Miracle Beach (17 page)

Jack took Sophie’s arm from his and planted it on the porch railing to steady her swaying. He knelt down by the girl.

“Hi, there, sweetheart. How ya doing?”

The little girl smiled up at him, then yawned.

“Have you been here long?” Jack asked. “You been waiting a long time?”

“Little while,” the girl said.

“Who’re you waiting for, sweetheart?” Jack asked, helping her to sit up.

“My daddy.”

“I think you have the wrong house, baby girl.”

The girl shook her head. “What’s your name?” she asked Jack.

“I’m Jack, and this pretty lady back here is Sophie.” He gestured behind him as if the girl weren’t just young, but stupid. Obviously she could see that the only other person on the porch would have to be the Sophie he was talking about. This thought came too late, though, for Jack to stop it.

“Hi.” The girl waved to Sophie. Sophie waved back. Then the girl looked at Jack. “Do you live here?” she asked.

“No,” Jack said, “I’m just staying for a while. Just visiting.”

“Oh,” the girl said. The hamsters were running
—
that was what Nash would say. Anytime Jack was thinking about something, usually work related, Nash would ask him why his hamsters were working so hard.

“Do you live here?” she asked Sophie.

“No. I live down the road a ways,” Sophie said. “I’m just stopping by on my way home.”

“Oh,” the girl said again. Jack could see that she was still thinking—hard. He also noticed she was shivering—miniconvulsions rippled her skin every now and then, with a few seconds’ reprieve between. “I’m a little confused,” she said to Jack, leaning toward him and lowering her voice to a whisper.

“That’s okay, sweetheart,” Jack said, whispering back at her. “Why don’t we all go inside and figure out where you’re supposed to be, okay? It’s too chilly to stand out here on this porch.” As warm as the island could be during the day, the air at night could get damn cold.

The little girl stood up, gathered her jacket and box, and watched as Jack fished the spare house key out of the light fixture next to the door. He leaned over to her and whispered, “Now, you can’t tell anyone about that—it’s the secret hiding place.”

She smiled up at him, then pursed her lips and drew her finger across them as if closing a zipper.

“Atta girl,” Jack said, opening the door.

The girl marched purposefully through the door and into the house, as if she had been living there all along. Bold kid, thought Jack. When Nash was young, Jack had always tried to instill a healthy amount of fear in him—don’t talk to strangers, look before crossing the street, all of the typical stuff. But he also taught Nash to play a little game they called “casing the joint,” where Nash was supposed to be aware of his surroundings all the time: Look for suspicious-looking or suspicious-acting people, pay attention to exit placements or locations of security guards, avoid dark areas of parking lots, and steer clear of vans or cars with tinted windows.

When he and Magda would argue about it—she thought “casing the joint” was the type of thing that would only make their son neurotic; and besides, they lived in rural Wisconsin, and just what did he think could happen to their son in
Wisconsin
?—he’d tell her that only God could prevent accidents, and only parents could prevent everything else. To prove his point he’d clip missing children stories from the
News Chronicle
or the
Press Gazette
and turn the missing-children side of the milk carton toward her at breakfast. If he was feeling particularly zealous, he’d highlight the portions of the newspaper articles that proved his point: “Suspect believed to have driven a white utility van,” and such.

This fervor over his son’s safety had taken him by surprise by showing up fully formed at the same time Nash was born. He was anything but uptight in any other area of his life—not his business, not his friendships, and certainly not his marriage. Lord knew his and Magda’s relationship would never, ever work if they were both as high-strung as she tended to be. Lord knew it barely worked as it was. But his son, now, that was a whole different ball game. He had never wanted to protect anything like he had wanted to protect Nash.

This dirty little girl in front of him, though, hadn’t seemed to have learned even the basics of child survival. Going into a strange house with two strangers, and absolutely no apprehension about doing so. Her parents must be frantic. Jack knew he would’ve been; that was for sure. But the girl was calmly sipping on a glass of orange juice Sophie had poured—albeit sloppily—for her.

“Wonder where Ms. Macy is,” Sophie said, wiping up the mess she had made on the counter.

