Lover's Lane

by Jill Marie Landis

  She laid the picture on the bed, flipped on the closet light and then pulled out her long black duffel bag lying on the floor behind her shoes.

  With Matt staying over, they couldn’t leave until tomorrow, but the delay would give her more time to plan. Betty Ford would get them out of state, then she’d sell the wagon and buy bus tickets to somewhere far away. Maybe Canada. Definitely not Mexico. She could pack the car in the middle of the night, when the boys were asleep and Etta wasn’t on patrol.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at the sagging duffel, thinking about what Geoff just said.

  Don’t let this ruin everything that’s good in your life.

  The life she’d made out of nothing. The home she’d established for Chris. She’d done her best. She was a good . . .

  “Mom?”

  Both boys and Beauty were framed in the doorway. Chris stared at her duffel. “Are we going someplace?”

  The corner of her mouth quivered when she tried to smile.

  “I thought it would be fun for us to go on vacation.”

  “Can Matt go?”

  “No, he can’t, honey. It’s just going to be the two of us. Just you and me.”

  The way it had always been. The way she should have left it when Jake Montgomery came along. She’d been an idiot to think she could let someone into her life without paying a terrible price.

  “We won’t be leaving until we drop Matt off at home tomorrow,” she explained.

  “How long are we gonna be gone?” Chris crossed his arms over his chest and frowned as he looked from her to the duffel and back.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe two weeks.” She tried to keep her voice light, her smile pasted on, but the words left a bad taste in her mouth.

  “Wednesday’s hot dog day in the cafeteria.”

  “We’ll buy hot dogs on the road.” Mentally she tallied the emergency money she had hidden in a zip lock bag in the toilet tank. It would have to last until she found another town, another job.

  “But, Mom I’ll miss T-ball . . .”

  “Yeah, T-ball,” Matt echoed, looking glum.

  Christopher’s eyes were huge with disbelief. He’d never seen her like this, and she could tell she was frightening him. Gently she put her hands on his shoulders.

  “Maybe we should drive to the Grand Canyon before school is out. There won’t be very many tourists there yet. Don’t you think that would be fun?”

  Chris shrugged, unconvinced. “Maybe. What about Beauty?”

  Beauty. They don’t sell bus tickets to dogs.

  “Oh, we’ll take her along, of course.” She was amazed at how steady her voice sounded. Beauty was a complication, but having her along might help Christopher adjust. She’d find a way to work things out. She always did.

  “Shouldn’t we tell Jake good-bye? And Grandma?”

  “We’ll leave them both a nice note. Now, why don’t you two go back and play with Matt’s Game Boy and I’ll warm up dinner, okay?”

  “Okay.” Chris dragged his feet. Matt and Beauty took off ahead of him down the hall.

  She closed her eyes.

  This won’t work.

  Not again.

  She sat down on the bed, suddenly deflated, empty as a popped party balloon.

  She wasn’t fifteen anymore. She wasn’t nineteen with an infant who only needed a full diaper bag and regular feedings. She had a home and a job and a life here in Twilight, and most of all, she had Christopher, who had a life of his own.

  She took a deep breath and stood up. No matter what the outcome might be, she would stay and fight for what was hers, what was right. The running was over.

  Before she could put the duffel back in the closet, someone knocked on the front door. She wondered if she’d ever have a moment’s peace as she headed down the hall.

  Halfway to the living room she heard Chris say, “Hey, Jake. Come on in. Guess what? We’re going on a vacation, but I’d rather stay home for hot dog day.”

  Carly stepped into the room. “Chris, you and Matt go back to your room and take Beauty with you.”

  She waited until they were gone before she turned on Jake.

  “I thought I made it clear that I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “A vacation?” He leaned back against the door, crossed his arms, and shook his head.

  She watched his gaze dart around the living room.

