“Promise—no naming the baby after race car drivers or baseball players.”
He faced forward again, crossed his arms over his chest, and pretended to be mad. “Damn, I had my heart set on Earnhardt Brewer.”
“Kenny.”
He laughed. “Relax. I done gave it lots of thought already.”
“Really?”
“Sure. I’ve known for weeks what our son should be named.”
Dori took a left onto Washington Road. “Well, tell me.”
“You tell me yours first.”
“I’m not sure yet. Come on, what’s the boy’s name?”
“Mason Kenneth Brewer.” He held his breath.
“Oh God, I love that.” Dori’s tears welled up. She slapped her hand against the steering wheel. “I can’t match that.”
“You ain’t got to match nothing, just come up with a girl name you like.” He patted her leg. “We got time, you know. Ain’t no hurry.”
“Not that much time. Besides, I want to have names to call them both when we start talking to them.”
“What?” he asked, pretty sure he didn’t really want to know.
“Macy and I discussed it, and we think it’s time you and I started talking to the babies.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
She shot him a hell-no-I’m-not-kidding look from the corner of her eye.
“You mean we’re going to talk to Macy’s stomach?”
“Yeah. We can read to them, tell them stories, tell them how much we love them.”
“I ain’t talking to Macy’s stomach.” He said it slowly, so she’d know he meant it.
“Fine. But don’t come crying to me when they’re born not knowing your voice.”
“You really are serious.”
“I am.” She flicked on the turn signal.
“And Macy don’t think that’ll be weird?”
“No.” Dori glanced at him. “I meant to tell you—Grace called again yesterday. I actually feel sorry for her.”
“She don’t care nothing about us. She just saw a way to make a buck. I wish I could buy her for what she’s worth, and sell her for what she thinks she’s worth.”
Dori didn’t say anything to that. She just kept on driving until she pulled into Taco Bell. “I think I’ve decided.”
Kenny nodded toward the big bell. “Good. I could eat a Burrito Supreme, or two.”
“No, I mean I’ve decided on a girl name.”
“Oh?” It seemed to him she’d been giving it some thought over the last few weeks, too.
“Mya Elizabeth Brewer.”
“Hmm. I like that just fine.” Mason and Mya.
“I had a doll named Mya when I was a little girl. She had this beautiful emerald green dress that matched her eyes. I adored that doll.”
Kenny nodded.
“Elizabeth is Macy’s middle name,” Dori said.
As they crossed the parking lot, Kenny looked back at the old Maverick. He tried to imagine a green sport wagon with two car seats in the back.
Dori pulled free from his grasp, and he realized he’d been squeezing her hand.
“It’s gonna be fine, Kenny.”
She’d only half read his mind. If she’d read it all, she would have seen that as much as he wanted that to be true, he knew from the boiling in his gut that it might not be
Part Five
Survival
Chapter Twenty-One
Overburden
Jack walked in, chalk-white. When his parents called Macy, searching for Jeremiah, she thought Jack had pulled a sick prank. Looking at him, she knew he wasn’t the one who’d taken Jeremiah from Russ and Eileen’s.
“Oh, God,” Macy said and sobbed as Jack crossed the living room.
“What have you done?” Jack asked.
Russ stepped between them. “Come talk to me, son.” It wasn’t a request. The two men went into Macy’s kitchen and spoke without looking at one another.
Macy couldn’t watch. She felt the heat of a thousand accusations, spoken and unspoken. She was probably guilty of them all, deserving of their collective burn.
Her mother stood beside her. It was the first time she’d seen her mother—or Jack—in the months since she’d started the surrogacy. “Macy, if God—”
“Don’t you say it, Mama. Don’t you say a word about God or vengeance or messing around with His plan.”
Macy was doing a thorough job of beating herself up; she didn’t need any help. Her mother had taught her well.
Eileen pushed a mug of hot tea into Macy’s hand. “Here, take this.”
She didn’t need lectures or tea. What she needed was for someone to teach her how to breathe, to retrain her heart and lungs.
The police detective approached from her right, with Jack in tow. “Mrs. Stokes, we’d like to talk to you now.”
Dorianne was on the other side of them, clutching her list of all the gas stations and truck stops off I-20. Dori had faxed and emailed flyers to all the numbers with a recent photo of Jeremiah and the heading, “Have you seen me?”
Dori had already researched what to do if one of her children was kidnapped. She’d follow the structure of the Amber Alert, but old school, without the delay of the proper agency deeming it necessary. Dori was good at stuff like that. She was going to be a great mother.
“Macy.” It was Russ talking to her. “This is Detective Durell. He wants to ask you and Jack some questions.”
She nodded and put the tea on the coffee table, briefly resting it on J-man’s Spider-Man comic before she picked up the cup and used a coaster instead. She let her hand linger a moment on the glossy cover of the comic.
Detective Durell sat across from her and Jack. It was the first time in a long while that they’d sat on the same piece of furniture at the same time. She hated him. She hated herself.
