by Anna Adams
News vans rolled up. Noah spoke to the reporters and kept them away from Owen and Lilah. The clinic committee had a communication tree that they used to raise more volunteer searchers.
They didn’t find a sock or a shoe, not a mitten, or even a lock of curly brown hair. Ben had disappeared.
Owen kept his eye on Lilah. Her worst fear had come to life. She wasn’t speaking, and she wasn’t crying. Grim fear gripped her gray features. He couldn’t help her because every time he went near her she pushed him away.
She wasn’t the only one who assumed this was his fault. He couldn’t even say why he felt as if he’d brought this down on their heads, but he should have known Ben had somehow left his house.
As darkness and snow fell together, the search groups gathered in the field in front of the inn. Owen knew what was coming from the look on Sheriff Layton’s face.
“No one’s seen anything of him, Owen, Ms. Bantry. We have to call off the search for the night. It’s too dark to do anything else. With the snow, we’re putting all these people in danger.”
“I’m telling you, we’ll find Ben by a stream. If we give up tonight, he’ll be out in the cold—he won’t survive the night alone in the woods.” Owen’s voice hitched, and Lilah grabbed his arm, as a whimper escaped her throat. Owen’s body screamed with pain. He wrapped his arm around her, and she finally let him hold her. He tried to share his strength with her, even though every cell of his being clenched in panic.
The sheriff shook his head. “I want to help you out, but one of the searchers could fall in the water or off a cliff in the pitch-black out here. We can’t keep the volunteers going all night.”
Owen stared in disbelief. “How am I supposed to care about anyone except my son? And why don’t you care about him?”
“It’s my job to care about everyone.” Sheriff Layton looked at Lilah. “I’m sorry,” he said, in the mountain’s soft twang. “I want to find your son, but I can’t risk more lives. We’ll start again as soon as it’s light enough.”
“I’m trying to understand.” Lilah trembled so hard, her voice shook with every ragged breath.
“I’m not giving up,” Owen said. “Come with me if you want, Lilah. Some of the others will keep searching with us.”
“Of course I’m coming with you.” She looked around at the faces that surrounded them.
The men and women who’d been combing the mountain for hours talked among themselves. Some went toward the parking lot in front of the inn, but most stayed put.
“We’ll take the road over by Tanker’s Falls,” Noah said, walking away with Emma’s hand in his.
“And I’m going toward the ski lifts,” Chad said. “They hypnotize Ben.”
“Wait.” Owen lifted both hands. “I’m not sure how many of you heard me tell the sheriff earlier, but I taught Ben to follow a stream if he ever got lost. If you hear water, go toward it, and call for him.”
“Will do,” Chad said.
Noah nodded, his face stony.
Owen wanted to punch something. “What if he heard us last night, Lilah?”
“That’s what I think,” she said. “I should have stayed with him.”
“And we never would have talked. He left, rather than face an argument between his parents.” Owen knew how desperate Ben must have felt. How many times had he done the same thing when he was a kid?
“But what if someone took him? What if we’re wrong?”
“That person would have had to come up the mountain and down a twisting, unpaved road. It would have to be someone who wanted Ben and no one else. I’m afraid we’re the problem.”
She cried, and he tightened his hand around hers.
“We’ve already been to my favorite places, to all the places I’ve shown Ben. I don’t know where else to go.”
“Let’s just choose a direction we haven’t taken.” Her voice was so tight, it was hardly recognizable. “Which way do the goats head when they break out? He’s certainly traveled with them more than once.”
A smile hurt his mouth. He felt as if he were doing something wrong, smiling when his son needed help. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If I’d just let you go...”
“You knew I was leaving? I’m sorry. I should have told you. I think Ben must have figured out that’s what I’d do, as well. He knows me even though he’s only four.”
He increased his grip on her hand. Lilah’s thick mitten and his leather glove might have formed a barrier between them, but he felt her body’s warmth, and it made him grateful because her words filled him with cold.
