Splintered (4 page)

“Make sure you talk to your brother, Mr. Fry,” Officer Topher said. “He needs to understand the severity of the situation. Daniel’s lucky this didn’t happen with a minor, or he would have been arrested on the spot. The sheriff doesn’t take kindly to men messing with little kids in his county. Doesn’t matter if it was accidental or not. You get me?”

Hank closed Daniel’s door. “Understood. Again, thank you for your understanding and assistance. We appreciate it. Is there anything else?”

“No. If something more comes of this, we’ll be in touch.”

Hank gave a quick nod and walked around to the driver’s side. He clenched his fingers around the handle and drew a few deep breaths before climbing in. Once seated, he paused before turning over the engine. Daniel had a Wolverine comic book in his lap, one he’d fished out of the glove compartment. As he turned the pages, the stress of the morning instantly disappeared from his face.

Hank was only five when Daniel was born, but he remembered how his brother had arrived prematurely. His dad had said there wasn’t a chance in hell the kid would even come home from the hospital, but Daniel had proven him wrong—something that had always seemed to stick in his dad’s craw. Daniel was a twig of a kid, quickly earning him the nickname “Small Fry.” Of the many names he’d been called, it was the only one he didn’t mind. Sitting there flipping the pages of his comic book, the boy looked innocent enough, but Hank wondered if deviant thoughts jockeyed for position inside Daniel’s head.

“You promised you wouldn’t expose yourself in public again,” Hank said. After a couple of tries, the engine finally turned over.

Daniel turned and stared at him. Every emotion crossed the boy’s face, from shock to confusion to sadness.

“No, Hank. I told you it was a mistake. I just wanted to get out of the house. To go to the park and feed the ducks. Then I had to pee. Why won’t you believe me?”

Hank looked into Daniel’s teary eyes. He didn’t have an answer for the boy.

Daniel’s face flushed red. “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” He slammed his fist against his head with each word he yelled at himself.

“Hey, hey. Stop that.” Hank shot an arm out to block Daniel’s blows. “I didn’t say you were stupid. You know we don’t use that word.”

Daniel dropped his chin to his chest. His breath came out in ragged bursts.

Hank hated how Daniel always used his fists to deal with his emotional pain. “How about we head over to the comic store, see if we can find you something new?”

“Really?” Daniel looked up, brightening at the suggestion. “But you hate driving all the way over to Brandon.”

“Well, lucky for you, my day just freed up.”

Lily left the uneaten soup in the pot on the stove. No amount of cajoling could persuade Maddy to eat once they’d gotten home from the police station. The whole process had been agonizing—she’d had to just sit by, silently watching her daughter struggle to describe the man who’d almost stolen her away. Detective Wallace had watched Maddy with a look of skepticism on his face. It had infuriated Lily.

How in the world could a fifteen-year-old be expected to remember the thickness of an attacker’s eyebrows or the angle of his cheekbones?

By the end of it, both mother and daughter were emotionally spent. They didn’t say a word to each other the entire drive home.

Lily wanted to rage, to scream
“Screw it!”
at the world, and hide underneath a mountain of covers for a week. But that would be too easy, more than she deserved. Maddy hadn’t created this situation, at least not on her own. The girl was a victim of bad parenting. She had a mother and father who separately had deep-seated issues, but together were even more dysfunctional.

Yet, in spite of everything that had happened that day, tears still wouldn’t come. Lily refused to let herself feel anything, knowing that if she cracked open her heart even the tiniest amount, emotions would come flooding in, causing its walls to crumble completely. Lily leaned into the numbness. It’d been her go-to emotion for any stressful situation ever since Maddy was a baby.

Lily couldn’t help but think back to the night when Maddy was only two months old and had refused her last evening feeding. At the time, she didn’t think much of it. As a first-time mother she figured it was no big deal, that a few hours later Maddy would eat again, and would be ravenous from skipping a meal. Yet, when Lily awoke around midnight not having heard the baby’s cry, she got up to check on her. In the night-light’s weak glow, Lily could see Maddy lying awake, looking up at the ceiling. She picked Maddy up to breastfeed, but the baby still refused to eat.

