by Brenda Novak
“You don’t know them?”
She squinted into the distance. “I met them once or twice, but they both left California not long after Grandma died. One settled in Idaho and the other in Kentucky.”
“Your dad’s from L.A., then?”
“Bakersfield, which isn’t too far away.”
“Do these uncles and cousins know Sam?”
“No. I mean, they might know she exists. But they don’t know her.”
“What happened to your father’s parents?”
She reached for her purse, found a pair of sunglasses and slid them on. He got the impression she felt better after that, as if they gave her a shield of some sort, a way to hide the emotions coursing through her. “His dad died in a hunting accident when he was small. His mother worked at the library and did her best to raise him and his brothers alone. She died fairly young, too, from a blood clot after gallbladder surgery. I was eight.”
“Were you close to her?”
The tenseness around Zoe’s mouth softened. “Very. She didn’t have a lot to offer us financially. But she loved me, and took me in whenever my dad got in trouble. It broke her heart to see what had become of her oldest son.”
They were less than a mile from the mobile home park. Zoe clasped her hands over her purse and Jonathan stopped questioning her about her background.
“It hasn’t changed much,” she said as they spotted the Mount Vernon sign, which was broken on one side and had fallen against the pole.
He pulled off the busy road, onto the rutted driveway. “How long’s the sign been like that?”
“Since I was here last.”
He eyed the dilapidated, rust-stained metal-sided homes and shook his head.
“What?” she prompted.
“I can’t imagine any child being raised here.”
“I wasn’t a child for long,” she murmured.
CHAPTER 13
“He obviously hasn’t been around for quite a while.” Zoe stood on the rickety landing of the mobile home where she’d grown up and gazed out at the untended land between the trailers—ground no one really claimed but folks in other places might call a yard. She’d already knocked but there’d been no answer, and the door was locked.
Jonathan had also donned a pair of sunglasses, which he’d retrieved from his luggage when they’d stepped into the bright sunshine. He looked exceptionally good in those glasses; his face, so lean and rugged, would’ve been right at home on a recruitment poster for the marines. How old was he, anyway? Her age? Younger?
Probably younger. She felt ancient.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“The weeds.” She waved at the spot where her father always parked his truck. “If my father had been here recently, they would’ve been smashed by his tires.”
“That’s one way to deal with weeding.” Jonathan removed his glasses and lifted a hand to block the glare as he peered through a window.
“Around here, it’s the only way.”
“I wonder if that would work for my yard.”
She checked under the mat for the key her father used to leave for her, but it was gone. “We’ll have to break in,” she said.
He lowered his voice. “You arrived at that conclusion pretty fast.”
“I didn’t come all the way down here for nothing.”
He grinned. “I like the way you think. Give me a second.”
He went around back and, a moment later, she heard a popping sound. There was some noise from inside the trailer, then the front door swung open. “Your wish is my command.”
The chain rattled above them as he waved her in. She glanced over her shoulder to see if anyone had noticed their actions. “Quick work.”
“I’ve seen bathroom stalls with stronger doors.”
The place was filled with the same secondhand furniture and threadbare carpet she remembered all too well, but it was tidier and actually cleaner. That came as a surprise. When she’d lived here, she’d been cook, housekeeper and maid. “He couldn’t have picked up after himself before?” she grumbled. Even when she’d come to stay for their Disneyland trip it’d been a mess.
Jonathan walked up behind her. “What’d you say?”
“Nothing.” Nothing important. Sarcasm was just her way of dealing with the nostalgia rushing over her like a giant tidal wave, carrying her into the past. And now that she was home, she was faced with a new fear, one she hadn’t allowed herself to feel so far. What if the father she pretended to hate wasn’t even alive anymore? What if he’d overdosed or run his truck off a cliff?
The last words they’d said to each other would be the last words she’d ever get to say to him….
She should’ve called him back and done what she could to mend the rift. But she’d been trying so hard to gain Anton’s approval, to be like him. Normal. Successful. A regular suburban parent. She could keep up that facade only by remaining as disdainful of her father’s weaknesses as Anton was.
But now she felt as if she didn’t know the person she’d become. Did she really want to be a carbon copy of Anton, or any of his family or friends? Most of them had no sympathy for the struggles people like the ones in this trailer park dealt with on a daily basis. Wasn’t she one of them?
“Hey.”
Blinking, Zoe shifted her attention to Jonathan. “Hmm?”
“If your father was hurt, or worse, you would’ve been notified.”
She smiled at his understanding. He was so vital, and supportive in a nonjudgmental way. Nothing like her fiancé. Somehow, Jonathan didn’t have to resort to absolutes and a regimented routine to compensate for—
Stop it! Why was she thinking such unkind thoughts about Anton? Because she blamed him for Sam’s being gone?
That wasn’t fair.
Somehow she’d always been able to cope. But she couldn’t cope with this….
Suddenly the obvious occurred to her. Although Ely had long since paid off the trailer, he didn’t own the piece of ground beneath it. He had to pay a monthly fee for the space; everyone in the park did. “Someone’s keeping up with the rent or there would’ve been notices on the door,” she said.
