by T. L. Haddix
“I don’t blame you. What about your mother?”
“She disappeared. Hasn’t been seen since. She…” A frown wrinkled her brow, and she blinked, then slowly sat up. Her eyes widened with horror, face growing pale. “Oh, God. Oh, my God!”
“What?” Gordon looked around, but didn’t see anything. “What’s wrong?”
Stacy grabbed his arm as she scrambled to her feet. “It’s her. The woman on the video from the appliance store. That’s why she’s so familiar. I didn’t see it before. But it’s her. It’s my mother!”
CHAPTER 15
STACY COULDN’T BELIEVE SHE HADN’T seen it before. She cursed her own stupidity and hurried across the room to the fireplace mantle, where she’d left her cell phone. Her first thought was to call Wyatt, then Ethan, but when she whirled around, she ran into Gordon, who’d followed her. He steadied her, and she shook him with a triumphant laugh, even though tears threatened.
“It makes sense, Gordon. It all makes sense now. Every bit of it. Wyatt was right when he said he thought the rape was relevant, just not for the right reasons. He thought someone might have found out about it and was setting me up based on that.”
“Slow down just a little bit and explain it to me, please,” he asked. “You’re a few steps ahead of me.”
Stacy nodded, her hair falling in her face. She pushed it back impatiently. “After the wreck, I was feeling pretty low. I didn’t have anything to do, and I started thinking about my father. So I started digging. He disappeared when I was four, and I never knew what happened to him. That has to be it. She found out I was looking into his disappearance, and she doesn’t want me to find him.”
Gordon still looked confused. “Why would she care?”
“You know that gut instinct that tells you when you’re on to something?”
“Sure.”
“Well, as soon as I started digging, my gut started screaming at me that there was more to him vanishing than a man just walking away from an unwanted responsibility. I don’t have any way to prove it, but I swear to you, I think she had something to do with his disappearance. And maybe she was afraid I was getting too close to figuring that out, or where she is. There are still active warrants for her in Kentucky.”
Stacy was both relieved and embarrassed, and she stepped away from him. “I know it sounds like my family is the worst kind of white trash.”
“I wasn’t thinking that, exactly. But you’re not your family. Trust me, my family, with very few exceptions, is not any prize, either. So what does this mean? What do you want to do?”
“I need to call Ethan, see where that surveillance CD ended up.” She’d given it back to him the other night before they left his house since he was going to be the official face of the investigation.
When Chloe chased Murphy through the living room, they both jumped. She chased him around the couch and back down the hall. Stacy hurried to look after them, wanting to make sure Chloe wasn’t beating up on the smaller cat. When they returned seconds later and dashed upstairs, this time with Murphy doing the chasing, she realized they were playing.
“You know, I haven’t seen him that calm the whole time I’ve been here,” Gordon remarked. “Do you think he’s just been lonely this whole time?”
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out, though.”
“What all do you have on your investigation into your dad’s whereabouts?”
“A couple of files. I brought them with me. They’re in my briefcase. Do you want to see them?”
“If you don’t mind showing me. How does some coffee sound while we look things over?”
“Sounds nice. I’ll call Ethan and get the files.”
A loud clap of thunder split the air, and they both looked up. Stacy’s phone vibrated, sending a weather alert. “Oh, boy. Looks like some pretty serious storms are moving through.” She showed Gordon the weather radar, which was covered with red and yellow.
When the lights flickered, he groaned. “Maybe I’d better hunt up some candles before I make the coffee.”
“I’ll check upstairs. You look down here?”
They split up, and Stacy hurried to the second floor. “Do you think they’d mind if I checked their bathroom?” she hollered back down to Gordon.
“Not at all. Just don’t fall in the swimming pool Annie calls a bathtub.”
The cats escorted her as she searched. As she’d expected, several candles occupied a shelf above the tub. “That is a big tub,” she told Murphy and Chloe as she grabbed three of the candles. She saw that they were the battery-operated LED style and smiled. She had a set just like them at home.
Leaving one illuminated candle on a table at the top of the stairs, she ducked into her room and grabbed her briefcase, then went back down with the other two. Gordon came down the hall as she reached the first floor.
“No luck here, but it looks like you did well. The bathroom?”
“Yep.”
“Good deal. I’ll make the coffee.”
She sat everything on the coffee table and called Ethan. As she finished surmising the theory for him, Gordon returned with the coffee. He cast a wary glance at the cats before setting it down. He clicked for them to follow him back into the kitchen, and they went.
Her call with Ethan finished, she walked to the door to watch him feed them, surprised when Gordon tossed Murphy a baby carrot. The cat caught it with two paws and stood on his back legs eating it. Thunder rumbled again loudly, and Murphy paused to listen, then went back to eating.
“Um, that is the weirdest thing I think I’ve ever seen,” she commented.
“Yeah, I can’t explain it. He’s just special.” He sat bowls down for both cats. With a haughty look at Murphy, Chloe dug in.
They returned to the living room. They were sitting down when the lights flickered again and went out. Stacy carefully felt for the candles. Once they were turned on, she settled back into the corner of the couch with her coffee.