  “What’s wrong with making vacation plans? The petition hearing isn’t going to drag out forever, you know. When it’s over, Chris and I will need some time away.” Her insides were fluttering as she walked into the kitchen and filled the tea kettle with water. Anything to keep moving, to distract him, to keep Jake from reading her mind.

  “How do you plan on disappearing this time? You haven’t got any aliases left, or have you?”

  She slammed the kettle on the burner harder than she intended. “What I’ve got is none of your concern. Besides, if I want to move, that’s my business, not yours.”

  “What about Chris? Will he thank you for it when he grows up?”

  She lowered her voice. “You saw Anna today. Now that she’s met Christopher, do you really think she’ll change her mind? I can’t wait around and just roll over and play dead.”

  She lifted a plastic canister of assorted flavored teas out of the cupboard, pulled one out without even looking at the packet.

  “What if I won’t let you go?” He followed her into the kitchen, backed her up against the stove, though the only thing he really threatened was her composure.

  “I’d like to see you stop me.”

  “If you’re so bound and determined, I can’t stop you, but I can sure as hell give you something else to think about.”

  Before she knew it she was in his arms, and he was kissing her. Putting up a weak resistance, she moaned against his lips but she was defenseless against the magic of his kiss, his tongue, his mouth.

  Carly closed her eyes, felt his large, warm hands against her back as he pressed her closer. Lost, she kissed him back until reason kicked in, and she remembered everything.

  She pushed against his chest until he lifted his head and let her go.

  Christopher pressed his back against the wall in the hallway, arms spread like an airplane, the way the cops on TV always did when they were sneaking up on someone. With Matt plastered to the wall beside him, they clung like two starfish to the fake wood paneling.

  “Did you hear that? Your mom said something about moving!” Matt whispered.

  The anger in his mom and Jake’s voices already had Chris’ stomach tied in a big knot. Mom said something about Anna, too, but he couldn’t hear it. Then she told Jake that he couldn’t stop her.

  Stop her from moving?

  He blinked hard, tried to imagine living in another house, going to another school. Having another best friend.

  “I don’t want to move.”

  “What are you gonna do?” Matt whispered with his lips against Chris’ ear.

  Chris thought of the backpack in his room with a change of underwear, a sweatshirt, an old parka, some cheese and cracker snack packs. He thought there might even be some canned pudding in there, too. Mom called it the emergency pack, and right now, he was pretty sure this was the biggest emergency ever.

  “I’m gonna run away.”

  “By yourself?”

  Chris slowly turned to Matt. His friend’s blue eyes were huge, and he was standing so close that Chris could see little specks of white in them.

  “You wanna come with me?” He mouthed the words, afraid his mom might hear—but she was still arguing with Jake.

  “I dunno.” Matt shrugged. “Where you going?”

  “To hide someplace where she can’t find me and make me move.”

  “Then what?”

  “I dunno that either. Maybe she’ll change her mind before I come back.”

  “Why don’t you just tell her you don’t want to move?”

  How could he explain that h
e’d never heard his mom talk like this before? That she never, ever sounded this mean or this scared before. So he shook his head, pretty sure after all the crazy things she had said earlier that her mind was made up.

  Matt was quiet for so long that Chris was afraid his friend would turn him down. He hoped with all his heart that Matt would go along, because the idea of running off by himself was pretty scary, especially since it was already late afternoon.

  “Well? You wanna come with me?” Chris couldn’t wait any longer.

  “What about Beauty?”

  He almost started bawling when he looked down at his beautiful dog. Beauty’s nose was resting on his leg.

  “I’ll put her in the closet. If we take her, she might bark, and somebody will find us. Are you coming?”

  Matt shrugged and then slowly nodded. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  They slid along the wall all the way back to his room where Chris wrote a note and then grabbed his backpack and coaxed Beauty into the closet. He knelt down and whispered in her ear that he’d come back for her soon, then he kissed her on the nose and shut the closet door.

