“You’re so mean!” he yelled. “No wonder you don’t have a husband!”
The words stung, as if he’d said he hated her. Carny slammed the door again, collapsed against it, and before she could control herself, tears assaulted her, and she covered her mouth as the sobs rose to her throat. Logan Brisco was not only destroying her child’s innocence, he was causing a huge rift in her relationship with Jason. A rift that hadn’t been there before.
Logan had to be stopped.
Pulling herself together, she ran to the phone and called her in-laws. They answered on the third ring.
“Hello?”
“Bev, I need you. Can you come over for a little while and watch Jason while I go out?”
Bev hesitated. “Carny, are you crying, honey?”
“Can you come or not? It’s urgent.”
“Yes, of course. We’ll be right over. Are you all right?”
“I will be,” she said, her voice quavering. “Please … just hurry.”
She hung up the phone, then sat down at the kitchen table and covered her face. Jason had never in his life talked to her the way he had today. Their conflicts had been few and far between, and the ones they’d had were minor. His words cut her more deeply than she could have predicted, and that she’d been made into the bad guy made her furious.
How could Logan take money from the kids? She’d been so foolish to trust him enough to let him alone with her son. That made her just as gullible as the rest of the town.
She heard the car drive up in the driveway, and she got up and met her in-laws at the door. “Jason’s in his room,” she said. “He’s grounded, so don’t let him out.”
“Carny, what’s happened?” J.R. asked, taking her by the shoulders. “I’ve never seen you like this.”
Carny realized that, even when Abe had abandoned her, she had never let her in-laws see her cry. “Jason gave Logan all his money, J.R. Seventy-six dollars, and Logan took it. I know you think he’s legit, but a man with any integrity would not take money from babies! I’m going to get it back, and Jason doesn’t like it.”
Bev looked at J.R., and finally, he nodded. “Whatever you need to do, Carny. Logan shouldn’t have taken it without your permission.”
“And he knew how I felt about it,” she said. “He knew!”
Wiping her eyes, she grabbed her keys. “Let me just tell Jason you’re here, and then I’ll go.”
She went back to Jason’s door and flung it open. “Jason, your grandparents —”
Her voice dropped as she realized her son was gone. The window was open, and the curtains flapped in the breeze.
“Jason!” By then, her in-laws were right behind her. In a mad panic, she pushed past them and rushed back through the house for the door. “Jason!” she screamed. “Jason, you get back in here right now!”
When there was no answer, she ran across the lot separating her from the Trents and banged on the door.
Janice answered it right away. “Carny, what’s wrong?”
“Where’s Jason?” she asked breathlessly. “Is he over here?”
“No,” she said. “Nathan’s doing his homework. We haven’t seen Jason since earlier today.”
“Are you sure?” Carny asked. “I’ve got to find him. He can’t have gone very far.”
She ran into the woods behind the house. She heard Janice calling from behind her. “Carny, don’t go back in there. It’s dark! He wouldn’t go there after dark!”
Still, Carny ran through the brush, between trees, calling as she ran, until she reached the lake. “Jason! Jason, please come home. It’s not safe for you to be out here when it’s dark. We can talk about this!”
Silence. She listened for the sound of a crackling leaf, a breaking limb. All she heard was an occasional cricket or the rumble of a bullfrog. “Jason, please!”
Two flashlights came from the direction of the house, and soon David Trent and J.R. joined her. “We looked in our storage room and in the tent in the backyard, Carny,” David said. “He’s not there.”
“And we searched the house,” J.R. told her, coming up behind David. “Carny, where do you think he is?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but keep looking around the lake. I’m calling the police! And then I’m going to see Logan Brisco.”
twenty-four
Logan checked his watch and decided it was too late for UPS to do a pickup, but he still had time to get his boxed equipment to the FedEx Store before they closed at eight. Setting his bag on the bed, he dialed the closest airport, which was an hour away in Odessa, to get departure times. There was a flight to Los Angeles around midnight, so he booked it.
The insistent knock at his door was unexpected, and for a moment, he sat still, unwilling to answer it.
But the knock continued, and finally, he cracked the door open just enough to see Carny. He stood in the opening so that she couldn’t see into the room.
Her face was alive with fury, and her eyes were red. “Where’s Jason?” she demanded.
“Jason? Didn’t he come home?”
“Of course he came home!” she said through clenched teeth. “And then he left again. Where is he, Brisco?”
“Carny, I don’t know!”
With more force than he would have expected from her, she shoved him back from the door and pushed her way inside. “Jason!” she called.
“He’s not here!” He tried to stand between her and the bags on the bed, but it was too late.
She stopped, stunned, and looked from the bed to Logan and back again. “Going somewhere?” she asked, fresh tears filling her eyes.
“Yes … no! Carny, why are you looking for Jason? What’s wrong?”
“You!” Grabbing his bag with both hands, she flung it off the bed. Jack jumped up from the floor, startled. “You’re what’s wrong! You took money from my baby, turned him against me after you promised you’d never hurt him, and now he’s gone … and you … you’re getting ready to leave, aren’t you? Just like I said! Only I didn’t want it to be true!”