“So much for looking over the paperwork,” Gordon said. “You’ll have to brief me, instead.”
“Do you mind if I ask you something first?”
“No, go ahead.”
“What I told you. You don’t seem freaked out by it.”
In the candlelight, his face was all shadows and sharp angles. His feet were still on the floor, and he clasped his coffee with both hands. “I don’t know what I am. I’m angry. I’m heartbroken. I’m not disgusted, not by you, so don’t even go there. I guess maybe my poker face is better than I thought it was. I’m plenty upset.”
“How can you not be disgusted?”
He turned to look at her, and his eyes glittered like emeralds in the light. “Why would I be? You were raped. What happened that night wasn’t your choice. If it had been, yeah, I’ll admit that would bother me. I was raised fairly conservatively, and while I’m no saint, I don’t think sex is something that shouldn’t be accompanied by affection.”
Stacy was surprised. “So if I’d been involved in a threesome willingly, you’d have a problem with that?”
“I guess it would depend on the circumstances.”
His answer was somewhat noncommittal. She was so emotionally beat-up she that she didn’t push the issue. She tilted her head and studied him curiously.
“So have you ever had a threesome?” Her timing could have been better, because he’d just taken a swallow of coffee, and he choked. “I know a lot of men have that fantasy.”
Coughing and sputtering, he sent her an incredulous look. “No! I have not ever had a threesome. What kind of man do you think I am?”
Stacy’s face heated. “You’re just so… male. I guess I made some assumptions.”
He had to get up and blow his nose, he’d coughed so hard. She hadn’t expected to fluster him so much with the question. Setting aside her mug, she groaned and hid her face. “I’m sorry. I feel so stupid.”
The couch dipped, and she looked up. Gordon was sitting on the middle cushion, and he gently pl
aced his hands on her knees. She couldn’t tell for sure, but she thought his face was as red as hers felt. “Look, I like sex. I like it a lot. I’m not even opposed to a little light bondage in the right situation. But that’s it. I don’t do anal, I’m not into S and M. I don’t read Playboy, but I have watched porn. Tasteful porn, more erotica than smut, but that’s beside the point.”
“I didn’t know there was such a thing.” She buried her face in her hands again. “I’m so embarrassed.”
Gordon tugged her hands away from her face and kissed each of them. “Don’t be. Do you have any other questions?”
“No.” She wasn’t sure why she was so calm. She hadn’t expected to be. Going back and reliving the rape hadn’t been easy, but it had been cathartic. She hadn’t been expecting that, either.
He sat back into the other corner and put his feet up on the couch. He braced them on either side of her feet, nothing more, but Stacy felt as if it were an embrace.
“What did Ethan say?”
“He’ll have the CD at the department tomorrow. He said to just call him when we’re ready to come in, and he’ll get things set up to watch the footage again.”
“Good. So, your father. Tell me his story.”
Arms resting on her belly, she snuggled down against the soft cushion at her back and stared at the ceiling as she tried to figure out where to start. “I barely remember him. He didn’t seem like a happy person to my four-year-old self, but he always had a smile for me when he came in at the end of the day.”
“What did he do?”
“He was a mechanic on base, a corporal.” She moved her legs to one side and looked down the couch at him. “I don’t know that much about him as a person, really. Maggie liked him, I know. She’s told me more than my mother ever did, but I still don’t have much to go on. They were all from the same small town down near the Kentucky-Tennessee border, and I guess my dad got my mom pregnant with me. They had to get married, and so he joined the Army to support the family. He introduced Maggie’s husband to her.”
“Where’s he at these days?”
“Dead. He got killed in the first Gulf War.”
Gordon winced. “How old were you?”
“Seven or eight. I didn’t know him very well. I didn’t spend a lot of time with Maggie until after the county fair thing.”
“So when did your dad disappear?”
“May of nineteen-eighty-eight. He was just gone, I remember. He didn’t say goodbye, didn’t act odd. He was just gone. My mother cried. I do know that much. It’s the only time I ever saw her show any weakness.”
Her feet were itching and tingling, and she shifted them for what seemed like the twentieth time.
Gordon took hold of her ankles. “Here, give me those feet. I’ll rub them.”
Ignoring the nervous flutter in her belly, Stacy straightened her legs. He seemed to know just the right spot to hit. She relaxed a little and let herself enjoy the gentle foot massage.
“You have magic hands. You know that, right?”
He smiled at her. “So what did your mom say about your dad vanishing like that?”
“She was angry. She kept saying it was all his fault and her life was ruined because of him. I think that’s when she really started resenting me. I’ve seen the pictures from before, and she wasn’t as bitter, as twisted.” She sighed. “After a while, she wouldn’t talk about it. By the time I got old enough to ask about him, about where they’d come from or their families, our relationship wasn’t such that I could do that. Maggie told me some things, but she’s been pretty close-mouthed, too. I get the impression that whatever the three of them left behind down in Kentucky, it wasn’t good.”
“You’re still in touch with Maggie?”
Stacy’s lips curved upward. “Yes. We’re not as close as we were when I was a teenager, but we still talk pretty often. Every couple of months, at least.”