Jonathan flipped a switch and the light came on. “The utilities haven’t been turned off, either. Where does he get his mail? If we can find out the last time he picked it up, that might give us some answers.”
“It used to come through the slot next to the front door. But a few years ago, the post office put a bank of boxes out by the street. I saw them when I visited nearly two years ago.” With Sam. When they’d gone to Disneyland and had such a great time—until Ely went out afterward and came home stinking drunk, hollering about how he never got to see them anymore. She’d dragged Samantha out of bed and they’d left before dawn.
“We’ll have to check with the neighbors, see if someone’s collecting it for him,” he said.
Clinging to the hope that her fears, at least about her father, were unfounded, Zoe moved through the trailer. She saw what she’d seen on her last visit. Her room hadn’t changed since she’d left home, with her own baby, at seventeen. The white dresser with the missing knobs still hugged the closest wall and even had some of her old jewelry draped over the mirror. The poster of David Has-selhoff she’d tacked up at thirteen still covered the opposite wall. The stickers she’d affixed to the closet doors hadn’t been removed.
Now that she was an adult, it was difficult to believe she’d gotten pregnant a mere two years after her father bought her the pink “princess bedspread. Two years older than Sam was now.
“You did some fine decorating in here,” Jonathan said, his sunglasses now clipped to the neck of his T-shirt.
A faint smile curved her lips. “Thanks.”
He touched her elbow. “Are you coping with this?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, but fine was a relative term. She’d definitely been better.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
She was remembering the
day her father had bought her that bedspread. She’d wanted it so badly he’d spent the money even though it meant they’d probably go hungry the next week.
Maybe she’d been too hard on him…. “Nothing that will change the world.”
“No one’s all good or all bad, Zoe.”
“That’s unfortunate, isn’t it?” She took a deep breath. “It’d make life so much simpler if we could classify everyone into neat categories.”
“It’d certainly make police work easier.” He crossed the hall to peek into her father’s room, and this time she trailed after him. “Anything strike you as odd?” he asked.
“The beds are made.”
“That’s all?”
“It doesn’t smell like pot.”
“Your father’s drug of choice?”
“It’s cheaper than the rest, so…out of necessity, I suppose.”
“Makes sense.” He walked around the bed and stopped to pluck a photograph from the mirror. “This is you?”
Sure enough, it was her second-grade picture, the one in which she was missing her two front teeth. The edges of that photograph were tattered and torn—like almost everything else in the trailer. “Yes.”
“Maybe your father’s cleaned up his life,” Jonathan said.
Ely swore he had. When they’d been arguing about whether or not Sam could stay with him, he promised Zoe he’d been clean for months and would remain that way. Come on, Zoe. Trust me, just this once. Your old room’s ready. I bought those Pop-Tarts she likes. And I’ve got money. I been workin’.
She’d wanted to say yes, but she couldn’t. Sobriety was one promise he’d never been able to keep.
When Jonathan went back to the living room, she stayed put. She needed a moment alone. Especially when he pressed the button on her father’s answering machine and she heard her own voice echoing through the thin walls. “Dad? Dad, where are you? I need to talk to you. Please call me.” Beep. “Something’s happened, Dad. To Sam. Don’t be angry anymore. Pick up.” Beep. “Damn it, if you ever want to see me again, pick up the phone!” In the next message the anger was gone and there were tears in her voice. “Dad? Please. I need you.”
Zoe rubbed her temples to relieve the tension building into another headache. For the past few days she’d struggled to hold in the tears. Now she wanted to cry and couldn’t. “Where are you?” she muttered to her father’s room at large. “Why can’t you ever be around when I need you?”
A knock at the front door made her breath catch in her throat. Pivoting, she hurried to see who it was.
Jonathan held up a hand to forestall her as she emerged from the hall, and crossed the living room to answer it himself.
“Who’re you?” a female voice demanded. “Are you the one who called me early this morning?”
Zoe stepped into view and felt her jaw drop. “Sharon?”
“Zoe!” The fifty-something-year-old woman wore a bathrobe despite the midafternoon hour. “You’re lovelier than ever, missy. No wonder your dad’s so damn proud of you. But…what’re you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing. Last I heard, you’d moved to Mississippi to live with your oldest son.”
Sharon Thornton wasn’t dyeing her hair the same harsh black as before. Today, it was silvery gray. And while the lines in her face had deepened into harsh grooves, she seemed happier somehow. “I was there for eight long years. But the weather sucked—God, it’s humid in Mississippi. And it was too crowded in that house, if you ask me. The woman Danny married—” she shook her head “—she straightened me out, but I’m tellin’ ya, she was a real bitch.”
Zoe silently qualified Sharon’s statement with a “…straightened me out for now,” but couldn’t help laughing at the image of tough love her words created. “So you’re living in the park again?”
“Right next door.” She motioned to the beat-up red-and-white trailer a stone’s throw away, the one that had belonged to old man Montgomery.
“Sharon used to live in unit 10,” Zoe explained to Jon. “She babysat me every now and then.”
“When I was less stoned than her daddy was,” Sharon added in a rueful voice. “You poor kid. It’s a miracle you survived the two of us.”
