Between Now and Forever

by Barbara Freethy

  "I don’t know what you mean."

  "Yes, you do. Try again."

  "I guess the view is from the living room looking towards the dining area."

  "Looking up," she said pointedly. "From the ground. Brandon drew this, Ryan. He did it the first time he came back from your condo. Do you remember where he spent the day?"

  "Under the desk in the living room," he said in bemusement, trying to make sense of what she was saying. "He didn’t have any paper under there."

  "He drew it when he came home."

  Ryan shook his head in disbelief. "How is that possible? It’s like a snapshot."

  "He has a photographic memory. Brandon sees something once and he can draw it perfectly. It’s a savant skill one of the doctors said."

  He met her eyes. "God, Nicole, what the hell goes on in his head?"

  "I wish I knew," she said softly.

  Ryan took the paper out of her hands. "Why do you have it up on the refrigerator?"

  "Brandon put it there. I took it down once, and he put it back up. I think it might be his way of staying connected to you."

  Now he was more confused. "Brandon hated every second that he was in my home. He hates every second that he’s with me."

  "That’s not true," she said with a definitive shake of her head. "He doesn’t hate you."

  "Even when I’m here, he doesn’t look at me, doesn’t acknowledge I’m in the room."

  "And you think he acknowledges me?" she challenged, a spark of anger in her eyes. "He doesn’t. He treats me the same way."

  "No, he’s better with you."

  "Because I’ve stuck with him, but he knows when you’re around. He is paying attention, even if he doesn’t show it."

  "That’s your fantasy, Nicole."

  She bristled at that. "I’m not delusional, Ryan."

  "I didn’t say you were delusional, but you have to admit that you’re very optimistic where Brandon is concerned."

  "I’m hopeful. There’s a difference. But you want proof? Come with me." She marched out of the kitchen.

  He followed her into Brandon’s room. His son’s bedroom looked nothing like it had when Brandon was a baby. Back then, the walls had been covered by a beautiful mural that Nicole had painted. There had been piles of stuffed animals, shelves of books, crates of toys, and piles of stuff everywhere. Now the shelves were almost empty, the walls were painted a light blue and the bedding was the same color. Everything was very neat with the exception of a box of building blocks next to a half-built fort and a group of pebbles and rocks on Brandon’s floor. His son was obsessed with rocks.

  Nicole opened the top drawer of the desk and pulled out a stack of papers. She flipped through them until she found the one she wanted, and then she handed it to him. It was another drawing, this time a portrait of him. He was sitting on the back steps of their house, a red ball in his hand. He’d wanted to throw that ball to Brandon, but his son had been too busy digging for pebbles under the bushes. So he’d sat on the steps, bouncing the ball, and after an hour of complete quiet and total rejection, he’d gone inside.

  As before, Brandon’s drawing was perfection, down to every detail, including the look of disappointment in his father’s eyes, the scowl on his lips. God! Was that the way his son saw him? Was that the way Nicole saw him? He felt sick to his stomach.

  "Brandon sees you, Ryan, even if he doesn’t appear to be looking at you," Nicole said.

  "Why didn’t you show me this before?" he demanded. "Brandon drew this weeks ago."

  "When would I have shown you? You canceled your last two visits and the time before that you stayed about ten minutes."

  "That’s not the reason you didn't show me." He saw the truth in her eyes. "You didn’t want me to know, did you?"

  Guilt flashed across her face. "Fine. I didn’t want you to know."

  "Why?" he asked in bewilderment.

  "Because Brandon has never drawn a picture of me." Her words came out in a heated rush. "He sees you for ten minutes and draws you down to the freckle by your left eye, but has he ever drawn me? No. Make of that whatever you want." She grabbed the picture out of his hand and stuffed it back into the drawer.

  There was pain in every taut muscle in her body. He wanted to take her in his arms, protect her, comfort her, the way he’d promised to do a lifetime ago. But she wouldn’t welcome his touch. She didn’t want his comfort. She didn’t want anything from him.

