The Stranger (12 page)

“Oh, come on—”

Kristin held up her hand. “I’m not saying you do. I’m just giving you an example. We just don’t know.” There were tears in her eyes, and now he wondered about her husband, Hank, and why, with this physique, she sometimes wore those long sleeves and cover-ups. He had thought that maybe she had wanted to be modest. But that might not be it.

She had a point, though. They might live in a seemingly friendly community or a close-knit neighborhood, but every home is its own island with its own secrets.

“You know something about this,” Adam said to her.

“I don’t. And I really have to get back to the girls now.”

Kristin turned away from him. Adam almost reached out and grabbed her arm. Instead, he said, “I don’t think Corinne was really pregnant.”

Kristin stopped.

“You knew, didn’t you?”

With her back still turned, she shook her head. “Corinne never said anything to me.”

“But you knew.”

“I knew nothing,” Kristin said in a low voice. “You need to go now.”

R
yan was at the back door
waiting for him.

“Where’s Mom?”

“She’s away,” Adam said.

“What do you mean, away?”

“She’s traveling.”

“Where?”

“It’s a teacher’s thing. She’ll be home soon.”

Ryan’s voice was a panicked whine. “I need my uniform, remember?”

“Did you check your drawer?”

“Yes!” The panicked whine had upgraded itself to a shout. “You asked me that yesterday! I checked the drawer and the laundry basket!”

“How about the washer and dryer?”

“I checked both of those too! I checked everywhere!”

“Okay,” Adam said, “calm down.”

“But I need my uniform! If you don’t have your uniform, Coach Jauss makes you run extra laps and miss a game.”

“No problem. Let’s look for it.”

“You never find anything! We need Mom! Why isn’t she answering my texts?”

“She’s out of range.”

“You don’t get it! You don’t—”

“No, Ryan, you don’t get it!”

Adam heard his voice boom through the house. Ryan stopped. Adam didn’t.

“You think your mother and I exist only to serve you? Is that what you think? Well, here’s something you should learn right now, pal. Your mom and I are human beings too. Big surprise, right? We have lives too. We get sad, just like you. We worry about our lives, just like you. We aren’t here just to serve you or do your bidding. Now do you get it?”

Tears filled his son’s eyes. Adam heard footsteps. He turned toward them. Thomas was at the top of the steps, staring down at his father in disbelief.

“I’m sorry, Ryan. I didn’t mean—”

Ryan sprinted up the stairs.

“Ryan!”

Ryan ran past his brother. Adam heard the bedroom door slam shut. Thomas stayed at the top of the stairs and looked at him.

“I lost my temper,” Adam said. “It happens.”

Thomas didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then he said, “Dad?”

“What?”

“Where’s Mom?”

He closed his eyes. “I told you. She’s away at a teachers’ thing.”

“She was just away at a teachers’ thing.”

“There’s another.”

“Where?”

“Atlantic City.”

Thomas shook his head. “No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“I know where she is,” Thomas said. “And it’s nowhere near Atlantic City.”

C
ome in here,
please,” Adam said.

Thomas hesitated before heading down the stairs into the kitchen. Ryan was still in his room with the door closed. That was probably best. Give everyone a chance to cool down. But right now, Adam desperately needed to follow up on what Thomas had just told him.

“Do you know where your mother is?” he asked.

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean, sort of? Did she call you?”

“No.”

“Did she text or e-mail you?”

“No,” Thomas said. “Nothing like that.”

“But you know she isn’t anywhere near Atlantic City.”

He nodded.

“How do you know that?”

His son lowered his head. There were times when he would see Thomas move a certain way or make a gesture and realize that it was an echo of himself. He had no doubt that Thomas was his son. The similarities were too great. Did he have doubts about Ryan? He never had before, but in some secret, dark corner in the heart, all men have that misgiving. They never voice it. It rarely reaches their consciousness. But it’s there, sleeping in that dark corner, and now the stranger had poked the fear and dragged it into the light.

Did that explain Adam’s stupid outburst?

He had lost his temper with Ryan, and yes, under the circumstances, it was more than understandable, the way the boy was carrying on about his uniform.

But was there more to it than that?

“Thomas?”

“Mom will get mad.”

“No, she won’t.”

“I promised her I’d never do it,” Thomas said. “But, I mean, she always texts me back. I don’t get what’s going on. So I did something I shouldn’t have done.”

