“Mom told me to read your first novel.”
“Did she? Good choice, that’s the best one.” He’d forgotten Hannah was a fan. The thought warmed his ego, which proved how shallow he was.
“She said the same thing.”
Okay, that little ping of pleasure had nothing to do with ego. “You want me to get you a copy?”
“You travel with a stash?”
“Nah. Free shipping on Amazon.”
“I only shop indies.”
“I shop everywhere. I’m a big book shopper. So. Want a signed copy?”
“I can’t read right now,” Galen said. “I can’t write. I can’t read. Time creeps by, and I’m unable to fill it. It’s like losing my sight. If I can’t write, I can’t process the world. I can’t engage with anything or anyone.”
“You’re engaging with me.”
“But you’re not writing, either.”
“Thanks for reminding me.” Will sipped his ridiculously weak coffee, then joined Galen at the kitchen table. He hit the return key on his laptop. “Before you came in, I was pretending that posting on Facebook was writing.” He scrolled down on his touchpad. “You go by the same last name as your mom?”
“No. Galen Jones.”
Will typed and then peered at the screen. “Yup, that looks like you. I’ve sent you a friend request. You better accept it.”
“Really?” Hard to tell, but that could have been pleasure in Galen’s voice. “I’m not on Facebook much these days. There seems little point. Can’t take an interest in myself, can’t take an interest in anyone else. Besides, I get nauseated hearing how great everyone’s lives are.”
“People don’t always post happy things,” Will said. “Maybe you should log on sometimes, to get out from under your own shadow.”
“Is that why you do it?”
“Hell, no. My marketing person makes me. If you met her, you’d understand. She’s a total ball-breaker.”
Galen didn’t smile. “You do Facebook every day, then?”
“Yeah. I try and do an hour about this time every night. My messages pile up if I ignore them for too long.”
“You tweet, too?”
“One of my assistants does it for me.”
“Blog?”
“Gave up. Felt too personal.”
“And yet you’re on Facebook.”
“Because you can stay connected without really saying anything.” Will leaned in. “Don’t believe anything I post on Facebook. I use it as a promotional tool, nothing else.”
“You make stuff up?”
“I perpetuate an image.”
On Saponi Mountain, an owl hooted twice.
“My writer friends will be stunned when you pop up on my wall.”
“Use it to add to the mystique of your breakdown. Pretend I seduced you to the dark side.”
And then Galen did something totally unexpected. He laughed.
Twenty
The ceiling fan hummed, and outside the katydids rubbed their forewings together in song. Hannah stood by her open bedroom window as darkness filtered through the screen. The local forecast had promised temperatures in the low sixties once night fell, but the house continued to creak and groan through another evening of record-breaking dry heat.
If only she could lie awake listening for rain gushing through the downspout, not the sound of the Chubb lock snapping into place on the front door. Last night Galen had stayed over at the cottage for two hours. And she’d been awake for another hour after that, trying to reassure herself he was home to stay, that he hadn’t taken the truck and run away as Liam had done when he was sixteen. Or—she shuddered—that he hadn’t wandered into the forest with a stash of pills.
Tonight Galen had gone to see Will the moment she’d come back to her room. Her son was reaching out to someone, which was good, more than good. It was fantastic. Really, fantastic. But he hadn’t chosen her or Poppy; he’d chosen a stranger.
She was in uncharted territory with her eldest, stumbling through a desert and searching for a large neon signpost that flashed This Way to Being a Good Mother.
When the boys were little, she’d moved through motherhood with such confidence: play dough was homemade, not store-bought; her boys collected leaves and downed birds’ nests, not G.I. Joes; they constructed ride-in rocket ships out of cardboard boxes and caves out of ripped sheets. How she longed to return to simpler days of worrying about nutritious lunches, sharpening colored pencils and making sure letters to Santa were mailed up the chimney.
She moved away from the window, tugged off her T-shirt, unsnapped her bra, stepped out of her jeans and threw herself facedown on her white bed. Fan-circulated air tickled her spine.
She twisted her hair away from her neck, then let it spring free.
Why Will Shepard?
Galen picked friends with caution, and yet Will had made the grade.
If not for the playground bravado of his younger brother, Galen would have been bullied mercilessly throughout middle school. There was little room in a county school of jocks and science nerds for a published poet. The incidents, however, stopped during Liam’s first week. No need to ask why. Liam and his posse of hangers-on had, undoubtedly, taken revenge. Liam had been a pack leader since kindergarten; Galen was a loner, drawn to kids ostracized as freaks.
Hannah reached under her pillow, grabbed her camisole and wiggled it over her head. No sleeping naked when the boys visited.
She chewed on her bottom lip. What did Will and her son talk about for hours? Galen had always been a secret keeper. Interrogation was pointless. She had, however, extracted one fact on the drive back from A.A.: they discussed writer’s block. Then, at dinner, Galen had slipped up and made reference to Ally, someone Jacob had mentioned, too. If Hannah had known this Ally was the love of Will’s life, she would never have pressed for details. Galen had sworn her to secrecy, but it was too late. Will was earning her respect in pieces, and she hated him for it. Physical attraction could be dismissed, but love that stretched over two decades—or was it three?—could break her heart. If only Will would hurry up and leave. But she couldn’t let him, could she? Not if he’d become the only person Galen trusted.
