by Lisa Jackson
Her fingers moved awkwardly over the keyboard at first, the keys feeling unfamiliar, but she kept at it, typing carefully, making mistakes and corrections until muscle memory took over. “Just like riding a bike,” she told herself, and soon she was in the rhythm of it, creating columns of names, relationships, where each person had claimed to be when Noah disappeared. She’d gone over it with the police again and again but had been so brokenhearted she hadn’t been able to do much more than grieve.
Now she looked down at the spreadsheet she’d compiled. Would it help?
No way to tell until she tried.
Three hours later, a headache throbbed behind her eyes as she sat in her desk chair. She rotated the kinks from her neck and stared at the chart and timeline she’d created on her computer, one made primarily from her own recollections and conversations with others over the past few years.
She could see the house as it had been that night. . . .
The foyer had been festooned with fir garlands winking with white lights and threaded with gold ribbon. A twenty-foot tree had stood at the base of the steps, its boughs laden with winking lights, ornaments, and red bows, its upper branches nearly reaching the second story of the open stairway.
A steady stream of Christmas songs had been playing from speakers located all over the house, familiar notes audible only when the din of conversation, laughter, and clink of glasses had receded.
The mood had been festive, the only moment of sadness when, at dinner in the dining room, Ava had glanced to her right, to the seat her brother, Kelvin, had always occupied at family gatherings. Of course he was missing, his chair occupied by Clay Inman, who was an associate of Wyatt’s, a junior partner in the firm. Inman’s family lived somewhere in North Carolina, if she remembered right, and he’d had nowhere else to celebrate the holidays. He’d innocently taken Kelvin’s chair. No one save Ava, or perhaps Jewel-Anne, who had caught her eye at one point during the meal, had seemed to notice.
By nine o’clock, Noah had become cranky and she’d carried him upstairs, rocking him a bit and placing him in his crib.
“No,” he’d objected, and pointed a finger at the twin bed that had been delivered just that week.
“I don’t know . . .”
“Big bed, Mommy!”
“Okay, okay.” She’d given in, a mistake she’d regretted immediately. “But you go to sleep.”
She’d tucked him in and waited in the rocker as he’d closed his eyes, feigning sleep. Then he’d opened one eye again.
“Sleep,” she’d repeated firmly, and settled into the rocker.
Twenty minutes later, he’d given it up and was breathing regularly. Ava had gotten up from the creaking rocker, leaned over the twin bed, and whispered, “Merry Christmas, big guy,” as she’d brushed his dark curls from his forehead and planted a gentle kiss upon its soft skin. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
He’d offered up the ghost of a smile though his eyelids were closed, sooty lashes lying upon his cheeks. She remembered stopping at the door and looking over her shoulder to double-check that his blanket was covering his body and the night-light was glowing softly under the window situated between his crib and bed.
Her heart ached as she thought of that last, final glimpse she’d had of her son. The pain was palpable and she picked up the pencil again, twisting it anxiously as the memories rolled through her brain.
She’d been in a hurry.
Satisfied that Noah was asleep, she’d left his door ajar as she’d walked out of his room. Then she’d gathered the skirt of the red dress she’d bought for the occasion and hurried down the stairs to join her guests. She remembered pausing on the landing, thinking she’d heard Noah call “Mommy?” but as she’d waited, straining to listen, his little voice hadn’t drifted to her over the cacophony of sounds rising from the first floor, and she’d told herself she’d imagined it.
“There you are!” Wyatt had called up to her, and she caught sight of her husband standing at the foot of the stairs, a drink in his hand as he grinned up at her. “We’ve got guests!”
“I know, I know. I was just putting the baby to bed.”
She hurried down the rest of the stairs and said good-bye to Inman and a couple of others who had gathered near the front door, slipping into coats, scarves, and gloves before being ferried back to the mainland.
The guests came and went and she engaged in small talk and made certain that the drinks were flowing, the candles remained lit, each guest was involved in a conversation, the music never died, and her smile was clearly in place. For over an hour, no one checked on Noah. She’d had the baby monitor set up, an audio system with remote speakers in their bedroom as well as the den and morning room. They’d installed a video monitor as well, but the camera had been angled toward the crib; it hadn’t been redirected toward the twin bed because Noah hadn’t moved to it yet.
Both had proved useless. That night the audio monitor had been muted by the noise level of the party, and the camera had offered no clues. It wasn’t outfitted with a tape, and even if it had been, it was unlikely with its limited view that any image would have shown.
The guilt that had been with her since that night was still her companion.
How many times had she wished she’d returned to her son’s room?
How much mental self-flagellation and anguish had she borne thinking that she’d ignored her child when he’d called for her, when he’d needed her most? That one, stupid decision might have been the difference between . . .
She closed her eyes for a second and felt her throat thicken with the tears that were always just under the surface. No. Crying wouldn’t help. Neither would railing at the heavens.
She knew.
She’d already tried those two tacks and had beaten herself up for ignoring her heart and rushing back to Wyatt and the party . . . .
“God help me.” Her fists clenched on either side of the keyboard and she lowered her head.
Concentrate.
Don’t let the heartache overcome you.
