False Step

by Victoria Helen Stone

  “It’s not ready yet.”

  “It doesn’t have to be perfect. I just want to see it. You made it sound so cool.”

  “Not yet,” Sydney insisted. She got back to eating fries and browsing the internet on the family iPad, and Veronica got back to stewing about whatever the hell Johnny was doing wrong.

  Well, screw him. If he was cheating, so was she. And if he was dabbling with Trey and his boys again, he deserved whatever he got.

  He’d denied dealing last time around, and she’d let him get away with that little lie. He’d sworn he’d just been buying and helping with some of the logistics. But she knew the truth. He hadn’t just been buff; he’d been flush with cash. She wasn’t an idiot, but she’d pretended to be one to keep the peace. Just like her mother.

  Veronica wiped her greasy fingers on a napkin and watched her daughter stare down at a frenetic YouTube video. Images danced in her eyes. Her lips froze in the tiniest half smile in response to the show she was watching.

  She was such a good girl. Sweet and bold and smart. She loved life. She loved her family.

  Johnny might deserve whatever trouble he’d cooked up for himself, but Sydney didn’t. Their daughter couldn’t even deal with the idea of her parents living in separate homes, much less her father somehow being removed from her completely.

  Veronica ran the back of her hand over her sweaty forehead and took a deep breath. She was panicking and jumping to conclusions. Probably it was the lesser of two evils. He was just messing around and he needed the other phone for sexting.

  Veronica choked on a bitter laugh, then turned it into a cough when Sydney looked up.

  “Sorry,” she managed. Her daughter narrowed her eyes in suspicion, but her attention was quickly drawn back to the screen as Veronica coughed a couple more times to hide her outburst. She was the only woman in the world who would sigh with relief that maybe it was just an affair.

  But God, despite her habitual jealousy, it would be a relief, wouldn’t it? She could do her thing, he could do his, they’d limp along for a few more years until Sydney was a little more mature and solid . . .

  She’d seen an ad somewhere for a book about raising more resilient children, and she’d made a mental note to check into it. Maybe it was time to track down a copy. Not tonight, though. Tonight she had more important things to accomplish.

  She dumped the last of her burger and fries into the trash and marched into the bedroom. The small room was crowded with secondhand furniture piled high with the miscellany of their lives. The mirrored dresser had been plucked from her old adolescent bedroom. It had once held her teenage makeup and perfume and hair scrunchies. Now it was piled with old bills and documents. Things that seemed important enough to keep but somehow not essential enough to be carefully stored.

  The tall dresser had been inherited from one of Johnny’s grandparents, and it was topped by various workout accessories, like exercise trackers and an old heart rate monitor.

  The wardrobe they’d found at a garage sale, and that was where Johnny kept most of his clothes, because the closet wasn’t nearly big enough to share.

  She threw open the doors and began patting down every article of clothing hanging inside it. When she found nothing, she dropped to the floor and pawed through the drawers stuffed with shorts and socks and running tights. Nothing. No steroids or needles. No condoms or hotel key cards. Not even a stray bottle of cologne.

  In desperation, she moved his pair of dress loafers that sat on the one shelf. When her fingers slipped inside the left shoe, she felt something stiff and rubbery. Pulling the object from the shadows of the black leather, she realized it was a charging cord. For a cell phone.

  Veronica stared at the black cord in her hand for a long while as her mind flashed BINGO in bright colors. This was it. His hiding place. She dug her hand deep into the left shoe and then the right but found nothing else inside them.

  Not at the moment, anyway.

  After stuffing the charger back into its hiding place, she closed the doors of the wardrobe. If he hid the cord there, he likely hid the phone there as well. She’d check later, after he’d fallen asleep. He wouldn’t hear her rustling around. A broken nose in high school had left him with a snoring problem that would keep him oblivious to any noise she might make. His snoring would also act as a low-tech alarm. If she woke him, he’d drop straight into silence, and she could freeze and wait for the noise to start again.

