Leaving Yesterday (7 page)

I looked toward the others. “Okay, now that we’ve gotten Marsha’s optimistic delusions out of the way, what do I need to work on?”

Tasha slid her stack of papers toward me. I could already see red-inked notes in the margin. “This
is
powerful, and I agree with Marsha that you were born for this. I would have to disagree about the perfect part, however. You know how I feel about proper grammar and your lack of it.” She smiled and said, “Of course, that’s the reason God led me to you, so you wouldn’t be left in the wilderness of dangling participles.”

“And … God led me to you because a few of your chapter titles are a little lacking,” Carleigh said. “Some of them are fine, but I think we need to reach for greatness. Don’t you? I noted some suggestions.” She slid her copy of my manuscript back to me.

“Thanks so much. I don’t know how I’d do this without all of you.”

“You couldn’t.” Carleigh laughed, then lifted her glass of iced tea. “To our future writing project.”

Glasses clinked all around the table.

Lacey peered at me over the top of her Wedgwood teacup. She took a sip, returned the cup to its saucer, and continued to watch me. Waiting.

There was no reason for me to pretend that nothing was wrong. We’d met too many times over these Tuesday morning breakfasts. “The detective that came to our house, he’s showing up other places now.”

She looked at me with eyes the palest shade of blue I’d ever seen. “What kind of places?”

“He stopped by Rick’s jobsite.”

Lacey laughed twice, before it turned into the usual dry cough. She hacked for a few beats, then took a sip of water and a deep breath. She was still grinning when she spoke. “Stopped by his jobsite? I can imagine how well that went over.”

Rick had worked his way from carpenter to top construction superintendent in record time, partly due to his impeccable work ethic. He maintained strict rules about what constituted an appropriate time to call or stop by while he was at work. There were very few situations deemed serious enough to be appropriate. “Yeah, I’m sure all the guys wondered what a cop wanted with Rick.” I rubbed my index finger along the graceful curve of the teapot’s handle. “Come to think of it, I guess they really didn’t. They all just assumed it was something about Kurt.”

“And they were right enough about that, I suppose. You said ‘places,’ plural, so where else has he showed up?”

“He came to the seminar last weekend.”

“He showed up at your grief seminar?” The wrinkles in her forehead deepened as she pondered this. “Did he make a scene?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t even know he was there until the very end of my talk. He sat in the back row, and when I was taking questions he asked me about Nick.”

“What’d he ask?”

“If it helped ease my grief knowing the guilty party was in jail, if I thought that all parents whose children were victims of violent offenders wanted to see justice for their child’s murderer, or something to that effect.”

Lacey stared out her window and nodded slowly. “He’s trying to crank up the pressure on you, there’s no doubt about that.”

“He must think I know something that I’m not telling him.” I took a sip of my tea. “I wish I did. I’d give anything to know exactly where Kurt is this very minute, how he’s doing.” And how I prayed the answer to that question was that my son was truly in rehab. Those were not the kinds of doubts I cared to voice, so I did what I always do, put on an upbeat front. “Besides, if I knew the exact date he checked in and could prove that, it would get Kurt’s name taken right off the list. An alibi that would leave no doubt, that’s what I want.”

“You’re right about that. We just have to hope the kid went to rehab before the murder. I still have some friends from my law days, and from what I’ve heard, the police are grasping at anything they can right now. It sounds like there was no hard evidence left behind. All they have is the list of people who owed the dead guy money. I’m sure they’re hoping if they put enough pressure on the usual suspects, eventually someone’s going to slip.”

“I don’t see why he’s so intent on talking to Kurt. He said himself he’d met Kurt a few times and thought he was a good kid just messed up in the wrong thing.”

“Baby, have you been reading the paper lately? Two gang fights, a stabbing on the east side, and several tourists robbed at gunpoint. Those are the kinds of stories that send the Chamber of Commerce into full-blown panic mode. The businesses are demanding action, the mayor’s running scared. This whole city is worked up over the whole violent crime issue right now. There’s a lot of pressure on them to find somebody and get him charged. Makes everyone look bad if a killer goes uncaught, even if the city is a better place with the murdered guy dead and gone.”

I nodded my head. There was another fear eating away at me, one I’d voiced to no one. Lacey was the safest person to share with, I knew that, and I needed to talk. “I’m starting to wonder if he still is in rehab at all. Wouldn’t he be calling home more? Wouldn’t they even want us to come down there for some family therapy? What if after a few days he decided it was too hard and has gone back to his old life?”

“He said he’d already made it through the detox process, right? That has to be the hardest part of it all, at least I’d think so. If he were back in Santa Barbara and back in his old habits, the police would have found him by now and your detective friend wouldn’t be following you around. No, he’s still in treatment.”

“Why haven’t I heard from him?”

“I’m sure every center has their own protocol about calls home and family therapy. My guess is, you won’t hear from him again until he is ready to come home. He’ll want to be sure that everything is just perfect before he comes to see you.”

“I hope you’re right.” And I did hope. I was finding it harder by the day to actually believe.

Nine

I passed through the aisles of Vons the next day, pushing my cart with all the determination of a speed walker. I didn’t want to be here shopping if this was the moment that Kurt called home. As I rounded the corner of the bread aisle, another cart clanked into the side of mine, forcing my attention back to the here and now. “Oh, sorry. I should have looked first. …” When I saw who was driving the other cart, all apologies froze in my throat.

“Well, hello. Fancy meeting you here.” From the expression on his face, and the jeans, T-shirt, and Angels baseball cap he was wearing, no one would assume that Detective Thompson was anything other than surprised to be running into an old friend at the grocery store. I, of course, knew better.

