“Whose room is this?” Josh whispered when I tapped lightly on the door.
It opened almost immediately. When he met my eyes, I knew he was still suffering the guilt for having kidnapped a baby. And along with that guilt came fear and the anticipation that still, even after returning the baby unharmed, he would be caught.
“Hello, Drew. May we come in?”
Defeated, he stepped away from the door and sank onto his bed, his shoulders slumped. But he was an intelligent boy. He knew not to admit anything, not until he was certain I knew. Maybe this was another fishing expedition. Or maybe I had come to ask questions on Josh’s behalf.
“What—did you need something?”
I walked over to his dresser. Not a single photograph. Then his desk. Still none. There was only one in the room, on his nightstand. His parents. But there was a cell phone. I was still struggling to come into the digital age. Fortunately I was learning. I snatched it up, turned to him and said, “May I?”
He stood, ready to snatch it away from me. “No! That’s private!”
But it was too late. Even as inept as I was, the one thing I had learned to do was snap photographs at the drop of a hat and access them when I wanted to, not because I was a detective, but because I was a mother. Josh crossed the room and stood by my side, much the way Rocky would have done. But this time it was more than protective instinct. It was also curiosity.
I couldn’t have said it better than Josh’s gasp. “What the hell—?”
Sure enough, the shy steeplechaser had a hot girlfriend.
Josh was the one who confronted him. “What are you doing with pictures of Jillian on your cell?”
Resigned, he knew it was pointless to lie. “She’s—she’s my girlfriend.”
No wonder he had no photographs of her up in his room. Not only was she jailbait, but we knew her. Had he taken them down when he found out we were questioning some of the track team members? Or when we were outside his door, waiting for him to get dressed? Or was it while the police were making the rounds?
My mind was reeling. She had tipped him off. That’s how he knew what we were doing every step of the way, from narrowing it down to the track team to knowing it was a steeplechaser. And to knowing we were going to attempt to catch him when he brought back Ally. Thus, he left her in my car before the crack of dawn, a car that anyone in the neighborhood could easily know was always left unlocked. And knowing his car was being watched, he had used a different one.
The question was why. Was Jillian really that jealous of her baby sister that she would want her to disappear? Was she so desperate to return to the way things were before Ally had come along?
Drew was staring at me, an alarmed look on his face. I suspected he was reading my mind, or at least following my deduction. “It wasn’t her idea. She didn’t even know.”
I couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. He was a boy in love. He would protect her at all cost.
“Then why did you do it?”
His sigh felt as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. “She just wanted some time with her mom. Time alone, you know? She misses that. She misses having her mom to herself.”
“So you thought you’d give her that. You’d take away her baby sister so she could have her mother to herself.”
“It was only going to be for a little while. A couple weeks. And Ally was perfectly safe. My aunt was looking after her.” He shook his head as if anticipating my thoughts. “She didn’t know who she was. She had no idea. I told her it was a friend’s baby that I was looking after. She was staying in her cabin in the mountains so there’s no television or anything.”
“You really thought this was what Jillian wanted?”
“I only knew she wanted her mom. She misses her. She misses the way things used to be.”
“So you kidnapped her baby sister.” My mind had not stopped reeling. Did it not occur to him that a mother whose baby had been kidnapped would not be present for her other child? That she would be completely preoccupied and unable to think about anyone other than her missing baby? Apparently his own tragic life experience and the loss of his parents had failed to teach him that.
As if I had challenged his valor, his posture shifted and he stood taller and more determined. “I love her. I’d do anything for her. Anything.”
Jillian seemed to have inherited her mother’s ability to have men falling at her feet, doing anything for her.
I could feel Josh shaking his head beside me. I didn’t know if it was in response to this declaration that a boy would do anything for a girl, including kidnap a baby, or if it was because he figured a relationship with Jillian was now out of the question.
I sighed and set the cell phone back on his desk.
“What are you going to do?”
“Talk to Jillian.”
“But she had nothing to do with it.”
Except that she was the motivation behind it. And if she hadn’t known from the beginning, she had figured it out at some point because she was the one who had warned him to fake the flu and stay away from the college fair. She was the one who had told him to call and ask for ransom so it would appear to be someone who was desperate for money. And she had told him to return Ally early so he wouldn’t be caught.
“You have to believe me. Please. She didn’t know.”
I stared at him for a long minute. Was he protecting her?
“Really. It was all my idea. She was really upset when she figured it out.”
“How did she figure it out?”
“Your friend, the guy who was here with you that first time. Malcolm? He saw the sweatshirt.” The palm of his hand swept up and hit him in the forehead. “I can’t believe how stupid I was. I wore my college sweatshirt!”
“She knew then?”
“No. She didn’t figure it out until he said it was probably a runner. Then she suspected I’d done it.”
“What did she do?”
“She confronted me.”
“And you told her the truth.”
“Yeah.”
“So, why didn’t she bring Ally home then?”