Although she wasn’t the woman who’d gotten her father started on drugs, she hadn’t helped the problem. She’d used right along with him. But Zoe had always liked her.
“What brought you back to the old neighborhood?” she asked.
Her eyes flicked toward Jonathan and she pulled her robe tighter. “Your father didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“He asked me to come.”
“Are you two…seeing each other?”
Sharon blushed furiously. “I think he’d like that. But I won’t marry him until he pulls his life together. Now that I’ve climbed out of that black hole, I can’t let him or anyone else drag me back down.”
“Then you should’ve stayed away.” Zoe spoke before she could stop herself.
“I didn’t really have a choice. He totaled his truck a few months ago so he couldn’t work. He was hitting rock bottom when he called, and I couldn’t refuse him. At our age, it’s now or never, you know? Where would I be if my son’s bitch of a wife hadn’t slapped me into shape?”
Zoe had never heard bitch said with so much respect. “How long have you been sober?”
“A year and three months.”
At least she had a track record. “That’s great, Sharon.”
Her eyes sparkled with excitement as she angled her head toward Jonathan. “Is this Anton? Your dad told me you have a new man. Someone who has his own business, no less. Someone respectable.”
“No, not Anton.”
Her grin widened. “You’ve traded up already?”
Zoe felt herself flush. “This isn’t my boyfriend.”
“But I do have my own business. Does that count?” Jonathan put in.
She gave him the once-over. “Not as much as what you’ve got beneath those clothes.”
“Oh, God, don’t provoke her,” Zoe said.
“What do you mean?” Sharon retorted. “I’m just stating the obvious. What healthy young woman wouldn’t want a man like him in her bed?”
Zoe’s cheeks grew even hotter. “He’s a private investigator.” Who was also one of the handsomest men Zoe had ever seen, so she could understand why Sharon might be impressed, but she preferred to keep that opinion to herself.
Sharon’s flirtatious smile disappeared and her level of enthusiasm dropped by several chilly degrees. “So you are the one who called me.”
“Yes,” he said.
“What are you doing with a P.I.?” she asked, scowling at Zoe.
“Right now we’re looking for my dad. Can you tell us where he is?”
She didn’t respond.
“Sharon, this isn’t about him. Sam’s gone missing. That’s why I’m here.”
The ruddy color drained from her aging face. “Gone missing? What do you mean?”
“She was home sick from school, lying on a chaise in the backyard, and she just…disappeared.”
Sharon pressed a hand to her heart. “When?”
“On Monday.” Zoe was growing light-headed; she needed to eat. “You don’t think…I mean, I know my father’s been asking to see her—”
“No! He’d never take Sam without your permission, never scare you like that,” Sharon said.
“Have they been in communication?”
“No.”
“No calls? No letters?”
“No, he’s been in rehab, Zoe.”
She froze. “Since when?”
“Almost a month ago.”
“Then who’s paying the bills around here?”
Sharon didn’t answer immediately, which told Zoe it was exactly as she’d guessed. “You are, aren’t you?”
“For the time being….”
Zoe shook her head. “Oh, Sharon.”
“He’s not using me.”
>
“He’s been in rehab before. What makes you think this is going to be any different?”
“Because it is. He was having a tough time of it—I’ll be honest with you. Even after I got back, he kept relapsing and relapsing. But then I threatened to call you and report that he was back at it again, and that was all it took.”
“Why didn’t he try to tell me he was going into rehab?” she asked, using the wall to steady herself.
A flash of concern entered Jonathan’s eyes as he watched her try to shake off the dizziness, but she ignored it in favor of focusing on Sharon’s response.
“He was afraid you wouldn’t believe him. He said he needs to prove it to you. Says he owes you that much.” Tentative hope crept into her manner. “And, with summer on the way, I think he was hoping you’d relent and let Sam stay with him for a few days. He talks about both of you constantly.” She waved toward the kitchen. “He has a jug of cash that he’s been saving and he won’t touch it. Not for anything. ‘It’s for Sam’s trip to Disneyland,’ he tells me.”
Zoe couldn’t listen to any more. How many times had she been through this? “How do you know he’s still there?”
“I check up on him practically every day. And we write. He hasn’t broken one rule. Not one.” She smiled proudly. “More importantly, he hasn’t given up. I know that because they have visiting hours on Tuesdays. I went to visit him yesterday.”
“We have to call, just to be sure,” Zoe said.
Jonathan pulled his BlackBerry from his pocket, but Sharon stopped him. “They won’t give you any information, not unless they know who you are. Let me do it.”
She punched in the numbers—and they waited, hardly breathing at all. “It’s gonna kill him to hear about Sam,” she muttered.
Zoe snapped her fingers to get Sharon’s full attention. “If he’s there, don’t tell him.”
Sharon’s eyes latched onto hers. “How can you not tell him that his only grandchild is missing?”
“Like you said, at his age it’s now or never. He’s where he needs to be.” The dizziness intensified as she struggled to bear up under the confusing onslaught of emotions she felt about her father—gratitude for keeping her when her mother hadn’t, disappointment in his other choices, worry, disgust, love. It seemed that her relationship with Ely was filled with extremes. “If we tell him about Sam…”
