Summer by the River

by Debbie Burns

  There were no pictures on the walls or accessories anywhere apart from a giant map of the United States on one wall. An assortment of pushpins dotted it, from the West moving eastward. A giant pile of newspapers rested in several stacks in one corner of the room.

  Carter stared at the map for a long time, nausea flooding him. He’d written a few articles on missing people over the years, but he’d never really imagined what it would be like to walk in the shoes of someone who’d been left behind.

  After Sam finished tossing in enough clothes to fill a backpack, he walked over to stand next to Carter in front of the map. “The red ones are towns where I felt like I’d searched long enough to move on. The white ones are still active—were still active, I guess.”

  “You’ve been to all these towns? There are over a hundred pins here.”

  “Yeah, they were short trips. I worked a few towns at a time, and I’ve moved around a lot. I’d put up signs and place ads in local papers. Will you tell me what town she’s in now?”

  Having seen this, Carter couldn’t keep it from him. Clearing his throat, he pointed out Galena. A few white push pins came within a hundred miles of the town. Sam pulled a lone thumbtack from the top border of the map; it was gold and larger than the others. He pressed it in, nodding to himself.

  “I knew I’d find her eventually. I couldn’t see another way. I almost gave up a few times since the only calls or emails I ever get are from freaks fascinated with girls who are presumed lost to the world of sex trade or from the Bible thumpers who want me to know they’re praying for her. I was bracing myself for you being one of the former.” He placed the flat of his hand on the edge of the map as if to steady himself. “When I could tell that you’d seen her, my mind went to the worst place it could go.”

  Carter dragged a hand over his mouth, taking in the complexity of Sam’s search. The kid had done so much more than host a website. “I’m sorry. I was protecting Josie until I knew who you were and why you were looking for her.”

  “Look, do you have a picture or something? Because a part of me thinks maybe I’m going crazy, and none of this shit’s happening.”

  “I have a few.” Carter pulled out his phone and began flipping through his pictures. Josie wasn’t big on pictures, but she’d let him take a string of them when they were carving pumpkins with Zoe and a few other ones just because. He offered his phone to Sam. “You can scroll through. I’ll use your bathroom before we get moving.”

  He lingered in the bathroom, gripping the sink to collect himself. When he returned, Sam was on the couch holding his head in his hands. His tears were perfectly silent, but they were streaming down to his chin and dripping onto his jeans. If it wasn’t for the controlled shaking in his shoulders, it would’ve been easy to miss that he was crying.

  Carter took a seat at a respectful distance and closed a hand over Sam’s shoulder. “It’s going to be better now. For both of you. It has to be.”

  * * *

  Sharp claws digging into his thigh pulled Carter out of a doze. He brushed his thumb and forefinger across his eyes as memory rushed in. He was reclined in the passenger seat of his car. He attempted to sit up but doing so sent a stab of pain racing from the side of his throat outward.

  The claws belonged to the giant creamy-orange tabby cat of Sam’s. After explaining that the cat was a nearly feral mouser he’d found dozing on the hood of his car one day and had brought inside for a meal and ever since had been coming and going out his second-floor fire-escape window, Sam had been ready to turn the animal back out on the streets.

  But when Sam had set him down, the giant cat had walked back and forth between them, rubbing against their legs, and Carter had ushered him into the car. He crossed his fingers that Myra would be okay while they figured out the cat-and-two-dogs-in-one-house issue.

  He cleared his throat carefully as he extracted the big cat’s claws. The animal was purring as loud as a percussion band. As calm as the cat was, when they stopped for a pee break, hopefully they could offer him the same thing on a patch of grass.

  “How long was I asleep?”

  “A couple hours.”

  “That explains why it’s dark.” From what Carter could tell, they were still traveling north on I-55. A glance at the dashboard showed it was six o’clock, yet it felt like the middle of the night. But then again, with the little sleep he’d gotten the night before and how early the sun was setting, his body had the right to a bit of confusion.

