Stone Rain

by Linwood Barclay

  She got dressed. Jeans, a sweater. Put on her makeup. Enough not to look like shit, but not too much that her mother started making cracks about her going to “tramp tryouts.”

  When she got to the kitchen, she just stood there.

  No cereal boxes out, no juice, no coffee in the coffeemaker. No plates out, no bread in the toaster, no mugs. No bowl with a trace of milk and soggy Rice Krispies in the sink. The kitchen looked exactly as it had after her mother had cleaned up from dinner the night before.

  Cynthia glanced about for a note. Her mom was big about leaving notes when she had to go out. Even when she was angry. A long enough note to say, “On your own today,” or “Make yourself some eggs, have to drive Todd,” or just “Back later.” If she was really angry, instead of signing off with “Love, Mom,” she’d write “L, Mom.”

  There was no note.

  Cynthia worked up the nerve to shout, “Mom?” Her own voice suddenly sounded strange to her. Maybe because there was something in it she didn’t want to recognize.

  When her mother didn’t answer, she called out again. “Dad?” Again, nothing.

  This, she surmised, must be her punishment. She’d pissed off her parents, disappointed them, and now they were going to act like she didn’t exist. Silent treatment, on a nuclear scale.

  Okay, she could deal with that. It beat a huge confrontation first thing in the morning.

  Cynthia didn’t feel she could keep down any breakfast, so she grabbed the schoolbooks she needed and headed out the door.

  The Journal Courier, rolled up with a rubber band like a log, lay on the front step.

  Cynthia kicked it out of her way, not really thinking about it, and strode down the empty driveway—her father’s Dodge and mother’s Ford Escort were both gone—in the direction of Milford South High School. Maybe, if she could find her brother, she’d learn just what was going on, just how much trouble she might actually be in.

  Plenty, she figured.

  She’d missed curfew, an early one of eight o’clock. It was a school night, first of all, and then there’d been that call earlier in the evening from Mrs. Asphodel about how if she didn’t hand in her English assignments, she wasn’t going to pass. She told her parents she was going to Pam’s house to do homework, that Pam was going to help her get caught up on her English stuff, even though it was stupid and a total waste of time, and her parents said okay, but you still have to be home by eight. Come on, she said, she’d barely have time to get one assignment done, and did they want her to fail? Was that what they wanted?

  Eight, her father said. No later. Well, screw that, she thought. She’d be home when she got home.

  When Cynthia wasn’t home by eight-fifteen, her mother phoned Pam’s house, got Pam’s mother, said, “Hi, it’s Patricia Bigge? Cynthia’s mom? Could I talk to Cynthia, please?” And Pam’s mother said, “Huh?” Not only was Cynthia not there, but Pam wasn’t even home.

  That was when Cynthia’s father grabbed the faded fedora hat he never went anywhere without, got in his Dodge, and started driving around the neighborhood, looking for her. He suspected she might be with that Vince Fleming boy, the seventeen-year-old from the eleventh grade, the one who had his license, who drove around in a rusted red 1970 Mustang. Clayton and Patricia Bigge didn’t much care for him. Tough kid, troubled family, bad influence. Cynthia had heard her parents talking one night, about Vince’s father, that he was some bad guy or something, but she figured it was just bullshit.

  It was just a fluke that her dad spotted the car at the far end of the parking lot of the Connecticut Post Mall, out on the Post Road, not far from the theaters. The Mustang was backed up to the curb, and her father parked in front, blocking it in. She knew it was him instantly when she saw the fedora.

  “Shit,” said Cynthia. Good thing he hadn’t shown up two minutes earlier, when they’d been making out, or when Vince was showing her his new switchblade—Jesus, you pressed this little button, and zap! Six inches of steel suddenly appeared—Vince holding it in his lap, moving it around and grinning, like maybe it was something else. Cynthia had tried holding it, had sliced the air in front of her and giggled.

  “Easy,” Vince had said cautiously. “You can do a lot of damage with one of these.”