“It’s okay,” Adam said, trying to keep the desperation from his voice. “Just tell me what happened.”

He let out a deep breath and gathered himself. “Okay, you remember before you went out, I asked you where Mom was?”

“Yes.”

“And, I don’t know, you sounded . . . it was just weird, that’s all. First, you not saying where Mom is, then Mom’s not answering my texts . . .” He looked up. “Dad?”

“What?”

“When you said all that stuff about Mom being at a teachers’ conference, were you telling the truth?”

Adam thought about it, but not long. “No.”

“Do you know where Mom is?”

“No. We had a fight, I guess.”

His son nodded in too sagely a way. “So Mom, what, ran out on you?”

“I don’t know, Thomas. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

Thomas nodded some more. “So maybe Mom wouldn’t want me to tell you where she is.”

Adam sat back and rubbed his chin. “That’s a possibility,” he admitted.

Thomas put his hands on the table. He wore a silicone wristband, the kind people use to promote causes, though this one read
CEDARFIELD LACROSS
E
. He started using his free hand to snap the band against his wrist.

“But here’s the problem,” Adam said. “I don’t know what happened here, okay? If your mom contacted you and told you not to tell me where she is, well, I would listen to her on that. But I don’t think she did. I don’t think she’d put you or Ryan in that position.”

“Mom didn’t,” Thomas said, still staring at the band on his arm.

“Okay.”

“But she did make me promise never to sign into this.”

“Sign into what?”

“This app.”

“Thomas?”

The boy looked up.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“See, we made a deal. Mom and me.”

“What kind of deal?”

“She would only use the app in emergencies, not to spy on me. But I was never allowed to use it.”

“What do you mean, emergencies?”

“Like if I’d gone missing or she really couldn’t reach me.”

Adam felt himself spinning again. He stopped and tried to center himself. “Maybe you should explain about this app.”

“It’s called a phone locator, and it’s supposed to help you find your phone, you know, in case you lose it or someone steals it.”

“Okay.”

“So it shows you where your phone is on this map. All phones come with an app like this, I think, but this is an upgrade. So see, if something happened to us, or Mom couldn’t find me or Ryan, she could look us up on the app and know exactly where we were.”

“From the phone?”

“Right.”

Adam reached out his hand. “Let me see.”

Thomas hesitated. “But that’s the thing. I wasn’t supposed to use it.”

“But you did, right?”

He lowered his head and nodded.

“You signed in and you saw where your mother is?”

Another nod.

Adam put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “I’m not mad,” he said. “But could you let me see the app?”

Thomas took out his phone. His fingers danced across the screen. When he was done, he handed the phone to his father. Adam looked at it. There was a map showing Cedarfield. Three
blinking dots were coming from the same place. One dot was blue, another green, another red.

“So these dots . . . ,” Adam began.

“That’s us.”

“Us?”

“Right. You, me, and Ryan.”

The pulse in Adam’s head started to thrum. When he spoke, his voice sounded far away. “Me?”

“Sure.”

“There’s a dot representing me?”

“Yeah. You’re the green one.”

His mouth went dry. “So, in other words, if your mom wanted, she could track . . .” He stopped. There was no need to finish the thought. “How long has this app been on our phones?”

“I don’t know. Three, four years maybe.”

Adam just sat there as the realization rolled over him. Three or four years. For three or four years, Corinne had that ability to sign into some app and see exactly where her children and, more important, her husband were at any given moment.

“Dad?”

He had prided himself on his naïveté when it came to this technological mastery that had enslaved the masses, that forced us to ignore one another and obey its insatiable demand for attention. Adam’s phone had, to his knowledge, no unnecessary apps. No games, no Twitter, no Facebook, no shopping, no scores, no weather reports, none of that. He had the apps the phone came with—e-mail, texts, phone, stuff like that. He had Ryan put on a GPS that mapped out the best driving routes, taking into account the traffic.

But that was it.

“So why can’t I see Mom on this thing?” Adam asked.

“You need to zoom out.”

“How?”

Thomas took back the phone, placed two fingers on the screen, pinched them. He handed the phone back to his father. Adam could now see the entire state of New Jersey and to the west, Pennsylvania. An orange dot was on the left part of the screen. Adam tapped on it and the phone zoomed in again.

