Lover's Lane (27 page)

She pushed against his chest until he lifted his head and let her go.

Christopher pressed his back against the wall in the hallway, arms spread like an airplane, the way the cops on TV always did when they were sneaking up on someone. With Matt plastered to the wall beside him, they clung like two starfish to the fake wood paneling.

“Did you hear
that
? Your mom said something about
moving
!” Matt whispered.

The anger in his mom and Jake’s voices already had Chris’ stomach tied in a big knot. Mom said something about Anna, too, but he couldn’t hear it. Then she told Jake that he couldn’t stop her.

Stop her from moving?

He blinked hard, tried to imagine living in another house, going to another school. Having another best friend.

“I don’t want to move.”

“What are you gonna do?” Matt whispered with his lips against Chris’ ear.

Chris thought of the backpack in his room with a change of underwear, a sweatshirt, an old parka, some cheese and cracker snack packs. He thought there might even be some canned pudding in there, too. Mom called it the emergency pack, and right now, he was pretty sure this was the biggest emergency ever.

“I’m gonna run away.”

“By yourself?”

Chris slowly turned to Matt. His friend’s blue eyes were huge, and he was standing so close that Chris could see little specks of white in them.

“You wanna come with me?” He mouthed the words, afraid his mom might hear—but she was still arguing with Jake.

“I dunno.” Matt shrugged. “Where you going?”

“To hide someplace where she can’t find me and make me move.”

“Then what?”

“I dunno that either. Maybe she’ll change her mind before I come back.”

“Why don’t you just
tell
her you don’t want to move?”

How could he explain that he’d never heard his mom talk like this before? That she never, ever sounded this mean or this scared before. So he shook his head, pretty sure after all the crazy things she had said earlier that her mind was made up.

Matt was quiet for so long that Chris was afraid his friend would turn him down. He hoped with all his heart that Matt would go along, because the idea of running off by himself was pretty scary, especially since it was already late afternoon.

“Well? You wanna come with me?” Chris couldn’t wait any longer.

“What about Beauty?”

He almost started bawling when he looked down at his beautiful dog. Beauty’s nose was resting on his leg.

“I’ll put her in the closet. If we take her, she might bark, and somebody will find us. Are you coming?”

Matt shrugged and then slowly nodded. “Okay. Let’s go.”

They slid along the wall all the way back to his room where Chris wrote a note and then grabbed his backpack and coaxed Beauty into the closet. He knelt down and whispered in her ear that he’d come back for her soon, then he kissed her on the nose and shut the closet door.

Matt started out the door toward the hall. Chris had to grab the collar of his shirt and drag him back into the room.

With his lips against Matt’s ear, Chris whispered, “We can’t just walk out the door! We gotta sneak out the window.”

It took some doing to get the warped window open without making any noise. Standing on his desk, Chris used one of his marker pens to pry up the hook on the screen before they pushed it out. After Matt climbed through, Chris handed out the backpack and followed close behind.

When they reached the far end of the porch opposite the front door, Matt hesitated.

“Are you comin’ or not?” Chris shouldered the pack, ready to go.

Matt looked like he wanted to say no, but then Chris pointed to his knee, a reminder that they were blood brothers to the end.

Matt sighed, but when Chris turned to jump off the end of the porch, Matt was right behind him.

Shaken by Jake’s kiss, Carly sidestepped him and reached for one of the thick pottery mugs she’d splurged on at the Summer Crafts Fair last year. When she turned around, he was still so close that she bumped into him. For a second she was almost too startled to say anything. He was so solid, so close, so tempting, that it was easy to forget that he was the enemy now.

“Would it be too much to ask for you to give me some space in my own house?”

“Is that what you really want, Carly?”

She gripped the mug with both hands. “Yes.”

He reached for her again, slipped his hand through her hair to cup the back of her neck. “Are you sure?”

She closed her eyes, resisted temptation, and whispered, “Yes. I’m sure. Please, Jake. Don’t do this.”

Not until she sensed he’d stepped back did she open her eyes and automatically ask, “Do you want some tea?”

“What I want is for you to stop and think. Think about the rest of your life. The rest of Chris’ life.”

“He’s all I ever think about.”

He gave a slight shake of his head. “Then promise me you won’t do anything so foolish as to run away.”

She set the mug down. “I don’t owe you anything, especially any promises, Jake.”

A deep sadness crept into his eyes. “No. You don’t. You don’t owe me anything.”