“Because she was protecting me. Even after I’d done something so stupid, she knew I’d done it for her. I know she doesn’t love me the way I love her, but she cares about me. A lot. And she didn’t want me to get in trouble.” His forehead furrowed and his grey-blue eyes pleaded with me much the way Rocky’s did when he wanted a bite of my scone.
“Are you going to get me into trouble?” He sounded so much like a little boy that it was hard not to reach out and hug him. I managed to resist. I was confused, still in shock.
“I don’t know,” was all I could say. I walked toward the door. Josh was one step behind me, closing it as we exited.
“Where are we going now?” His voice was hoarse. He too was still trying to process this.
“To see Jillian.”
She was easy to find. She was at the park with Maureen and their puppies. They were making a valiant effort to train Maxwell and Chuck. Josh and I sat in the car watching them.
“She’s pretty, isn’t she?” I said.
He answered without thinking, without editing. “Oh, yeah. Probably the most beautiful girl I’ve ever—” Ah, the editing had kicked in.
“Were you surprised to learn she’s Drew’s girlfriend?”
“Not as surprised as I was when she claimed that she didn’t have a boyfriend at all. As far as her choice is concerned? I mean, he is a college guy. That attracts younger girls, I guess. He seems okay, nice, like he’d be good to her, except for the kidnapping part. I don’t get that.”
Nor did I. But then I didn’t understand young men nearly as well as I did young women. Holly had been a good teacher. Teenage girl jealousies I could grasp. Hadn’t I, after all, only recently stared out at this same park and watched while three girls sat on a bench together, and I had felt jealous? I laughed inwardly. Yes, I had envied Jillian and Maureen because my daughter was confidi
ng in them instead of me. Because she was huddled up with them against the chill, instead of with me, her mother.
If I understood one thing, it was jealousy, even Jillian’s jealousy of her little sister. More difficult to grasp was a boy’s temporary paralysis of his normally-intelligent brain cells and his need to please his girlfriend by committing a crime and causing an entire family to suffer. I could only attribute it to one thing—the loneliness and desperation to be loved that comes from having been orphaned way too young.
I opened the car door quietly and stepped out. Josh followed.
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“I think it’s best I talk to her alone.”
While Josh ran up the back steps to the kitchen, I headed for the park. When Maureen and Jillian spotted me, they waved. I forced a smile. Maureen hugged me. Jillian didn’t. She didn’t know me as well. Or, she had talked to Drew.
“Maureen, I need to talk to Jillian alone for a minute. Do you mind?”
Slightly bewildered, she shook her head. “No, of course not. I need to get going anyway. Dad’s coming home tomorrow and I need to do some cleaning. Yuck.”
Jillian sat down on the nearest bench and pulled Maxwell onto her lap. Comfort and security. I understood the need for a furry friend.
“Drew called you.”
She nodded. That was why she was at the park, outside, walking her dog. She didn’t want me coming to her house.
I sat down beside her. As with Drew, I resisted the urge to put my arm around her. I was not there to comfort her. I was not her mother. I was the detective who had figured out the truth.
“It’s not his fault.”
Ah, so the need to protect ran both ways.
“He kidnapped your baby sister. He took Ally.”
Tears streaming down her cheeks now, she looked up at me. “But he didn’t realize—He did it for me. He didn’t realize how devastated everyone would be. And that it would make things even worse. He was just trying to give me what he thought I wanted.”
“Explain.”
“Explain?”
“Why did he think that’s what you wanted?”
It took her a minute, a minute filled with wiping away tears and deep sighing. Finally, she spoke. “I tell him stuff, you know. Like a girl would tell her boyfriend or even her friends. Except I don’t tell my friends that stuff because they get annoyed, you know? When I complain and stuff. They think I have it really good. They think I’m so lucky because we live here, on the water in a nice house. And I have a car and everything. And I have such a beautiful mom and because I’m really close to my dad. And they think I’m lucky because they think my step-dad loves me and stuff.”
“Does he?” My mind shifted to the way she automatically pulled away from his affection.
She shrugged. “I guess.”
“So, why are you uncomfortable with him?”
I dreaded hearing the answer. But then my intuition kicked it and told me it wasn’t what I was thinking.
“’Cause my mom loves him more than she loves my dad. And me.”
I started to argue that last point, but decided it was better to listen.
“She gives them all of her attention. She always has.”
“Who?”
“All of them. Mostly Carter now, but my father too. And Ally. Before I just figured that I was left out because I was the kid. But she doesn’t leave Ally out. Just me.”
“Have you ever told your mother this? How you feel?”
“No! I could never tell her that!”
She could confide her pain to her boyfriend to the extent that he was motivated to kidnap her baby sister, but she couldn’t tell her mother how she felt. I wondered what throat problems she’d been suffering from and would continue to suffer from if she didn’t learn to speak her feelings.
“What did you say to Drew that drove him to take Ally?”
“I just told him about that, about how my mother gives all her attention to Carter and to Ally now. And that I’d give anything just to have my mom to myself, just for a little while.” She looked up at me with pleading eyes. “I didn’t mean for him to— She was safe. She was being well taken care of.”