  She checked a few other drawers in the room before satisfying herself that there was nothing left to find. This was a new era of lying, after all. All the evidence, all the notes or dirty pictures or receipts, showed up in only one place, and that place was currently in his pocket.

  Veronica retreated to the bathroom. She stared at the countertop where Micah had taken her, where she’d spread for him and clutched him tighter, and she wished to God she could have him anytime she wanted. She wanted him now. She needed him.

  Tears welled in her eyes and spilled onto her cheeks before she could blink them back. She kicked the door shut and buried her face in her cold hands. “I don’t want this,” she sobbed against her clammy palms.

  This. Her husband, her life, her crowded old house, and the borrowed furniture they could never get rid of because their credit cards were maxed out on groceries and car repairs and school supplies.

  All the lies between them, accumulating over the years like rocks at the ocean’s edge, collecting barnacles and a crust of old salt. His first lie that he’d support whatever decision she made about the pregnancy. The desperate panic in his eyes when she’d rejected the idea of an abortion. The way she’d told him over and over that it would be fine. They’d be fine. Nothing would change, really; it would just get better. How he’d finally proposed and promised forever.

  The lies had grown like neglected children until they were too big and heartless to control. She wept for long minutes, her sobs receding into little hiccups and then pitiful sniffles. She was okay. She’d be okay. They all would be.

  Thank God she hadn’t kept up her ridiculous, choking self-pity, because just as her spigot of narcissism dried up, a quiet thud startled her into a yelp.

  “Mom!” Sydney called too loudly through the cheap, hollow door. “Are we gonna watch Survivor?”

  Veronica drew a deep breath, then blew it out as slowly as she could.

  “Mom!”

  “Yes, honey,” she finally managed. “Did you do your math sheets yet?”

  Sydney groaned, and the dull thump that echoed through the bathroom was no doubt her forehead hitting the wood.

  “Come on. You know the rules. Homework first. Do you need help?”

  “Nooo,” she answered, managing to draw the one syllable out into an impressive whine.

  “Get to work at the table then. I’ll be there in a few minutes. We’ll watch Survivor after I check the answers.” Her voice sounded admirably steady, though it was clogged with snot and the abrasions the sobs had left in their wake. Her daughter didn’t notice or didn’t care, and that was a blessing. Children were naturally selfish. Their selfishness protected them from noticing the rough currents of life that pulled in all directions. But they noticed the rapids. They knew when they were being sucked under.

  There had been fights between Veronica’s parents. There had been shouted words late at night behind closed doors. Her mother had wept. Her father had blustered. But in the morning her mother had served breakfast and her dad had told jokes, and that had been the end of it. Veronica had put the arguments from her mind and gotten back to the selfish work of childhood.

  But how many times had her mother sat like this, hiding her sobs behind closed doors? Even during the divorce, Veronica had never wondered. She’d chosen to believe her mother had just discovered the betrayals and decided to end it. But her mom must have been so lonely for so long. If a teenage Veronica had known about the infidelity, her mother had known too. But she’d set aside her own hurt for her children. That was what moth
ers did.

  Veronica turned on the tap behind her, then caught the cold water in her cupped hands. She lowered her face into the icy pond she’d created and something like a sigh drifted through her whole body. She held the water to her skin as long as she could, then dropped it with a splash into the tub.

  After drying her face, she blew her nose. The woman in the mirror looked like shit, blotchy and swollen, but Veronica turned the lights off on her and left her behind.

  The sheet on the table in front of Sydney was still pristine, as Veronica had known it would be. She sat down across from her and stared until Syd picked up a pencil. As she began to scratch, Veronica opened her texts.

  Do you know what’s going on with Johnny? she asked.

  Micah didn’t reply.

  CHAPTER 12

  She waited for the snoring. Then she waited longer, watching the digital clock on her side of the bed as it ticked away the minutes in glaring red numbers. Once he’d been fully asleep for a quarter of an hour, Veronica eased out of bed like a snake, slithering her way from under the edge of the comforter.