Please, God, don’t let Will have figured out that she was infatuated.
* * *
The light beating on his eyelids was too bright, too damn serene. This was not the half-light of his Manhattan bedroom that never saw the sun. And the chirpy thrush was definitely not a New York cabbie riding his horn. The context may have changed, but the memory Will woke to never varied: Freddie waving over his shoulder, saying, Bye-bye, Daddy. See you next weekend.
But this morning there was a second memory hiding behind the first: the memory of touching a woman and being ambushed by the consciousness of belonging. Which was crazy enough to have stepped from one of his mom’s fairy stories. Everything about Hannah was unexpected—her age, her sons, the side of her Galen revealed—so why not the emotions that her touch evoked? But that didn’t mean he belonged here, with Hannah, in Nowhereville, North Carolina. Not that he belonged anywhere without Freddie.
Pushing up onto his elbows, Will let his head flop back. He opened one eye, then the other, and stared upside down through the window above his bed. A cheerful Carolina morning exploded, white-hot, around the edges of the pale blind. A sign that the Indian summer was set to continue for at least another day. If he checked online he would know for sure, but paying attention to the five-day forecast smacked of permanency.
He sat up and massaged his shoulders, working a tension knot. At the corner of his sight, clothes sprawled over the empty dresser and dirty laundry spewed from the open duffel.
Never a neat freak, he liked a minimal sense of order. Piles that made sense. This Will-made mess was more of a statement
or possibly a pledge: I may sleep here—when I’m not up half the night with a suicidal grad student—but I’m not staying.
He leaned over the edge of the bed, picked up the new Dennis Lehane and placed it on the nightstand. Talking with Galen had encouraged him to start reading again—although trying to concentrate on anything except Freddie’s journey was like running across sheet ice.
Ten o’clock? He glanced at the alarm clock a second time. For real? He was slipping back into New York habits, behaving—once again—as if the world had to function around him and his schedule.
His dad would be up and waiting. Possibly even cooking his own breakfast again. It was hard to tell now that the old man had dismantled the smoke detector.
Had Hannah left already? He pulled up the corner of the blind and peered down into the yard. The truck was gone, but then she’d probably done several hours of work by now, as had most people. Everyone except him and Galen.
Throwing the blanket aside, Will swung his legs around, pausing to scrunch up his toes on sun-warmed carpet.
“Dad?”
He grabbed his jeans from where he’d abandoned them in the middle of the floor. Tugging them on, he hopped to the door.
“Dad?” he called into the hallway. “You down there, Dad?”
Will leaned over the banister and listened to an empty cottage. Nothing moved, except for the creeping dread in his gut.
“Dad?”
Will dashed through the main bedroom, past the bed made with perfect hospital corners and into the bathroom. The counter was wiped clean; a folded hand towel was laid out next to the sink; the toilet seat was down. Unlike the small bathroom he’d claimed, this space had the air of a hotel room waiting for its next guest.
Will turned and ran downstairs. Now he was officially freaking out.
Twenty-One
Hannah was feeling the tumor on Scarlet’s leg when her cell phone rang. Reaching across her stomach with her left hand, she unclipped the phone from her jeans and stared at the screen.
Which was more ridiculous—the thrill at seeing Will’s name pop up on her phone or the sudden wave of motion sickness when she was standing still? Her heart rate had definitely increased, her palms were sweaty and she had tinnitus in her ears. It was as if she were floating.
“Did you take my dad somewhere?” Will said.
The lack of greeting provided an instant cure. Anger was not an emotion she wanted to own, but yes, she was ever so slightly pissed. Pissed that she had developed a ridiculous crush; more pissed that her crush hadn’t said hello.
“Good morning to you, too.”
Will blew into the phone.
Hannah mouthed, Excuse me, to Andrew, Scarlet’s owner, and walked out onto the screened-in porch.
“Have you lost Jacob?” she said to Will.
“Maybe. Yes. Should I call 9-1-1?”
“No. I can be home in half an hour. We’ll find him together.” Hannah grabbed her wrist and pinched. Together was a loaded word.
“Don’t you think I should issue a silver alert or something?”
“You’re overreacting and he’ll resent you for it.” As thirteen-year-old Liam had done when she hadn’t been able to find him and had called the cops. Afterward he insisted she knew he’d been sleeping over at a friend’s and blamed her amnesia on the latest pet emergency.
“Suppose he’s in trouble?” Will said.
“I think it’s more likely he’s gone for a wander in the forest.”
“Exactly. Where he could get hurt. The forest is a place of a thousand and one dangers.”
“Not my forest. If he’s on the mountain, he’s safe.”
“Can you come home any quicker?”
“Sure,” she said, and hung up.