  “How’s your neck?”

  “So-so. The numbing shot wore off. So did that Advil.”

  “We should’ve stuck around to pick up your prescription.”

  “I’m not big on prescription pain meds.”

  Sam huffed. “I’ve known enough addicts to see why. Myself included.”

  Carter looked at him but stayed quiet.

  “No worries; I’ve been clean in this life. Not that it’s been easy.”

  “In this life?”

  “If you’d been dead for seventeen minutes, you’d understand.”

  Carter tipped his head. “Point taken.”

  “Sorry I pulled a blade on you.”

  “Do you always carry around a switchblade big enough to carve up a deer?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Is someone after you?”

  “I can’t say for sure, but it doesn’t hurt to be careful.”

  “You never finished your story. What happened after you were shot?”

  “I woke up in the hospital a couple days later. The Feds were hanging around. After all that went down, I’d become a person of interest. For me, it was nark or go to prison. I’m not one to rat someone else out, but they promised to help me find my sister. Promised to get us into a relocation program. Josie was on the run, but they told me they had a lead. So, Sam Pictures was officially pronounced dead, and the information I gave helped them bring down several dealers from a couple different gangs. I heard they got about a mill in the drugs they confiscated, and five or six dealers went to jail.”

  “But they didn’t have her?”

  “No, their lead ran cold. I was transferred to a hospital in Seattle for another month. I had taken three hits, all in the chest. I was pretty drugged up most of the time, but there was this one agent I trusted. She promised they were doing their best, and mostly I believed her.” Sam regripped his hands around the steering wheel and shook his head. “Josie ran with nothing. Not a purse or phone, her ID. Anything—just a kid she didn’t know from squat. One credible witness put her in Vegas. Another put her in San Francisco. If either were true, even for a short time, I knew it wouldn’t stay that way. My gut said she’d stick to small towns and stay out of big cities. She’d been ready to get out of LA most of our lives. If I hadn’t screwed up so bad, she’d have gotten us out sooner. She had scholarships to three different universities. She was brilliant like my mom, only she was always so much better at keeping her act together.”

  “Then she hasn’t changed much.”

  “You seriously have no idea. We were dropped in foster care for five or six months when we were kids, but we weren’t placed together. The people I was with—I can say it now. They fucked me up bad. When we got back with our mom, Josie was hell-bent on us never getting separated again. I’m bad with time; she was eight, maybe nine. She picked up all our messes so it looked like my mom was doing her job when Social Services same by, and whenever my mom got drunk or OD’d and it looked like she was going to haul off and start hitting us, Josie would get us out long enough to make sure my mom wouldn’t leave marks that would arouse suspicion and have some do-gooder pulling us away from each other again.”

  “At eight years old?” That was just a little older than Zoe; Carter’s heart twisted to think Josie’s childhood innocence had been lost so young.

  “It’s true. Every word. My sister saved my ass a tho
usand times if she saved it once. By the time she was eleven, she was figuring out which bills needed to be paid when so as not to have the electric shut off. She kept me from failing out of school and made sure we had clean clothes to put on in the morning.”

  “That all sounds like Josie.”

  It wasn’t until Sam flew past a car in the slow lane that Carter glanced over at the speedometer. “Hey, did you notice you’re driving about a hundred and five? Mind keeping it closer to eighty-five? Or ninety, tops. They arrest you at this speed, rather than hand you a ticket, and I’ve got an unregistered gun in the trunk.”

  Sam cocked an eyebrow as he eased up on the gas. “You don’t seem like a gun-in-the-trunk type, but it’s your car. And a nice one too. I can’t believe you only have a few thousand miles on it.”

  “I haven’t had it long. When I was in New York, I shared a car with my ex-fiancée, a BMW, which she took after we split.”

  “So, you and my sister, you’re a couple, aren’t you? I could tell by the way she was looking into your camera when you took those pictures.”

  “Yeah, we are.”