Logan took her by the shoulders and turned her around. “What do you mean, he’s gone? Where did he go?”
“He ran away, you scumbag!” She shook his hands off. “Who knows where he’ll go! And it’s dark, and he’s so little!” Her voice broke, and she lost herself to sobs, a sight that Logan was quite sure few people had ever witnessed.
“I didn’t ask for the kids’ money, Carny, and I wasn’t going to keep it,” he said softly. He went to his coat and fished the fat envelope with Jason’s name on it out of his pocket. “It’s all there. Every cent the kids gave me.”
Wiping away her angry tears, she looked up at him. “And what about the adults, Brisco? Are you giving theirs back too? Before you flee into the night?”
He turned away. She saw right through him, to all the dark, ugly places that had never seemed dark or ugly until he’d come to Serenity.
“No, I didn’t think so,” she said. “I’d hoped I was wrong about you. You had so much potential.” She headed back to the door.
“Carny, wait!”
“I can’t. I have to find my son!” she cried.
The door slammed, and Logan stood for a moment, reeling from the impact of her words. She had wanted to trust him, that woman who’d had so many reasons not to trust. And he had just given her one more.
He turned to Jack, who sat on the floor, whimpering. And as he looked at the bed, where his whole life was packed neatly away in one bag, a briefcase, and a couple of boxes, he realized that he couldn’t leave town.
Not yet.
Grabbing the keys to his car, he said, “Stay here, Jack. There’s something I have to do.”
Logan found Jason in the first place he looked. He was in his secret spot at the lake, a place Logan knew the boy had never been to at night, a place that seemed more ominous than peaceful with the moonlight playing through the trees and the shadows dancing beneath them.
At first, Logan saw only the sof
t mound on the fallen log, but when he got closer, he realized it was a sleeping bag, opened up and draped over the boy, not to keep the warmth in, for it was May and not very cold, but probably to keep out those things he feared the most. The things he hadn’t thought about when he’d resolved to run away. But little boys never thought anything would hurt them, least of all the grown men they counted as their friends.
Logan stepped closer, and in a quiet voice said, “Jason?”
Startled, the boy looked out from under the sleeping bag. “Oh, Logan,” he said, catching his breath. “You scared me. I thought you were a mean animal.”
“Sorry,” he said, sitting down on the log next to him. “But you shouldn’t be out here at night by yourself.”
“I’m not going back.”
Logan looked at the boy staring off into the lake, his features stubborn and angry, but still so innocent. “Why not?”
“Because my mother treats me like a kid.”
“Your mother happens to be worried sick about you. She came to me crying, Jason. Do you want to make your mother cry?”
Jason didn’t answer for a moment, and finally, he asked, “What did she say?”
“She was looking for you. Everybody’s looking for you. Jason, running away is no answer. Why don’t we go back, and let her —”
“No!” he said. “If you came out here to talk me into that, then you can leave. I’m not scared to stay here by myself.”
Logan sighed. “I know you’re not. Look, what do you plan to do? Spend the night on this log? What about tomorrow? What will you eat?”
“I’ll fish,” he said. “I’ll start a campfire and cook it myself, and live like Huck Finn, without anybody telling me what I can do with my money.”
“Jason, your mother was right about the money. I never should have taken it from you. I gave it back. Your mother has it.”
“See?” the boy said, throwing off the sleeping bag and standing up to face him. “I knew she would do that! She’s ruining everything!”
“She’s trying to protect you, Jason.”
“Well, I don’t need protecting. I can make my own decisions.”
For a moment, Logan stared quietly at the boy, knowing that nothing he said right now was going to make any difference. “All right,” he said finally. “I won’t try to talk you into going back. But I hope that sleeping bag will fit two, because I’m staying here with you.”
Jason gaped at him. “What?”
“You heard me. I’m not making you go back, but I won’t leave you here, either.”
“What about Jack? You gonna leave him alone all night?”
“He’ll be all right.”
Jason looked confused. “Yeah, well, you can stay tonight, but tomorrow, I’m taking off, and you can’t come. I don’t need anybody slowing me down.”
Logan would have found Jason’s words amusing, except that he remembered making the same decision himself when he was fourteen. “It’s lonely out there, Jason.”
“I don’t care.”
He patted the log, urging the boy to sit down, and finally, Jason did. Logan put his arm around him and pulled him against him. Weary from the battle, Jason laid his head against Logan’s chest. “Jason, I know how you feel, buddy. I really do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Listen to me, Jase. Listen real close, because I’m gonna tell you a story, and I’m only gonna tell it once. It’s not easy to tell, and I’ve never told it before. Are you man enough to keep it to yourself?”
Jason pulled back and looked up at him. “Sure I am.”
Logan hoped the boy couldn’t see the mist in his eyes as he cleared his throat. “Once there was a little boy who lived with his mother, and she was the most wonderful person alive. He didn’t know his father, but it didn’t really matter, because his mother gave him so much love that nothing seemed to be missing.”