In the small backyard, submerged beneath drifts of leaves, crows cawed. A squirrel practiced acrobatics on the plastic bird feeder; a robin flitted in and out of a large pot containing deer-mutilated pansies; and her secret crush burst wide-open. The boys had always criticized her inclination to trust people, but this need to be needed was far more dangerous. It could turn fantasy into love.
Andrew opened the door. “Is everything okay out here?”
“Fine. Just fine. Sorry for the interruption.”
Hannah walked back into the living room cluttered with mementos: china cats, stuffed cats, pictures of cats, needlepoint cushions of cats. In the two years since his wife’s death, Andrew had devoted himself to the care of her seventeen-year-old cat. Now Scarlet had cancer.
The tragedy of a couple who had shared a lifetime was that they rarely shared death. One of them was destined to end up alone, and that had been enough to push her dad over the edge. What would happen to Andrew when Scarlet went? Last Christmas he’d had only two cards on display. One of them was from Hannah.
The window air-conditioning unit rattled as Hannah squatted down to where Scarlet was curled up in a nest of towels rank with cat pee. Her right knee crunched, and not for the first time, Hannah wondered if knee replacements were in her future. See? She should be contemplating aging gracefully, not daydreaming about a younger guy.
“When was the last time she ate?” Hannah said.
“Yesterday.”
“How much?”
“Half a can.”
Scarlet purred.
“She’s still drinking?”
Andrew nodded and rubbed one of his watery eyes.
Hannah eased herself back to standing. “You’re giving her the immune support?”
“Yes.” His right hand began to tremble.
“Let’s keep taking it day by day. It’s not her time yet, but when it is, I can help her along.”
Hannah stared at one of the cat pictures. “You know, I have a friend who’s an artist. Would you like her to come with me tomorrow and sketch Scarlet?”
“Thank you kindly.” Finally, Andrew smiled. “I used to draw, back in my younger days. That charcoal of the Siamese? I did that for the wife.”
Perfect. In the middle of darkness, there was always hope.
* * *
Hannah did something she hadn’t done in years—drove at seventy miles per hour on Redbud Road with no thought for deer or for the sheriff’s car that often tucked behind the trailer park mailboxes. She ignored the rattling under the hood and sped down the driveway, bouncing in her seat as the old Ford thumped in and out of potholes.
Yet again Will was pacing, and the large sweat stain on the chest of his snugly fitting T-shirt suggested he’d been at it for a while.
Blazing sunlight reflected off his golden hair and washed out his skin, making it ethereal. He was caught in the daily half hour when the sun reached the space between the house and the cottage, but as he swung around, his body entered solid shadow. The shade was near-perfect for picture taking; the expression and beauty of the subject were perfect. This should have been his author photo. If she had her camera, she would light his face with her flash and snap his portrait. Capture this moment on film and store it in her keepsake box with her wedding ring and the handmade Mother’s Day cards.
He took off, running toward the truck, and certainty punched her. Unequivocal certainty. She had always hoped to fall in love again, but not like this. Not now. Not while Galen was struggling to crawl through each day. Not while she had to help an eighty-year-old who may or may not be in danger.
No.
An invisible force clutched her heart, grabbed and squeezed. Stole her breath.
No.
She gasped. Will’s head had thrust through her open window.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to make you jump. Are you sure I shouldn’t have called 9-1-1?”
Don’t look at his eyes, don’t look at his eyes.
Hannah took small, quiet breaths and st
ared at her clogs. She did this every day—set aside personal feelings to do her job. Will was no different than a client who needed her expertise, her ability to take charge. He needed her to be the person in control. She needed to be the person in control. She took a bigger, slower breath. Filled her lungs with warm air so she could breathe again, so she could be the person they both needed her to be.
“How long has he been missing?” she said.
“I don’t know. I overslept.”
Hannah kicked off her clogs, then retrieved her hiking boots and shook out the socks stuffed inside. She waved Will back so she could open her door.
The dogs whined a welcome, but they needed to stay in the house with Galen. Hannah tightened the laces on her boots and slowly created two perfect, knotted bows. She centered her thoughts and released a quick prayer.
Let Jacob be safe.
As she eased herself out of the truck, the back of her neck prickled with sweat. The mercury would hit eighty before noon. Once again, Saponi Mountain was imprisoned under brilliant blue skies and a blistering sun.
Will flicked his hair back from his face. “Ready?”
“Do you have your phone?”
He nodded.
“Good. That way we can split up if we need to. Once we find him—”
“If.”
“Trust me, we’ll find him.”
His eyes settled into a look she couldn’t decipher, then he turned to watch a pair of black vultures circling over the dead rat snake in Miss Prissy’s pasture.
“I don’t trust,” Will said. “It’s what keeps me alive as a rock climber.”
“Since you’re not dangling off a rock, now might be a good time to start trusting. No one knows that forest better than I do.”
“Sorry.” He drummed his fingers on his cheek. “I’m amped up and losing it.”
“I can tell,” she said. “But I need you calm so we can focus on practicalities. Can you manage that?” She nearly added, For me.
He breathed heavily. “Calm I can do. I’m an expert on calm. Lead the way. I’m right behind you.”
She blocked the image of spooning with Will. “Follow me,” she said.
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