False Step

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False Step Page 2

by Victoria Helen Stone


  The first sip of wine was still pooled on her tongue when she picked up her phone. Did you see the news? she typed out. The text zoomed away, and her heart hitched a little at the sound.

  She waited a moment, knowing she wouldn’t wait nearly long enough. When no response arrived, she typed again. Johnny found that missing kid! The little Holcomb boy! He’s ALIVE!

  She took another sip of wine. Then another. Her phone stayed silent and she purposefully set it facedown on the table. She’d nearly finished the wine when the phone finally buzzed, and Veronica’s fingers grazed the glass in her excitement. Thank goodness for her cheap stemless glassware or it would’ve tipped and shattered instead of just wobbling.

  A smile spread over her face as she picked up the phone and realized it was still buzzing. Not a text. A call. But her mom’s picture filled the screen when Veronica flipped it over. Her smile faded. “Hi, Mom,” she answered.

  “Veronica! Johnny is on the news!”

  “I know.”

  “He found that little boy!”

  A car pulled up outside. Hopeful again, Veronica pushed to her feet and rushed to the window to peek through the blinds. But there was no sleek silver car at the curb. Instead, a white van was parked on the street, its paint job bragging about being “the number one news network in Denver.”

  “Oh shit,” she breathed.

  “What is it?” her mom squawked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Veronica said, but the panic was back, and she imagined it would hang on a little longer this time.

  Johnny was going to love this.

  CHAPTER 2

  By three o’clock there were two news trucks on the street and a dozen of Johnny’s friends in the living room. Veronica would be hard-pressed to name a dozen of her own friends in the whole world, but Johnny had at least that many who lived nearby and didn’t have jobs, apparently, because how else would they be here in the middle of the day?

  She knew most of them, but she only liked a few, and there were none she particularly wanted to leave alone in her house. She glanced around the crowd again, hoping to see someone she could put in charge while she went to get Sydney from school, but even the few she liked had beers in their hands. This was a party, after all. The kind of celebration Johnny’s friends lay in perpetual wait for, as if they were all still in college. Someone got a new gig? Party. Someone broke an arm skiing? Party. Someone appeared on the news after rescuing a lost little boy? Oh, that was definitely cause for a party. They’d likely have a keg rolled in before the hour ended. The crowd would grow larger as those few friends with eight-to-five jobs showed up.

  “Damn it,” she muttered, finally reaching for the arm of the nearest man. “Terrance, I need to run and pick up Sydney. I’ll be back in fifteen; can I put you in charge?”

  “Sure,” he said, barely looking at her. They were all waiting for Johnny.

  With a glance at the front door and the craziness lurking beyond it, Veronica headed out the back and into the alley.

  Johnny usually picked up their daughter on his way home from work. When things were busy for him, he’d head back to the gym after Veronica got home.

  At ten years old, Sydney could walk the half mile on her own, but that hadn’t been the plan today, and she didn’t have a cell phone yet. Not until age twelve. They’d decided that. Well, Veronica had decided that. Johnny had gone along with her but rolled his eyes at the idea that early smartphone use might be bad for kids.

  If they were divorced, it would be a different matter. There would be pickups to arrange, schedule changes, and confusion over who had Sydney on which day. But they weren’t divorced.

  Feet crunching on the gravel-littered cement, Veronica hurried through the old-fashioned alley. She imagined this was one of the last neighborhoods in the Denver area that had been built with alleys. They simply weren’t an efficient use of land. But she liked being here. It felt like a secret world behind their houses, and their narrow streets looked so orderly with no driveways or front-facing garages.

  The alley was also an easy way to spy on the neighbors. People left their blinds open in the back. They stood out on their decks to smoke cigarettes and have loud conversations on cell phones. None of them seemed to realize how their voices echoed down the cement lane. But Veronica realized. She never took a private call outside or anywhere near an open window. She kept her secrets close.

  She cut through another alley the next block over, then turned up the street to the school. Like the surrounding houses, the school was low and long and vaguely ugly. If it were redbrick it might have had a certain charm, but its beige-blond color depressed her, especially when she noticed the way water had trailed rust lines down the bricks from the roof. Still, it was a decent enough school, and Sydney had always liked her teachers.