  Matt started out the door toward the hall. Chris had to grab the collar of his shirt and drag him back into the room.

  With his lips against Matt’s ear, Chris whispered, “We can’t just walk out the door! We gotta sneak out the window.”

  It took some doing to get the warped window open without making any noise. Standing on his desk, Chris used one of his marker pens to pry up the hook on the screen before they pushed it out. After Matt climbed through, Chris handed out the backpack and followed close behind.

  When they reached the far end of the porch opposite the front door, Matt hesitated.

  “Are you comin’ or not?” Chris shouldered the pack, ready to go.

  Matt looked like he wanted to say no, but then Chris pointed to his knee, a reminder that they were blood brothers to the end.

  Matt sighed, but when Chris turned to jump off the end of the porch, Matt was right behind him.

  Shaken by Jake’s kiss, Carly sidestepped him and reached for one of the thick pottery mugs she’d splurged on at the Summer Crafts Fair last year. When she turned around, he was still so close that she bumped into him. For a second she was almost too startled to say anything. He was so solid, so close, so tempting, that it was easy to forget that he was the enemy now.

  “Would it be too much to ask for you to give me some space in my own house?”

  “Is that what you really want, Carly?”

  She gripped the mug with both hands. “Yes.”

  He reached for her again, slipped his hand through her hair to cup the back of her neck. “Are you sure?”

  She closed her eyes, resisted temptation, and whispered, “Yes. I’m sure. Please, Jake. Don’t do this.”

  Not until she sensed he’d stepped back did she open her eyes and automatically ask, “Do you want some tea?”

  “What I want is for you to stop and think. Think about the rest of your life. The rest of Chris’ life.”

  “He’s all I ever think about.”

  He gave a slight shake of his head. “Then promise me you won’t do anything so foolish as to run away.”

  She set the mug down. “I don’t owe you anything, especially any promises, Jake.”

  A deep sadness crept into his eyes. “No. You don’t. You don’t owe me anything.”

  She was tempted to reach for him, to trace his full lips with her fingertip, to cup his strong jaw with the palm of her hand. It would be so easy to give in to desire and ignore the fact that her mind was screaming no.

  I love you, Carly. She’d never forget hearing him say it.

  She crossed her arms, sighed. “I thought about leaving,” she confessed. “I was tempted, but I have to do what’s best for Chris. I have to believe in myself, too, and in what I’ve done. I am a good mother. I know that in my heart. It’s just so terrifying to believe that for the first time in my life, everything will turn out all right.”

  Jake said, “I wish I’d done things differently. I wish I deserved to be a part of your life, but as you said, you don’t owe me anything.” He turned, as if about to leave, then suddenly stopped. “I thought that having you and Anna meet would help, Carly. That there was no way she’d continue with this once she met Chris. I guess I should have known better than think things would work out that easily.”

  “Did you really think it would?”

  He shrugged. “I guess after all I’ve seen in my line of work, I shouldn’t have. In this case, I guess I wanted it for you so badly that I’d convinced myself I could help.”

  She didn’t know what to say that hadn’t already been said.

  “You’ll need a good lawyer . . . ,” he began.

  “I already have one. Geoff recommended Tom Edwards in San Luis Obispo.” She dropped her hands, amazed at how much better she felt now that she’d made a commitment to stay and make a stand—and said it out loud.

  “Well, then.” He looked around the kitchen, his gaze ultimately resting on her again, touching her eyes, her lips, before he said, “I’ll let myself out.”

  Wishing wouldn’t make things different or turn back the clock. They couldn’t start over.

  “I’d better go and check on the boys.” She couldn’t bear to see him walk out the door so she started for the hall.

  She glanced into Chris’ room and not seeing the boys anywhere, walked into her own room. Her duffel was right where she’d left it, so she tossed it back into the closet before she went back down the hall.

  “Hey, where are you guys?” She walked into the bathroom, snapped on the light, looked behind the shower curtain.

