The Missing Place (32 page)

The man turned and followed his friend out. He had a slight limp, favoring one leg and coming down heavy on the other one. A moment later the lights from their truck cut across the doors as they made the tight turn.

Silver chain. Dog tags, like a soldier would wear.

T.L. felt like he was losing his mind. At least Myron knew now. Not being alone with it anymore—that was a comfort.

But there was at least one other person who knew. Which was why he had been trying so hard to get Kristine to talk to him. Because the only way to get to Elizabeth was through her. After Chief Weyant found out that T.L. was dating his daughter, he took away her phone and forbade her to go out. For a while they'd been able to communicate through a Hotmail account she set up and used at school, so that they'd arranged to see each other at football games and outings with her friends. And there were those four times she'd pretended to be at sleepovers, and instead they'd gone for drives in his truck.

Around Halloween, Elizabeth seemed distracted, too busy to see him. She stopped answering his emails. Then right before winter break, he got the news about the scholarship. A full ride to UCLA—a way for them to be together, far from North Dakota, far from her family, her parents' crazy rules. It was what she wanted most in the world—to be somewhere else. To put North Dakota in her rearview mirror and light out for the coast, any coast. And California! When she found out he was applying, she'd been so excited that he felt bad about telling her the odds, telling her that UCLA was nothing but a dream.

A dream that had somehow come true, and she was the first person he texted. That night she snuck out and met him with news of her own: she was pregnant—that was why she'd been so scarce. She'd waited until she was sure, she said, evading his eyes.

They'd cried together; this wasn't what they had planned. It would be all right, Elizabeth promised through her tears. They'd get a tiny apartment near campus, and she'd find a job. They'd take turns watching the baby, and he would study and she would work, and they'd go to the beach on weekends. After all, the beach was free—and it was worlds away from the rolling hills, the endless frigid nothing she'd grown up in.

T.L. was dismayed. They couldn't raise a baby that way. A baby needed family, stability, tradition—everything his mother had denied him and that Myron had provided. There was no way he was starting a family far away from home. He'd never wanted to go to California anyway—he had only been trying to please Myron, but he always intended to come back once he got his degree. T.L. wanted to draw and paint, to work hard and create the family he always wished he had, and he didn't want to do it far from the wide-open sky he'd grown up under.

It was an uneasy parting. Elizabeth had made him promise he'd think about it. That he'd consider L.A. She said she could never be happy living in Fort Mercer, especially since it would be the last nail in the coffin of her relationship with her parents. She'd hinted before that her father was racist, but now she was adamant:
He'll never accept you.
He won't let us go anywhere near the reservation.

T.L. had marshaled his arguments. He'd planned exactly how he would convince her. But he never got the chance, because the next email she sent was to break up with him.

He wrote increasingly frantic emails back. She couldn't do this to him. There was no way he would turn his back on a child he had fathered. He couldn't make Elizabeth love him, but he could make her share custody. He researched it online, sent her the links. The Department of Children and Family Services had a whole program that would help establish paternity—he could force her to take a test, if it came to that. Just hear me out, he begged. He even offered to reconsider the scholarship in California. But he got no response.

Until the week he told her that he had no other choice but to come and talk to her father. That he would get a lawyer if he had to. He had been bluffing, but she didn't know that—it was what finally got her to call him on a borrowed phone. He asked her to meet him. Told her his schedule: a couple of shifts at the store, fishing on Saturday, studying for a math test on Sunday. She said she would find a time and let him know.

Now, in the empty store, his only company the game turned down low on Myron's little television, T.L. thought about what an idiot he was. He'd walked right into the trap, and he was no closer to understanding what had happened than he had been a week and a half ago. He couldn't reach Elizabeth, Kristine wouldn't help him, and Myron had counseled him not to say a word.

SHAY TOSSED COLLEEN
the keys as they walked across the parking lot in the dark. “You drive this time,” she said. “This snow's going to kill me.”