Pittsburgh?

Adam had made the drive to Pittsburgh once to bail a client out of jail. The ride had taken him more than six hours.

“Why isn’t the dot blinking?” Adam asked.

“Because it’s not active.”

“What do you mean?”

Thomas bit back the sigh he always sounded when he had to explain technology to his father. “When I checked the app a few hours ago, she was still moving. But then, about an hour ago, well, that’s where Mom was.”

“So she stopped here?”

“I don’t think so. See, if you click here . . .” He reached over and touched the screen. An image of a mobile phone with the word
CORINNE’S
came up. “It puts the battery power left up here on the right. See? So when I checked it then, her phone only had about four percent left. It’s out now, so the dot stopped blinking.”

“So is she still where this dot is?”

“I don’t know. It only shows where she was before the battery died.”

“And you can’t see where she is anymore?”

Thomas shook his head. “Not until Mom charges her phone. There’s also no point in texting or calling right now.”

“Because her phone is dead.”

“Right.”

Adam nodded. “But if we keep watching this, we can see when she’s powered back up?”

“Right.”

Pittsburgh. Why on earth would Corinne have gone to Pittsburgh? To his knowledge, she didn’t know anybody there. To his knowledge, she had never been there. He didn’t remember her ever talking about the city or having any friends or relatives who’d moved there.

He zoomed in on the orange dot. The address read South Braddock Avenue. He clicked the button for a satellite photo. She’d been in or near a strip mall of some sort. There was a supermarket, a dollar store, a Foot Locker, a GameStop. Maybe she had stopped there to grab something to eat or get supplies or something.

Or maybe she was meeting the stranger.

“Thomas?”

“Yeah?”

“Is this app on my phone?”

“It has to be. If someone can see you, then you can see them.”

“Can you show me where it is?”

Adam handed him the phone. His son narrowed his eyes and started with the fingers again. Finally, he said, “I found it.”

“How come I never saw it before?”

“It was grouped on the last page with a bunch of other apps you probably never use.”

“So if I sign in right now,” Adam said, “I can keep an eye on Mom’s phone?”

“Like I said, the battery’s dead right now.”

“But if she charges it?”

“Yeah, you’ll be able to tell. You just need the password.”

“What is it?”

Thomas hesitated.

“Thomas?”

“LoveMyFamily,” he said. “All one word. And you need to capitalize the
L
,
M
, and
F
.”

O
h yeah,
hotshot, in your face.

Bob Baime—or, as Adam preferred, Gaston—hit yet another turnaround jumper. Yep, Big Bob was in the zone tonight. He was on fire.
En fuego
.

This was pickup basketball at Beth Lutheran Church. A rotating group of guys, mostly town fathers, played two nights a week. The players varied in ability. Some guys were great—one guy had even been an all-American at Duke and a first-round draft pick of the Boston Celtics before crapping out with a knee injury—and some guys sucked eggs so badly they could barely walk.

But today, Bob Baime, Big Bob Baime, was the man, the go-to guy, the automatic basket machine. Under the boards, he was a one-man rebounding wrecking crew. He used his two-hundred-
seventy-pound frame and moved people out of the way. He knocked over the all-American, Mr. Basketball Superstar. The all-American shot him a look, but Big Bob Baime stared right back at him.

The all-American shook his head and started running downcourt.

Yeah, asshole, keep moving, so you don’t get your ass kicked.

Ladies and gentlemen, Big Bob Baime was back. That all-American with his stupid knee brace usually got the best of him. But not today. Uh-uh, no way. Bob had held his ground. Man, his old man would have been proud. His old man, who’d spent most of Bob’s childhood calling him Betty instead of Bobby, calling him worthless and weak, and worse, a pussy, a faggot, and even a girl. His father, the tough son of a bitch, had been the athletic director at Cedarfield High School for thirty years. Look up
old-school
in the dictionary, you’ll see a picture of Robert Baime Senior. It had been hard growing up with a guy like that, but in the end, no doubt, the hard love had been worth it.