  She would move on to the middle school next year, and then she’d be on a bus with all the bigger kids. Veronica was more worried about it than her daughter was.

  Veronica heard the distant trill of the bell and picked up her pace. By the time she got to the school, dozens of kids were milling about on the front lawn. A few stragglers chased one another around the baseball field in back. Their screams and laughter rose above the rumble of the waiting line of cars.

  Veronica hurried past the idling vehicles and kept her head low. She didn’t want to speak to anyone about Johnny. She just wanted to find Sydney and get back to the safety of home.

  She was trying to decide whether she’d look more conspicuous with the hood of her light jacket up or down when Sydney squealed out “Mom!”

  Veronica braced herself in time to catch her daughter’s wild hug. Closing her eyes, she pressed her cheek to Sydney’s warm, tangled hair and breathed in the smell of her shampoo. In a few years these hugs would be few and far between. “Hey, sweetie!”

  “What are you doing here? Where’s Dad?”

  “He got held up. I’ll walk you home today.”

  Sydney waved at a friend and they set off, as easy as that. Veronica blew out a sigh of relief and laced her fingers through her daughter’s. No drama. No attention. Just a normal after-school pickup. “How was art today? Did you finish the papier-mâché project?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t get to seal it. I took too long with the paint details. She said we’ll have free time next week so I can—”

  “Veronica!”

  The loud call cut off her daughter’s words. Veronica winced and briefly considered making a run for it. She wasn’t the social butterfly in this community. That role was reserved for Johnny. Whichever woman was calling out to Veronica wasn’t looking to get coffee or invite her to a party; this was an information hunt.

  But the moment to escape had passed. Sydney stopped and tugged Veronica to a stop too, so she took a deep breath and turned to see who was hailing her.

  She’d met Kay Ronsom plenty of times. In fact, the woman came to every one of Johnny’s backyard barbecues even though her son and Sydney weren’t friends. “Veronica, oh my gosh!” she said breathlessly as she hurried over. “I saw the video, I just can’t believe it. Johnny is amazing!”

  “He is. But we’re all a little stressed right now, so . . .” She cut her eyes meaningfully toward Sydney. “Sydney just got out of school.”

  “Oh!” Kay yelped, her eyes widening. “Oh, of course! Just . . . Wow, please tell him how proud we are of him. Your daddy is a wonderful man, Sydney.”

  “Um, yeah,” Sydney replied. “Thanks?”

  Veronica swung her daughter around and stepped up the pace toward home.

  “Tell him I promise to get back to the gym!” Kay called out, as if Johnny gave a damn what she did. Or perhaps he did. Maybe they had a weekly meet-up in the locked family restroom outside the lap pool. Kay was a bit old for Johnny’s tastes, but she looked at him with big, admiring eyes, and maybe that was all he needed. “I’ll stop by the house later!”

  Veronica sighed and shook her head at her own bitter thoughts. She’d suspecte
d Johnny of cheating plenty of times, but as far as she knew, it had only happened once. Just once.

  Since then, there’d been no nights unaccounted for, no diminishing kindness to his wife, no STDs. Just Veronica’s weary knowledge that her husband adored being admired and had a tarnished record.

  As for that one time? Well, she’d forgiven him. Or she thought she had. It turned out that frantically gluing the broken pieces of a marriage back together didn’t make for the tightest hold. The seams had eventually given way and left her sitting in a giant, messy pile of hurt and anger and memories.

  But their trust issues couldn’t eclipse the love Johnny gave Sydney. Whatever else he was, he was a great father, and their daughter glowed under his care. It kept Veronica holding on.

  “What’s going on, Mom?” Sydney asked. “Why are we walking so fast? Is something wrong?”

  “Everything is fine, sweetie.”

  “What was Mrs. Ronsom talking about?”

  “Well . . .” They’d crossed one of the school’s driveways and were past the idling traffic now, so Veronica slowed her pace. “Honey, you know that little boy who went missing in the mountains last weekend? Tanner Holcomb?”