She was tempted to reach for him, to trace his full lips with her fingertip, to cup his strong jaw with the palm of her hand. It would be so easy to give in to desire and ignore the fact that her mind was screaming no.

I love you, Carly.
She’d never forget hearing him say it.

She crossed her arms, sighed. “I thought about leaving,” she confessed. “I was tempted, but I have to do what’s best for Chris. I have to believe in myself, too, and in what I’ve done. I
am
a good mother. I know that in my heart. It’s just so terrifying to believe that for the first time in my life, everything will turn out all right.”

Jake said, “I wish I’d done things differently. I wish I deserved to be a part of your life, but as you said, you don’t owe me anything.” He turned, as if about to leave, then suddenly stopped. “I thought that having you and Anna meet would help, Carly. That there was no way she’d continue with this once she met Chris. I guess I should have known better than think things would work out that easily.”

“Did you
really
think it would?”

He shrugged. “I guess after all I’ve seen in my line of work, I shouldn’t have. In this case, I guess I wanted it for you so badly that I’d convinced myself I could help.”

She didn’t know what to say that hadn’t already been said.

“You’ll need a good lawyer . . . ,” he began.

“I already have one. Geoff recommended Tom Edwards in San Luis Obispo.” She dropped her hands, amazed at how much better she felt now that she’d made a commitment to stay and make a stand—and said it out loud.

“Well, then.” He looked around the kitchen, his gaze ultimately resting on her again, touching her eyes, her lips, before he said, “I’ll let myself out.”

Wishing wouldn’t make things different or turn back the clock. They couldn’t start over.

“I’d better go and check on the boys.” She couldn’t bear to see him walk out the door so she started for the hall.

She glanced into Chris’ room and not seeing the boys anywhere, walked into her own room. Her duffel was right where she’d left it, so she tossed it back into the closet before she went back down the hall.

“Hey, where are you guys?” She walked into the bathroom, snapped on the light, looked behind the shower curtain.

“Chris?” In his room once more, she looked under the bed. “Matt?”

A piece of notebook paper was lying on the floor near the desk. She picked it up, intending to put it back on the desk when she noticed the screen was unhooked and hanging open at the bottom.

Headlines flashed through her mind, sordid, nightmarish tales of children stolen out from under their parents’ noses, taken from their own rooms.

She scanned the words on the page in her hand, then ran to Christopher’s closet and whipped the door open. Beauty lay on the floor, muzzle on her paws, staring forlornly up at her. The dog’s tail thumped against the carpet. Beauty began to whimper.

Christopher’s emergency backpack was gone.

Her son was gone, and it was all her fault.

Hers and Jake’s and Anna Saunders’.

37

“JAKE!”

Hearing the panic in Carly’s voice, Jake froze with his hand on the door handle of his car. She pushed the dog back inside and ran across the porch, her face ashen, the bleakness in her expression communicating stark fear.

“They’re gone.” She handed him a piece of lined paper. He glanced down at huge letters scrawled in crayon, suddenly finding it hard to swallow.

BY MOM I DONUT WANTTO MUVE. WE RUND AWAEE. ♥ CHRIS

Jake stared at the cryptic note, his gut tightening as he pictured Chris trying to catch the ball in the park in Avila.

“Hey, Jake, how do you spell your name?”

“We’ll find them.” He knew it would take more than his assurance to strip the fear from her eyes.

He started to walk the perimeter of the mobile home while Carly ran straight to her neighbor’s, rapped on the front door, hurriedly spoke to Etta, and then met him at the end of the walk beside the plaster donkey wearing the chipped sombrero.

Carly shook her head. “She hasn’t seen them.”

Calling the boys’ names, they quickly walked Seaside Village, covering winding avenues that curved out like the spokes of a wheel and that had a small grassy park in the center. Jake noticed hundreds of places to hide between the mobile homes, behind aluminum storage sheds and landscaping, in boats on trailers stored in driveways.

There were as many seasonal visitors as full-time residents at the place, so many of the homes were closed up tight. Jake doubted the boys would break into one even if they could.

A few times Jake walked up long driveways to peer into the small backyard spaces of the vacant mobile homes, but the boys weren’t there. From the grassy area, they followed a winding path down to the beach.

Standing at the end of the path they could see the entire beach, smaller but broader than Twilight Cove. There wasn’t a soul in sight, but there were countless footprints. Spotted sandpipers danced along the glistening sand at the water’s edge.