  "You’re with him all the time," he said quietly. "Brandon doesn’t need to draw you. He has you."

  She met his gaze, her eyes blurry with tears. "He should have you, too."

  A phone rang, and they both jumped. They started for the door at the same time, colliding in the doorway. Nicole shoved past him, running down the hall to the kitchen. She grabbed her cell phone off the table. "Max? Did you find him? Did you find my son?"

  His heart jumped into his throat as Nicole listened to whoever was on the other end of the phone.

  "Yes, I understand," she said finally. "We’ll be there as soon as we can."

  "What happened?" The words bolted out of his mouth as she hung up the phone. "Did they find Brandon? Is he all right?"

  "They haven’t found him yet. Max wants us to come down to the station. They've put together a task force, and they have questions for us."

  "What kind of questions?"

  "I don't know. They say the family is always suspect. I don't care what they ask. I just want to get this over with. The sooner they clear us, the better. Then they can spend their time finding the person who took our son. I'm going to change clothes, then we'll go."

  Chapter Four

  Nicole walked down the hall to her bedroom and shut the door behind her. She paused long enough to take a deep breath. The call from Max had been both welcome and also terrifying, because Brandon was still as lost as he'd been the day before.

  With her stomach churning and her head pounding, she moved into the bathroom, stripped off her clothes and stepped into the shower. As the warm water ran over her head, neck and shoulders, she tried to force some calm into her system. She needed to be able to think, to make decisions, to give the police whatever information they needed to help them find Brandon. She just didn't know what else she could tell them.

  She suspected that they really wanted to talk to Ryan. They'd asked her a lot of questions about her estranged husband the day before.

  She really hated that word estranged. It shouldn't be a word that described their relationship, but what would work better?

  They'd been separated for months, and divorce seemed to be inevitable. She tried not to think about it. It was easier to deny reality when Ryan wasn't around, but when he got close to her, when she looked into his beautiful brown eyes, she felt a deep aching pain in her heart. And it wasn't only pain she felt, it was also attraction, yearning for the love they'd once had for each other.

  Ryan had been her whole life since she was seventeen. And she'd been his.

  They'd been so caught up in each other that they'd gotten engaged when they were twenty and married at twenty-one. Their families thought they were too young. Her friends tried to tell her that she should date other people, make sure Ryan was really the one. But she didn't want to see anyone else.

  So they'd had a simple wedding in her parents' backyard and a quick trip to Lake Tahoe for a honeymoon. Then they'd moved into a studio in San Francisco. The apartment was so small they could only fit a bed and a dresser, and meals were cooked in a toaster oven and a microwave. In reality, the place was a dump, but through the eyes of love, all Nicole had seen was Ryan. She didn't care that they were tripping over each other. She was in love, in lust, and crazy happy.

  It had all been so perfect.

  Until it wasn't.

  Was it her fault? Was it his? Who even knew anymore?

  She felt a little guilty that she hadn't shown Ryan Brandon's artwork. It might have helped Ryan connect to Brandon, but she'd hated the fact that she was the one B
randon saw every day, yet he chose to draw his father on the few occasions they were together.

  She jumped out of the shower and dried off. She pulled her damp hair into a ponytail, then grabbed some clothes out of the bedroom closet and threw them on.

  When she got to the front door, Ryan was waiting. They didn’t talk on their way to the station, which was fine with her. She didn't want to think about anything except getting Brandon back.

  * * *

  After arriving at the police station late Friday morning, Nicole was whisked away by her future brother-in-law, Max Harrison, while Ryan was taken into an interrogation room to face Inspector Michael DeCarlo of the Missing Persons Unit. DeCarlo was a forty-year-old cop with twenty years of experience. His weathered, cynical expression told Ryan he was not going to go easy on anyone, not even the father of the missing child.

  "Has Brandon ever wandered away before?" Inspector DeCarlo asked.

  Ryan considered the question, the automatic ‘no’ not quite rolling off his lips.