He tugged her closer. “Careful. Don’t trip over a root.” His advice made her groan as they both thought of Ben tripping over roots and holes and rocks, into icy water. Taking a deep breath, he shouted his son’s name. “Ben! Ben, buddy, come to me if you can hear my voice!”
“Please, let him hear us,” Lilah said. “Ben?” Her shout was a broken cry that shattered Owen.
“We have to find a better way to make things work for us,” he said. “We can’t risk this ever happening again. He’s just a little guy even though he acts so mature.”
Lilah wiped her mouth with her free hand. “I know you think I’ve made him into a miniadult, because I didn’t want anything to happen to him—”
“But you never lost him in the woods in Vermont.”
“This is no time for an ‘I told you so.’ I wouldn’t do that.”
He stared intently at the darkened woods, following the beam of his flashlight with concentration. After today he’d have a hard time defending himself from accusations that he wasn’t good father material. “Let’s not argue now.” Owen pointed at the path that curved in front of them. “After we find Ben, we’ll discuss custody.”
“Custody? When you didn’t even notice Ben leave your house? I try to give you a break, but you use it to bring up custody?” She came to a dead stop in the muddy path. “I don’t have to give you anything, and I won’t give you my child. Do you think I don’t know how to disappear?”
Her threat rattled him as if someone had taken him by the head and shaken him like a toy. At that moment, a whistle cut through the cold night. He turned toward the sound and followed the streak of red into the sky. A flare.
“That has to mean—” Chad had headed in that direction, believing Ben might have gone to the ski lift that bordered on Gage property. Had his younger brother planned ahead enough to take a flare?
Owen didn’t finish his thought, and he didn’t wait for Lilah. He ran across the rough ground, tripping, nearly falling so many times he was surprised he stayed on his feet.
He ended up splashing through one of those streams he’d been terrified his son might have fallen into. Lilah, gasping, came rushing up behind him.
He didn’t care. He couldn’t stop for her. She wouldn’t want him to.
“I just need to see Ben,” he said, hearing his own words and the desperation in them.
Owen stumbled as the ground rose up to the top of the hill where Chad had just lit another flare.
“We’re coming,” Owen shouted.
“He’s safe,” Chad yelled back to them.
Lilah uttered a sound that tore at Owen’s guts. But he didn’t turn back, even though every instinct urged him to help her, to comfort her.
She didn’t want his comfort. She wanted nothing from him except their son.
So he had to get to Ben. That was the only thought that made sense. He needed his son in his arms. He needed to hear Ben’s voice and feel the weight of his sturdy, small, impatient body.
Owen struggled up the hill, grabbing one-handed at branches, skidding through snow and ice he could barely see in the bouncing illumination of his flashlight. At the very top, he waited, holding back a heavy shrub to let Lilah through.
At the same mo
ment, they saw Chad, holding Ben on his hip, but Ben was cradling his arm in the same way Owen had after he fell off the ladder.
“Wait,” Chad said. “Don’t panic. I think he broke it, but he’s all right.”
“Baby.” Lilah pushed past Owen and slammed into Chad and their son. Ben’s good arm wound around his mother’s neck.
“Mommy,” he said, crying. “My arm...”
“Let me see.” She touched gently, and looked back at Owen, tears running down her face. “Can you call Noah and tell him we’re coming?”
They both took off their outer clothing and wrapped it around Ben, who cried harder. Owen stood there, feeling like an outsider, now that he was so close, but Lilah came first with their child.
Before he could reach for his phone, Ben looked up as if he hadn’t known his mother wasn’t alone. His eyes went wide in the light, and then he blinked, leaning backward to release his arm and hold it out to Owen.
“Daddy.”
That word. It was magic. A gift. Happiness and trust.
Pure bliss.
Owen couldn’t speak, but a sound came from his throat that made Chad and Lilah turn to stare at him. He didn’t care at all that he was crying. He held out his arms.
