Where, then?
She rolled the desk chair over to the oak bookcase. Small items could sit on top, blocked from sight. Gripping the edge of a shelf for balance, she stepped up one foot at a time. She teetered as the chair swiveled under her. She reached over the top of the case. Please, no spiders, no spiders. Her fingers bumped the smooth square edge of a picture frame, and … a book. The cover felt like textured leather. A journal or something. She brought it down.
A Bible. Black leather cover, silver-edged pages. A name engraved in the lower right corner: Clayton Michael Hansen. Violet flipped it open and turned to the copyright. Thank goodness every kid learned by third grade the fastest way to identify an illegal Bible. And there the words were, inarguable. New International Version. Her stomach knotted.
“Hurry up, Vi! He’s about to toss her into the lake!”
Violet shoved the book back into its place, jumped down from the chair, nearly falling as it spun. She dashed across the toffee-colored area rug and shut the French doors behind her. She backtracked to the bathroom and stared at her pale straw-haired reflection. Five minutes ago, she’d been ready to call Austin and tell him the whole thing was off. Clay might not be her father, but he was like her father. Almost her father. And he was a good one.
Austin had texted a phone number to her this morning, followed by instructions. When you get to the meeting, text address to that number. Then you run. They can’t find out you’re a spy.
Spy. She’d had all day to ponder that title, to break it in. It still blistered, like the narrow-toed pair of heels she’d had to squeeze her feet into yet bought anyway.
What’ll they do if they catch me? she’d nearly texted back but stopped herself. Austin was already on the edge of forbidding her mission.
Which she didn’t want him to do. Right?
The knock on the bathroom door almost wrenched Violet’s heart from her chest.
“You’re missing all the best parts,” Khloe said from the other side. “Want me to pause it for you?”
“Be right out.” Violet turned on the water and splashed her hands through it, breathed deep, and opened the door.
6
He might be taxiing one person or a whole family. Clay drove north, and suburbia melted farther away with every minute. Oncoming traffic thinned. He switched on the radio.
“—with a high of eighty-four degrees and a thirty percent chance of rain for the next …”
Clay tuned out the voice for now. News after weather. The top stories would loop in a few minutes. He could get his news online like most people these days, but radio was an untraceable alternative. Probably a lot of other Christians used it too. Had the Constabulary figured that out yet? Could you monitor a person’s car radio?
Now in rural territory, Clay switched on the high beams. Ditches and culverts replaced sidewalks, and space grew between houses. Insect kamikazes pelted his windshield.
“And in the top story this hour, Senate Resolution Eight-Six-Three did pass with a vote of seventy-six to fourteen with ten abstentions …”
Clay’s stomach knotted. Seventy-six senators voted for that pile of crap.
“… requiring state Constabularies to comply with federal audits of case files and success percentages, among other new protocols. The president has already stated that he plans to sign this into law immediately. He’s expected to do so sometime next week.”
The first step. Eventually, they’d end up with a single federalized Constabulary. Clay heaved a helpless sigh and switched to a classic rock station. Led Zeppelin, perfect. For now, he’d drive. And try not to think too much.
Right.
Indian Trail proved to be a wide unpaved road pocked with eroded holes. The address from Marcus had to be on the right, since the left side of the road held nothing but fallow fields. There it was, fourth house down. He pulled into the driveway and shut off The Who in the middle of a guitar solo. The Jeep coasted to a stop while he gazed at the house—no, the mansion, and that wasn’t hyperbole. This place had to be … Clay couldn’t begin to guess the square footage.
He pulled the Jeep up a twisting gravel driveway and parked on the slab of cement in front of the unattached garage. Its door was open, as if expecting Clay. Then again, someone was expected. Just not him.