  Clayton Bigge marched right over to the passenger door, yanked it open. It creaked on its rusty hinges.

  “Hey, pal, watch it!” Vince said, no knife in hand now, but a beer bottle, almost as bad.

  “Don’t ‘hey pal’ me,” her father said, taking her by the arm and ushering her back into his own car. “Christ almighty, you reek,” he told her.

  She wished she could have died right then.

  She wouldn’t look at him or say anything, not even when he started going on about how she was becoming nothing but trouble, that if she didn’t get her head screwed on right she’d be a fuckup her whole life, that he didn’t know what he’d done wrong, he just wanted her to grow up and be happy and blah blah blah, and Jesus even when he was pissed off he still drove like he was taking his driver’s test, never exceeding the speed limit, always using his turn signal, the guy was unbelievable.

  When they pulled into the driveway, she was out of the car before he had it in park, throwing open the door, striding in, trying not to weave, her mother standing there, not looking mad so much as worried, saying, “Cynthia! Where were—”

  She steamrolled past her, went up to her room. From downstairs, her father shouted, “You come down here! We got things to discuss!”

  “I wish you were dead!” she screamed, and slammed her door.

  That much came back to her as she walked to school. The rest of the evening was still a bit fuzzy.

  She remembered sitting down on her bed, feeling woozy. Too tired to feel embarrassed. She decided to lie down, figuring she could sleep it off by the morning, a good ten hours away.

  A lot could happen before morning.

  At one point, drifting in and out of sleep, she thought she heard someone at her door. Like someone was hesitating just outside it.

  Then, later, she thought she heard it again.

  Did she get up to see who it was? Did she even try to get out of bed? She couldn’t remember.

  And now she was almost to school.

  The thing was, she felt remorseful. She’d broken nearly every household rule in a single night. Starting with the lie about going to Pam’s. Pam was her best friend, she was over to the house all the time, slept over every other weekend. Cynthia’s mother liked her, maybe even trusted her, Cynthia thought. Bringing Pam’s name into it, Cynthia thought somehow that would buy her some time, that Patricia Bigge wouldn’t be so quick to phone Pam’s mother. So much for that plan.

  If only her crimes ended there. She’d broken curfew. Gone parking with a boy. A seventeen-year-old boy. A boy they say broke school windows the year before, took a joyride in a neighbor’s car.

  Her parents, they weren’t all bad. Most of the time. Especially her mom. Her dad, shit, even he wasn’t too bad, when he was home.

  Maybe Todd did get a lift to school. If he did have practice, and he was pressed for time, her mom might have given him one, then decided to go grocery shopping after. Or to the Howard Johnson’s for a coffee. She did that once in a while.

  First-period History was a write-off. Second-period Math was even worse. She couldn’t focus, her head still hurt. “How did you do on those questions, Cynthia?” the math teacher asked. She didn’t even look at him.

  Just before lunch, she saw Pam, who said, “Jesus, if you’re going to tell your mom you’re at my house, you wanna fucking let me know? Then maybe I could tell my mom something.”

  “Sorry,” Cynthia said. “Did she have a fit?”

  “When I came in,” Pam said.

  At lunch, Cynthia slipped out of the cafeteria, went to the school pay phone, dialed home. She’d tell her mother she was sorry. Really, really sorry. And then she’d ask to come home, say she felt sick. Her mother would look after h
er. She couldn’t stay mad at her if she was sick. She’d make soup.

  Cynthia gave up after fifteen rings, then thought maybe she’d dialed wrong. Tried again, no answer. She had no work number for her dad. He was on the road so much of the time, you had to wait for him to check in from wherever he was staying.

  She was hanging out in front of the school with some friends when Vince Fleming drove by in his Mustang. “Sorry about all that shit last night,” he said. “Jeez, your dad’s a prize.”

  “Yeah, well,” Cynthia said.

  “So what happened after you went home?” Vince asked. There was something in the way he asked, like he already knew. Cynthia shrugged and shook her head, didn’t want to talk about it.