He switched his attention to her other foot, and Stacy whimpered when he hit a sweet spot. He worked it a little harder. “Does she know that you’re looking into your father’s disappearance?”
“I didn’t tell her as much, but I suppose she could have guessed. I brought him up with her right after the wreck. Why? Do you think she could be involved in all this?”
“I think it’s possible. And why don’t you seem surprised by that idea?”
She laid her head back. Watching the shadows cast on the ceiling by the candles, she considered the question. “Because I think that as much as Maggie does care for me, her loyalty is and always has been to my mother. Right after the rape, I stayed with Maggie once I was released from the hospital. She helped pull me out of the dark place it left me in. At that point in time, if my mother had come to her for help, Maggie would have shot her on sight.”
“But that changed?”
“Yeah. I don’t know when, exactly. Two or three years later, I think. There was just something a little different about her when I went back to visit from college. We had a falling out over it because I was convinced she knew where Pam was. Maggie insisted she didn’t know. I didn’t speak to her for about four years after that.”
Gordon looked contemplative. “How’d you reconnect?”
“She called me. She’d had a mild heart attack, and she was staring mortality in the face. Like I said, it hasn’t been the same as it once was, but we’re both comfortable with where the relationship is. There are certain things we don’t discuss, my mother or her whereabouts being one of them.”
He stopped rubbing her feet, and Stacy drew them back with a sigh. She sat up more fully and propped her arm on the back of the couch, resting her head on her hand.
“How is it that you can hold back from drumming the truth out of her?”
“It isn’t easy. It basically came down to me deciding that I had to let it go and hope that someday Maggie’d feel comfortable enough to talk to me about Pam. Or that she’d slip up. And I got tired of worrying about Pam and what she was up to. I had to let go of that, or I would have really lost my mind.”
A yawn surprised her, and she checked her watch. It was only ten o’clock, but it felt several hours later. Fatigue hit her like a wet blanket, and she thought of the cushy bed upstairs with longing.
“Day catching up with you?” Gordon asked.
“I think so.”
He swung his feet down and held out his hand to her. “Then why don’t you call it a night? With this rain coming down, it’s perfect sleeping weather.” The storm had died down to a steady rain, and the sound of it hitting the roof was soothing.
“You know, if you don’t mind, I think I will.”
“Not at all. I’ll probably go up, too.”
They checked the downstairs without speaking. Once they’d reached the upstairs hall, Stacy turned to him, her heart pounding. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Gordon tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “If you need anything, I’m just a door away.”
She squeezed his hand. “I know. Thank you.”
Inside the bedroom, she made sure the bathroom door was closed before she stripped down and put on her cotton nightgown. The white sleeveless tunic came to her knees, and as she looked down at herself, she snorted.
“Oh, if you got any sexier, you’d go up in flames.” Shoving aside the regret that pinched her, she crawled into bed with a tired groan. “Please, please,” she prayed, “don’t let me have any nightmares tonight.”
Stacy wasn’t sure what woke her. It could have been a sound from one of the cats or the unfamiliar house settling around her. She rolled onto her back and lay there, listening. Seconds later, she heard a soft meow at the door, and she smiled.
“Just a second, baby girl.” She fumbled with the lamp, and the switch clicked, but nothing happened. “Power must still be out.” She turned on the candle and checked her phone to see that it was one o’clock. Wiping the sleep from her eyes with a yawn, she went to the door to let Chloe in.
To her surpris
e, Chloe didn’t run inside as soon as the door opened. Instead, she meowed plaintively and turned back down the hall, looking over her shoulder as if asking Stacy to follow.
“What is it, Chloe?” Stacy whispered, not wanting to wake Gordon. She glanced down at herself, wondering if she should get dressed. Chloe meowed again, making the decision for her. Whatever was wrong, the cat didn’t think it could wait.
Stacy followed her downstairs. At the foot of the stairs, she saw that the front door was open. Though the moon wasn’t quite full, it cast enough light that she could clearly see Gordon through the storm door. He was sitting on the steps, running his hands through his hair. Murphy was at the door, and when Stacy approached, he stood and purred.
She hesitated, unsure of what to do. When Chloe nudged the back of her leg, she suppressed a laugh and sat the candle down on the table beside the door. Drawing in a deep breath, she eased open the storm door and went onto the porch.
Gordon turned to watch her approach, but he didn’t stand. “Hey. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t. Chloe did. Apparently, she and Murphy don’t like you being out here by yourself. Everything okay?”
He scooted over and patted the spot next to him. “Yeah, I just can’t sleep. I raided Chase’s microbrews, thinking that might help.” He held up a bottle of the artisan-brewed beer and took a sip.
“Is it?” She eased down beside him, carefully wrapping the skirt of her gown around her legs. The storm had cleared out, leaving a star-studded sky that winked at them through scattered clouds.
“Not really.”
“I feel like that’s my fault.”
He looked at her. “Why?”
Stacy raised an eyebrow. “Maybe because this has been the day from hell, and I feel guilty. It’s what I do.” She leaned over and gently bumped his shoulder with hers. “Do you want to talk?”