Things I Want to Say (24 page)

The memory returned with a jolt. “I packed my Barbie suitcase,” Karen said. She recalled the contents—two Barbie dolls, a flower identification book, her toothbrush, a change of underwear, four dollars and ninety-three cents in change, a Chapstick and a map of Texas she’d swiped from the glove compartment of her mother’s car.

“You got as far as the Piggly Wiggly parking lot and Barbara Anne Jones from church saw you and talked you into letting her give you a ride home.”

By the time Mrs. Jones found her, Karen had spent half her money on a package of Oreos and a pint of milk. She’d reasoned she’d be more likely to recognize her real family on a full stomach. “You gave me a spanking and made me clean out the hall closet as punishment.”

“I told you this was the family you were stuck with, so you’d better get used to the idea.”

But she never had. Not really. All her life she’d felt out of step with the rest of them. She wasn’t interested in birds, like her father, or a daredevil like her brother. She couldn’t talk to anyone about anything the way her mother did.

As a child, she would look in the mirror every night as
she brushed her teeth and imagine that somewhere, there was a family with a father who doted on his little girl, and a mother who knew all the girl’s friends and everything that happened at the girl’s school. Instead of spending all her spare time playing bridge and volunteering at the Y, the mother took the girl shopping for cute clothes, and the father helped her with her homework every evening. And the little girl had no siblings, so she was the center of her parents’ attention.

“It’ll be all right,” Sara said again, and patted Karen’s shoulder. “When he gets hungry, he’ll come home. Sixteen-year-old boys can’t go very long without eating.”

She almost smiled. While her mother’s complacency often annoyed her, she took comfort in it now. If Sara wasn’t panicking, things couldn’t be that bad.

“I need sugar,” Karen said, standing. “I’ve got some cake Tammy Wainwright made. Would you like some?”

“You bet. And a big cup of coffee.” Sara rose, also, and started to follow Karen to the kitchen, but the staccato beep of a car horn made them both look around.

“Who is that in your driveway?” Sara asked.

Karen shook her head. The battered green truck didn’t look familiar. As the women watched, the passenger door opened and a familiar lanky figure slid to the ground. He waved to the driver, then shouldered a backpack and started toward the steps.

Karen blinked, half-afraid her eyes had deceived her.

Sara had no such fears. She looked at Karen and grinned. “Good Lord, is that Casey?”

Casey expected his mother would be surprised to see him, maybe a little annoyed that he hadn’t bothered to call first. He didn’t know what to think when she burst into tears.

“Thank God you’re all right,” she sobbed, running to him and pulling him close.

“Well yeah, of course I’m fine.” Hungry and a little tired, but okay. He tried to pull away from her a little. Not that he thought he was too big for his mom to hug him, but she was getting his shirt all wet.

She stared at his face, as if to verify that it really was him. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought maybe you needed some help looking after Grandpa.” He spoke with more bravado than he felt. As the miles rolled out beneath the bus wheels, the wisdom of his impulsive decision to take off for Texas had grown more questionable. His dad, for one, was sure to get bent out of shape about it. What if Mom got upset with him, too?

“Casey Neil MacBride, what do you mean scaring us all to death like that?” His grandmother stood on the top front step, hands on her hips. She looked exactly the way she had
when he was little and she’d scolded him for swiping cookies from the cookie jar or tracking mud on her carpet. “Your folks have been worried sick. Your father has the police out looking for you.”

“The police?”
Shit!
“Why did he do that? I mean, I know I should have called—I thought about it, but by that time I was almost here.” Besides, by then Denton Carver had stolen all his money, so he didn’t have change for a pay phone. And since his folks had refused to get him his own cell, there was nothing he could do. “I figured when I got here, I could explain everything.”

Mom sniffed, and dabbed at her eyes with a wadded-up tissue. “You’d better start explaining.”

“Yes, I’m interested in hearing this one,” Grandma added.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders. He wasn’t always so good at explaining why he did stuff—not in ways that made sense to his parents. It was like, when you got to be an adult, you quit doing anything just because it felt right.

“Did you and your dad fight about something?” Mom asked.

He shrugged. Dad was always on his case about something. “He wasn’t too happy after he heard from the counselor, but you know how he is.”

“Then whatever possessed you to come all this way?”

He could hear the exasperation in her voice. How long did he have before real anger set in? “I guess after I talked to you the other morning, I thought you sounded so sad. And then I thought about how I’d feel if I was down here by myself and all. And it wasn’t like I had anything big going on at home, so I thought, why not surprise you by coming down here?”

She still wore a pinched expression, like she was trying to
keep from crying again—or yelling at him. “You still have a week left of school. I think that’s fairly
big.
”

“Aw, I was failing anyway.” He kicked at the dirt. “Why stick around to make it official?”

She shook her head, but put her arm around him and led him toward the house. At least she hadn’t started crying again. He couldn’t handle more tears.