Russ stood behind the detective, his massive arms across his chest.
“Tell me about Jeremiah’s friends,” Durell said.
Macy named his closest ones: Billy, Joey, Ricky, Connor. “I’ve already talked to all the parents.”
“Has Jeremiah been behaving lately, or has he started acting out, acting differently?” Durell asked.
“No,” Macy said. “Everything has been normal, great.”
“Do you have anything to add?” Durell asked Jack, who shook his head.
“Has he ever run away before?”
“No, never,” Macy answered without hesitation.
The detective looked at Jack. “What kind of things is he interested in?”
Jack looked at Macy and glanced toward his father.
“Video games, sports, typical boy stuff,” Macy said. “He likes to read and watch TV, especially Animal Planet. He loves the funny animal videos. And the crocodile specials. During shows about bugs, J-man makes crawlies on my arm with his fingers, pretending he’s a spider. He loves it when I act like I’m scared.”
She stopped talking when she noticed Jack studying her like she was the pin-riddled frog in high school biology.
The detective looked toward Jack, as if to ask if he wanted to add anything, but Jack wouldn’t look at him. Instead, he picked up the Spider-Man comic, fidgeted with it for a moment, and set it back on the table. He rocked forward and backward, his elbows digging into his knees. “I can’t contribute anything. Why am I even here?”
“Because you’re his father.” Macy knew it was her voice, but the words were foreign.
“Yeah, but that’s all I am. His father. I want to be his daddy. I should have been his daddy.”
“He called you daddy. Maybe not lately, but he has.” Then Macy laughed, too loud, too painful in her own ears. “J-man cracks me up with the things he says. Just last week he said the neatest thing. Russ had joked about how ugly Bella is. Bella is J-man’s dog, the one with the huge head and short legs. So, J-man says to me, ‘God must have put Bella together in the dark, because he got some of the pieces wrong.’” She took a deep breath, gasping w
hen the air pierced her lungs. “J-man’s only six years old,” she said and sobbed.
†
Kenny narrowed his eyes, focusing. Cam was leading for the first time ever in their nail-gun contest, and he sure as hell didn’t want to be beat by a girl. The phone was closest to him when it rang, so he snatched it up.
“Jeremiah’s gone missing.”
Dorianne’s words stunned Kenny, and he repeated them out loud for Cam’s benefit. When he hung up, he thought for sure he’d be sick.
“I have to go be with Macy,” Cam said.
“They said for us to stay put.” But Kenny had serious doubts about that being possible. “Get Gary on his cell phone. Tell him to drive around and look.”
Kenny couldn’t believe Jeremiah had disappeared right out of his aunt and uncle’s backyard. It was the same yard where Kenny had played as a kid, where he and Jack had fought so many times, under the big, messy magnolias.
He pulled out the phone book. He would call every person he knew and get them to help in the search for Jeremiah.
“I can’t get through to Gary,” Cam said, sounding panicked.
“Wait a few minutes, then try again.”
“Then what?” she asked.
“We wait to see what they want us to do next,” Kenny said.
“Just wait?”
“Find something to keep you busy. You don’t know anyone in town, and you don’t know your way around. Ain’t nothing you can do but wait here for Gary to call back.”
The next thing Kenny knew, Cam was in the front office. She was cussing, crying, and scrubbing at the carpet, all at once. Kenny went in there, too, to use that phone, since it wasn’t attached to the wall like the one in the back. Kenny knew there was no way he was gonna be able to stay still and just wait. He looked up Freddie Miller in the phone book. Freddie had kids, all younger, but Kenny was sure he’d drive around and look for Jeremiah.
Cam was mumbling something. When Kenny got Freddie’s answering machine, he just hung up. Cam was still groaning, so Kenny asked her what she’d said.
“I said…” She slammed down a wet wad of paper towels. “That goddamned Gary’s always tracking this crap in.” She scrubbed at the clay that streaked the carpet.
“You give Dori a run for her money with your bitching.” He flipped through the phone book. “Better yet, you sound like Aunt Eileen complaining about us tracking clay through the house when we were kids.”
Cam was on her hands and knees, attacking the dirt. It looked to Kenny like Texas Pete with mayo mixed in. Hot sauce, mayo, and what? Eye shadow. The purplish-blue eye shadow Dorianne wore to their prom. Did he actually remember that?
Then it dawned on Kenny that he was remembering that combination from another time. His Aunt Eileen was bitching about the dirt, but she wasn’t scrubbing at it. She always let it dry, then she could just vacuum it up. Kenny was about to tell Cam to leave it be, to let it dry, but then he remembered something else.
The day Timmy Jones disappeared and everyone was at his Uncle Russ and Aunt Eileen’s, waiting to hear something, there was a mess just like that one on the carpet. The same mess of red and white clay that his Aunt Eileen yelled at him and Jack for when they’d go fishing at the lake by the chalk mines. With Gary.
