by Mary Brady
REED HURRIED UP THE STEPS to Jesse’s apartment two at a time. He had been trying to find his brother for six weeks, first on the internet and by phone, and last week he started in person, and now he had a real lead.
The apartment door opened into a kitchen, with a dining and a living room area as one continuous room, one continuous small room. He could see a bedroom and bathroom through the open door off to the left.
Everything was in order and clean. Not a thing out of place. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but neatness was not it.
So not like the drop-it-anywhere Jesse he had known. The place was as orderly as his own condo, and he couldn’t imagine living any other way. Jesse could and did. Helter-skelter best described the life the Jesse he knew led. Maybe miracles did happen.
Reed pulled out his mobile phone and ran his finger across the screen to boot it up. Two bars. Good enough.
He needed to speak to his business partner. Corporate investing seemed to go better when his and Denny’s complementary brains studied the deals together. Denny looked at things more from the people angle and Reed from the logistics side. Together they understood better than most the motivations and financial implications of buying businesses and real estate for their business clients.
But right now, Denny was also working on a personal issue for Reed.
Reed placed the call.
“You found civilization. Impressive,” Denny said instead of hello.
Reed laughed. “I wear my battery out checking for service.”
“Find anything out there, and where is there anyway?”
“I’m in St. Adelbert, Montana. Cheery little burg buried in the mountains where my brother has an apartment.”
“But no pay dirt?” Denny was perceptive.
Reed looked around and then decided the bedroom might be the best place to start searching. As he neared the bookcase along one wall, he stopped for a moment. On the top shelf sat the photo of him and Jesse with their parents Abby had mentioned. That Jesse had it was a wonder. That he displayed it made him think Jesse might not hate his family as much as he pretended.
“Reed?”
Reed moved on. “But—he’s not here. Hasn’t been for a while, a couple months.”
“Then you won’t want to hear that your mother has been in again asking if you found anything.”
“I wear out the rest of my battery listening to her voice mails.” He opened the top drawer of the beat-up old dresser and picked up a paltry pile of cancelled checks from the local bank.
“I told your mother I’d call her if I heard anything from you.”
“Thanks, I know it won’t stop her from coming into the office and I promise I’ll make that up to you some day.” The checks were mostly to Abigail Fairbanks in nice, neat penmanship, only the signature was Jesse’s. The memo lines said rent, cleaning and laundry. That explained why the apartment was so neat.
“Don’t think I haven’t got things figured out, buddy.” Denny’s tone held a mock challenge.
“What’s that?” Reed played innocent.
“Your mother is the reason you went out there instead of hiring someone else to do the legwork.”
Reed gave a gruff sound that probably passed for laughter. “Might have been. I need you to see what you can find on Abigail Fairbanks. She’s renting an apartment to Jesse.” He gave Denny the address listed on Abby’s checks and then moved around the things inside the drawer to look under them. A few pairs of new underwear and some unmated socks, one with a hole in the toe. Nothing else.
“Related to Angelina? Oh, and I know it’s a little late, but I found Angelina. She’s in the army. Apparently, she was given a strong recommendation by a judge to find some meaning in her life.”
“Sounds like Jesse’s type. Abigail is Angelina’s sister.” Angelina was apparently a wild woman. He wondered what Abby was like. Her mass of dark curly hair, warm brown eyes, snug-fitting flowered shirt with its seductive V of buttons and jeans said she had a figure that probably drew a crowd of men. People in Denver had been happy to regale him with stories about Angelina, whom they called Lena. None of the neighbors knew much about Abby, not even her name.
“From what I can tell, Angelina hasn’t been in any trouble since she left for Fort Jackson, South Carolina.
She’s in the Middle East right now.”
“Do they have any other siblings?”
“Not that I’ve found.”
“Angelina might have a child. A little boy came to the door when I was talking to the sister. He called her Aunt Abby and she called him Kyle.”
Denny laughed. “Are you sure the child is a boy? Many gender related names are crossing over to the other side these days.”
Reed made an exasperated sound. “Who am I to know? I’ve paid so little attention to kids in my life, it could have been either, and I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell even if I had seen the kid’s face.”
Denny shuffled papers. “Wait. I think I have info about a child, but the sources, apparently a bit on the drugged-out iffy side, said—yeah.” The paper shuffling stopped. “They thought the kid was a little boy and might even have belonged to the sister. They rarely saw him. The sister took care of him anyway.”
Reed pulled on the handles of the second drawer. The drawer stuck, but when he pulled harder it opened only to contain a very old pair of jeans and a couple T-shirts, each with a rude saying.
“Maybe the kid lives with the aunt because Angelina isn’t mother material.” Much like Reed’s own family. One brother stayed and made something out of himself, turned the family misfortune around. The other brother couldn’t be bothered with responsibility, family or otherwise, and just disappeared into the West. And then there was their mother…
“There’s more.” Denny rustled more papers. “Seems to be some confusion because they are both A. Fairbanks.”
