“You saved me,” she whispered.
He swallowed hard, forcing his throat muscles to move. “I didn’t know what happened to you. He—he grabbed me before that lady reached you. That’s what I remember, anyway. I was trying to shush you, but you kept crying, and that woman was coming closer, and I was going to grab the cradle and run but he caught up with me and dragged me away.”
He felt the memory like a physical wave of nausea traveling through his body.
“That was my mother. I mean, the woman I thought was my mother. Amanda Rockwell.”
“She was…good?”
“Yes. She was wonderful. I couldn’t imagine a better mother.”
“Good. That’s good. I—didn’t know.” He hauled in a breath that nearly made his chest crack. The baby.
When the police had first found him, after he’d escaped the crazy man, he’d told them about the baby. But when they found no evidence of a baby, they decided he was just confused. And then he stopped talking. After a time, he’d forgotten her. Mostly.
“I felt so guilty for leaving you.”
“Guilty? That’s ridiculous. I don’t know everything that happened, but I know that you saved me.” The certainty in her voice made him swallow hard. “What else do you remember?”
She reached for his hand. He allowed her to take it, mostly because he was too numb to resist. This was so insane. He’d never thought he’d see that little baby again. He’d stopped thinking about her, even at the margins of his mind. He never even talked to his therapist about her; that’s how deep the memory, and the guilt, was buried.
She drew him inside the cabin and urged him onto the bench seat. “You look shell-shocked. I’m sorry to spring this on you like this. I’ve had time to get used to it, but you haven’t. How about some tea? Water? Rum?”
He held up a hand. “I’m good. No liquids. Nothing wet. So you came here to…what, figure out if it was me in the woods with you?”
“Yes, but also, I’m trying to find out who I really am. Who my parents were, or are. Maybe they’re alive. I don’t know anything.” Her hopeful gaze fixed on his face, as if he could deliver all her answers in one swoop.
His heart dropped. He didn’t want to disappoint her, but he had to. “I don’t know who you are. I never did.”
Her face crumpled; it almost broke his heart to watch. “What do you mean? We were together, in the woods. And there was a car. I remember a car! And a bad guy.”
“Yes. All of that is true. You remembered right. At least, it matches what I remember. But I was only six, so my memories are all mixed up. I can’t say much for sure.”
She twisted her hands together. “Can you…maybe just tell me everything that you do remember?”
He forced breath into his lungs, long and deep, the way therapists had coached him over the years. Of all the things he’d expected to happen tonight, recounting the worst experience of his life wasn’t anywhere on the list.
But this wasn’t for him; this was for that tiny, delicate baby who’d depended on him totally and utterly for one night.
“I was with my parents at a gas station. My dad was filling up the tank, and I went with my mom to the restroom. After I was done, I was supposed to go right back to my dad. But when I passed a car at another gas pump, I heard this weird noise, so I went closer. It was a fancy car, I knew that much, the kind my father drooled over in magazines.
“Then I saw you—well, I saw a baby in the back seat. The baby was kicking its feet so its cradle made the noise I’d heard. I remember thinking what a weird car seat it was compared to the ones I’d seen. No plastic, like a wizard had made it. As soon as the baby—you—saw me, you gave me this pitiful look, like you were asking me for something. I didn’t know what, but then I saw that your pacifier had fallen out of your mouth onto the seat next to you.”
She was looking at him as if she wanted to inject his story right into her veins. He had to get this right, tell it exactly as he remembered. He owed her that.
“I looked around, but my dad was talking to someone at another gas pump, and no one was in the driver’s seat or anywhere near the car. I figured maybe the baby’s parents were buying snacks or something. So I decided to be a ninja and opened the door really quietly and reached in for the pacifier. I couldn’t quite get it, though, so I half-crawled onto the backseat. One foot was still on the ground outside…but then all of a sudden, it wasn’t. Someone pushed me all the way inside and closed the door behind me.”
