When The Wind Blows: A Spruce Run Mystery

by Mark Mueller

  I walked back to the World Trade Center PATH subway station. I was still confused and angry beyond all reason. How could Maddy do this to me? I spent the last six years with an enormous weight on my shoulders because Maddy was the one person I hadn’t made amends with during my recovery. The guilt I was living with was all but unbearable. She busted my chops about not making amends, but all along she had been keeping a secret from me. And that secret was Charlie. What was she thinking? Was it because of my drinking? Was it because she wanted to be a parent all by herself?

  It was the drinking, of course. Maddy was concerned for Charlie’s safety. She didn’t want Charlie to grow up with a father who was a drunk. Intellectually, I couldn’t begrudge her for that. But still, she should have at least told me. She made the decision to keep Charlie out of my life, all on her own accord, and without any input from me. She decided that I didn’t matter. And that’s what hurt most of all.

  It was when I had arrived at the PATH ticket turnstile that I became aware of an enormous sensation of thirst that had been growing inside of me, and it was stronger than I could ignore. My eyes began darting around, searching, seeking the nearest liquor store. I stepped away from the turnstile and walked over to Centre Street. I needed something to quench my thirst. I started breathing like an asthmatic and started wiping my mouth with my sleeve, something I used to do when I needed a drink. It had been a while since I had been in New York, but still I thought I knew where I could find something to drink.

  I turned left on Centre Street and headed north. I continued past City Hall in search of my query. A liquor store had to be around somewhere.

  Several blocks later I veered left onto Lafayette Street, not even aware of where I was going.

  I entered Chinatown. And in Chinatown anything could be purchased, whether it was legal or not.

  Five minutes later I stopped walking and looked up. I was still on Lafayette Street, but had stopped at the corner of White Street. I recognized at once the yellow brick building in front of me. The white sign with blue lettering on the side of the building acknowledged that I was at the New York City Rescue Mission.

  How the did I get here? Wasn’t I just at the PATH station? Jeez freaking Louise. It’s like I was sleepwalking or something. Now I’m going to have to walk all the way back to the PATH.

  “Go inside,” I heard someone say.

  I looked around but no one was nearby, and that spooked me. I crossed White Street and went into the Mission. When I entered the lobby, I was hit with an icy blast of air-conditioning. I hadn’t realized how warm it had been outside.

  A tall, bald man was standing next to the lobby reception desk. A mischievous grin appeared on his face.

  “Mac!” he exclaimed as he gave me a bear hug. “What are you doing here?”

  I hugged him back and then focused my eyes on my shoes.

  “I need a drink, Joshua.”

  Joshua studied me for a moment, concerned. “Come on back to my office.”

  * * * *

  I spent almost half an hour in Joshua’s office telling him what had happened during the past couple of days, of how I had met Maddy and Charlie at the fireworks show, of how Ducky and Harry Cassidy had a theory to Charlie’s identity, of my Internet search yesterday, of the amends I had made with Maddy in the car, and of the will reading I had just come from.

  “You have a daughter?” he asked incredulously. “I guess congratulations are in order.”

  “Maddy never told me. I found out just yesterday on the Internet, and it was confirmed this morning.”

  “How could she not tell you?”

  “I don’t know. She was pregnant when she broke up with me and she didn’t tell me. I only found out by accident.”

  Joshua put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, bro. I mean that.”

  “I still want a drink, though,” I blurted.

  “I know you do. And I know you’re not going to give in to that temptation. You’ve come this far, Mac, and you can get through this. Put your trust in Jesus. He’s always with you.”

  I smiled. “Thanks, Joshua. You’ve always known what to say.”

  “Anything for you, Mac. You’re one of the good guys. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

  I sat silent for a moment. “So what happens now? What should I do?”

  “Tell you what. Stay here tonight. Have a good dinner and go to our chapel service tonight. Sleep on it tonight, here. And open your heart. God always has a plan for you, even now. So just relax. I have a feeling that tomorrow morning you’ll know what to do.”

  I smiled. “I think I already do.”

  “I knew you would. But I still want you to stay here tonight, anyway. There’s nothing worse than running off all half-cocked.”

  “Thank you, Joshua.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “You’re the best, you know that?”

  “Thank you, so are you.”

  During the night I spent at the Mission, I dreamt about the day Ducky, Maddy and I graduated from Kean University. The thing I remember most about that day was the keynote speaker during the graduation ceremony. The speaker was some long-forgotten U.S. Representative who talked, long and winded in the hot sun, about how hard work and not luck was the key to success in the careers we were all about to embark on.

  As the speaker concluded his remarks, Ducky leaned over and whispered to me, “All I’ve ever wanted was an honest week’s pay for an honest day’s work.”

  I couldn’t help but to laugh out loud. Ducky always had a way to lighten my mood, even in my dreams.

  * * * *

  The Mission’s homeless guests, getting themselves ready for another hard day on the streets of New York, awakened me the following morning. I was surprised that I still felt compassion for the homeless guys, even though I hadn’t been with them in almost five years. I even recognized some of them.