  “Yeah. That’s so sad. Wait! Did they find him?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s great! I mean, he’s okay, right? He’s alive?”

  “He is,” she answered with relief, thinking for the first time what the conversation would have been like if Johnny had found the boy too late. “Not only is he fine, but . . . Well, Daddy is the one who found him.”

  “Daddy?” Her eyes widened and warmed until they glowed with joy. She was a daddy’s girl through and through, and Veronica couldn’t even summon parental jealousy, because Sydney’s love for her father was the purest thing she’d ever seen. It was healthier than Veronica’s adoration of her own father had been, because Johnny was present and attentive. He didn’t flit in and out of his daughter’s life like an impossible-to-capture butterfly. Sydney beamed with pride for her dad, but then the glow in her eyes turned to a shimmer, and she burst into tears and threw herself into her mother’s arms.

  “Oh, honey, it’s okay. The boy’s going to be fine. This is all good news.”

  “I know,” Sydney sobbed. “I’m just so happy. Daddy found him!”

  Veronica tried to blink back her own tears, but they spilled onto her cheeks. That poor little boy. He was only three years old, so hopefully he’d remember none of this experience in a few months. It must have been terrifying being cold and so alone. At that age he’d probably been utterly confused why no one was there to help him in the dark.

  “I’m so proud of Dad,” Sydney whispered.

  “You should be. He’s a good man.” A decent man, at least. And a great father. The sum of that surely added up to good.

  Conscious of the cars driving slowly by, Veronica kissed Sydney’s head before easing her back. “Come on. Let’s get home. All of Dad’s friends are there.”

  Sydney brightened up and nodded. She was outgoing like Johnny. There was nothing she loved more than being surrounded by people. She was already excited about all the clubs she could join in middle school. Veronica, on the other hand, had been terrified of leaving the little pond of her elementary school and jumping into a treacherous ocean of teenagers. Syd couldn’t wait.

  Her daughter’s tears dried almost immediately, and she skipped a few feet ahead. “Is Dad home yet?”

  “I don’t know! Let’s find out.” When Sydney kept gaining ground, Veronica called out her name. “Wait! We’re taking the alley. There are reporters in front!”

  “Reporters?” her daughter yelped. “Mom, this is so cool! Dad is going to be famous!”

  Veronica sighed. Yeah. Yeah, he was going to be famous. But surely someone else would knock him off the screen within a few minutes. She just had to wait it out.

  CHAPTER 3

  A cheer went up as if a goal had been scored at a championship football game. Sydney paused her race from guest to guest, then sprinted toward the front window to push her way through the gathered crowd.

  “Daddy’s here!” she yelled over the noise.

  “Thank God,” Veronica muttered. It’d been a full hour since she’d picked up Sydney, and their tiny house was only getting more crowded.

  She headed for the kitchen sink and the small window above it so she could peek through the blinds. The scene playing out wasn’t shocking, of course. She’d known the reporters were there. But a groan still managed to leak from her throat at the sight of Johnny holding court in front of the television cameras.

  He looked like a tanned, outdoorsy dream in hiking boots, worn khaki shorts, and a tight blue T-shirt. He shook his head in seeming disbelief at part of his own story and his white teeth flashed. They’d been together eleven years and, impossibly, he was more handsome now than he had been at the start.

  When he knelt down to hug Old Man, cameras flashed like strobe lights, even in the afternoon sun. Most of the cameras belonged to the press, but a few belonged to neighbors who’d gathered with their phones held high.

  Veronica caught movement outside at the edge of her vision and stiffened. When the blur of bright color solidified into her daughter running across the lawn, Veronica yelped and sprang into action. She dodged around the small kitchen island and shoved her way through the party. But it was too late. By the time she emerged onto the front stoop, Sydney was against her dad’s side, arms clinging tight to his waist.