“Are you following me?”

He leaned both elbows on the rails of the cart and whispered. “Just doing a little shopping.” He gestured toward the chips and salsa in his cart, then smiled up at me. “Why? Should I be following you?”

I remembered what Lacey had said about their not having much evidence to work with. In my head I knew that the guy was just trying to do his job. He wanted to find a killer and silence the public outcry. That all sounded well and good— until my son became part of his doing his job. “You know what? I wish I could tell you something. I wish I knew where my son is. I wish I could tell you the name of the rehab where he’s been for the last couple of months and help lighten your load. But I can’t. Why don’t you go follow some other lead and quit harassing the innocent citizens of Santa Barbara?”

“Hmm, didn’t realize that grocery shopping constituted harassment. I do apologize.” He tipped the cap and offered a lazy smile. “You know what, though? My gut tells me that someone with nothing to hide shouldn’t be so upset about this chance encounter. Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?”

I gripped my cart so tight my fingers went numb. “I don’t know
anything
. How long is it going to take for you to get that through your head?”

“My head accepts it already; it’s just that my gut hasn’t quite caught up yet.”

“Well, tell your gut to get over it and leave me alone.”

“All righty, then. I’ll just make my way up the fruit aisle and harass some other citizens for a while. How about that?” He turned his cart the other way and sauntered off, whistling “Yankee Doodle” as he went.

I looked at the couple dozen items still unmarked on my list and decided we could live another week without most of these things. I hurried to grab the necessary gallon of milk, Caroline’s favorite string cheese, and yogurt. Fudgsicles and chicken nuggets would have to wait until the next trip. I wasn’t staying in this place with that man for a second longer than necessary.

When I pulled onto my street, I found myself checking the curb for black cars before I pulled into the driveway. There were none. Finally starting to relax, I carried the first couple of grocery bags inside and dropped them on the kitchen counter. As always, I went to the phone and checked it for voice mail. There was one message. I pressed the pass code, held my breath, and waited.

“Hey, it’s me. I need to chat with you as soon as you’ve got a spare minute. Call me. Okay?” My sister’s voice carried the same even tone with which she always spoke. You could rarely tell from Jodi’s voice, or facial expression for that matter, if she was happy, sad, mad, or afraid. She always came across as … for lack of a better word, content.

No message from my son, but of course that didn’t stop me from continuing with the second step in my routine—checking my caller ID. Not everyone left messages. Maybe Kurt wouldn’t, either. It was a long shot, but it was all I had.

Today’s reading told me there were three missed calls. I perused the list. The first was from Lacey; she never left a message. The second was from my sister, the third from a number marked Private Caller. That one set my heart to sputtering.

Every day I received calls marked Private—telemarketers, the local thrift store when they call to say they’ll have a truck on the street next week to pick up donations, several of my friends who are particularly uptight about their privacy. None of those things even went through my mind. Logic ceased to exist where my children were concerned. This call was from Kurt, it had to be from Kurt. It wasn’t just emotion; there were facts to support it.

When he’d called the first time, the call had been marked private. He told me that he would call me when it was time to be released, probably six to eight weeks. Well, it had been seven weeks and eleven hours, so this call had to be from him. Maybe he was even now on his way home. And that’s what I needed, to get a glimpse of my son’s face, to see that he was all right, clear eyed, and turning his life around.

What if that was his only chance to call and I had missed it? Would he still come by unannounced, or would he wait for the okay? A discordant clang began somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, telling me that it couldn’t possibly be Kurt because he’d probably left rehab a day or two after calling me, that maybe Detective Thompson was right and he’d never been there at all. I put my hands over my ears to muffle it, but even when I concentrated on staying positive, the negative thoughts pushed their way inside.

I knew one way to win this battle. I would make myself behave as if I believed only the positive. I would prepare Kurt’s room for his arrival.

I walked down the hallway and opened the door that had remained closed for far too long. As soon as I switched on the light, I regretted not preparing better for this moment. The bedspread, although clean and tidy, was at least ten years old, and somehow I doubted that multicolored surfboards were age appropriate for a twenty-one-year-old’s duvet cover. The blue stripes on the curtain panels looked faded, I’d never noticed that before. Why hadn’t I replaced those things while I had the chance? Maybe this room would be too full of bad memories for him. Then again, maybe it would feel more like home—as if his room had just been sitting here waiting for him all this time.

I got the Windex and cleaned the windows, then dusted the furniture and vacuumed the beige carpet. At least it would be clean when he got here.

I opened his mostly empty closet to see if anything needed straightening. An old ski jacket hung in the back—reminiscent of happier times when we actually took family vacations. I hoped those days would return to us now that Kurt was drug free. It would never be the same, of course. Nick was gone and would never be back. Still, better times, even good times, awaited.

The empty closet once filled with things made me think about Kurt’s possessions in the back of our storage shed. What if I took his things out, got them all cleaned up, and set them up in his room for him? When he arrived, I could show him that his room was stocked and ready for him, and let him know that he was welcome to stay awhile.

How would Rick feel about that? I was pretty sure he would have issues with it. He held firm to the belief that after children were grown and left the nest, they should not return. Period. Even though he wasn’t living here, the house was technically half his. Besides, we’d always tried to work as a team where our kids were concerned. At least until recently.

Surely even he would be willing to make an exception in this case. How could he not see the necessity of doing everything we could possibly do to make certain that our son succeeded in his recovery? A wholesome environment, healthy food, and a safe place to sleep would be paramount at this time.