  Still here. What a hard life they had. Seeing them in action reminded me of how blessed I was to have a family and a home to go back to after I finished my own recovery.

  I got up with them, and dressed myself in the same clothes I had worn the day before. I hadn’t planned this overnight stay, so I hadn’t brought a change of clothes. And after a breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, and orange juice, I left the Mission and walked back to the PATH station at the World Trade Center, but not before I said goodbye to Joshua and to some of the homeless guys I knew. I was fortunate that my desire to drink the day before had been brief, thanks to my stop at the Mission. I was lucky.

  Twenty minutes later, I was in my Charger and heading for Spruce Run. Although I hadn’t planned on spending the night in New York, I still scoffed when the parking bill from the Newport Center Mall came out to almost seventy dollars. Call me naïve, but a seventy-dollar parking tab in New Jersey was criminal. A round-trip on the bus was half that.

  A Bugler editorial was already springing to life in my head.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I got home an hour and a half later and parked in the driveway. I planned to head to the Bugler once I had showered and changed into some fresh clothes and fed the cat.

  I was feeling only so-so as I scraped and washed the barnacles off of my carcass in the shower. On one hand, my conversation with Joshua diffused my desire to relapse into drinking. But on the other hand, I was still unsettled about discovering that I had a daughter. I couldn’t deny that I resented Maddy for keeping me in the dark.

  Right or wrong, she should have told me, but she didn’t. And that was unacceptable. Here she was, grating my gears for my not making amends with her, and at the same time she was holding perhaps the biggest secret someone could possibly keep: that she had become pregnant just before she had broken up with me and decided not to tell me. It was selfish and it was hypocritical.

  But in all fairness, I was selfish, too. I had put myself, and my escape from reality ahead of everything else, including Maddy. I was wrong in what I had done, and I paid a huge price for hu
rting her.

  * * * *

  I had discovered during the past five and a half years of sobriety that things don’t get any easier when you stop drinking. The best thing anyone can hope for is to find a way to live with it; to have a support system of friends and counselors who can help you get through the tough times. I was fortunate enough to have found friends through Alcoholics Anonymous who have helped me through my own rough patches. I’ve learned from them how to cope when things get hairy.

  Deliverance is a word I’ve heard a lot over the years. A lot of people in AA talk about asking for deliverance when it comes to working on Step Seven, which is when the alcoholic humbly asks God to remove their shortcomings. As much as I’d love to be delivered from alcoholism, it hasn’t happened. And I’m not sure if I ever will be.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an unbeliever by any stretch of the word. I do believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, of all that is seen and unseen. I also believe He will walk with me and help me get through the burdensome issues in my life. But, He won’t always make the tough times go away.

  Even on the night before Jesus was crucified, He implored God to ‘take the cup from Him,’ but only if it was His will. Jesus knew He was going to be crucified and had asked God to keep it from happening.

  And since God didn’t let that cup pass from Jesus, He won’t always remove every cup I ask Him to take from me. Instead, He often decides I need to deal with whatever has been handed to me. And He’s more than willing to guide me through it if I ask.

  It also doesn’t mean He’s always going to give me the answer I want. Sometimes it seems as if He doesn’t answer me at all. But what often seems like a non-answer is indeed an answer. Sometimes what we think is a non-answer is actually a “no” answer. And more often than not, we don’t want to accept that, and we just conclude that He didn’t answer.

  * * * *

  As I was drying off from the shower, it occurred to me then that Maddy had named Charlie after my grandmother, whose name was Charlotte. It didn’t surprise me. Maddy and my grandmother had had a close relationship before my grandmother passed away from cancer, a year before Maddy and I had broken up. My grandmother often teased me that Maddy was too good for me.

  She was right, of course.

  Still, I hated myself for allowing it to happen. I was glad she wasn’t around to see how things had turned out between Maddy and me because I knew she would have been disappointed. And she would have told me I had better snap out of it and get my act together.

  My grandmother was someone special. She lived in Pittsburgh and I used to see her two or three times a year, when my mother took my brother and me out to see her, or when she came to see us. Of all the visitors who had come to visit us over the years, and we had a lot of visitors, it was my grandmother who was the one person I had always wanted to see the most. She was the one person who seemed to understand me the best. She and I had a mutual love of music and she was the one who piqued my interest in it. She played the piano and exposed me to all different areas of classical and popular music. Over the course of several years of listening to classical music, along with my interest in rock music, I developed a love for the Wagnerian Rock sound of Jim Steinman, of whom I’m still a fan today.

  Steinman’s Bat Out Of Hell collaboration with Meatloaf is still one of the most awesome sounding recordings in the history of recorded music. And it’s still one of the top selling music albums of all time. If it wasn’t for my grandmother’s love of music, I may never have appreciated the power and majesty of the recorded sound.

  My grandmother also always told me that getting in the mother’s good graces was the key to having a good relationship with the daughter. I understood that when Maddy and I were together, and I was fortunate to have a pretty good relationship with her mother, at least at the time.