“I wonder,” said Jack, although he really hadn’t until that moment. Macy had found them making their way home. She was going to get a ride back with her high school friend and was plenty old enough to take care of herself. Jack hadn’t given her whereabouts a second thought. Though, in a flash, he pictured Macy with another man—a man who wasn’t Nash—and the image made him both uncomfortable and angry.

“Who’s Macy?” the girl asked. “Does she live here?”

Jack nodded. “It’s her house.”

“Oh,” the girl said. Then she squinted at Jack. “Does anyone else live here?”

Jack shook his head. The girl rooted around in the pocket of her jacket and pulled out an equally grimy envelope that had been folded in fourths into a fist-size package. She smoothed it on the table, studied it, and sighed audibly. “Is this 8254 Galley Road?” she asked.

“It is,” said Jack. “But we’re the only ones who live here. Why don’t you let me take a look at that address. Maybe you’re just reading the numbers wrong.”

“I’m not,” she said. She jutted her chin at Jack but handed the envelope to him anyway.

Even before he had unfolded the envelope completely, Jack gasped. There, in the upper left corner, was Nash’s handwriting. Jack knew it in a second—the short, deliberate, choppy strokes. The letters in all caps. Nash didn’t write in cursive, ever. Not even his signature. The all-caps style of Nash’s handwriting always seemed to Jack like it was yelling, like it was so much louder and angrier than Nash ever was.

Jack could feel his heart beating all the way up in his ears. He held the envelope up in front of him to take a closer look, but the letters kept jumping around. He smoothed the paper out on the table, just as the girl had, to keep it steady.

He looked at the girl, who was looking back at him, wide-eyed.

“Honey, where did you get this?” he asked. His tongue felt heavy and dry and huge. “Where did you find this? Tell me
where
.” Too late, he thought he maybe sounded too harsh, too intense for this sweet little girl.

“My mom,” the girl said matter-of-factly, almost annoyed. She had clearly been expecting more substantial information from him.

Sophie had ceased trying to make coffee and had sat down at the table opposite the girl. “Jack?” Sophie asked.

He ignored her, focused on the girl. Everything in the room except the letter and the girl had gone fuzzy.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” Jack asked the girl.

“Glory Jane Gibson,” she said, proudly, as if Jack had finally asked her a worthwhile question. “And I just turned eight on June twenty-third.”

He looked down at the letter. Addressed to Glory Gibson. Well, at least that added up. Because the rest of it sure as hell didn’t.

He should say something nice to her, Jack thought. He should tell her she had a pretty name. That was what he always said to kids—“Wow, what a great name!”—whether it was or not, because it was so much work for most kids to own up to their names, to say them out loud. You had to toss them a little encouragement here and there at those young ages—for being “this many” or for having a name, even. The praise was the thing; it didn’t matter much what the hell it was for.

But he couldn’t say it now. It just wouldn’t come out.

Instead he stared at the kid like she was a talking kangaroo.

“Jack?” Sophie asked again, concern creeping into her voice. “Ja-ack.”

Jack turned his head to look at her. Right about then, he wished he had given Sophie a few more swigs off his canteen. He wished she would just pass out already. He turned slowly back to Glory. “Glory, honey, who’s your daddy?”

Instantly, Jack started thinking of ways he could have better phrased that question, so as to make it sound a little less like he and Glory were playing a game of pickup basketball in which he had just scored on her.
Who is your father?
maybe.

“Nash Allen.”

Jack looked at her. Had she said what he thought he heard? “What?” Jack asked.

“Nash Allen. Or maybe Alden, or something like that,” Glory said. “It’s at the bottom of the letter. But reading is my worst subject, so that might be a little wrong.”

A little wrong? More than a
little
wrong, darling.
Not Nash. Nash, this girl’s father? No way.

He stared at Glory. Then he looked back at the letter on the table. Then back at Glory. She did a quick nod of her chin toward Jack, as if to say, “Go ahead; open it.”

Jack pulled several sheets of yellow legal paper out of the envelope, unfolded each one, and tried to organize the pages into the correct order. The pages were smudged and the paper around the creases had grown thin from being folded and refolded. Jack found the first page and began to read.