Hidden Falls

by Newport, Olivia

  “We’ve taken up so much of your time,” Molly said.

  “I was glad to give it.” Lauren stacked the plates. “I hope you’ll come to the fair on Saturday. We’re planning fun for the kids, and I think you’ll meet people you’ll really like.”

  “The only thing that will keep us away is if I find a job.”

  Lauren wondered who would look after Christopher when Molly found work. He had just missed the cut-off for being old enough to go to school. One challenge at a time, she reminded herself.

  Christopher returned to the kitchen in Thomas the Tank Engine pajamas that were too short and his new coat. “I can’t zip it myself.”

  “We’ll have to work on that,” Molly said.

  Rather than standing before his mother, Christopher presented himself for Lauren’s assistance. “Can you tell me a story while I fall asleep?”

  “Oh, honey,” Molly said, “Lauren has done a lot for us today.”

  His face fell.

  “I would be happy to do it,” Lauren said. She didn’t care if she didn’t make her calls that night no matter what the consequence would be tomorrow.

  “At least let me help you brush your teeth.” Molly steered the boy toward the bathroom.

  Lauren ran water in the kitchen sink and started on the dishes while she waited for Molly’s return.

  “He’s ready,” Molly said. “But make it a short story. He needs his sleep, and you have things to do. We’ve imposed enough.”

  Lauren found Christopher’s bedroom. There were only two rooms at the other side of the house. He was in his jacket and under a quilt. In the background, Lauren heard his mother cleaning up after the meal.

  She sat on the bed. “This story is about a little boy who loves macaroni and cheese.”

  Lauren filled the story with bits and pieces of Christopher’s own day—at least the good parts she had witnessed for herself. After only a few minutes, his eyes closed and his shoulders drooped. She lowered her voice and spoke more slowly, matching her cadence to his even breathing until she was sure his slumber had passed the fragility of waking. Lauren managed to stand up without disturbing him and, on impulse, leaned over his face to give him the butterfly kisses she had learned from her Nana, her eyelashes barely brushing his cheek. Christopher shifted his head on the pillow but didn’t wake. At his door, ready to pull it closed behind her, Lauren turned to watch him. A prayer welled in her for this little boy to know blessing more than fear.

  Molly was in the hall and embraced Lauren. “I can’t remember the last time someone was so kind to me. You’ve given us both a beautiful day. It gives me hope in my spirit. I had just about given up on hope.”

  Just about.

  Lauren patted Molly’s back. When Molly woke in the morning, she would still have no job and crushing debt. She would still be raising a child alone. She would still be living in a dismally furnished rental house. She would still grieve the little girl she had laid in the ground last year and the dismantling of a life where she had been loved and happy. Lauren knew nothing she had done that day would solve the disappointments of Molly’s existence. But for now, her son had a warm jacket, new shoes, and food. It was a start.

  Outside Molly’s house, Lauren remembered she had ridden her bicycle out to the community center. Molly drove them around town to the various businesses that allowed Lauren to find a chink in the desperation of Molly’s day and ignite hope. Lauren could walk to her apartment easily enough from the edge of town. The movement would give her time to pray for Molly and Christopher.

  Nothing about the last four days had been what Lauren expected. In her small corner of the world, Lauren had just about given up hope herself—hope for the health fair, hope for being able to do it well, hope for caring enough to carry through when she was exhausted.

  She had lost another precious day.

  And she would do it again in a heartbeat.

  8:36 p.m.

  “Tell me you’re not on the Internet.” Ethan snatched the phone out of Nicole’s hands and closed the search window.

  She looked up at him. “I’m not on the Internet.”

  “Funny.” He set her phone out of reach. “If it rings, I’ll let you answer.”

  “I remember your being a lot more entertaining to be around.”

  “Yeah, well, you weren’t so grumpy in those days.”

  “I thought Lauren would be home by now,” Nicole said. “I was going to ask you to go over to my house and get my stuff. Lauren can go along if you feel weird about doing it.”