  Aware that the floor creaked near the window, she kept her feet as close to the bed as she could, paranoid that she’d stub her toe on the bedpost, but determined to keep her mouth shut if she did. Once she’d navigated past that disaster, she felt her way slowly across the thick rug to the cheap, rough carpet just past it. Hands out, she waved blindly in the dark until her fingers brushed the wardrobe.

  Did these doors squeak? She’d never noticed if they did. None of her sneaking around had ever involved the wardrobe—just closing the bedroom door on prying eyes. And then the bathroom door. Her lips quirked in a bitter smile as she trailed her fingers down the cool wood to the ice-cold metal of the latch.

  As if it could help her prepare, she squeezed her eyes tightly shut in a grimace before trying a gentle pull. Too gentle. Nothing happened. She tried again. And again. She should have practiced earlier, but opening the doors had seemed such a simple idea in the light.

  Finally she clenched her teeth and tugged hard. The doors opened with a dull bonging sound as the wood vibrated. She grabbed both edges to still them and her fingers clunked far too loudly against the wood.

  Jesus.

  Veronica held her breath and waited for her husband to snort himself awake, but after what felt like a thousand heartbeats, he inhaled on a long snore that sounded the same as the last one. She exhaled into a slump and said a quick prayer to a god she didn’t believe in.

  The rest was easy. She reached blindly into the wardrobe, hands thrusting between his clothing before she slipped her way down to the shoes. Inside the left was the charger. Inside the right was a phone. She pulled it out, closed the doors without latching them, and tiptoed to the bathroom.

  After locking the door behind her, she turned on the lights and collapsed onto the edge of the tub. The phone was designed to look like an iPhone but it felt cheaper and lighter in her hand, the edges thick and clumsy and the glass recessed a little beneath them. Veronica found the power button and pushed it. Her pulse sped as the screen turned from black to a fuzzy gray. A logo she didn’t recognize appeared. A few seconds later the phone glowed with a request for a passcode.

  She’d watched him unlock his real phone often enough. Heck, she’d unlocked it herself a few times in the distant past just to check up on him. Assuming he used the same code here—and suddenly terrified that he didn’t—she typed in 0302, Sydney’s birthdate. It worked. The code screen disappeared to show a generic blue background topped by a few icons.

  This was it. The moment she found out the truth.

  She tapped the icon that looked like a message bubble. The screen opened and invited her to input a phone number to start a text. She hit the contact icon instead. A blank screen opened. It said “Contacts” at the top, but there were no entries. She backed up to the message screen again and tried to find old messages. They didn’t exist.

  Frustrated, she backed out and hit the phone icon. Another dead end. There was nothing there. If he was calling or texting anyone, he was deleting all evidence afterward.

  “Damn it,” she whispered. She hadn’t expected he’d be this careful. She wasn’t this careful. Maybe Johnny had more to lose.

  Oh, she deleted texts from Micah eventually. But not right away. She needed to savor them first. But whatever Johnny was doing, he wasn’t sentimental about it, apparently.

  “Wait,” she muttered, then tried one last icon. Photos. She fully expected to find a few saved nudes of some gorgeous young woman or at least a dick pic of Johnny, but it was another dead end. One blank square of gray showed where a photo should’ve been if any had been taken. There was nothing.

  The phone’s clock said it was just after 11:00 p.m. Maybe if she waited here patiently the girl—or Trey—would send Johnny a late-night text. Veronica could pretend to be him. She couldn’t exactly ask the person for a name, but she could probably tell if it was a man or a woman texting. If it was a woman, Veronica could pretend to be Johnny and ask her to send a cute picture.

  Not that she cared. Did she?

  A few minutes later, she was sleepy and bored, and the unforgiving edge of the tub felt like it was trying to drill a hole through the muscles of her butt. Veronica squirmed, trying to find a more comfortable spot. Then she heard a buzz. Like a text message.