Colleen drove slowly through town, joining the parade of trucks returning from the rigs and heading back out into the night. The Weyants lived in a sprawling trilevel house in the nicest part of town, a gently sloping subdivision near a nine-hole golf course. She parked in the street that ran parallel above the Weyants' street, where they had an unobstructed view of the driveway, which was helpfully illuminated with a powerful spotlight.

Through the house's back window, they could see the family sitting down to eat. “One, two, three, four, five,” Shay counted. “Mom, dad, and all three kids.”

“Cozy.”

Dinner took less than half an hour. The kids carried plates to the sink; a light went on in the family room, followed by the blue glow of the television. Someone did dishes at the sink.

At seven o'clock the garage door went up. Colleen almost missed it. They'd been turning the car on for a few minutes to warm up whenever it got too cold, running the windshield wipers to clear the snow from the glass, and the blades obscured her view.

Then headlights came on and a little Toyota RAV4 pulled slowly out of the garage.

“Can you see who it is?” Shay demanded.

“I think the driver has long hair. So, Elizabeth or her mom.”

“Could be her mom running to the grocery. Or to see friends.”

“Let's find out.”

Colleen's heart pounded as she started up the truck and drove slowly down the hill, hanging back as far as she dared. The SUV turned right out of the subdivision.

Away from town.

It kept up a steady fifty miles per hour, below the speed limit, which seemed prudent given the weather.

“Where the fuck is she going?” Shay muttered as the miles went by. After they'd been in the car for nearly fifteen minutes, the RAV signaled a right turn onto one of the rural routes that crisscrossed Ramsey County. Colleen took the turn and dropped back even farther, until a set of headlights approached close behind.

“I can't believe there's other traffic on this road,” she said, speeding up.

Shay turned her head to look. “They're carrying a load,” she said. “They're probably on the clock.”

After that Colleen didn't bother to maintain as much distance. If there was traffic at this time of day, even in weather like this, whoever was in the SUV wouldn't give much thought to a vehicle behind them.

It was another several miles before the SUV turned down an unmarked road so narrow that Colleen wouldn't have known it was there except for the fresh tire marks.

“She's meeting someone,” Shay guessed.

“Out here? Where are we?”

Off in the distance to the left, they could make out the orange glow of a rig. To the right, a couple more glowing dots studded the
distant hills. The SUV drove steadily ahead, headlights bouncing along the road.

Colleen pulled off the road and idled. “What the hell do I do now?”

“Try cutting the lights. The moon's probably enough.”

The SUV was far ahead now, disappearing over a gentle rise. With the headlights off, the road in front of the truck was illuminated eerily by the moon, its silvery light shining on the tire tracks. Cautiously, Colleen started forward.

Neither of them spoke. Colleen stayed as close as she could to the other set of tire tracks. The road was marked by bright yellow poles on either side, and she tried to keep between them so they didn't end up in the ditch.

She thought she'd lost the SUV several times, but each time it popped up again on the gently rolling road ahead. As they started down a long incline, Colleen realized that the placid field stretching far to the right at the bottom of the hill wasn't a field at all, but a lake.

The SUV was slowing in front of a tiny boxy shed.

“Hunting blind,” Shay said. “Or fishing shack, one or the other. I'd bet money.”

The SUV made a lazy turn and pulled up with its lights shining on the shack. A figure in a bulky parka stood in front of the little structure. Behind the shack, Colleen could see another truck.

“There he is, whoever she's meeting,” Shay mumbled. “What on earth . . .”

Colleen slowed, the truck crawling along the road, wondering if they'd already been spotted. They descended a swell and were momentarily cut off from the view of the shack. When they came up the other side, Colleen decided there was no way they could assume
they were still hidden. She had to hope the driver didn't turn around and look up the hill.

A gasp from Shay made Colleen twist around to see what was wrong. Shay's mouth hung open, her face contorted in an expression of shock. “Oh, God,” she said, and then her hand was on the door handle and she was opening the door. “That's Taylor's truck. Oh, my God, I can't believe it, that's Taylor's truck!”