  Shit. Cameras were flashing again. Veronica felt anxious, but why? Sydney was proud of her dad. This moment would be immortalized forever, and Syd wasn’t exactly shy. She was going to show the videos and pictures to all of her friends as often as they’d agree to look at them. She wasn’t allowed a Snapchat or Instagram account yet, but she’d be thrilled to start one and post every single picture from this day.

  Someone asked a question Veronica didn’t hear, but she heard her daughter’s answer when the rest of the reporters quieted down. “My dad is the best dad in the world, and he’d save every kid in danger if he could. I’m so glad that little boy is safe, Daddy.” She and her father hugged tightly, and Veronica heard a chorus of Aws rise up from the reporters in front of her and the friends behind her.

  Veronica pressed her lips tight together and nodded, blinking away more tears. This was good. This was worth anything. Almost anything.

  “Mrs. Bradley!” someone called. “Mrs. Bradley!” And then everyone looked right at her. Veronica took a step back, intending to retreat into the house and close the door. They couldn’t know who she was, could they? She might just be a guest at the party.

  But then Johnny sealed the deal. “Babe, get over here!” He scooped his arm out in a welcoming wave.

  She froze. Looked at Johnny. Then at the reporters. Back and forth. Finally she looked at Sydney, who grinned and wiped tears from her eyes. “Come on, Mom!”

  She couldn’t make herself deliberately move toward those people filming and snapping. She didn’t want this. But somehow the reporters were getting closer. Somehow her legs were moving, taking her to them. The black pupils of the video cameras glinted. They had already zoomed in. It was already too late.

  When she reached Johnny, he pulled her close, Sydney sandwiched between them. Their nuclear family. A tight, beautiful core. They must look so happy. No hint of strain or betrayal between them. The perfect family she’d expected they’d eventually grow into.

  Veronica buried her face in Johnny’s shoulder as Old Man nudged the backs of her knees.

  “Mrs. Bradley! Are you proud of your husband?”

  She lifted her head and looked into Johnny’s eyes. They crinkled charmingly at her. “This is crazy,” she whispered.

  “Yeah. It really is.”

  Brow crumpling in disbelief, she managed a smile, then made it stretch into a grin before she turned to the cameras. “Of course I’m proud of Johnny,” she declared, “and I’m so, so relieved for that little boy. We�
��ve all been watching and worrying for him and now his parents have him back. What a wonderful day.”

  “Were you with your husband on the trail?”

  “No, I heard about it the same way everyone else did. I guess I can’t ever tell him there’s no time for one of his hikes now!”

  There was far more laughter than the joke deserved, but everyone was giddy. Jubilant. They posed for some family pictures, and then Veronica led Sydney back to the house so Johnny could answer more questions. Fifteen minutes later he popped inside and was met with a wall of sound as his friends went wild. Even Sydney clapped her hands over her ears, and she was used to hanging with ten-year-olds all day.

  Someone pressed a beer into his hand and Veronica suddenly remembered the champagne. She’d forgotten to put it in the fridge. But it didn’t matter. Several other corks popped and the crowd began chanting “Speech, speech, speech!” Johnny glowed.

  She’d loved his confidence when they’d met. She’d loved how comfortable he was with his own body and self. She’d felt blessed in that luminescence. Everyone did.

  Johnny took a long draw from his beer and then held up his hands to quiet the room.

  “I don’t know what to say. I’m not really a big speech guy.”

  Chuckles rumbled through the house at that.

  “I guess you guys want to hear the story.”

  “Hell yeah!” someone yelled, and everyone cheered in agreement.

  For once, Veronica was in complete accord with his friends. She wanted to hear it all again too.

  He rocked back on his heels and nodded. “Well, I was about a mile into a hike, and Old Man started going crazy. I thought he was just excited about a skunk or something, but he really took off. I followed him down a gully as quickly as I could and . . . wow. There he was. The kid.”

  “Hell yeah!” one of his friends screamed again.

  “Hell yeah!” Johnny repeated, but he shook his head as the cheering resumed. “Seriously, nobody else would have done anything different. I scooped him right up and got back to the trailhead as quickly as I could. I hope the little guy will be okay. He was pretty shaken up and scared. I’m just glad I was in the right place at the right time.”

 

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