“I’m going to go now,” Grandma said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

They went into the house. It was like stepping into some kind of time warp. He hadn’t been here in, what, three years? Yet everything looked exactly the same. Amazing.

“Are you hungry?” Mom asked. “Did you have anything to eat on the way?”

“I had a burger and fries for lunch.” More like a late breakfast, really. He hadn’t had the nerve to ask for any more handouts after that. He rubbed his stomach. “I am kind of hungry.”

“I’ll fix you something to eat. But first, we’d better call your father.”

He made a face. “Do we have to?” Dad would freakin’ lose it when he heard what Casey had done. The old man never cut him any slack the way Mom did.

“Of course we have to. He’s been up all night, worrying about you.” She took him by the shoulders and turned him to face her. “You do understand how wrong it was of you to take off like that, not telling anybody?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“We didn’t have any idea what had happened to you—whether you’d run away, or been abducted by a stranger, or hurt in an accident.”

“I said I was sorry. I didn’t do it to freak you out. I went down to the bus station to see how much the fare from Denver to Tipton would be, and when I saw there was a bus leaving
right away, I thought, why not?” He hung his head. “I thought it’d be a cool surprise for you.”

“Oh, honey.” She put her hand to his cheek, the anger gone from her expression. “I am glad to see you. But until you have children of your own, you won’t understand what an awful, awful feeling it is to know that your son is missing, and no one seems to know where he is.”

He hugged her, tight. He hated thinking he’d hurt her. “I know. I screwed up again. But I’m here now. And I really am going to help you.” He pulled back. “How’s Grandpa?”

“Don’t change the subject.” She picked up the receiver, but stopped when a series of thumping, dragging noises from the hallway caught their attention.

Casey tried not to stare at the figure in the wheelchair. Grandpa Engel had always been such an imposing man. Not big, but tall and sort of
looming.
Now he looked as if he’d been shrunken and dried into this smaller, withered version of himself. His thick brown hair was now gray streaked with white, and Casey could see his pink scalp showing through in places. Only his eyes were as black and fierce as ever. Casey stood up straighter and raised his voice a little. “Hi, Grandpa. It’s good to see you up and about.”

The old man scowled at him, then looked at his mom and pointed at Casey.

“He got on the bus to come see us, but forgot to tell his father, or anyone else, where he was going.”

“Humph!” Or at least, that’s what it sounded like his grandfather grunted. Mom had said he couldn’t really talk, but he didn’t seem to have too much trouble getting his point across. He held up a coffee cup and waved it at Casey’s mom.

“I’ll make a fresh pot as soon as I’ve spoken with Tom.”

Grandpa didn’t seem happy with that news, but with his face sort of tugged downward on one side—Casey guessed from the stroke—it was probably hard for him to look really
happy about anything. “You want me to wheel your chair somewhere for you to wait for your coffee while Mom’s on the phone, Grandpa?” he asked.

His mom put her hand on his shoulder. “You stay right here, young man. You need to talk to your father.”

He gave her a pleading look. “Can’t I eat first? I defend myself better on a full stomach.”

She gave him her you’re-not-going-to-pull-one-over-on-me-this-time look and picked up the phone.

Casey slumped against the counter and stared at the floor. He supposed the situation wasn’t completely bad. At least when Dad yelled at him this time, he’d be a thousand miles away.

Karen’s hands shook as she punched in Tom’s phone number, her initial rush of relief at seeing Casey safe and alive giving way to frustration and anger—all underlaid by the tenderness her vulnerable younger son never failed to engender in her. When he’d told her he’d been worried because she sounded sad, and that he’d come to help her, it had been all she could do not to break down into tears again and hold him close. But she couldn’t let his no-doubt sincere good intentions negate the very real fright he’d given them all. He’d have to be punished, as soon as she and Tom decided what was appropriate.

Tom answered the phone right away, as if he’d been anticipating its ring. “Honey, it’s me,” she said. “Casey is here. He’s all right.”

“He’s there? In Texas?”

She glanced at her son, who was slumped against the kitchen counter, arms folded over his chest, head bowed, as if bracing for a blow. “Yes, he showed up a few minutes ago. Someone in town gave him a ride out here from the bus station.”

“He took the bus to Texas? What the hell made him do that?”

She sighed. If she knew the answer to questions like that, raising her children would be a lot easier. “You know Casey. It seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess.”

“Let me talk to him.”

She held out the phone. “Your father wants to talk to you.”

He took the receiver, automatically straightening his shoulders before he spoke. “Hey, Dad.”

Whatever Tom said made him wince. Karen’s own forehead wrinkled in sympathy. She didn’t blame Tom for being angry, but he sometimes let his anger get the better of him with the boys. He said hurtful things without thinking about their impact.