She was in the snow, trying to run, her legs sinking almost to the knees. Colleen jumped out and raced after her. When they got to the tire tracks, it was easier going. Colleen strained to see the figure that had turned now and was looking up the hill. A man. There was something wrong; he seemed to be stumbling, losing his balance. His face was lit white and featureless by the headlights as he lifted a hand to shield his eyes.

He stepped out of the bright glare of the spotlights and for a moment he hesitated, staring at the two women running toward him in the snow.

Then he lurched forward. “Mom!” he yelled. He took three steps, the word still on his lips as he fell to the snowy ground.

ELIZABETH RAN, HER
feet plunging through the crusted snow, desperation the only thing keeping her from falling.

She had been moving toward Paul when he fell. The sound of the car doors behind her were like bullets in her back. It never occurred to her that someone would follow her out here, once she slipped the knot of her family, once she got behind the wheel of her mother's car. Everything in her life was moving forward, toward Paul, toward her future. Paul was still trapped in the net of the past, but Elizabeth would be strong enough for both of them, strong enough for them and for the baby too. Everything had gone wrong and she was to blame, and she was sure she would pay for that later, if there was justice in the world. But for now she could not look back, because it wasn't just her anymore: she had a baby—a family—to take care of.

So she ran. But Shay was faster, wild like a dog racing with its head down and its ears flying, every cell in its body focused on being where it wasn't. Elizabeth witnessed the exact moment when Shay realized that the man on the ground was not her son. Too short, too wide, the wrong clothes—if it weren't for the desperation of her love she would have seen it sooner.

She staggered and Colleen ran into her, she was so close behind. Colleen pushed Shay out of the way as if she was nothing, a rack of clothes, a shopping cart, and Shay's hands went to her mouth and Colleen reached her son and threw herself to the ground.

By then Elizabeth was there too. She knelt on his other side: the two women, like when Jesus died and it was his mother and Mary Magdalene who grieved together, keening over the body and tearing their hair. Except Paul wasn't dead, he couldn't be. Elizabeth found the tab to his coat zipper and pulled it quickly down. Then, more carefully, she unbuttoned the soft cotton shirt with the stiff brown stain she knew she would find there.

The headlights from the car illuminated them in harsh white light, leaching the finer features from Paul's face and the color from his skin. Elizabeth worked carefully, terrified of hurting him further.

“Is he dead?” Colleen screamed. “Oh, my God, please don't let him be dead!”

“He's hurt, Mrs. Mitchell. Can you call nine-one-one?”

Colleen dug frantically in her coat pockets, coming up empty. “My phone—it's in my purse. Oh, God. Oh,
God.
”

Elizabeth was going to tell her to run to the car and make the call, when she changed her mind. Paul's skin was hot, much too hot. The heat radiated from his skin, shimmering in the freezing air.
Fever.
He was burning up with it. There was a faint crust of white on his dry, cracked lips. A smell came from him, sweetish and terrible.

He was so much worse than he'd let on. But she would fix this.

“Mrs. Mitchell, stay here with him, please. He's hurt, here, on his stomach. I think it's infected. I'm going to get help.”

She didn't wait for a response. She ran toward the car, picking out Shay's footsteps in the snow so she could be faster. Shay had gotten to her feet and was staggering toward the shack. She was looking for her son. She wouldn't find him. Elizabeth felt a crush of emotion—guilt, shame, fear—and then she resolutely pushed the feelings back.

The door of their car was open, and she slid into the driver's
seat. Two purses sat on the floor of the passenger side. Elizabeth grabbed the black leather one and pawed through it, found the cell phone in a pink case with a scrolled floral design. No passcode—thank God. Only one bar. She tried the call: nothing.

She felt for the keys, and yes, they were still in the ignition. She slammed the door shut, the car dinging its seat belt warning, but she ignored it. A seat belt was nothing to her. She floored the gas, turning the car in a wide turn, remembering too late that she could easily end up stuck in a drift. Her wheels spun, then—miraculously—bit down into the snow. She let up on the gas and ground her teeth together and willed the tires to find purchase in the tracks they'd made driving down. Slowly she inched up the hill, then picked up speed at the top before slamming on the brakes. She stabbed at the phone, trying again.