  Startled, she glared down at the phone in her hands. The message icon hadn’t changed, but she touched it anyway. Still nothing. It took her a few sleepy moments to remember she’d tucked her own phone into the pocket of her sweatpants before getting into bed.

  Micah. He’d finally texted back. But when she opened the message it wasn’t him at all. It was her sister.

  Are you still awake? Did you see the news?

  No. What news?

  That Holcomb boy was kidnapped!

  WTH? What do you mean? Someone stole him???

  No, he was kidnapped BEFORE. He didn’t wander off. The family finally admitted they paid a ransom the day before Johnny found him! The police had no idea!!!

  Veronica stared at her phone. She stared until the letters blurred into sickly green puddles of nothing.

  Then she looked at the phone in her left hand. Its cool blue screen waited for something. Someone. But who exactly?

  CHAPTER 13

  What was she thinking here? What did she suspect? That Johnny had kidnapped that boy?

  No. She wasn’t thinking that, because he hadn’t. It wasn’t even in question. Johnny had been with her the day Tanner had gone missing. He’d kept his normal schedule. He’d been around.

  Well, not all day, certainly, but she’d only worked a half day, so he’d cooked lunch on the grill and then he’d picked Syd up from school. He’d gone for a run later, sure, but his truck had stayed in the garage. She’d already recalled it all for the police. There was no big chunk of time he’d been away. No opportunity for him to drive to the mountains and kidnap a child.

  Plus, he was Johnny. He wasn’t a kidnapper. The very idea was ridiculous. He didn’t even like it when Veronica put mousetraps in the pantry. He might be a narcissist, but he definitely wasn’t a sociopath. Hell, he cried over Disney movies more often than his daughter did. It was one of their running jokes.

  Okay, she told herself. Okay, you’re freaking out for no reason.

  Well, not no reason. Kidnapping was a pretty damn big deal.

  Frantic, Veronica scrolled through news feeds on her phone, but the story had just broken, and everyone repeated the same scant details. After consulting with attorneys, the Holcomb family admitted that they had received a ransom demand on Saturday night, and that they had paid the kidnapper without informing the police, according to the kidnapper’s instructions. Police have scheduled a news conference for 9:00 a.m. Mountain Time.

  More than nine hours until she could find out more.

  Veronica turned off Johnny’s secret phone and slipped it back into its hiding place, but not until she’d compulsiv
ely wiped off the prints she’d left on the screen. But that was ridiculous. He was just having an affair. Or dealing drugs.

  There were crimes anyone might commit, like jaywalking or smuggling a really cool rock home from a national park. Then there were certain crimes you could assign to people you knew well. Trish, for instance, might steal a campaign sign from a bigoted school board candidate and throw it in the trash if no one was looking. Veronica herself had once keyed a guy’s car in high school because he’d lied to his friends about them hooking up. And Johnny might deal steroids; he had before. But he wouldn’t hurt a child for any reason.

  She slipped out of the bedroom and hurried to the living room to turn on the television. All her rushing was in vain: she’d missed the local news. She eventually found a local news story online, but everyone was using the same brief, useless source of information. There were no details to be had.

  Veronica looked at the four messages she’d sent Micah in the past hour. He hadn’t texted back. What the hell was he doing? Who was he with?

  PLEASE CALL ME! she finally typed out in all caps, no longer caring that she was blaring her desperation out for him to see.

  She stared at her phone, waiting, waiting, waiting for the moving dots that would signal his typing. Was she panicked over Johnny or panicked that Micah was probably with another woman? She couldn’t process her anxiety well enough to even know.

  Finally, an eternity later, the little dots appeared. Veronica pressed a shaking hand to her mouth in relief. She expected an apology or worry or something, but all she got was a query.

  CALL you?

  Screw this. Veronica hit the call button.

  Her blood swirled through her body as if the steady beat had gotten pushed up against a ragged shore. Waves and spray and dangerous eddies everywhere. Teeth clenched, lip raised, she listened to each tinny ring, wondering whether Micah was excusing himself from the bed of some other woman to answer his phone.