“Oh my God.” She breathed the words in the barest whisper of a voice, as if she felt every bit of the horror he’d experienced at the time. “What did you do then?”
“I yelled. But expensive cars like that have really good soundproofing, and no one heard me. The next thing was that a man got into the driver’s seat and drove us away. I was so terrified, I was shouting and punching at his head and neck from behind. The baby started crying. I don’t remember what happened next, I think he must have done something to knock me out.”
“Oh, Mark.”
Doggedly, he continued. “The next thing I remember was waking up on a very dark road with lots of tall trees all around us. I had no idea where we were. It felt like another country because I wasn’t used to thick forests like that. There were hardly any other cars, which was also very different. I was so scared, I was shaking. The man noticed that I was awake and handed me a bottle and told me to take care of the baby. So I fed you for a while.”
“You sang to me,” Gracie said suddenly. “I just remembered.”
“Well, it wasn’t really a song. I couldn’t think of the words to any songs, I was so terrified. I think I used some random tune and just jammed some words in. I didn’t know your name, so I made one up.”
“What was it?”
He shot her an embarrassed smile. “PoopyPants. You were kind of smelly.”
Her eyes went wide, and her entire face turned pink. She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh my God. Did you change my diaper?”
“Not that I remember. Of course, I could have blocked it out.”
She closed her eyes and shook off the moment. “Well, if you did, feel free to continue blocking it out. Go on. What happened next?”
“I fed you with the bottle, and you calmed down. I told the man that he was going to be in big trouble because my parents were going to be looking for me. He started ranting about all the evil in the world, and how he deserved his golden ticket, and no one understood him and all this stuff, and I realized that he was crazy. Like, he wasn’t in his right mind. So I stopped talking and just stayed quiet. Every time you cried, I’d sing to you again, except it was just babbling. ‘We’re gonna be fine, I’ll take care of you,’ that sort of thing.”
“I remember that I trusted you.” Gracie rested her elbow on the table, her head on her hand. The hurricane lamp made her light hair glow like a halo.
“I doubt that. You were a newborn.”
“I know it seems weird that I would remember anything, but I do. Just images and impressions, but they’re pretty vivid. Actually, I didn’t remember anything until recently, and it’s because of the bassinet. We brought it out of storage for a visiting baby, and as soon as I touched it—” She shivered. “That’s when things came back to me. So how did we end up in the woods? That’s the part that’s clearest in my mind.”
“He stopped to take a piss. Before he got out of the car, he checked on us. You were asleep, and I pretended to be asleep. As soon as he was off the side of the road, in the trees, I opened the other door and slipped out. I grabbed you and that cradle, which was a lot heavier than I thought it would be. I had to unbuckle it from the seat, and then I nearly toppled you onto the road. God, I haven’t thought about this in years. Can’t believe I remember it.”
She nodded eagerly. “I’m so glad you do. You have no idea how much this means to me. Go on.”
“I got us out of the car and tiptoed across to the woods on the other side. I remember that the forest looked r
eally dark and thick and scary from the outside, from the highway, but as soon as we were inside it, I felt safe. I could see enough from the moonlight so I didn’t run into any trees. I just kept going. I wanted to get as far away from that man as possible.”
“Didn’t you worry that getting lost in the woods would be even worse?”
“No. There was something about the man that was just…off. I knew he was dangerous. I knew we had to get out of there. Now that I’m an adult, I guess I can look back and think, wow, that was nuts. We could have gotten eaten by a mountain lion or something. But at the age of six, I didn’t even know about mountain lions. We lived in the suburbs. I was a lot more savvy about stranger danger than the wilderness.”
Gracie adjusted her position on the bench seat, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around her legs. Only someone small could manage that, and he thought of the tiny figure in that bassinet, and how she’d tugged at his heart.
As if she sensed the direction of his thoughts, Gracie asked softly, “Why didn’t you just leave me behind?”