And yet the pain was always there, scraping at her soul, reminding her that it was her fault he’d gone missing. Her damned fault.
And now you have to find him.
No one else will.
Swallowing hard, her eyes burning, she set her jaw and forced her thoughts again to that last night.
The party had wound down early, a little after eleven, but for the most part, those who had remained in the house were still hanging out downstairs. Wyatt had been in his study, sharing a glass of rare Scotch with Uncle Crispin, father to the bevy of Ava’s cousins.
Trent and Ian had been playing billiards in the rec room that was located half a floor down from the main living area, and their sister, Zinnia, had stepped through the French doors to the garden to take a call on her cell. Through the half-open door, they’d felt the cold of winter and heard her chewing out her most recent boyfriend, the guy who’d refused to spend the holidays on “some fuckin’ rock in the middle of nowhere.” He’d ended up jetting off to Italy, which royally pissed off Zinnia. Fueled by several Irish coffees and a temper she’d never learned to control, Zinnia had let the boyfriend, Silvio, have it, according to both her brothers.
Aunt Piper had kicked off her high heels and was reading in the sitting room while her son, Jacob, had walked outside to smoke a cigarette on the front porch. Ava remembered catching a glimpse of him through the window. His body had been in shadow, but the tip of his cigarette had glowed red in the darkness.
Jewel-Anne had already gone upstairs for the night; she was the only member of the family who’d admitted to being on the second floor, though she’d sworn she never went near Noah’s room. Later, she said she was certain his door had been shut.
Ava remembered leaving it slightly ajar, and it was heavy enough not to have blown closed. Someone had to have shut it on purpose.
“Who?” she whispered as she wrote it on the legal pad and circled it, over and over again. Ne
xt to it, she wrote WHY?
Sheriff Biggs and his detectives had thought there was a chance Noah had gotten out of bed himself and wandered down the long hallway to the back staircase, therefore avoiding being detected by anyone downstairs. From those steep back steps, the authorities surmised, he could have climbed upstairs to the third floor or even to the attic, though a search of the upper floors had found nothing. The police had then surmised that the boy could have gone to the kitchen and out the back door in a moment when all the staff were elsewhere or just didn’t notice him. There was the chance, too, that he’d wandered around the basement, but, like the attic, a search of the underground rooms had provided no clues to Noah’s whereabouts.
Of course, there was the chance that Noah had been abducted, though in the following days, no ransom call or note had been received, and Sheriff Biggs had fallen back to his original theory that the boy had wandered outside and gotten lost.
Now the pencil in Ava’s fingers snapped. “No way.” She just didn’t believe it, though Biggs had his reasons. Excuses, she thought.
Ava had always thought the idea that no one had seen Noah escape outside was lame, but it was true that the back door to the porch had been left open sometime in the evening. The screen door had been banging in the wind, a sound no one had noticed during the festivities. Only later had Virginia mentioned the noise. “I did hear something,” she’d admitted, “but I thought it was farther away, like the barn or the stable window. There’s always something rattling or banging around here.”
Most of the night, Virginia had been in the kitchen. Khloe and her husband, Simon Prescott, had been working that night, Khloe helping out in the kitchen while Simon had taken turns with both their ranch hand, Ned Fender, and Butch Johansen, ferrying the guests to and from the island.
Graciela had helped prepare and serve the hors d’oeuvres and drinks, while keeping the room picked up and tidy. She disposed of used napkins, dirty plates, forgotten flatware, and empty glasses.
Demetria had spent some of the night attending to Jewel-Anne and had spent the rest on her own. Ava remembered her speaking with Ian and sipping wine with Wyatt, even talking to Tanya while Jewel-Anne was elsewhere.
All of the help was alibied for the most part, though the alibis had loose timelines only guessed at as people kept coming and going, on the island, off the island, in the house, out of the house . . .
But not up the stairs.
Few people admitted to leaving the first floor of the house, and the handful of those who had said they’d climbed the main stairs by the Christmas tree or used the elevator had claimed they had been looking for another restroom. Each person had sworn they’d never been on the second floor after Ava had put her son to bed and had alibis to confirm their statements.
So who?
Frustrated, she flung the pieces of her useless pencil into the trash can near her bed.
The guest list hadn’t been that large, really. Inman, of course, and Tanya who had elected to drag Russ to the party even though they’d been separated at the time.
“We’re trying to work things out,” she’d said by way of explanation. “For the kids.”
It had been a failed attempt. Less than two months later, Tanya had filed for divorce and Russell had left Anchorville permanently.
There had been a few other guests as well, friends who’d known her parents, people whose roots were planted in Church Island soil as hers were. Most of those locals had left early, before she’d shuttled Noah off to bed. Her son had sagged against her, all the while saying, “Not tired, Mommy. Not tired!”
Oh, how she ached to hear his little voice now. Even a protest was better than this nothingness, this not knowing. Closing her eyes, she leaned back in her desk chair and tried to make sense of it all. She’d relived the night Noah had disappeared thousands of times in her head and never come up with any answers, any clues to what had really happened. And now . . . now she had a chart and a timeline, which wasn’t much and probably not more than the police had developed two years earlier.