“Go on.” The next two drawers were empty. Again a reflection of his brother’s life.
“Apparently their Denver departure was rather abrupt and it might have had to do with the sister and not Angelina.”
Reed put his free hand flat on the dresser top. “Any details?”
“I’ll see what I can find out. I assume you don’t want me to tell your mother anything.”
“That’d be correct. Thanks, Denny.”
Reed hung up and crossed the room to where a wood-framed picture sat on the bedside table. The photo was of Jesse, Angelina, a toddler and Abby and it looked to be a few years old. Abby looked serious and the others were grinning. The kid was probably the child on “Aunt” Abby’s porch. He picked up the snapshot. The boy looked familiar, but maybe that was because all kids looked the same to him, they just had different colored hair.
He placed the picture back on the table and continued searching. There was nothing in the bathroom except a dry, cracked bar of soap and a neatly folded towel. On top of the refrigerator in a basket was an old letter from their mother ranting and raving in the tone of a chronic alcoholic. This would be the address Abby had used. It was their summerhouse in the Chain of Lakes area and no one was there this year. The letter would probably arrive in Evanston soon and the housekeeper would forward it to Reed’s office in Chicago with any other mail that might upset his mother and contribute to a relapse into the bottle.
Where the hell are you, Jesse?
ABBY TOSSED TOYS INTO the wooden “pirates treasure” box while Kyle ran to get a new game, undoubtedly leaving another mess on the floor outside the game cabinet as he tried to decide which one. There was nothing left of the cookies but crumbs and Kyle had beaten her at most of their half dozen games of Candy Land.
All the time they played, she wondered if she had done the right thing, letting Jesse’s brother into the apartment. Legally, she supposed the apartment wasn’t Jesse’s anymore. He hadn’t paid the rent due before he left, he kept meaning to and now his brother had.
Maybe Reed would find something she didn’t know about and get a clu
e as to where Jesse had gone after Utah. A stab of dread hit her as she thought of something happening to Jesse.
She picked up a picture of the four of them. It had been taken at the zoo in Denver and she’d had a copy made for Jesse. They were so young in the picture. Lena had just turned eighteen when Kyle was born and he was barely two in the picture.
Abby always wondered about Jesse and Angelina, how their relationship went.
“Is Mommy scared?” Kyle stood, holding the Shoots and Ladders game.
Abby put the picture back and smiled at Kyle’s sweet face.
“Maybe she is sometimes.” She handed the photo of his mother in uniform to Kyle and he left a kiss print on her face where he’d placed so many others. “But she’s in a place where there are a lot of people to make friends with. I bet she misses you a lot, though.”
“She left her bunny slippers. Do you think she misses them?”
On Kyle’s feet were large pink bunnies with floppy ears and black button noses.
“I think they look great on you,” she said, and smiled.
He grinned and then his expression grew serious enough to wrinkle his forehead. “I’d be scared.”
What did she say to that? She couldn’t tell him not to be scared, but she could listen.
“You’d be scared?”
“If I had to go and live with strangers.”
She reached for him and pulled him into a hug. “I don’t think you’ll have to worry too much about that, you rascally rabbit slipper wearer. You’ve got me and your grandma here.”
She tweaked his nose and he grinned again.
“Do you promise, Aunt Abby?”
“I promise,” she said with as much animation as she could stuff into her tone.
The doorbell rang. In the reflection in the hallway mirror, Abby could see Reed Maxwell silhouetted in the sheer lace curtained window of her front door.
“Is that the man again?” Kyle wiggled out of her arms. “Can I see him this time?”
“I want you to stay in the house. I don’t really know this man. He’s a stranger.” And he’s poking and prying. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to know how he found out that Lena and Jesse were friends. And if he found that out, how much else did he know? And what did he plan to do with that knowledge?
“We don’t like strangers. Do we?” he said in a serious little-boy tone.
Abby tugged one of his blond curls. “We want to be safe around strangers. That means you stay inside right now. I’ll put a DVD in if you want.”
“Land Before Time. Land Before Time.”
She popped in the kid dinosaur DVD as the bell rang again.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes. Please stay here.”
He gave her a half nod, already holding the remote control in anticipation of the movie starting.
Ah, if life were that simple.
Now all she had to do was send Jesse’s nosy brother away and she could watch the movie with Kyle. She should clean the bathroom and address a few cobwebs, but she wanted to spend as much of her day off with her young nephew as she could. Being a nurse at the only clinic in St. Adelbert didn’t leave her much free time.
Abby opened the door and this time stepped out onto the porch to greet Jesse’s brother. “Did you find anything that would help?”
“There’s not much there.”
“Rolling stone and all that. It’s too bad he’s not here. If you had come in the spring…”
He seemed as if he was trying to decide something. Maybe he just wanted to make sure he asked all his questions before he got back in his rental car and left town.