He cocked his head at her, not understanding the question at first. “In the car?”
“Yes. You weren’t even supposed to be there. You wouldn’t have been if not for my pacifier. And that bassinet ain’t light. I’ve carried it myself. It would have been a lot easier to escape on your own.”
He tried to conjure up his state of mind from that night. “I don’t think I ever thought about that,” he said slowly. “We were in it together, and you were completely helpless. Of course I couldn’t leave you.” He smiled wryly. “Also, you were very cute, even though you stank.”
She looked at him very seriously. “You’re a hero.”
“Stop that.”
“I mean it. You saved my life, and all because of a pacifier. Want to know something crazy?”
“What?”
“I still have it.” She hopped to her feet and dashed to her backpack, which she’d apparently packed for a quick getaway, since clothes were spilling out the top flap. In a side pocket, she rummaged around until she pulled out an ancient pink pacifier with white daisies printed on the plastic rim. “I found it in the bassinet.”
“Ho-ly shit.” He opened his hand, and she placed it on his palm, then perched on the tabletop. “Those daisies. I remember those. This is it…this is the fateful pacifier. It’s all real. That was you. Jesus!”
They stared at each other for a moment, the full significance of the reunion sinking in.
“Hi,” he said softly. “Long time, no see, PoopyPants.”
She laughed once, a surprised hoot, then again. After that came a gale of giggles as she totally lost it. He followed suit, and the two of them laughed until they held their sides from the ache of it.
“I just realized something,” he finally said, still wheezing. “This whole conversation, I’ve been wearing nothing but a towel.”
That sent them into more howls of laughter. She bent over, head between her knees, gasping for breath.
“Wait…” she managed, waving her hands around. “Why are we laughing about the worst thing that ever happened to us?”
And that set them off again. It gave him an actual head rush. Laughing about something that had haunted him for so long, it was surreal and crazy and absurd and yet—exactly what he needed.
Eventually their laughter died down and the seriousness of it all set in again. They sat in stillness for a moment. He became aware of the lap of waves against the Buttercup’s hull, the familiar creaking of the planks. A sense of complete harmony came over him, as if, for the first time in a very long time, he was exactly where he was meant to be.
“I think I can piece together what happened after that,” she said softly. “We stopped to rest, and that’s when Amanda came through on one of her early-morning walks. I remember that I heard her singing, and all I wanted was to be close to the person making that amazing sound. I cried. You tried to shush me, and I wanted you to know that it was going to be fine, but of course I had no words. And then you were gone. That’s when the man caught up with us?”
His throat clogged, as if the same thing was happening to him again—mouth covered, unable to cry out. He nodded, then finally got his words moving again. “I’d put you down, I remember that. My arms were tired. We heard the singing. It’s pretty blurry, all I remember is the man dragging me back into the woods and his hand over my mouth. We watched from the trees while that woman found you. I was so scared I could hardly breathe, but I remember trying to stomp on his foot and missing. The woman pulled out a walkie-talkie, and as soon as the man saw that, he hauled me back to the car. He kept saying how I owed him because his golden ticket was gone.”
“Golden ticket?”
“I guess that was you. He talked about that a lot for the next three weeks. That’s how long I was with him. Golden ticket, golden ticket. I didn’t know what it meant, but whatever it was, I didn’t fit the bill. He didn’t really want me, I wasn’t much use to him. It turned out that he was a metalwork artist, and he made me run errands and clean up and stuff like that. The worst part was that he was off his rocker. And—”
He cut himself off, not wanting to relive too much of the experience.
Suffocating fear—that was what he remembered the most. Never knowing when the man would rant and rave or when he would go into a morose silence, hunched over his work-in-progress.
“How did you escape from him?”
“He lived out in the country and only drove into town for groceries. He never let me come, but I eventually stowed away in the trunk of the car. Not the car that he stole—he sold that one. Anyway, I crawled out and ran toward the first person with a badge that I saw. It was a meter maid writing someone a ticket. That’s how I was rescued.”