Jake checked his watch. It was almost four.

“Are the Potters home?”

“No, they went to stay in San Luis overnight. To . . . to a real estate seminar. Oh, Jake. What am I going to tell them?”

“By the time they get back, we’ll have found the boys. Maybe Matt just wanted to go home.”

“No, he would have asked me to drive him. I . . . I talked about going on a trip and taking Chris out of school. If he heard us arguing, then he could be thinking anything.”

Jake scanned the beach again. The tide was out, the sun catching on bits of mica in the wet sand, flecks of glittering fool’s gold. Narrow hiking paths led up the gradual sloping hillside away from the strand.

“They could have taken any one of those trails.” Jake pointed to where the path veered off in different directions across the bluff. Taller grasses could easily shield two small boys from sight.

“What if they make it to the highway?” The wind off the water blew her hair across her eyes. She pulled it back and anchored it with one hand against her neck. “What if someone picked them up already?”

“They may have gone to the highway, but Chris wouldn’t willingly get into a car with a stranger.”

“How do you know that?”

“He wouldn’t leave the baseball park with the Potters because you told him to wait for you. I’m sure he knows not to get into a strange car. He’s a smart kid.”

“A second ago you said he wouldn’t
willingly
get into a car with someone he didn’t know. They could be abducted.”

Anything was possible, but he wasn’t willing to frighten her any more than she already was.

“Oh, God, Jake.”

Wanting to absorb her fear and pain, he slipped his arm around her shoulders. She was so shaken she didn’t even notice.

“We should split up,” he said, planning out loud. “You drive up the highway in both directions and see if you can spot them. I’ll follow the main nature trail at a jog. If they are on the way to Matt’s, you’ll spot them on the road.”

Gently, he withdrew his arm and then pulled his car keys out of his pocket and started to hand them over. “Do you feel all right to drive?”

“I can do anything I have to.”

“Take my car. I don’t trust Betty.” He tried to smile, failed miserably.

She grabbed the keys without argument, turned to leave. He grabbed her elbow and she looked back at him again.

“Carly, we’ll find them.” The desperation in her eyes was killing him. He let go and watched her run back down the beach path alone.

An hour later Carly parked in front of her own place again and found Jake pacing the narrow porch, talking on his cell phone. She climbed out of his SUV, hurried up the walk, and handed him his keys with a silent shake of her head.

Tears were streaming down her face, warm and wet. She could feel them, but was barely aware of anything. For the past hour she felt as if she’d been looking at the world through the distorted glass of a fish bowl, submerged, unable to breathe.

Jake snapped his phone off. “You didn’t find them.”

She wiped her cheek with the hem of her sleeve. “No.”

“I got a hold of the Potters. I called Glenn’s office and got his cell number off the machine. They’re on the way back.” Jake glanced at his watch. “I told them I called the police.”

Carly bit her lips and closed her eyes, afraid the nightmare was only beginning. On the run at fifteen, she’d been terrified, but she’d been old enough to know what dangers she faced. Chris and Matthew had no idea what could be waiting for them. They were so young, so innocent and defenseless.

If anyone wanted to grab them, force them into a van or a car . . .

She wanted to scream, to tear her hair, and to rail at God to give her baby back, but she was helpless, stuck in a damn fishbowl, fighting for every breath.

Jake was on the phone again briefly. Then he turned to her, took her by the shoulder, and led her inside. Once she was seated in her old rocking chair, he went into the kitchen. She heard water running, heard the kettle hit the burner.

Familiar sounds. Everyday sounds that were suddenly foreign. Nothing seemed normal anymore.

He walked back into the living room and stood beside her, hands in his back pockets. She hated the undisguised worry in his eyes.

“I put the kettle on.” He paced over to the open front door and looked through the screen. “It’s getting dark. I’m betting they’ll be home in a few minutes. They’ll get hungry and come out from wherever it is they’re hiding. Chris eats like he has a hollow leg.”

A tear plopped on the front of Carly’s sweatshirt. Mesmerized, she watched the dampness spread, as if that were all she had to concentrate on.

She heard a car and looked through the screen door as a black-and-white police cruiser pulled into a parking stall out front.

A young, heavyset officer stepped out, adjusted the thick gun belt around his even thicker waist, and then picked up a clipboard. The sun flashed on the bright gold badge pinned to his crisp, navy shirtfront. He looked like a boy. Too young to be a cop.