Approaching the back door might seem like skulking, and out here in Farmville, half the residents probably kept loaded shotguns on their mantels. Okay, front door, then. The porch wrapped halfway around the house. A basket of ferns hung from the center, and a flowered vine curled around the lattice on the north side. Clay’s footsteps seemed to echo in the quiet that encased this place. No traffic noises, no neighbors talking from across the street, no radio station hollering from somebody’s car in the carport. No neighbors or carport at all, actually. The closest house was nearly a mile down the road.
He thumbed the doorbell, and it chimed a four-note melody inside the house. A minute later, a lock clicked, and the door swung open. A lively Southern twang embraced Clay before he even saw the speaker.
“Now, son, you know better than to come to the front door like a …”
At the doorway, she stood still. She was portly in a matronly way, clad in jeans and a short-sleeved green sweater, sixty or so years creased into her face. She blinked and smiled.
“So sorry. I thought you were somebody else. How can I help you? You didn’t go and break down out here, did you?”
“Actually …” A shrug lifted his shoulders. “Marcus asked me to come.”
The gregariousness faded from her eyes. “Who? You must have the wrong house.”
His heartbeat jolted into overdrive. Had he written the address wrong?
The woman pushed blonde-from-a-bottle bangs off her forehead and began to shut the door. “You have a good night, now.”
“Wait.” Clay held up a hand. “Please. He said to tell you he hasn’t slept since last Thursday.”
Her mouth opened, closed, and opened again. Then a laugh burst from her, and she opened the door wide. “My heavens, that man can still surprise the stuffing out of me.”
Clay stepped inside, and she shut the door, then bolted it as a sort of afterthought.
“I’m Belinda, and my rude husband is around here somewhere. Chuck! Get your rear in here and acknowledge we’ve got a guest!”
“Guest? Aren’t you always saying he’s family?” A gray-haired man walked in from the hall, built like a tree trunk with a beer belly. Under his arm he held a baby in the classic “football” carry. He swung the boy close to the carpet, eliciting a squeal, then spotted Clay.
“Huh. Guess we do have a guest.”
“He sent me,” Clay said. “Marcus.”
Chuck hooked the thumb of his free hand in his belt loop, to one side of his paunch. “And how do we know that?”
“He said to tell us that he’s been awake since last Thursday,” Belinda said.
Chuck cocked his head.
“There’s no way this man—” Belinda broke off to settle her eyes on Clay, as if she hadn’t fully noticed him before now. “What’s your name?”
“Clay Hansen.”
“First names only,” Chuck said. “If you’re feeling paranoid, make one up, but I’m guessing you didn’t.”
“Um, no.”
The baby beat his heels in the air and arched his back. Chuck set him on his bottom on the runner that connected the hallway and the foyer, and the baby lurched to his hands and knees and crawled toward Belinda’s feet.
“So what’s the joke?” Clay said. “About being awake since Thursday?”
The couple shared a grin, then Chuck spoke. “Belinda here, she usually makes great coffee, but last time Marcus came by, it turned out a little strong.”
“He drank it, though,” Belinda said, “and I told him he’d be awake until his next birthday. He just had one last w
eek.”
Chuck crossed the foyer to stand closer to his wife. “So, Clay Hansen, did Marcus tell you why you’re here?”
“I’m here for … an ‘item.’”
Belinda’s smile buckled. “Oh … but …”
“Now Pearl,” Chuck said. “You knew it was tonight.”
She latched onto her husband’s arm and nodded hard. “Got everything all packed up, even. But you can’t ever be ready, you know?”
She spoke the last words to Clay. He shook his head. “I don’t know what—who—I don’t know anything about the item.”
The baby used Belinda’s leg to pull himself to his feet, then toddled over to Clay.
“There’s your item,” Chuck said.
Whoa. No wonder Marcus told him not to take the bike.
The baby wobbled a moment, then latched onto Clay’s jeans. He looked up for the source of the new legs, discovered a stranger, and let go with a shriek. Belinda scooped him up and rocked him.
