Dad,” she said. “A lady asked if it was true that my father was a lawyer. She’s waiting to talk to you.”

Ethan snapped lids on the two paper cups Gavin set in front of him. “You’re busy, I’m busy. Let’s talk about this after the fair.”

11:48 a.m.

Though she felt slightly mean, Dani got ready to laugh when Eva put her hand on the ice chest lid. “Are you sure you want to do that?”