  Four and a half years ago, on the morning of Brandon’s second birthday, before his son's world had gone dark, Ryan had taken Brandon to the park so that Nicole could decorate the house for the party. It had been a beautiful sunny Friday in early June, the scent of summer in the air. He’d pushed Brandon on the swing, helped him down the slide and watched him dig in the sand with his shovel and bucket.

  Brandon had been a normal two-year-old, happy, eager to join in the play, not at all disturbed by the noise or squeals around him. His son had been the way he was supposed to be. And Ryan hadn’t appreciated that moment as much as he should have.

  Then his friend, Patrick, had called. Ryan had walked a few feet away from the sandbox to talk to Patrick about the upcoming Giants game. The call hadn’t lasted more than a couple of minutes—at least he didn’t think it had. But when he turned around, Brandon wasn’t where he’d left him.

  The memory made his heart stop. He could still feel the adrenaline rush, the fear. He’d found Brandon a few minutes later, hiding in the tube part of the play structure. Brandon had given him a big smile, said, "Daddy", and crawled over to him. He’d thrown his chubby little arms around his neck and held on to him as if he would never let him go.

  Ryan had never told Nicole that their two-year-old son had been out of his sight for a good five minutes. He’d just thanked God that Brandon was all right and sent up a silent promise that he’d do better in the future.

  He really hadn’t done any better.

  "Mr. Prescott?" the inspector prodded.

  "No," he said, not wanting to confuse the current situation with some old memory. "Brandon isn’t a kid that wanders away, especially not since he was diagnosed with autism. He doesn’t like change, new places, or strangers. He gets upset, hysterical sometimes. I can’t imagine how anyone could have lured him away without a struggle."

  "That’s what your wife said."

  "Are we about done?" Ryan asked. Every minute that passed reminded him that Brandon was still missing, and he was doing nothing to find him.

  "Not quite."

  "Look." He waved a frustrated hand in the air. "You know I was on a flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco when Brandon vanished. We need to wrap this up so I can look for my son."

  "Just because you were out of town doesn’t mean you don’t know anything about your son’s disappearance."

  "Why would I want to kidnap my son?"

  "Having a child with disabilities can be very stressful," the inspector answered in an even, reasonable voice. "It obviously caused a break in your marriage. I understand you and your wife are separated. I’m sure there must have been moments when you wished you didn’t have such a difficult child."

  The inspector had been trying to get some sort of reaction out of him since he'd walked in the room, but it wasn't going to work. The truth was on his side. "I love my son," Ryan said. "And Brandon belongs with his mother, who adores him, who does everything she can to help him get better. I would never take him out of his home environment. I would never tear him away from Nicole."

  "How did it feel to come in second to your own kid? Did it make you angry? Did it make you want to get back at your ex-wife for devoting herself to your son instead of to you?"

  "No! What the hell kind of man do you think I am?" he asked, unable to keep the anger out of his voice.

  "I have no idea, Mr. Prescott. That’s why we’re having this conversation. Why don’t you tell me how you got that black eye?"

  He hesitated, realizing his reply was not going to help their situation, but he had to tell the truth. "Nicole hit me last night. I implied that losing Brandon was her fault. She took offense. It was the heat of the moment. She was stressed out, and I deserved it."

  "Was your marriage often violent?"

  "It was never violent. Nicole was pushed beyond the limit. I don't blame her."

  "You’ve never hit her?"

  "No," he said tersely, the question reminding him of another time, another cop, another person with bruises—and that person had been his mother. But unlike his father, he had never hit a woman, nor had he even contemplated the idea. The thought of being like his father made him sick to his stomach. "You can ask Nicole if you don’t believe me," he added, seeing the speculation in the inspector's eyes.

  "We will."

  "Fine, what else?"

  "Your wife stated that you rarely see Brandon. What is your relationship with your son?"

  "There is no relationship. Brandon doesn't have relationships with anyone. He's more comfortable with Nicole, but even she can't reach him."