“He’s right around eleven months now,” she said. “We don’t know his birthday, but we have an estimate of how old he was when … well, when he came here.”
Clay’s brain tried to keep up. He was here to rescue an eleven-month-old fugitive already in the care of an able, attached couple.
“Marcus should be calling me. He’s supposed to tell me where I’m taking … What’s his name?”
“Elliott.” Belinda tugged up the baby’s blue-and-white-striped shirt to plant a blustery kiss on his tummy. He smiled, toothless.
“And you don’t know where his parents are?” Well, that was obvious. They must be in re-education.
“Nobody knows who his daddy is,” Belinda said. “His mother passed away, right before the holidays.”
Clay’s cell phone chirped, and he dug it out of his shorts pocket. Different number, same area code.
“Hey.”
“Yeah,” Marcus said. “You got everything?”
Just call me the Toddler Transporter. “Yup.”
“Okay. You’re going to seven-eighty-two Lochmoor …” Marcus gave him the nearest intersection, name of the subdivision, and directions to the street. “It’s about twenty minutes from where you are now.”
“I know the area,” Clay said. “Anything else?”
“They’ll probably think you’re me. They shouldn’t ask any questions, but if they do, just say you can’t answer them.”
“Um, if they—”
Belinda waved, mouthed something, mimed taking the phone.
“Hey. Be—” No names. “Someone here wants to talk to you.”
“Tell them later. And thanks.”
Before Clay could determine if that meant gratitude for him or for Elliott’s caretakers, Marcus hung up. Clay pocketed his phone and shrugged at Belinda. “He said he’ll talk to you later. And I got the feeling he wants me to leave now.”
“I’ll go get the stuff,” Chuck said and returned in a few minutes with a diaper bag and car seat.
Belinda settled Elliott inside and chattered as if words could hide the tears that dripped down her face. “It’s been harder than we thought, keeping him hidden. Once our neighbor showed up, toting some extra garden vegetables she couldn’t use, and I just about forgot to take him up to the playpen before I answered the door. Now, picture explaining that one. She knows none of my grandbabies are that young.”
Once she’d finished fastening buckles and straightening straps, she stayed kneeling on the floor and gazed at the baby, who fussed at the confinement.
“I’ll make sure he gets there safely,” Clay said to fill the throbbing silence.
“Of course you will.” Chuck leaned down and half lifted his wife to her feet. “C’mon, now, time for him to go.”
Belinda nodded and buried her face in his red shirt, sure to leave a dark smear of tears. Awkwardness piled on more heavily with every second.
When Clay hefted the carrier, Elliott’s squirming abated. Clay tossed the diaper bag’s strap over his shoulder, and Chuck nodded over the top of his wife’s head, then tipped his gaze toward the door. As Clay stepped onto the porch, Belinda shattered into a loud sob behind him. He held the screen door to ease it shut and bore his cargo out to the Jeep.
Young-father instincts could rust but not disintegrate. He installed the base and lifted the carrier into the Jeep, facing Elliott toward the seat, and his hands remembered securing Khloe into their old minivan. They’d bought a vehicle big enough for a small flock of babies. He tossed the diaper bag onto the passenger seat and headed toward Elliott’s new family.
The turn into the subdivision revealed small, identical brick townhouses with dark-red siding and narrow walkways to their front doors. Cozy in any other context, now almost claustrophobic compared to Chuck and Belinda’s plantation. In a community like this one, a baby might be big news. Thank goodness the drive had lulled Elliott to sleep. Clay pulled into the open garage, his headlights illuminating a mountain of boxes along the back wall.
He switched on the dome light. The diaper bag had tipped forward and dumped a bottle adorned with T-rexes, a mint-green blanket … and a plain, legal-sized envelope. He stuffed the blanket and bottle back into the bag.
Across the envelope, someone had written Elliott. It was unsealed, the gummed flap tucked to the inside.
An explanation?
None of his business.