“I’ll give you my phone number and if you think of anything else, you can call me. Anytime.” Abby felt an urgent need to reassure him and send him on his way.
His brow furrowed.
“I don’t mean… I mean I’m not trying to get rid of you,” she hurried to say and then to prove her point she sat down on the top step and invited him to sit. His brother was missing, after all. There had to be some middle ground between the bum’s rush and trying to keep Kyle’s and her little world undisturbed.
He declined to sit, but descended and put one foot on the lower step as he had earlier. He was tall, and sitting, she did feel at a disadvantage. Maybe that was good. Let him think he had the upper hand.
“Do you know where in Utah he went hiking?”
“There are several parks—Zion, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and more—but he didn’t name one specifically.”
“Do you know if he went hiking alone?”
“He usually did. He said it gave him the space to think.”
“Was there anyone else in town Jesse was friends with?”
“Maybe, but he didn’t confide in me. Like I said, he and Lena were friends. She lived in the house with me for a little while.”
He nodded toward the house. “Is that little boy Angelina’s child?”
Abby turned to see Kyle peering out the window beside the door.
CHAPTER TWO
ABBY FOUGHT BACK THE sudden sensation of panic, an immobilizing dread that had first started when she had been trapped on a dark night by reporters. She had thought she’d banished the feeling forever. She swallowed and quickly stuffed it into the bad memory file where it belonged.
Kyle waved at her. The boy had to move the plant and stand on his tiptoes to see out the lowest window in the column beside the door, his nose pressed on the glass probably leaving a mark. She motioned him away and he disappeared from view.
When she turned back, the thoughtful look on the man’s face appalled her. There were no reasons for him to be interested in her sister’s child—none she could possibly acknowledge anyway.
Abby suddenly didn’t want to talk to Reed Maxwell anymore. She didn’t want to talk to anyone about her sister’s child, except her sister. Her mission in life right now was to protect that little boy. She’d been doing it since before he was born and she’d do it as long as necessary, forever if she had to. The best way to do that was to send Jesse’s brother back to Chicago.
The sooner he left the better, because there were questions she had asked her sister about Kyle and hadn’t gotten any satisfactory answers, answers about Kyle and Jesse. It hadn’t seemed very important before, but with Lena so far away and this man here asking questions, she recognized how little control she might actually have over what happened to Kyle.
Reed Maxwell had to go. Now. Because he was be ginning to make the safe town of St. Adelbert not seem so snug anymore.
“If you leave me a contact number, I’ll email my sister again about Jesse, and I’ll call you and let you know what she says, and if I hear anything from Jesse, I’ll call.” She sounded flustered. She knew she did. Maybe he wouldn’t notice.
He half turned away and then turned back. “I thought, until I can be sure I’ve found out everything I can from the people here about where Jesse might be, I’d stay in Jesse’s apartment for a few days.”
“Stay in Jesse’s apartment? You want to stay here in St. Adelbert?” A wrenching, gut-level protest flashed through Abby. This man could not stay in town. There could be no good reason for him to stay. There was nothing for him here.
He stared steadily, silently. Unsure she could say any more without sounding like a crazed shrew, she did the same.
The adrenaline rush and the late-afternoon’s cool breeze made her skin prickle. She couldn’t have him digging into Kyle’s past, her past, and if he stayed, he might do just that—until he discovered things he did not need to know.
“If there’s a chance I can find something out about Jesse by staying here for a couple of days, I’m going to stay.”
She watched his face for some kind of hope that he was kidding, pulling her leg. City Man Invades Small Montana Town a Hoax. Ha ha! We always gotta have hope, her mother would say. But there had been no give in his words, and now no relenting in the expression on his face.
The bottom of her world gave way a bit.
Was Jesse Kyle’s father? If he was, did Jesse know or even suspect?
Pudgy-cheeked and blond, Kyle was nothing like the dark and lanky Jesse and if Lena had not wanted to tell anyone, Abby had known it wasn’t any of her business. It wasn’t until her sister went into the army leaving Kyle in her care that she had admitted she should have insisted on concrete, believable answers, but pinning down her younger sister was like holding fog in the palm of her hand.
Jesse’s brother climbed the steps and sat down beside her. She stayed where she was, refusing to give an inch.
With the tip of her fingernail she flicked off a chip of the peeling gray paint. The flake landed with a tiny click on the sidewalk below.
Maybe Reed thought she was being friendly. The niggling of dread threading through her thoughts told her it was more likely he could see through her facade.
He knew she wanted to send him over the mountains never to come back again, and in protest, he was staking a claim.
She held her ground.
“I have this mother, you see,” he said quietly and then fell silent. He didn’t seem to be expecting her to comment. Instead, he gazed intently out over the neighborhood.
Abby sat silently. Let him ponder. It was a dirty trick to bring his mother into this. She didn’t want to hear about his mother. She didn’t want to think of Jesse’s family, have them become human beings and not just the miserable caricatures Jesse had sketched and then dismissed.