What was the name of the lead detective who had interviewed her? Simms or Simons or . . . Snyder, that was it! Wes Snyder. In his midforties with a fleshy face and a cue-ball head that he shaved close. Snyder had been kind enough, serious and intense, a whole lot smarter than Joe Biggs, and yet, he, like everyone else, had come up empty, without any real theories of what had happened to Noah. There was talk of kidnapping, but that, too, had been negated, the FBI never stepping in. Eventually even Snyder had given up—like all the rest.
Except you, Ava. You can never let this go.
Eyes open again, she snagged a pen from a cup on her desk, then wrote Snyder’s name on the legal pad under a previously scribbled Joe Biggs.
From her cell, she dialed the sheriff’s department and asked for Detective Snyder, only to be told he was out for most of the day. She left a message on his voice mail, then slammed the phone down. It seemed as if she were being purposely thwarted at every turn. Everyone was against her.
Her head was pounding, her muscles tighter than bowstrings, her stomach rumbling loudly. She popped a couple of Extra-Strength Excedrin, downed a glass of water, then broke off pieces of the banana she’d snagged earlier and chewed on them thoughtfully.
Her jangled nerves eased a bit, but she knew she needed to get out of the house, to think things through. Clicking off her computer, she tucked it, along with its case and her scribbled notes, inside her closet.
The old house was beginning to make her feel claustrophobic. Throwing on an old Mariners sweatshirt, she headed out of her room, only to stop at the staircase. Her gaze skated along the open landing that wound its way around the staircase to land at the door of Noah’s room. Only once since her release from the hospital had she found the nerve to push open that door and peer inside. Then the grief had assailed her and she hadn’t been able to enter. Since then the door to the nursery had been firmly shut, the room left exactly as it had been, the only disturbance being its weekly cleaning.
Today she felt compelled.
Before she could second-guess herself, she strode to her son’s bedroom, twisted the glass doorknob, shoved open the door, and stepped inside.
Her heart pounded.
Her hands were clammy and cold.
The only light in the room was from a window where the shade was half drawn. The gray day seemed to seep into the room, draining color from the sailor print coverlet on the twin bed and dulling the once-vibrant sheets. Her throat tightened.
She felt ill with grief.
Hidden deep beneath the smells of furniture polish and dust, she thought she detected the faint aroma of baby oil . . . but that was probably her mind just playing tricks on her again.
Swallowing hard, she snapped on the tiny mariner’s lamp and noticed the mobile suspended over the crib. Tiny, smiling sea creatures hung lifeless. Heart in her throat, she switched on the mobile and the tiny smiling crab, seahorse, and starfish began slowly rotating to a tinkling bell and a few notes of a familiar lullaby.
She remembered Noah as a baby, lying on his back, his eyes following the slowly moving sea animals, or as a toddler, standing by holding on to the rails, trying to reach the suspended animals.
“Ava?” Wyatt’s voice cut into her reverie.
She jumped about a foot, hitting the spinning starfish and sending it bobbing, the rest of the mobile wobbling wildly. Turning quickly, she found her husband standing in the doorway, light from the hallway throwing him in relief. “You scared me!”
“Didn’t mean to.” Wyatt forced a smile that didn’t touch his eyes. His coat was slung over one arm and in the other he carried his small bag. “I just wondered what you were doing in here.”
“Remembering,” she said, running her fingers along the top rail of the crib where marks from Noah’s baby teeth cut into the smooth wood.
“Is that a good idea?”
“God knows.”
“I . . . I, uh, had a little more
work to do, but I was hoping that . . . we could just hang out later tonight. Have dinner in the den, maybe watch a movie?”
“A house date?” she asked, and he nodded, his smile seeming sincere for the first time.
“That’s what we used to call them.”
“I remember.”
“Good.” He nodded and she felt a rush of relief, a fragile sense of hope that what they’d once shared hadn’t been completely destroyed. “Ava?” he said softly.
“Yes.”
“He’s gone.” He cleared his throat. “Noah. He’s not coming back and . . . I think it would be best if you would accept it.”
Shaking her head, she straightened her shoulders. “I can’t and I won’t.”
“Then you’re not going to get better.”
“I just want to know the truth, Wyatt.”
“No matter what?”
She felt that cold fear coiling inside her again, but she steadfastly tamped it down. “No matter what.”
His gaze held hers for a second, his lips tightening. Then he slapped the doorjamb in frustration. “Do whatever it is you have to do, Ava. You’re damned well going to anyway.” He strode away without another word, his footsteps fading.
“I will,” she vowed to the empty room as she softly turned off the small lamp near the empty bed.
It looked like the “house date” was off.
CHAPTER 10
Pissed at the world in general and Wyatt specifically, Ava stormed outside where the salty breath of winter rolled in from the sea. The argument still filling her mind, she passed lacy ferns and broad-leafed hostas that huddled in the shade as she followed the winding, overgrown stone path that cut through the garden.
She just needed to do something, anything to get her life back on track. Set to walk off her frustrations on her way into town, she noticed the horses grazing near the fence line and came up with a better plan.