  “I’m sure you think it will be easier to scour the Internet for clues about Quinn on your laptop instead of your phone.”

  “Don’t forget my iPad.” Nicole raked her fingers across her scalp.

  They’d tried the TV, but Lauren didn’t have cable and Nicole wasn’t satisfied with broadcast options. Ethan snooped in the hall closet and uncovered a Scattergories box, but Nicole found him such a pitiful opponent that she refused to play more than two rounds. Ethan called in an order to the Fall Shadows Café and left Nicole alone long enough to run down the street and pick it up. When he got back, she was rolling around the apartment in the swiveling desk chair again. He wasn’t an orthopedist, but he’d seen enough broken bones to know she was in pain, and she refused to take another painkiller before bedtime. The lack of response by her assistant to her phone messages increasingly bothered Nicole. Her uninjured foot jiggled almost nonstop.

  She was anxious, in pain, tired, and bored—though Ethan doubted Nicole would admit any of it. Her general state of agitation underscored for Ethan why he became a physician and not a nurse. He was used to being in and out of a patient’s room within a few minutes. He counted on nurses to let him know when his skills were needed or when a change of meds might be helpful, and he’d never developed the ability to patiently respond to shifting moods and chronic discomfort.

  “I hear footsteps.” Nicole straightened as much as she could in the recliner.

  Ethan breathed relief at the sound of the knob turning. Lauren came through the door.

  “Nicole was about ready to send out a search party.”

  “Sorry.” Lauren dropped her bag on a chair next to the door. “I kept meaning to call.”

  “I hope you were able to get some work done on the health fair,” Nicole said.

  “Not really,” Lauren said. “Something else came up.”

  Despite Lauren’s words, Ethan thought, she looked less stressed than she had when she left after lunch. She went into the kitchen for a glass of water and then stretched out on the sofa.

  “I hope you ate,” Lauren said.

  “We did.” Nicole rubbed her eyes. “How about you?”

  “Yes. Has Ethan been taking good care of you?”

  “No comment.”

  They laughed.

  “Actually,” Nicole said, “I was hoping you and Ethan could run out to my house to get my things.”

  “Sure. I’m willing.” Lauren sipped water. “I wish that as long as we’re in the neighborhood there was some way to get Quinn’s notes on the fair. I still think it would make my job easier.”

  “The place is locked up,” Ethan said. “We’d have to climb a tree to see if Quinn ever fixed that window into the attic.”

  Silence slid into place as the women froze.

  “Ethan,” Nicole said, “are you saying that all this time you knew a way to get into Quinn’s house?”

  “Well … no,” he said. “That was years ago.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lauren asked.

  “Quinn’s house has a full attic with windows at the back,” Ethan said. “I used to climb the maple that shades his deck and get into the house that way.”

  “Why did I never know this?” Nicole asked.

  “I only did it a few times when I just had to get out of my house,” Ethan said. “It was a scary climb and it’s a small window, which was probably why Quinn never got around to fixing it.”

  Nic
ole reached for the lever and lowered the footrest on the recliner. “My crutches, please.”

  Lauren rose from the couch and handed Nicole the crutches. “I’ll find your shoe.”

  Ethan stared at them. “You’re not seriously thinking about breaking into Quinn’s house.”

  “What’s to break?” Nicole said. “We just need to find out if the window still opens.”

  “I’m not twelve years old,” Ethan said. “I’m not climbing three stories up to an attic window.”

  “Lauren needs Quinn’s notes,” Nicole said, “and we might find a clue about where Quinn went.”

  “I am not going to climb that tree.”

  Lauren was on hands and knees looking for Nicole’s single shoe under the sofa. “Well, I’m not going to do it, and Nicole is in no condition. That leaves you.”

  “I don’t recall putting this to a vote.” Had they lost their capacity for rational thought? When he was a neglected preadolescent, Ethan lacked the sense of danger he felt now. And while he kept himself in good shape, he wasn’t as nimble as he was at twelve—and weighed eighty pounds more than the last time he climbed the tree. He wasn’t even sure if the branches that high up would support his weight. Testing the notion had no appeal.