  “Chris?” In his room once more, she looked under the bed. “Matt?”

  A piece of notebook paper was lying on the floor near the desk. She picked it up, intending to put it back on the desk when she noticed the screen was unhooked and hanging open at the bottom.

  Headlines flashed through her mind, sordid, nightmarish tales of children stolen out from under their parents’ noses, taken from their own rooms.

  She scanned the words on the page in her hand, then ran to Christopher’s closet and whipped the door open. Beauty lay on the floor, muzzle on her paws, staring forlornly up at her. The dog’s tail thumped against the carpet. Beauty began to whimper.

  Christopher’s emergency backpack was gone.

  Her son was gone, and it was all her fault.

  Hers and Jake’s and Anna Saunders’.

  37

  “JAKE!”

  Hearing the panic in Carly’s voice, Jake froze with his hand on the door handle of his car. She pushed the dog back inside and ran across the porch, her face ashen, the bleakness in her expression communicating stark fear.

  “They’re gone.” She handed him a piece of lined paper. He glanced down at huge letters scrawled in crayon, suddenly finding it hard to swallow.

  BY MOM I DONUT WANTTO MUVE. WE RUND AWAEE. ♥ CHRIS

  Jake stared at the cryptic note, his gut tightening as he pictured Chris trying to catch the ball in the park in Avila.

  “Hey, Jake, how do you spell your name?”

  “We’ll find them.” He knew it would take more than his assurance to strip the fear from her eyes.

  He started to walk the perimeter of the mobile home while Carly ran straight to her neighbor’s, rapped on the front door, hurriedly spoke to Etta, and then met him at the end of the walk beside the plaster donkey wearing the chipped sombrero.

  Carly shook her head. “She hasn’t seen them.”

  Calling the boys’ names, they quickly walked Seaside Village, covering winding avenues that curved out like the spokes of a wheel and that had a small grassy park in the center. Jake noticed hundreds of places to hide between the mobile homes, behind aluminum storage sheds and landscaping, in boats on trailers stored in driveways.

  There were as many seasonal visitors as full-time residents at the place, so many of the homes were closed up
tight. Jake doubted the boys would break into one even if they could.

  A few times Jake walked up long driveways to peer into the small backyard spaces of the vacant mobile homes, but the boys weren’t there. From the grassy area, they followed a winding path down to the beach.

  Standing at the end of the path they could see the entire beach, smaller but broader than Twilight Cove. There wasn’t a soul in sight, but there were countless footprints. Spotted sandpipers danced along the glistening sand at the water’s edge.

  Jake checked his watch. It was almost four.

  “Are the Potters home?”

  “No, they went to stay in San Luis overnight. To . . . to a real estate seminar. Oh, Jake. What am I going to tell them?”

  “By the time they get back, we’ll have found the boys. Maybe Matt just wanted to go home.”

  “No, he would have asked me to drive him. I . . . I talked about going on a trip and taking Chris out of school. If he heard us arguing, then he could be thinking anything.”

  Jake scanned the beach again. The tide was out, the sun catching on bits of mica in the wet sand, flecks of glittering fool’s gold. Narrow hiking paths led up the gradual sloping hillside away from the strand.

  “They could have taken any one of those trails.” Jake pointed to where the path veered off in different directions across the bluff. Taller grasses could easily shield two small boys from sight.

  “What if they make it to the highway?” The wind off the water blew her hair across her eyes. She pulled it back and anchored it with one hand against her neck. “What if someone picked them up already?”

  “They may have gone to the highway, but Chris wouldn’t willingly get into a car with a stranger.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He wouldn’t leave the baseball park with the Potters because you told him to wait for you. I’m sure he knows not to get into a strange car. He’s a smart kid.”

  “A second ago you said he wouldn’t willingly get into a car with someone he didn’t know. They could be abducted.”

  Anything was possible, but he wasn’t willing to frighten her any more than she already was.