“That’s an amazing story.” From her perch on the table, she peered down at him. “You were incredibly brave and resourceful.”
He swallowed hard. The one thing he couldn’t tolerate was compliments about what had happened. The entire thing was his fault from the very beginning. “No. I was scared nonstop, the entire time. And Gracie…” He hesitated before he shared this next part. “I tried to tell people about you. The police, my parents. But I guess I didn’t make any sense. No one really believed me about the baby. They thought I was making you up to explain why I got into a stranger’s car.”
She came off the table and curled up next to him, her hand on his arm. “It’s okay. Why do you sound so upset?”
“Because I let it go. I started to think that maybe they were right, and I’d imagined you. But I always had this guilty feeling, like I should have done more.” He rubbed the heel of his hand into his forehead. Damn, talking about this stuff always did a number on him. He desperately needed to get some sleep.
“Mark…” Gracie wrapped both her arms around him and rested her cheek against his shoulder. “Please, I beg you, stop feeling guilty. I was so lucky that Amanda Rockwell found me, and that wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t carried me into the woods. I had a beautiful childhood, and I owe that to you. Please, for me, your old pal PoopyPants, will you promise to stop beating yourself up?”
Her hair brushed against his chin, softer than goose down. Her cheek was warm against his shoulder, soft and fresh and smooth. A sweet sensation flooded through him…and suddenly he felt like he could sleep forever.
“I hope Amanda changed your diaper right way,” he said out of nowhere.
“I’m sure she did. So you can cross that worry off your list.” The little maritime clock that sat in gimbals on the shelf dinged the hour—four o’clock. In the morning.
Good Lord, what an epic day.
“You need to sleep. Take the bed. Please.” Gracie jumped to her feet and took him by the hand, tugging him upright. He swayed on his feet. How long ago had he downed those shots of tequila? How long ago had Sophie dumped him? It felt like a lifetime.
He staggered toward the bed and dove into it. God, that felt good. Under the covers—s
o he didn’t flash Gracie—he ripped the towel off his body and tossed it to the floor. He pounded the pillow into the shape he preferred, then caught sight of Gracie dragging her sleeping bag off the bed.
“Plenty of room in here,” he told her. “I promise I won’t touch you.”
A funny expression crossed her face, but she nodded, then yawned hugely. “Only because I’m so sleepy I might not make it to the guest berth.”
Still in her sleep clothes—pajama pants and a hoodie—she slipped under the covers.
“Sorry I’m naked, all my clothes are wet,” he murmured. Then darkness rushed toward him, and he was out.
14
Even though she was so exhausted her eyes kept crossing, Gracie had a hard time drifting off to sleep. Not only did Mark’s story give her a lot to think about, but his naked body did, too. She felt the heat of his body, like a living firelog in the bed next to her. She kept as much distance as possible between them, clinging to the farthest edge of the bed.
It didn’t help. She was still acutely, exquisitely aware of Mark, his deep, even breaths, the occasional twitch of a muscle or stretch of a leg. This beautiful, magnetic man was in bed with her.
Okay, not in bed with her in the traditional, sexual sense. But most definitely in bed. Next to her. He’d promised not to touch her, which was the proper, gentlemanly thing to do. But it wasn’t at all what she wanted. Every second she’d spent listening to his story was burned into her brain—not just the words, but his expressions. His fear, his protectiveness, his daring. His caring.
She’d had a crush on him before, but now that she knew more of the details of how he’d saved her? Forget about it. How was she ever going to get rid of this crush now? Who could ever come close to that kind of heroic act—a six-year-old saving a baby? Someone he didn’t even know?
That was the best part—he wasn’t related to her! Her gut feeling had been right, thank God. Maybe she hadn’t lost her touch after all. That was a relief.
On the other hand, there was the disappointment of finding out that Mark didn’t know who she really was.
The Runaway Page 10