  “Come on, Ethan,” Nicole said. “Four days. If you’re going to leave in the morning, then let this be your parting contribution to the cause.”

  “Getting arrested will not be a great career move.” Neither would falling out of a tree and breaking his back. He wasn’t going to listen to this nonsense. Ethan put both hands up. “Lauren, I’ll take you to get Nicole’s stuff, but that’s it.”

  “I vote we take Nicole with us. Once you get in and get the door open, it won’t be that hard for her to hobble in the back door.”

  Ethan squeezed his head between his hands. “You’ve lost your minds. Why don’t you just call Cooper and tell him there’s a way in?”

  Nicole waved off the suggestion. “He’ll make a fuss about needing a search warrant or something. An officer of the law can’t just go into somebody’s house. He’s a by-the-book guy.”

  “Well, maybe there’s a good reason for the book.”

  “Nicole, do you need a jacket?” Lauren asked. “I’ve got a spare.”

  “Good thinking.” Nicole was upright now, leaning on crutches and holding her booted foot off the floor. “What did you do with my house key when we got here yesterday?”

  “In my bag.” Lauren opened the front closet and pulled a dark jacket from a hanger. “Where are you parked, Ethan?”

  “Look, I’m taking you to Nicole’s house,” he said, “but Nicole does not need to come.” She might get a crazy idea like trying to climb the stairs.

  Nicole laughed. “I’m not missing this for the world.”

  Twenty minutes later, Ethan stood at the base of the mature maple tree in Quinn’s backyard. He judged the attic window to be at least twenty-five feet off the ground, maybe closer to thirty. Nicole sat on the deck with a flashlight. Lauren stood directly below the window in question with another light. The tree was closer to the house than Ethan remembered. He was surprised the roots hadn’t caused issues with the home’s foundation, but the proximity meant it wasn’t as far from the tree’s trunk to the window as he’d pictured. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d climbed in the dark—only the first time he did so knowing the ludicrous danger of climbing at all.

  They should have left this to Cooper and his team. If Ethan got any whiff of a four-day-old decaying body in the house—he banished the thought. Cooper had sent a squad car to the house within minutes of Quinn’s disappearance at the banquet. The premises had been undisturbed.

  Ethan checked to make sure the flashlight app on his phone was working. Though he knew its rays would be a pitiful weapon against the darkness inside the tree, Ethan didn’t want to carry anything heavier. He intended to stop every few branches to shine the light and get his bearings and make sure he was on a path toward the window and not above it or behind it.

  Sweat plastered his shirt to his skin before Ethan was ten feet off the ground. Where had his twelve-year-old self gotten such bravado? The higher he got, the more slowly Ethan climbed. He didn’t look down at Nicole’s flashlight beam and then Lauren’s without first grasping a branch with both arms. If this had been the middle of summer when the tree was in full leaf, he would never have seen the house from the interior branches. When he was fairly certain he had reached the right height for the window, he began scooting slowly out on the thickest branches he could find, making sure he also had a good grip at all times on a branch other than the one he sat on.

  Inch by inch, Ethan by turn held his breath and deliberately exhaled. The branch he slid out on thinned. Finally, he saw the glass in the window reflecting the beams angled from the ground.

  Ethan couldn’t get it open with one hand. He counted to three under his breath before releasing his security grip and leaning his weight into pushing the window up with both hands.

  Its resistance felt like it hadn’t been open since the last time Ethan made this climb.

  But it gave.

  He slid off the end of the branch and was in.

  Ethan closed the window behind him and leaned against the wall to wait for his heart to stop pounding. He turned on his phone light and gave his eyes time to adjust before finding his way across the attic, down the stairs, and into the upstairs hall. There he paused long enough to send a text message.

  I’M IN.

  Without turning on more lights, Ethan descended the carpeted stairs, paced to the back of the house, and unlocked the patio door.