  “Judging by the miles on your odometer and the highway miles you’ve had to have put on it if you drove from New York to Galena and now St. Louis, I’m guessing you’re pretty fresh on the heels of that split, huh?”

  Carter chuckled carefully, trying not to jar his wound. “We separated in June. I got this car in July, and I met your sister in August.”

  “You got any kids?”

  “No, not yet, but there’s a little girl who I’ve come to love like one.”

  “Zoe?”

  “Yes, though your arrival makes that a little more complicated.”

  Sam shot him a glance. “Why? Does she think Josie’s her real mom or something?”

  When Carter didn’t answer, Sam said, “Huh.” A few seconds later, he added, “Kinda makes me showing up and telling everybody I’m the kid’s dad a bit awkward, huh?”

  “It might make it a little more than awkward.”

  “Well, you can relax. I’m twenty-four years old, and I’ve been told since I was four that I’m immature for my age. I’m not looking to take on the role of a dad, and the only thing I’d do is disappoint the kid if I tried. You don’t even know. I can’t take care of a cat, man. I remember to feed him two or three times a week, but the rest of the time, he goes in and out of my bedroom window to hunt. Considering he was feral and smelled like a trash can when I found him, I don’t hear him complaining.”

  The giant of a cat was still stretched atop Carter’s thighs, making himself at home. Why he wasn’t interested in the empty back seat, Carter didn’t know. He was just thankful the cat didn’t have the typical car-ride hysteria most cats seemed to have.

  “What about Zoe’s other family? Grandparents or family on her birth mother’s side?”

  “Jena was a foster kid. Pretty sure her parents are dead. Or in jail. All she had was her brother, and he’s in jail for life. Killed three people.”

  “Damn.”

  “Not all parts of LA are Disneyland, I’ll tell you that.” Sam readjusted his speed a second time, slowing the car to eighty-five. “It feels like it’s crawling at this speed, man,” he complained. “So, what about you? You’re dating my sister, which makes it fair game for me to hit you up with some questions. Number one, what kind of guy are you? Got any fetishes or addictions? And why’d your fiancée leave you? And are you really a writer or was that bullshit?”

  “Ah, let’s see,” Carter said, grinning with amusement. “I’d like to think I’m a decent guy. I don’t have any fetishes or addictions, other than the fact that I gave up smoking for the second time not that long ago. My fiancée left me because, after years of failing to make it work, she found someone better. At least, she thought she did. They’ve since broken it off. And yeah, I make my living stringing words together, so I guess that makes me a writer.”

  When he stopped talking, his neck was burning something fierce. He cleared his throat and pressed his fingers gently around the six-inch bandage covering the left side of his neck.

  “Last question. You got a temper? Because if you ever hit my sister or that adorable little girl she was holding in her lap in those pictures, I’d have to kick your ass.”

  “I haven’t been in a fight since I was nineteen. Until today, I guess. And I’d never hit a woman or a child. Ever. If it makes you feel any better, I’m willing to bet I love your sister and Zoe as much as anyone is capable of doing so.”

  Sam pursed his lips. “How’d you meet anyway, with you being from New York and all?”

  “It’s a long story, but the short of it is one day I showed up at her door kind of like this cat of yours did.”

  Chapter 32

  Outside the kitchen window, a few stray snowflakes danced about, whipped by the wind, reminding Myra that the tea garden would soon be closing for the winter. The propane heaters and fire pits could only extend the season so long. Once it closed for diners for four months, they would be selling loose-leaf tea in bulk and quiche, scones, pies, and cakes by special order.

  With Josie upstairs readying Zoe for bed and out of earshot, Myra picked up the landline and dialed Carter’s number.

  “Well, you’re alive at least,” she said when he answered on the fourth ring. “I was beginning to wonder.”

  “I’m sorry. I should’ve checked in again.” Maybe it was his connection, but his voice sounded weak. “It’s been a bit of a blur since noon.”

  “A nine-hour blur. That must have been an informative meeting.”