“Son.”
It was all he could manage. Lilah held Ben out and let him go, but the look on her face cut Owen like the sharpest blade.
He knelt, holding on to his boy with his cast, but as Lilah came near, he also reached for her hand, as if he could hold her, too. Hold them both and keep them here. In his life.
Where they both belonged.
Lilah pulled away. “I’ll call Noah.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
OWEN CARRIED BEN, while Chad lit the way for them with the flashlight. Lilah pulled out her phone and called Sheriff Layton to tell them they’d found their son.
Her voice still shook, but with relief now.
“Does he need an ambulance?” the lawman asked.
“I spoke to Noah,” she said. “We think Ben has broken his arm.” Naturally, in these woods. In the dark. Because she couldn’t keep her voice down in an argument with his father last night. “Noah’s going to meet us. Ben has been in the cold all day, but he was walking fine. We’ll make sure his hands aren’t frostbitten.”
Chad pulled Ben’s gloves off and shone his light on them. They were healthy and pink, and Ben wiggled his fingers.
“Gomer came with me, but I lost him, and then I had a doggy, Mommy. A big, white doggy. He was so warm. I followed him for a while, but I got tired, and then we sat under a huge, old log.” He held his uninjured arm wide, whacking Owen in the nose as he measured his temporary sanctuary for them.
Thank goodness he hadn’t taken a nap with the big dog. With hypothermia, he might never have woken up again.
“That sounds like Mr. Tucker’s Great Pyrenees,” Chad said. “He probably thought Ben was a sheep or something and tried to herd him back to the farm.”
“I’m not a sheep. Daddy, will Grandma be mad I lost Gomer?”
“I’m mad at Gomer. He went home without you,” Lilah said, but then remembered she had the sheriff on the line. “Sorry,” she said. “I just wanted to let you know we found him.” Her son was alive. He hadn’t fallen down a bottomless pit. No backwoods criminal had carried him away from her forever. She couldn’t be sure if his arm was broken or not, but he didn’t seem to be in as much pain as Owen had been. “Can you let the rest of the searchers know we found him?”
“I’ll do that,” Sheriff Layton said. “You get some rest. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Thanks, and, please, thank everyone else for us.” All those generous hearts, out searching for her son in the cold.
Her son wouldn’t have wandered off and the searchers wouldn’t have been at risk if she’d just had the good sense to stay put in Vermont and dare Owen to try to take Ben.
Ben’s relief at being found seemed to dissipate, and he leaned against Owen again as they made their slower descent through the woods, snapping brittle, cold branches, and sliding on the composting piles of wet leaves on frozen ground.
Lilah avoided even looking at Owen’s broad shoulders. She’d never imagined she’d see him cry the way he had when Ben called him daddy. She didn’t want to remember that moment or the tug of his hand on hers.
She was going home, and her injured son would be coming with her. She wouldn’t let him near this place again.
Lilah was sure Owen knew exactly what she was thinking. His instincts rarely failed him. His father’s abuse and his mother’s neglect had made him a survivor, too. And she’d all but threatened to disappear with Ben, somewhere Owen would never find them...
His hand had groped for hers, and he’d held her as if he needed her, but he wanted Ben.
Too late. Just as she’d almost been too late, removing her son from this stinking wilderness. It might be the place Owen couldn’t help loving best on earth, but it had been one crazy risk after another to Ben.
As soon as they reached the clearing outside Suzannah’s inn, the family poured across the fields, crying out Ben’s name. Noah and Emma, Suzannah and Celia, all crowded around, clamoring to touch Ben’s collar, or his sleeve, or pat his damp knit cap.
Lilah pulled off her own cap and replaced Ben’s with it. As she shoved his under her elbow, the Gages eased her out of their way.
“Where have you been?” Suzannah asked in a high, strained voice that sounded nothing like her usual determined cheerfulness.