Jason pulled back slightly and looked down, and Logan knew that he thought he was talking about him. “Did she keep him from giving his own money for really important things?”
Logan set a finger on the boy’s lips, shushing him. “This little boy was only five, and money was the furthest thing from his mind. He liked to be read to and he liked singing songs with her and he loved bedtime, because that was when she tucked him in, and they cuddled while they said their prayers.”
He hadn’t expected the memories to be so painful, and he found his mouth going dry as he got the words out. Jason was quiet now, listening.
“The little boy stayed with a babysitter while his mother went to work, and every day she came just before supper-time and picked him up. But one day, she didn’t come.”
“Why not?” Jason whispered.
“The little boy didn’t know. He waited and waited, and finally the baby-sitter fed him, and then she told him that he would be staying with her that night.”
Logan’s voice wavered, and he stopped and waited for a moment, trying to rein in the emotions he had never voiced before. But the words had to come out. “He kept thinking that she’d be there soon, but the next day, she didn’t come. He waited and waited, sitting by the door most of the day, watching out the window, but his mother never came.
“Finally, a social worker came to the babysitter’s house, and she took the little boy. She told him they were going to find him a new home.”
“Why?” Jason asked.
“He didn’t know. All he knew was that, when his mother came back for him, she wouldn’t be able to find him. They put him in a home with people he didn’t know, people who didn’t have much patience with him, and he sat by the window most of the time, staring out, waiting for his mother to come. But she never came.”
Jason’s eyes were moist as he considered that for a moment. “Because she didn’t know where he was?”
“That’s what the little boy thought,” Logan said, taking a deep breath. “That little boy got real angry, and he threw a lot of fits, so the family he was with didn’t want him anymore. They wound up moving him from one foster home to another. For a long time, he kept waiting for his mother to come get him. But then he couldn’t remember how she looked … what she smelled like … When he was ten years old, he was sitting in the social worker’s office one day, waiting for her to assign him to a new home, when he saw his file. He opened it and learned that his mother was dead.”
“Dead? When did she die?”
“That first day she didn’t come home, when he was five.” He cleared his tight throat. “That was the worst day of his life, when he found out the truth.”
Jason stared up at him, horrified. “Did anybody ever adopt him?”
“No one ever did,” Logan said. “The file described him as ‘a precocious, angry child, prone to trouble.’ All his life, all he wanted was to have a real family, where someone loved him, where he could count on people, where he was important. He didn’t care if he got to make his own decisions or if he got to spend his own money, and he didn’t even care if it was a poor family. He just wanted to belong somewhere. But that never happened, so one day, when he was about fourteen, he decided he was old enough to be on his own, and he ran away.”
“Just like me.”
“Not exactly like you,” Logan said. “He was older than you, and he was running to something. He was looking for a place to belong. You already have a place to belong.”
Jason considered that for a moment. “What happened to him? He was all right, wasn’t he? On his own, I mean?”
“No, Jason, he wasn’t. He was very lonely, and he did dishonest things to make a living. He lost whatever childhood he had left, and he never really found what he was looking for.”
Captivated, Jason gazed up at Logan with sad eyes.
“Jason, do you know what that little boy’s name was?”
He shook his head.
“It was Logan Brisco. That little boy was me.”
Jason caught his breath, and stared at Logan with a new reverence. “Really?”
Logan swallowed the emotion in his voice. “Yeah, really. And you know what? If I’d had one person who loved me like your mom loves you, my whole life would have turned out differently.”
As he held the little boy’s gaze, he saw the tears forming in Jason’s eyes. They dropped over his lashes, and Logan pulled him against himself and held him while he cried.
After a moment, Jason looked up at him. “Logan, I want to go home.”
twenty-five
When Carny ran to embrace Jason, her face brought back a fantasy that Logan had had all his life. It was of someone — anyone — running to him with that look of pure love and unconditional belonging.
He watched as she clung frantically to the boy, tears streaming down her face. Then, pulling back, she made a lame attempt to look angry. “Jason, I could kill you for pulling such a stunt. Don’t you ever do that again!”
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
She crushed him back against her and held him tighter. “Where were you?”
Jason couldn’t seem to answer, so Logan stepped in. “He was at his secret place at the lake.”
“I looked at the lake, Jason! And Grandpa and David — didn’t you hear us calling?”
“Yeah, I heard,” Jason said. “But I didn’t want you to find me.”
She wiped her eyes and stood up, looking down at him. “Jason, I love you. Don’t you know that?”
“Yeah, I know, Mom,” he said weakly. “I love you too.”
“And you won’t ever run away again, will you?”
“No, I promise.”
She looked around at Nathan’s parents and her in-laws. “You hear that, everybody? He promised.”
Laughing with relief, she called the police to tell them all was well. The Trents said good night, and the Sullivans herded the weary child to his room to get ready for bed. Carny watched until he was out of sight, then turned back to Logan. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“Don’t mention it.”
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