  “No lights,” he said to Nicole and Lauren. The last thing they needed was someone in the neighborhood calling the sheriff’s office because of suspicious activity in a house everyone in town knew was locked and empty. After what he’d just been through, Ethan wasn’t interested in answering Cooper Elliott’s questions.

  “Let’s check his den first,” Nicole said. “He used to spend a lot of time there.”

  Lauren pointed her beam at the floor, keeping it one step ahead of Nicole’s crutches. Ethan followed, ready to catch Nicole at the first sign that she had put a crutch down on the edge of a rug or another spot that wasn’t clear and level. Cutting into someone’s brain was less nerve-racking than this.

  In the den, Lauren rifled through the papers on top of the desk while Nicole started on a file cabinet.

  Ethan just wanted them to finish whatever they were going to do so they could all get out of there.

  Lauren gasped.

  “What is it?” Nicole closed a file drawer.

  “I think I found his notes.” Lauren held her light steady. “Yes! Booths, supplies, volunteers. It’s not very organized, but it’s all here.”

  “Good,” Ethan said. “Let’s go.”

  “I’m not finished.” Nicole pulled open another drawer. “Lauren, bring your light over here.”

  Lauren folded the papers she took from the desk and stuffed them in her bag. Then she held her light, the brightest one, over the drawer Nicole had open.

  Nicole flipped through files with a rapidity and efficiency that astonished Ethan. Obviously she’d done this sort of thing before.

  “Bingo,” Nicole said.

  “What?” Lauren asked.

  Even Ethan couldn’t deny his curiosity. He was in too deep now to claim not to be party to the search.

  “It’s a photograph.” Nicole laid the picture flat on top of the contents of the drawer.

  Lauren looked at the photo, at Ethan, and then back to the photo with disbelief in her eyes. “Do you see what I see?”

  7

  Yesterday’s Promise

  Thursday

  6:54 a.m.

  Three more days.

  The good news was that Dr. Gonzalez, surgical chief overseeing Ethan’s neurosurgical residency, decided to follow a conference with a long weekend. Ethan had bartered his shifts to gain three more days in Hidden Fa
lls.

  The bad news was he would be in serious debt to his colleagues when he returned to Columbus in time for Monday morning rounds, exactly one week after his scheduled return.

  And there would be Gonzalez to deal with. Ethan reasoned he had three days to produce an explanation that the chief might accept. Somebody who survived four years of medical school and five years of a six-year residency should be smart enough to come up with something, even if he would probably be on probation for the entire final year of his residency.

  What mattered at the moment was Quinn. And Nicole. And what Ethan had let her drag him into last night. He was going to need some help getting out of this mess.

  Walking away wasn’t an option. Not this time.

  Ethan glanced at the clock in the motel room. Instead of guzzling bad coffee and hitting the interstate, Ethan now planned to drive across the bridge above the falls, go into town, and find the house Dani Roose lived in when she wasn’t incognito up at the lake. Ethan left his half-packed suitcase on the bed and went out to his car.

  The night had been late. Ethan could have used some coffee, but he didn’t dare delay or he could spend all day guessing at Dani’s movements. He wanted to catch her before she left.

  And he would do it without remorse in repayment for the morning she banged on his motel room door not much later than it was now. She’d needed something he had. Now he needed something she had.

  Ethan pulled up to Dani’s house on the north edge of downtown, wagering that her fishing habit was temporarily curtailed by the loss of her boat and that seven in the morning was too early for Dani to be working on a project in someone else’s home. At her front door, he knocked sharply twice before stepping back to await her response.

  When she opened the door, she was dressed and her long hair was braided. One hand gripped the handle of a large mug. She stared at him and sipped coffee.

  Ethan’s envy magnified his sense of morning caffeine withdrawal.

  “I need your help,” he said.

  Dani turned around and walked back into the house. Since she left the door open, Ethan followed her through the sparsely appointed living room and into the kitchen, where she took another mug from the cabinet and filled it. She set it on the table and sat down to finish her half-eaten breakfast.