He didn’t even know Christopher.

He had no idea how much her son meant to her, how very special Chris was. The young officer couldn’t know that her heart was breaking or how hard it was for her to breathe or even think straight.

She watched as he took his time walking up the steps clutching a little spiral notebook in his hand.

Her first reaction to the sight of the official car in Wilt’s
driveway that day was one of panic, until she remembered
that she was nineteen, and no one could make her go back
to New Mexico now, not if she didn’t want to.

It had been close to five years since that horrible morning
Caroline had died. She had no idea if anyone had ever
looked for Caroline or even identified her friend’s body.

Haunted by the image of Caroline lying cold and alone
in that gully off the highway, Carly had made one call to
New Mexico the morning after she reached California. She
phoned the Highway Patrol, made up a story about how
she was looking for her brother, and inquired about accidents along Highway 40.

They confirmed three teenagers had been involved in a
crash two days before and that one of the men in the car,
Raul Herrera, had been admitted to emergency in Winslow,
where he remained in critical condition. Lucky Marvin had
been D.O.A. along with an unidentified female.

A Jane Doe. No one would mourn Caroline. No one
would identify her, claim her body, see her buried. Hundreds of miles away, Carly had closed her eyes and hung up,
conscious of the silence in Wilt’s empty house.

Forgive me, Caroline. Forgive me for leaving you there all
alone.

She never called back with a tip to identify the Jane Doe.
Of all the people in the world, Caroline would understand
her decision and would have done exactly the same thing in
her place. Caroline would have been proud that she’d had
the guts to walk away in the first place. It had been her only
way out.

For the next few years, she had tried to put Caroline’s
death, the accident, her own duplicity behind her, but on
that hot, sunny afternoon, the sight of a Borrego Springs
patrol car outside Wilt’s door had brought it all back.

She walked to the door with Christopher in her arms and
recognized Jerry Holmes. She served Sergeant Holmes a
cinnamon roll and coffee almost every morning at the
Crosswinds.

“Hi, Caroline.” Like everyone in Borrego, he knew her
as Caroline Graham.

Jerry usually smiled, but that afternoon as he rested his
hands on his gun belt and looked everywhere but at her, she
realized he hadn’t stopped by to say hello.

“Wilt’s not here,” she told him.

“I came to see you, actually. You were dating Rick Saunders last year . . .”

Like everyone else who knew her from the Crosswinds, he’d seen them around town together and asked her
about Rick.

“Yeah?”

He looked at Christopher in her arms. Frowned.

“There’s no easy way to say this, Caroline. There’s been
an accident up on the grade. Rick’s car went off the road. I
got the call over the radio and wanted to tell you before you
heard it someplace else.”

“Is he . . . is he hurt bad?” Flashes of the accident in New
Mexico came back to her. Caroline on the ground. Lucky
twisted over the steering wheel.

Jerry scratched his neck with a beefy hand. His gun belt
creaked whenever he shifted his weight. Fear heightened
her senses so that she became aware of everything at once,
of the smell of bacon Wilt had fried for a BLT at lunch, the
way Jerry towered over her. She was usually standing over
him while he ate.

“He’s dead, Caroline. Rick didn’t make it.”

Jake let the young officer into Carly’s mobile home. When the uniformed policeman halted just inside the door, his gaze fanned the room like a minesweeper and stopped on Carly.

“We got your call about some runaways. How long have the boys been gone, ma’am?”

Her eyes found Jake’s. “I . . . I’m not sure. I don’t know.”

“Just over an hour,” Jake said. “We’ve looked everywhere.”

“Ages?”

“Six.” Carly found the strength to push out of the rocker. “They’re both six. We’ve looked up and down the highway, checked the beach.” She turned to Jake. “And the nature hikes along the bluff to the south.” Jake nodded.

“You’re sure they’re not still in the house? Kids hide right under your nose sometimes and then get too scared to come out.”

Carly stepped up to the spit-shined young man, tempted to grab and shake him. “They aren’t here. If they were, I’d have found them.”

Jake walked to the dinette set, picked up the note, and handed it to the officer.

“Christopher left this.”

The young cop read it, folded it, jotted something on the tablet, and asked Jake, “The boy’s your son?”

You’d be a real good dad.

“No, I’m . . .” Jake looked to Carly. Her arms were wrapped around her midriff, her intense pain physical now. Beauty lay on the floor pressed up against her ankles.

“No. I’m . . . just a friend.”