“Yeah, I know I should have told somebody,” Casey said. “Yeah, I know this means I won’t finish the school year. I thought Mom needed somebody to help her. She’s here all by herself looking after Grandpa.”

Karen’s heart contracted again. How could she stay angry with him when he was so concerned about her? His father hadn’t been this sympathetic to her position.

“Well, yeah. But Grandpa likes me. It’ll be good for him to have me here.”

Another long pause while he listened to Tom, the agitation in his expression in creasing.

“Just because I don’t do everything the way you’d do it doesn’t make me stupid.” Casey’s voice rose, quaking at the end, sounding to a mother’s ear as if he was dangerously close to tears.

She put her arm around him. “Give me the phone.” She took the receiver from his hand. “You go wash up. And take Grandpa with you.”

When Casey and her dad were gone, she put the receiver to her ear. “There’s no sense yelling at him now,” she said.
“He’s here. He’s said he’s sorry. We have to decide what to do next.”

“Saying he’s sorry doesn’t mean anything if he’s going to keep pulling stupid stunts like this.” Tom’s anger was barely contained. “My God, he could have been killed on the way down there and we’d never know it.”

“But he wasn’t. He’s okay. And I think he’s really sorry.”

“What about school? This guarantees he’ll flunk his year.”

“He seems to think he was going to do that anyway.”

“Not if he buckled down and got an A on his finals.”

“Then maybe we can talk to the school, make arrangements for him to take his finals later. Tell them it was a family emergency. That’s not really a lie.”

Tom ignored the suggestion. “If he thinks I’m going to let him take that lifeguarding job now, he can forget it. I’ve a mind to ground him until he’s thirty.”

“I think we should let him stay here. At least until I come home.” The idea had just come to her. Tom’s reaction made her reluctant to send Casey back to him. Maybe some distance would make the relationship between father and son less volatile. She couldn’t imagine how tense things would be between the two of them without her there to act as a buffer. And it would be good to have him here.

“What’s he going to do there? At least here I can put him to work. Maybe have the local police talk to him about what can happen to runaways. Scare some sense into him.”

“That’s not a bad idea, but it can wait until we’re both home. Right now I really could use his help. And maybe a different environment will give him anew perspective.”

“He needs more than anew perspective. He’s sixteen years old. It’s time he showed more responsibility.”

“I don’t think yelling at him is going to make him grow up any faster.”

“Coddling him certainly isn’t doing the trick.”

She gritted her teeth. “Just because I choose to deal with his behavior rationally, instead of shouting at him, doesn’t mean I’m coddling him.”

“You’re right. I am irrational. If you’d been through what I’ve been through the last twenty-four hours, you’d be irrational, too.”

She pictured him, slumped against the wall, raking one hand through his hair. Maybe if she’d been worrying about Casey for the last twenty-four hours instead of the last six, she’d be more upset, too. “It’ll be easier on you if you don’t have him to deal with this summer,” she said. “And I’ll feel less guilty if I’m helping with at least one son.”

“Yeah. You’re right.” He was silent a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was gentler. “I’m glad he’s okay.”

“Me, too. Do me a favor and first chance you get, pack up some of his clothes and send them down here. It doesn’t look like he brought much with him.”

“That figures.” He sighed.

“You must be exhausted,” she said. “Try to make it an early day, so you can get some sleep.”

“Not a chance, not with all the work I have to do. Plus I’ve got a stack of invoices six inches high that need to be dealt with.”

No doubt an exaggeration, but she didn’t feel like calling him on it. After all, she’d left everything in perfect order three days ago. Things wouldn’t be that far behind—yet. “Call a temp agency and hire some clerical help. You can’t do everything.”

“I guess you’re right.” He gave a hoarse laugh. “See, I need you here to figure these things out.”

This admission made her relax a little. “I’ll be home as soon as I can. Dad’s doing really well, so I’m hopeful it won’t be too long. Now get some rest.”

She hung up, then went looking for Casey and her dad.
She found them in the study, her father showing Casey his spreadsheets, Casey pretending to be interested.

Or maybe the interest was genuine. “Hey, Mom, did you know Grandpa has seen penguins in South America? And something called an Arctic Tern near the north pole?”

“Your grandfather has seen birds on every continent on earth.” She showed him the certificate from Guinness. “He’s set records which may never be broken.”

Casey admired the certificate. “That’s cool.” He looked at his mother. “What’s for lunch? I’m starving.”

She laughed. Now they were back in familiar territory. “Let’s go in the kitchen and see. Dad, you come, too.”

For once, her father didn’t argue. He allowed Casey to push him to the kitchen and even accepted a glass of the despised nutritional supplement, after Casey drank some and pronounced it, “Not as bad as I thought it would be. It might even be good if you put some ice cream in it, Mom.”

Dad nodded and she laughed. “Now, why didn’t I think of that?”

“See, it is a good thing I showed up, huh, Mom?”