  Vince asked, “Where’s your brother today?”

  Cynthia said, “What?”

  “He home sick?” Vince Fleming asked.

  Nobody’d seen Todd at school. Vince said he was going to ask him, quiet like, how much trouble Cynthia was in, whether she was grounded, because he was hoping she wanted to get together Friday night or Saturday, his friend Kyle was getting him some beer, they could go up to that spot, the one on the hill, maybe sit in the car awhile, look at stars, right?

  Cynthia ran home. Didn’t ask Vince for a ride, even though he was right there. Didn’t check in at the school office to tell them she was skipping off early. Ran the whole way, thinking, as she pumped her legs, Please let her car be there, Please let her car be there.

  But when she rounded the corner from Pumpkin Delight Road to Hickory, and her two-story house came into view, the yellow Escort, her mother’s car, was not there. But she shouted out her mother’s name anyway when she got inside with what little breath she had left. Then her brother’s.

  She started to tremble, then willed herself to stop.

  It made no sense. No matter how angry her parents might be at her, they wouldn’t do this, would they? Just leave? Take off without telling her? And take Todd with them?

  Cynthia felt stupid doing it, but rang the bell at the Jamison house next door. There was probably a simple explanation for all this, something she forgot, a dental appointment, something, and any second her mother would turn in to the driveway. Cynthia would feel like a total idiot, but that was okay.

  She started blathering when Mrs. Jamison opened the door. That when she woke up no one was home and then she went to school and Todd never showed up and her mom still wasn’t—

  Mrs. Jamison said whoa, everything’s okay, your mother’s probably out doing some shopping. Mrs. Jamison walked Cynthia back home, glanced down at the newspaper that still had not been taken in. Together they looked upstairs and down and in the garage again and out in the backyard.

  “That sure is odd,” Mrs. Jamison said. She didn’t quite know what to think, so, somewhat reluctantly, she called the Milford police.

  They sent around an officer, who didn’t seem all that concerned, at first. But soon there were more officers and more cars, and by evening there were cops all over the place. Cynthia heard them putting out descriptions of her parents’ two cars, calling Milford Hospital. Police were going up and down the street, knocking on doors, asking questions.

  “You’re sure they never mentioned anything about going anyplace?” asked a man who said he was a detective and didn’t wear a uniform like all the other police. Named Findley, or Finlay.

  Did he think she’d forget something like that? That she’d suddenly go, “Oh yeah, now I remember! They went to visit my mom’s sister, Aunt Tess!”

  “You see,” the detective said, “it doesn’t look like your mom and dad and brother packed to go away or anything. Their clothes are still here, there are suitcases in the basement.”

  There were a lot of questions. When did she last see her parents? When had she gone to bed? Who was this boy she was with? She tried to tell the detective everything, even admitted she and her parents had had a fight, although she’d left out how bad it was, that she’d gotten drunk, told them she wished they were dead.

  This detective seemed nice enough, but he wasn’t asking the questions Cynthia was wondering. Why would her mom and dad and brother just disappear? Where would they go? Why wouldn’t they take her with them?

  Suddenly, in a frenzy, she began to tear the kitchen apart. Lifting up and tossing placemats, moving the toaster, looking under the chairs, peering down into the crack between the stove and the wall, tears streaming down her face.

  “What is it, sweetheart?” the detective asked. “What are you doing?”

  “Where’s the note?” Cynthia asked, her eyes pleading. “There has to be a note. My mom never goes away without leaving a note.”

  ALSO BY LINWOOD BARCLAY

  Published by Bantam Books

  BAD MOVE

  BAD GUYS

  LONE WOLF

  AND COMING IN OCTOBER 2007, IN HARDCOVER FROM BANTAM BOOKS

  NO TIME FOR GOODBYE

  STONE RAIN

  A Bantam Book / May 2007

  Published by Bantam Dell

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2007 by Linwood Barclay

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  Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  www.bantamdell.com

  eISBN: 978-0-553-90366-9

  v3.0