Lily brought her back to the bedroom and frantically woke Tom, explaining Maddy’s lethargic condition. Tears streamed down Lily’s face as she told Tom they should rush her to the emergency room. He allayed her fears, explaining that sometimes babies were just sleepy and didn’t want to eat. Lily acquiesced to Tom, even though Maddy had been waking up like clockwork to eat every three hours since the moment she’d been born. She told herself that Maddy had finally reached the age where she could go longer between feedings. Plus, she didn’t want to be labeled as one of “those” first-time parents, the type that rushed her child to the ER at the first sign of a sniffle. Both she and Tom agreed that if Maddy persisted in not eating, they’d take her to the pediatrician first thing in the morning.

The next day, Tom and Lily were waiting outside the doctor’s office before the staff arrived.

The pediatrician listened to Maddy’s heart and said words that almost stopped Lily’s: “Your daughter’s heart is pumping so fast I can’t count the beats. She needs to go to the hospital immediately.”

Thoughts rushed through Lily’s head.
This can’t be happening. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.
After the doctor left to make arrangements for transport, Lily completely fell apart.

Tom glared at Lily. “Stop crying! This is no time for one of your Lily breakdowns. Get a hold of yourself. Maddy needs you.”

Through blurry vision, Lily stared at Tom, shocked he could be so harsh at a time like this. Logic told her he too was barely hanging on, that he wasn’t capable of comforting his wife as well as taking care of his daughter. The words sliced through her anyway.

Pushing the old memories away, Lily walked over to the end table near the couch and picked up her purse. She dug around until her fingers found what she was looking for. She dry-swallowed two pills, hoping to alleviate the pressure building in her head. The purse slipped off her bent elbow, but she left it lying on the floor. She grabbed her cell phone off its charger and punched in Tom’s number.

As angry as Lily was at him, she had to admit that what he had lacked in the husband department he made up for as a dad. She’d never seen a more loving, attentive father. That’s why she couldn’t understand how he could suddenly shut Maddy out of his life. It wasn’t like him.

“Come on . . . come on,” Lily said as the third ring sounded. “You can only duck my calls for so long.” She started pacing. Her strides matched the fury rising up inside as she thought about the message she would leave when the call finally switched over to voice mail.

“Hello?”

Lily paused for a moment, surprised Tom had answered. “Why haven’t you returned any of my messages?”

“Really? Do we have to do this now?”

“When’s a better time? Next month? Next year?” Lily’s grip on the phone tightened.

“I’m hanging up now.”

“No. Wait.” A couple slow exhales helped to stave off the impending explosion she felt. She had to remember why she’d called, not to rehash old arguments, but to plead Maddy’s case. “Tom, your daughter needs you.”

And so do I.

“This isn’t a good time for me.”

“Are you kidding me? Didn’t you listen to any of my messages? Maddy was almost abducted. Nearly ripped away from us. Again. Stop thinking about yourself for one damn minute.”

Silence answered Lily’s accusation. She thought about how Maddy’s illness had changed them both. They’d put their marriage on hold to tend to their daughter’s needs, but by the time she was out of the woods, they didn’t know how to find their way back to each other.

“Tom? Tom?”

A sound of something hard hitting metal reverberated over the phone.

“Tom?”

“I’m here.”

“What am I supposed to tell Maddy when she asks why her father hasn’t called to find out how she’s doing?”

“I don’t know, Lily. I told you I needed space to work through some things.”

“It’s been five months. Hasn’t it been long enough? Look, Tom, if you want to start over without me, I can deal with that. But don’t cut Maddy out of your life. She doesn’t deserve it.”

“I’m not cutting her out. I’m just taking time to work on me. Look, I’ll call her this weekend. I promise. Right now is tough though. I’m on the road and have a big presentation to get through.”

“One of these days, Tom Eastin, you’re going to regret not being the hero your daughter deserves.”

Maddy watched her mom pace back and forth in front of the couch.

“I heard you talking on the phone, Mom. Was it Dad? Did he call back?”

Lily turned around when she heard her daughter’s voice. “No . . . my boss called. He wanted to talk about the schedule.”