  "Does it bother you that you can't connect with your child?"

  "Of course it bothers me. He's my son." He looked DeCarlo straight in the eye. "I didn’t kidnap Brandon. I don’t know where he is, but I’ll do anything to help you find him. So keep asking me whatever questions you want, and I’ll keep answering, but the end will be the same. I am not involved in Brandon’s disappearance. If he didn’t wander away on his own, then someone has him." His stomach clenched at that unimaginable thought. "Someone you need to find. That’s the bottom line."

  "Would you be willing to take a polygraph test?"

  "Absolutely. I have nothing to hide. The sooner you can move past me, the sooner you’ll start looking for the person who actually did this."

  "I’ll set it up," the inspector said, getting to his feet. "Wait here."

  As DeCarlo left the room, Ryan blew out a breath. He glanced down at his watch. An hour had gone by—a wasted hour. He wanted to be out searching for his son. He looked up as the door opened, relieved to see Nicole.

  She quickly answered his unspoken question with a shake of her head. "No news."

  He let out a sigh, then got to his feet and paced around the small room, feeling a wave of anger and anxiety sweep through him. "This is so messed up, Nicole."

  "I know."

  "I don't want to sit in this room while Brandon is out there somewhere, lost and afraid."

  "I know," she repeated.

  "The inspector wants me to take a lie detector test. He thinks I had something to do with this."

  "No, that's crazy."

  "He asked me if I ever wanted to get rid of Brandon, because his illness was too difficult," he said, as rage swept through him. He might not have been the best father. Hell, he might not have even been close to the best, but he had always loved his son. "And then he asked me if I hit you, if I hit Brandon," he added, waving a frustrated hand in the air.

  "Oh, God," Nicole muttered, guilt flying through her blue eyes. "I didn't even consider that your black eye would focus attention on us instead of Brandon." She paused. "I'm sorry, Ryan. I shouldn't have hit you. I don't know what came over me."

  "Fear and anger."

  "At the situation more than you."

  He was a little surprised by the apology in her gaze. There had been so much anger between them the last few months.

  "The inspector was trying to rattle
you," she continued. "He doesn't know you, but I do. And you would never ever hurt a child."

  Her words put a knot of emotion in his throat. She reminded him of the old Nicole, the woman he’d fallen in love with, the one who’d trusted him, loved him—and made him believe that he would never be like his father.

  She ran a hand through her hair, tucking the loose strands behind each ear. "If this is anyone’s fault, it’s mine," she added. "I was with Brandon at the playground, not you. When you asked me how I could let him out of my sight last night, I hit you because I really wanted to hit myself. Brandon was my responsibility, and I screwed up."

  "I never should have said that. I know you watch him like a hawk."

  "But I did look away. And just so you don’t feel completely special, I've been asked to take a lie detector test, too. You're not the only suspect."

  He shook his head in disbelief. "You'd die for Brandon."

  "I don’t care. I’ll do whatever it takes to find our son."

  It was the first time in a long time that she’d referred to Brandon as their child. "I lost Brandon once," he said, the words slipping out before he could stop them.

  Surprise flashed through her eyes. "When?"

  "The day of his second birthday party. When we were at the park, I answered my phone. I was on the call for a couple of minutes. I looked up, and Brandon was gone. I’ll never forget that feeling of terror. I found him a couple minutes later. He was in that tube between the slides. He smiled when he saw me. And I thanked God that nothing bad had happened to him."

  "You never told me that."

  "I didn’t want you to think less of me. I guess that was bound to happen sooner or later. I’m just afraid that…"

  "That what?"

  "That I used up our miracle that day. That we weren’t supposed to lose Brandon again, because we already got him back once."

  "Don’t say that." She shook her head, her eyes glittering with determination. "We’re getting another miracle. I’m not settling for anything less."

  The door opened and Inspector DeCarlo returned to the room. "I received some new information," he said briskly. "A six-year-old child was kidnapped from a playground in Angel's Bay two days ago."