“How did you find him, Owen?” Celia asked.
“It was Chad.” Owen nodded to his brother. “He guessed right about the ski lift.”
“I wanted to ride the chairs,” Ben said. “Daddy, can we ride the chairs now that I didn’t get dead?”
Silence answered him. Every face turned to Lilah.
Their collective, unspoken question was obvious. How did a four-year-old learn about getting dead?
Lilah’s greater worry was that he didn’t seem that alarmed by the prospect.
“We’ll ride the chairs sometime,” Owen said. “When my heart’s back in shape, and after we talk about running away.”
“You and Mommy were fighting.” Ben’s sober glance trailed over Lilah’s face before he looked back at his father. “I don’t like fighting.”
“Fighting?” Suzannah asked.
Celia took her mother by the arm and steered her toward the inn. “Must be time for us to go inside. I’m sure Lilah and Owen want Noah to look Ben’s arm over before they get him to bed.”
Noah agreed with a nod and led them onto the inn’s porch. He examined Ben’s arm while Owen held the little boy and made funny faces as Ben began to cry. At last, Noah wrapped the small arm in an elastic bandage for support and straightened. “I don’t think it’s broken,” he said. “The wrist is swollen, and he’s in some pain, but I think it’s a sprain.” He glanced at Chad with a smile. “You must have panicked.”
“Me and everyone else in Bliss today,” Chad said. He grinned at Lilah. “But it was a lucky day, and he’s all right.”
She nodded. “This time.”
“I’m meeting some guys for a movie,” Chad said, clearly disappointed in her answer, while everyone else stared at her with suspicion. “Ben, buddy, don’t ever do that again. I don’t like being scared any more than you like fighting.”
Lilah had to admire his ability to get to the point.
“Why were you scared?” Ben asked. “I was the one who got lost.”
“You had the Tucker’s dog to keep you from being afraid. But we just didn’t have you,” Chad said. “Scary, so don’t do that again.”
“Okay.” Ben sounded reluctant. Then he brightened. “Or I can find you and you can run away with me.”
“Perfect.” Chad
scrunched up the top of Ben’s borrowed cap and sent Lilah a commiserating smile above the boy’s head. “That’s the only way to do it. So don’t forget next time. Come get me before you run away, and we’ll go together.”
He headed out of the house, and the others began muttering their goodbyes. At last, even Suzannah went upstairs, and Owen picked up Ben and turned toward the door. “Come with us and say good-night, Lilah.”
He led the way, carrying Ben with Lilah following behind them, planning her announcement in her head.
“Chad’s a good kid,” she said, instead of “I’m taking my son home, and you will never see him again.”
“He has his moments, but deep down, he has a heart and a sense of responsibility.”
“Daddy, I’m tired.” Ben yawned. “Mom, do I have to take a shower tonight? And brush my teeth?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “But I’ll help you with your wrist.”
“I want Daddy.” He held up his arm. “Look, Daddy, we match.”
She nodded, unable to speak after the twist of the knife in her heart. Ben loved his father, but Owen would just have to get used to either visiting in Vermont, or living without him. When Ben was older, he could decide if he wanted to come back here again, but she wasn’t ever returning. Her life lay elsewhere, and she was tired of considering anyone else’s opinions when she made decisions about her son.
* * *
“DADDY, I THINK Mommy’s mad at me.”
Owen helped Ben pull his pajama shirt over his dark curls.
“She’s not mad.” Not at Ben anyway. “She doesn’t want anything to happen to you, and she was afraid when we couldn’t find you.”
“I wasn’t scared, except when I got tired, and then the doggy stayed with me, and I was fine.”
“That’s not enough when you’re the mom or dad,” Owen said, trying to find a way to explain. “When you’re a mommy or a father, and you can’t find your son, you start to think bad things that scare you. We were afraid you might fall down or sprain a wrist.” He gently touched Ben’s bandaged arm. “And we might not be able to find you.”