Though Maddy didn’t believe her, she couldn’t be certain her mother was lying. Earlier, she’d been in her bedroom with the music cranked up to keep her mom away, but when she came out to go to the bathroom, she’d heard her talking on the phone. Not loud enough to make out the conversation, but loud enough that the tension in her mom’s voice was obvious.

She didn’t know why her mom would hide the fact that her dad had finally called. “Whatever.”

Maddy stomped back to her bedroom, ignoring the rush of her mom’s words trailing behind her.

If Dad had been the one sitting beside me while I described the attacker to that idiot detective, it wouldn’t have been such a nightmare.

Going into the station, Maddy had had a picture of the abductor in her head, but once the officer pelted her with questions about his complexion, the fullness of his lips, and whether he had wide-set eyes, she became confused. Detective Wallace had stared at her like he didn’t believe a word she’d said. And her mom was even worse, looking embarrassed to be there. Finally, Maddy had told everyone the sketch was correct just so she could leave.

Maddy slammed her bedroom door and glanced at the time on her watch—a birthday present from her dad. For weeks, she’d agonized over which watch color to choose. She’d finally settled on yellow, and her dad laughed, saying he knew that would be her choice all along. The memory caused a sudden sharpness to shoot through her chest. The waterworks threatened to start up again. For the hundredth time, Maddy told herself she should take the damn thing off her wrist. It was a constant reminder of everything she’d lost.

Why hasn’t he called?

She grabbed her cell phone off the nightstand, wondering if the battery had died.

Maybe he called Mom because he couldn’t get through. Then they probably got into a fight before he had a chance to talk to me. She always screws everything up.

No, the phone was fully charged.

Maddy couldn’t understand why almost being kidnapped hadn’t brought her dad back.
Why didn’t he show up to rescue me from this pit of hell?
I don’t know how much more I can take of being stuck with the Ice Queen. Even this morning didn’t thaw the coldness around Mom’s heart.

Ever since Maddy was little, she’d felt like her mom had kept her at arm’s length. Not physically. She was always there to hug, kiss, and read her bedtime stories. But it seemed like she was only going through the motions and showing up in body, not in spirit. It made Maddy naturally gravitate toward her dad. He was everything her mom wasn’t—loving, playful, silly. He had a real zest for life.

Her dad’s voice played in Maddy’s head now, extolling the virtues of patience, setting goals, and then working to realize them. “Maddy,” he’d say. “I remember when I was a kid and every time I saw a shooting star streak across the sky, I’d wish for a pet. My friends had cats, dogs, fish, and even lizards, but Pop thought I was too immature for my age and he wanted me to learn some responsibility before entrusting me with an animal. No matter how much I cajoled and begged, he wouldn’t give in. I finally realized if I wanted an animal to call my own, I’d have to do it his way. So I set a goal and made it happen. I had patience, and with a lot of hard work to prove myself worthy, eventually it paid off.”

Maddy had heard her dad’s stories hundreds of times. She smiled thinking about them, and how he invariably tied each to a life lesson.

Not in a preachy way though, like when Mom lectures me about how too much makeup gives boys the wrong impression or that young ladies should always have clean rooms.

Being with her dad again was Maddy’s goal. No matter what it took, she’d make it happen.

After Lily and Maddy left City Hall, Wallace headed back to the Eastins’ neighborhood. It had been a long day, but he wanted to talk with the folks who’d gone into work and hadn’t been interviewed yet. Wallace parked his sedan at the end of the street, opposite Maddy’s bus stop. He walked down the broken sidewalk while checking his notebook, comparing the house numbers to the ones on his list to see who was left to interview. A couple of times, he had to step into the grass to avoid tripping over roots. Oak trees planted too close to the sidewalk were escaping their underground cement prison.

Wallace met with a few neighbors, none of whom had witnessed anything. They had been long gone by the time the ruckus had begun. Wallace continued working his way down the street while Maddy Eastin’s voice played in a continuous loop in his mind. When she’d described her attempted abduction back at the station, her recollection of the crime was too precise. Wallace had interviewed enough victims to know that during an attack racing adrenaline made it nearly impossible to process what was happening, much less remember the particulars.