Too bad. Too bad his old man couldn’t see how his only son had become such a big man in this town. Bob no longer lived on the crummy side of town where the teachers and blue-collar guys tried to survive. No, he bought the big manor with the mansard roof in the ritzy “country club” section of town. He and Melanie drove his-and-hers Mercedes. People respected them. Bob had been invited to join the exclusive Cedarfield Golf Club, a place his dad once went as a guest. Bob had three kids, great athletes all of them, even if Pete was having a tough time in lacrosse right now, maybe losing his chance at a scholarship now that Thomas Price was taking his position. But still, it had all been good.

And now it would again.

Too bad his father hadn’t seen this part either. Too bad he hadn’t seen his son lose his job, because then he would have seen exactly what kind of man Bob was—a survivor; a winner; a man who, when faced with adversity, perseveres. He was about to close the page on this awful chapter in his life and become Big Bob the big breadwinner again. Even Melanie would see. Melanie, his wife, the former cheerleading captain. She used to look at him with something close to worship, but since the downturn, she’d been in full nag mode, riding him for being so generous in the past, being a show-off with the money, leaving them with no savings when he lost his job. Yep, the vultures had been circling. The bank was ready to foreclose on the house. The repo man had been talking smack about the two Mercedes S coupes.

Well, who was going to have the last laugh now?

Jimmy Hoch’s dad, a top headhunter in New York, had lined him up for an interview today, and to put it simply, Bob Baime nailed it. Crushed it like an empty soda can. The guy doing the interview had been eating out of Big Bob’s hand. Sure, the call hadn’t come in yet—Bob kept eyeing the phone on the sideline—but it wouldn’t be long now. He was going to land that job, maybe even insist on a better buy-in, and then, well, he’d officially be back. Wait till he told Melanie about the interview. She would finally put out again, maybe throw on that little pink thing he loved so much.

Back on the court, Bob got the ball, drove hard to the hoop, and scored the winning basket.

Oh yeah, Bob was back and better than ever. Man, he wished that he had felt this way the other night when that prig Adam Price was riding him over picking Jimmy Hoch for the lacrosse team. For
crying out loud, all three of those kids sucked. They’d all end up being glorified towel boys. Who cared that a tenth of a point assigned by some bored evaluators who only paid attention to the good players separated them? He wasn’t about to blow this big job interview. Not that it should matter. It wasn’t like him and Jimmy Hoch’s dad had any kind of quid pro quo, but hey, life was about mutual back-scratching. Sports were a life lesson, right? Kids might as well learn that now too.

Bob’s team was about to take the floor for a new game when his phone rang.

He grabbed the phone fast, his hand actually shaking as he checked out the incoming number.

GOLDMAN
.

So this was it.

“Bob, you ready?”

“Start the game without me, fellas. I have to take this.”

Bob headed out into the corridor for privacy. He cleared his throat and smiled, because if you smiled for real, that confident tone would even travel through the phone.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Baime?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Jerry Katz with Goldman.”

“Yes, hey, Jerry. Nice to hear from you.”

“I’m afraid that it isn’t good news, Mr. Baime.”

Bob felt his heart plummet. Jerry Katz said some more stuff about how competitive the market was and how much he enjoyed talking with him, but the words started to blur into a barely audible haze. Jerry, the scrawny idiot, was still jabbering away.
Darkness seeped into Bob’s chest, and as it did, a memory came over him. He thought again about the other night, about Adam openly challenging him on selecting Jimmy Hoch. It had, Bob realized now, surprised him in more ways than one. First, what business was it of his, a guy who wasn’t even going to coach the travel team, which players Bob selected? Adam and Corinne’s kid was on the team. So what difference could Jimmy Hoch make to him?

But more important, especially now that he thought about it: How did Adam recover so quickly from the devastating news that he had received just minutes earlier at the American Legion bar?

Jerry still talked. Bob still smiled. Smiled and smiled. Smiled like an idiot, and when he finally said, “Well, I appreciate you calling me and letting me know,” Bob bet that he sounded like a truly confident idiot.

He hung up.

“Bob, you ready?”

“Come on, man, we need you.”

And they did. Maybe, Bob thought, that was what the other night had been with Adam. In the same way Bob would go back on the court and find an outlet for his rage, maybe Adam had attacked him for picking Jimmy because he, too, needed the outlet.

What, Bob wondered, would be Adam’s reaction if he knew the full truth about his wife? Not the betrayal stuff he thought he knew now. But the full truth.

Well, Bob thought as he jogged back toward the court, he’d find out soon enough, wouldn’t he?