  So, I knew that in some way I was going to have to make nice with Maddy if I was going to have a relationship with Charlie. I began to feel bad about how I had walked away from her at the attorney’s office. Not a whole lot, but it still bothered me. I wasn’t concerned about her getting home safe. She was an adult, after all.

  * * * *

  I got dressed and then went into the kitchen. The cat had followed me and was standing next to its bowl. For a moment I debated whether to open up a can of Cat’s Meow, or just let the cat outside for good and let it go feral and become responsible for its own breakfast.

  My debate didn’t last very long. I knew that one way or another, the cat would find its way back home for din-din. It wouldn’t go feral. It knew a good thing when it saw one. Cats, like humans, are creatures of narrow habits.

  I filled the cat’s food bowl and topped off the water dish, and then opened the refrigerator door. The fridge was most barren of human nourishment, so I closed the door and opened Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, but the cupboard was also bare. I was in dire need of a trip to the supermarket.

  Since I was hungry, the only way I was going to have any sustenance was to go out and get it. And since I wasn’t feeling any love toward Mrs. Mattoon and her silent attitude from the other day, I decided to hit the Jugtown Convenience Store on my way to the Bugler. It was a little out of my way, but I was hungry.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I arrived at the Bugler fifteen minutes later. It was after eleven o’clock and the building was empty, which meant that Beth Henry was missing in action. That irked me to no end.

  I went into my office and found four messages on my voicemail, all from Ducky. He sounded rather distressed, which was unwonted, considering his unflappability was exceptional. I dialed his cell.

  “Where have you been?” Ducky growled, agitated. “I’ve been looking all over the place for you!”

  “I was in New York overnight,” I explained, realizing he had eschewed his regular ‘F.O.T.’ greeting. “I just got home.”

  “Then why don’t you answer your damn cell? I’ve been trying to get a hold of you since yesterday.”

  I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. It was turned off.

  “Crap,” I whispered as I hit the power button. I forgot to turn it back on once I had left the Rescue Mission. The Mission had a “no cell phone policy” for their recovery residents and I decided it would be prudent to turn mine off in their presence. No need to let them know I had one, lest a few of them ask if they could borrow it to telephone someone.

  “Sorry, Duck, I was indisposed.” I realized I hadn’t checked my home phone for messages, either.

  “Stay right where you are. I’m coming over.”

  “I’m at the Bugler.”

  “I know. Caller ID.”

  “What’s wrong, Duck?”

  “I’ll be right there. Don’t move.” The blower went dead in my hand. Typical Ducky exit strategy.

  I’d never heard Ducky this perturbed before. Something had to be way off-kilter for him to tell me to cool my heels while he raced over to see me. I didn’t get it, and it worried me.

  I walked out to the sidewalk. I noticed there were five messages on my cell’s voicemail. I checked them while I waited for Ducky. Three of the messages were from Maddy and two were from Ducky. Maddy’s messages were beyond frantic, almost intelligible.

  As I began to call her back, Ducky pulled up behind my Charger and blasted his horn. I hit my cell’s end button before the call connected. Ducky was out of his cruiser almost before it came to a complete stop.

  “What’s going on, Duck?” I asked. “What’s so important that you were trying to find me?”

  “We got a problem, Mac. You got to come with me.”

  “What problem?”

  “Your girl is missing.”

  “What girl?” I was confused.

  “Maddy’s girl. We’re looking for her.”

  “Hold on. What girl?”

  “The little girl we met at the fireworks the other night. Your and Maddy’s daughter.”

  “What are you talking about, Duck?”<
br />
  Ducky exhaled in exasperation.

  “Look, Mac, Maddy called me. She couldn’t find you so she called me. She told me that her little girl is your daughter. She told me about what happened at the will reading and how you took off. She went home with her parents, and when they got there the girl was gone. Somebody took her. The babysitter turned up at the sheriff’s department at about the same time to report a missing child. I’ve been trying to find you since yesterday.”

  “Why didn’t you just call me? I would have come right away.”

  “I did call you, Mac, about a hundred times. Your phone kept going straight to voicemail.”

  In an instant I was sick to my stomach. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and I felt like a total scumbag. What was wrong with me? What was I thinking, leaving Maddy in New York like that? Did I not learn anything about taking responsibility for my actions?

  I did it again. I let Maddy down one more time. Instead of swallowing my pride and let her explain to me what was going on, I fled the attorney’s office in anger.

  I mean, how could she have known I was clean and sober for the past five and a half years? It wasn’t like I made any effort to contact her in all that time. Instead, I acted like a wuss and put things off. And of consequence in delaying my amends with her, she had no way of knowing how my life had turned out. I hadn’t given her the chance to trust me again. She had no choice but to keep Charlie away from me. She was protecting her. And now Charlie was missing. And somehow it was my fault.

  “We’ve got to find her, Ducky,” I demanded.

  “We will, Mac.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Come and ride with me, like the old days. We’ll find her.”

  “First thing’s first, I’ve got to do something.” I glanced at the Charger.