He slid his finger under the flap. Ouch. Paper cut. Really none of his business.
No. He was putting himself on the line here. He was allowed to ask questions. He drew out the folded page, torn from a notebook, blue-lined and red-margined. The same handwriting marched within the lines, small and block and black. Masculine.
Dear Elliott,
I’m writing this because I knew your mom and you should have something of her since you won’t remember her. I didn’t know her well though, only for a weak. But I learned enough to tell you some things. Your last name is Weston. Your a baby right now, five or six months old I think. Your mom has been gone a couple months.
I guess you’ll never see a picture of her, so Aubrey was kind of short and had long brown hair. In case you ever wonder about that. She talked alot, and she could get stubborn. I know now that usually she was stubborn about the right things. Especially you. She lost you for a few days, the Constabulary took you from your grandparents and she was very stubborn about getting you back. She loved you alot. When you weren’t there, her face was empty, and when she got you back her face filled back up.
When she saw somebody hurt, she wanted to help them. She helped me a few times.
She tried this crazy thing to trade herself for you, to save you from the Constabulary. She went through reeducation and knew how bad it was, but she would have went back if it would save you.
A few other things, less important. She couldn’t flip eggs without breaking them. She liked to clean. She liked to read, and she thought it was really important that kids have books growing up. Maybe you’ll like to read once you learn how. That would have made her happy.
She died because she wanted you to be safe. I think you were the most important thing in her whole life and she couldn’t lose you again or see you get hurt. She was a brave person and I wish she could see you grow up and you could know her.
MB
In the dim overhead light, Clay read the letter twice and tried to ignore his fingers’ itch for a red pen. His inner grammarian cringed, but the misused words weren’t important.
Elliott was Aubrey Weston’s baby. So Aubrey Weston was dead.
What the heck happened?
Of course, he remembered Aubrey. Karlyn Cole’s best friend, a member of the Table for the first half of her pregnancy, until she somehow got herself arrested. Her fate was mostly alluded to at subsequent Table meetings, prayed for and discussed in the most abstract terms. Karlyn alone
indulged in the grief. Everyone else seemed to slog through the same mire in which Clay found himself: relief that their first arrest casualty was someone else, guilt at the relief, and of course, fear. Always fear, but heightened now. If the Constabulary would prey on an unassuming pregnant girl, they’d not hesitate to grab a thirty-nine-year-old lit teacher who occasionally rode a yellow street bike to clandestine Christian gatherings.
A month later, the fear began to go stale, and Aubrey returned, older behind the eyes, more swollen around the middle. And timid for the first time. After only a few meetings, she dropped off the edge of their little world. Each of them bore some fault for that. When Janelle and Abe questioned the wisdom of welcoming Aubrey back after a denial of faith—Janelle not waiting until Aubrey wasn’t around—Clay had tried to remain neutral. Maybe he should have joined Karlyn in fighting for Aubrey.
How had she died?
“MB” had to be Marcus. The next time Clay saw the man, he’d ask him.
A second sheet of paper was folded against the letter. A birth certificate. For Elliott … Sobczek. Marcus must have gotten to know some shady people in the last few months.
The Jeep’s automatic dome light shut off, encasing the garage in darkness. Light from a street lamp shone through the single window. Funny that no one in the house had opened the door. Maybe they hadn’t seen or heard Clay pull in. He retrieved his fugitive’s diaper bag, then the slumbering fugitive himself, and stepped up to rap on the screen door’s wooden frame.
The door on the other side swung inward to flood the garage with light. Small brown moths fluttered toward the screen door, collided with it, and hung there. A man pushed it open and swiped at the light switch on the wall.
Two long fluorescent fixtures hung from the rafters with fine chains. They flickered on and buzzed above Clay.
“Here he is,” the man said. Eyes level with Clay’s through bifocals, he stared down at Elliott. He held the door open with one outstretched arm but didn’t motion Clay inside.
Found and Lost Page 4