“Drew’s aunt.”
“Yeah, but she didn’t know who she is. She thought Drew was doing a friend a favor. But she’s really good with her. I knew that she was okay.”
“Right, but your mother and father and Carter didn’t.”
She shook her head, the tears spilling down her cheeks again. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for it to happen. I didn’t want him to take Ally. He thought that was what I wanted. But it backfired. All my mom could think about was Ally.”
“Of course.”
“I wish I could take it all back and make it so it never happened. I’ll never complain again. Ever! About anything. My baby sister or anything!”
“I think that would defeat the purpose.”
“What do you mean?”
I answered her question with a question of my own. “When did you figure out it was Drew?”
“I kind of got nervous when Malcolm said that the sweatshirt was from the college. And then when he figured it was a runner, I pretty much knew. He’s really smart, isn’t he?”
For a physics professor, I supposed he was. “Yeah, he’s pretty smart.”
“I mean, he even figured out that he did steeplechase. That’s when we really got scared.”
“And so you told him to make the ransom call so it would throw us off, make us think it was someone who needed money.”
She nodded. “I mean, we wanted to bring her back right away, but we didn’t know how. I couldn’t just go get her and bring her home. It was really hard to figure it all out. I almost told my mom at one point, but I couldn’t do that, not to Drew, not after he’d done it for me.” She glanced up at me, studying the look in my eyes. What she was looking for, I wasn’t certain. Suspicion perhaps? Assurance that I believed her?
“I didn’t ask him to do it. I really didn’t.”
“I know that, Jillian. But you knew.”
Maxwell woke up and stretched in her lap and licked her on the chin. She wrapped her arms around him and held on to his warmth. “As soon as I was sure, I confronted him. He looked so sad. I was really angry. I hurt him. I told him how stupid it was. And then he said he did it for me, Jenny. He did it for me!” She was sobbing now as she realized how much he must love her to do that for her. Or maybe it was the realization that she truly was loved and lovable. “Please don’t tell my mom or the police. I couldn’t bare it if he got in trouble. He didn’t mean any harm. He just did what he thought I wanted. We would have brought her home much sooner if we could have figured out how to do it without Drew getting caught.”
“That’s why you had him insist that your mother be the one to meet him, isn’t it? You figured you could convince her to let you go in her place and then there wouldn’t be any danger of anyone recognizing Drew.”
“I thought she’d be so upset that it would be too hard for her to go and she’d be relieved to let me go.”
“She loves you, Jillian. She’d never have let you go.”
This flood of tears made the others seem like a gentle mist. It was amazing what the realization that you’re loved can do.
When she could finally speak again, her voice was so soft and her throat so hoarse that I could barely hear her. “You’re going to tell them, aren’t you? Drew will end up in jail and they’ll hate me forever. All of them. For not telling them right away. For letting them go through that.”
Right and wrong. If only they were so easy to distinguish. “I don’t know, Jillian. I have to think about that. But one thing I need you to agree to no matter what—”
“What? I’ll agree to anything. I don’t want Drew to go to jail.”
“You need to start telling your family your feelings. It’s what I meant when I said your vow to never complain again defeats the purpose. You need to tell your mother it hurts y
ou when she gives all her attention to Carter and Ally. And even your dad.”
She winced as if I’d asked her to commit a crime. Was it really so hard? Apparently.
“I’ll try.”
“And both you and Drew need to talk to someone, someone outside your family.”
“You mean like a therapist?”
“Yes, like a therapist.” Or a spiritual counselor, but I didn’t tell her that I was one. “Or a minister. Someone you’re comfortable talking to and can tell your feelings to. They can help guide you.”
“Can it be you? I mean, I know you’re a detective, but I could talk to you. Would that be okay?”
I sighed and pulled my ministry card out of my purse and handed it to her. “As long as you get your parents’ permission. And Drew needs to see someone too. You both need to work on expressing yourselves better and more clearly, and knowing that you’re okay without the other one.”
“Are you going to make us break up?”
“It’s not my place to do that. But I will tell you that you both need to realize your self worth doesn’t depend on the other. And that you would have a much healthier relationship once you felt good about yourselves.”
She sighed and leaned down to kiss the top of her puppy’s head, and I knew she had heard me.
Chapter 18
MacGregor, Josh, and I were in the living room, sipping our tea and munching on stale scones. I really needed to get back to baking. We had finished filling MacGregor in on what had turned out to be an eventful day and not for the reasons we had expected.
“Right here,” he mumbled. “Right under our noses.”
“Jillian may have been the motivating factor,” I reminded him, “but she wasn’t the instigator.”
“She could have spared a lot of trouble and grief if she’d been honest with us once she realized the truth.”
I couldn’t argue with that, although I did understand her reasons.
“Is she okay?” Josh was making a good effort not to pry into what had been a private conversation.
“She will be. I told her she and Drew both need to talk to someone, a therapist, minister, someone who can help guide them.”
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