  “More than I think any of us could have imagined. But it’s good news. Phenomenal news. Where’s Josie?”

  “Upstairs getting Zoe into bed. What is it you found?”

  “Can you wait ten more minutes? I’m almost home.”

  A rush of relief swept over Myra. He was safe, his meeting had gone well, he’d be here to answer Josie’s questions. And he’d called this place home. “That’ll make Zoe happy to be able to say good night.”

  “Just do me a favor and see if you can have Josie sitting down when I come in. She’s in for a bit of a surprise.”

  Alarm coursed through Myra’s veins. “What is it you’re up to?”

  “It’s going to be good. Trust me, Myra.”

  She hung up and sank into a seat at the table. “Dear God, Carter. I hope your judgment is as strong as the faith I have in you.”

  She was still collecting herself when she heard Zoe’s tiny feet pattering down the hallway. “I’m all ready for bed,” Zoe said as she pushed open the swinging door wearing her s’mores nightgown and her hair still damp. “Can you help tuck me in, Myra?”

  Buttercup was behind her, wagging his bushy tail. Tidbit, who’d just settled on the floor around Myra’s feet, let out a single bark as if in reminder that he was the dominant animal in the house, even though Buttercup never paid him much notice.

  “Of course, but can you do me a favor and ask your mom to come downstairs first?”

  Zoe disappeared in a flash, returning a few minutes later with Josie behind her and Buttercup at her heels.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine. I was just wondering if you’d freshen my tea and sit with me a minute?”

  Josie frowned skeptically as Myra swept Zoe’s still-damp hair off her shoulders. “Carter’s almost home,” she offered in explanation. “He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  Zoe dashed out of the kitchen to the back door.

  “Not yet, child. Come sit a few minutes. I didn’t hear about school today.”

  “I told you at dinner,” Zoe said, coming back into the room.

  “That’s right. Did you have outdoor recess?” she asked in hopes of holding off some of Josie’s questions a bit longer.

  After heating Myra’s cup of chamomil
e tea, Josie sank into a seat at the end of the table. She waited until Zoe finished talking about the game of “Everyone’s It” to start asking Myra about some of the things that were no doubt racing through her mind. “I thought he wouldn’t be here till tomorrow. Did he say why he changed his mind?”

  “Thanks for the tea. And no, he didn’t, but I expect he didn’t want to spend the night away if he didn’t have to.”

  “I can tell you’re hiding something,” Josie whispered to Myra as Zoe clamped both her hands around Buttercup’s fluffy ears, and he swiped his giant tongue across her face.

  “I know,” Myra admitted, “so it’s best not to talk.”

  Josie frowned. “I hate being kept in the dark.”

  “So, sit here in the light, and in a few minutes, all our questions will be answered.”

  Unwilling to accommodate her, Josie walked over to the sink and looked out the back window.

  Seeing her mother’s actions, Zoe dashed out of the room to the back door again. “He’s here. He’s here!” She shoved out the screen door and onto the brick patio in her bare feet, allowing Buttercup to run out ahead of her.

  “Josie, he wanted you sitting,” Myra instructed as Josie headed after her.

  Josie shot her a sharp look and headed to the back door. As Myra stood up to follow her, Josie reprimanded Zoe for running out of the house barefoot.

  Rather than follow her out, Josie stopped in the doorway, watching through the screen door as Zoe threw open the back gate and ran to the edge of the car pad by the garage. Snowflakes were dancing all around as the Mustang pulled in. “Zoe, give him some space to park,” she called.

  The engine fell silent, but the headlights remained on, keeping the inside blanketed in darkness.

  Then Buttercup, who was standing next to Zoe, let out a long, low growl just as Zoe looked back at the house. “Where’s Carter, Mom?”

  The driver’s door opened, and the interior light came on, revealing that there were two passengers inside rather than one. Myra clutched at the door frame. “Josie, get inside. I’ll get Zoe.”