“Cam, when’s the last time you seen Gary?”
“This morning. He came in here for a few minutes while we were finishing up the Cooper job.”
His hands shaking, Kenny dropped the phone book onto the front desk.
Cam was babbling. “That’s probably when the jerk dirtied up the carpet.”
It all made sense. Gary was there when Timmy went missing, too. He was right there with Uncle Russ when Aunt Eileen bitched about the clay tracked in. And Gary was the one who always snuck Kenny and Jack out to the lake. He knew the chalk mines better than anyone, even better than Uncle Russ.
Kenny started digging through his pockets, looking for the truck keys. “Shit.”
“What?”
“Where are my freaking keys?”
Cam stood up and reached across the desk for the keys behind the phone book. “Where are we going?” Cam asked.
“We ain’t going nowhere. I’m going. You stay here and wait for me to call you.”
Cam’s eyes narrowed. “No way. I’m going with you.”
“All right, just give me the damn keys.”
She did, and they bolted out the door.
Kenny had never driven so fast in his life. Past the south side of town, he jumped onto Highway 25, toward Burke County. He made a couple of turns onto paved roads he’d never known the names of and then made a right onto a dirt road. The red clay was a little slick in some areas, bumpy with ripples in others.
He rounded a corner and suddenly stomped on the brakes. They slid to a stop right at the edge of a huge pile of discarded topsoil that had been moved to uncover a vein of chalk. The overburden rose up in front of them, blocking the old road into the mine.
“Shit.” Kenny pounded his fist against the steering wheel.
“Are we lost?”
“We ain’t lost. The road’s just gone. Happens all the time around here.” He knew he sounded defensive, and he was. He didn’t want this punk-ass kid to think he didn’t know how to get where they were going.
To their left, rows of pine came right up to the edge of the overburden. Kenny hated the unnatural neatness of land reclamation. Pines weren’t meant to be in such skinny, even rows. He jerked the wheel to the right. There was a steep ditch on the other side of the mound, but he figured they could pass if he hugged the side as tight as the truck would let him.
The truck was all but on its side, but it worked. The red clay road started back up on the other side. Kenny floored it and they fishtailed, but he quickly regained control.
Ahead, Kenny saw more rows of trees to one side and the long pond collecting water on the other side. The water was its typical unnatural turquoise, thanks to the minerals that settled at the bottom.
“What the hell is that?” Cam’s mouth hung wide open.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Duct Tape
When they rounded the corner, the landscape caught Cam totally off guard. A huge crater spread out in front of them. Striations of color layered its sides—red and brown at the top, then gray, purple, white, a layer of rust, more white. At the bottom was a pool of the most intense blue.
Cam knew then what Kenny meant when he said he used to swim at a blue hole. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
“No, it ain’t.”
Ignoring him, Cam studied the colors of the crater. They were all shades like the clay smeared into the carpet at work. “What do you think is going on?”
“I think that freak Gary is up to no good,” Kenny muttered.
One side of the orange-red road was lined with clumps of long grass that made Cam think of a vacation at the beach where Aunt Jess took her one summer. The other side of the road had some regular-looking grass and a spattering of frilly purple flowers. Cam thought she saw dog prints around the plants.
“What is this place?” Cam asked.
“Chalk bed.” Kenny looked from side to side as he spoke. “Ain’t been mined in a while, though.”
Chalk. White clay. Kaolin. All the terms Macy had used rolled around in Cam’s head. Macy. God, I hope she’s holding up okay.
She checked out the mocha-colored mud that led toward the mine from beyond the grass with the flowers. They hit a rut in the road, and her head banged against the roof of the truck.
Focus, Cam told herself. For once, she wasn’t just taking in the scenery, going where everyone else was going. For once, she was participating. “What do I need to look for, Kenny?”
“Any sign that someone’s been out here—tire tracks, footprints, anything.”
As he sped forward, Cam saw something move ahead to their left.
“There he is,” Kenny shouted.
When Kenny got to where Gary had ducked into the pine
trees, he stopped the truck. He looked from left to right and back toward Gary.
I am not along for the ride, Cam reminded herself. “You go after him. I’ll go back the way he came and look for Jeremiah.”
She barely had the words out before Kenny leaped from the truck and took off after Gary. Cam got out and ran to the other side of the road. In the mud, she saw a set of elongated footprints, like someone had been slipping and sliding as much as walking. Not far from those prints, she saw a set of two more heading away from her. One smeared path was made by much smaller feet. Jeremiah.
When Cam ran into the mud to follow the double prints, she immediately found out how slick it was. She half-stumbled and half-ran. The mud sucked at her work boots and coated them and her in its thick coolness. Bile burned its way from her stomach to her throat.
Please, Cam begged. Please let Jeremiah be okay. Her feet grew heavier as the mud caked her boots. She thought about stopping to take them off but didn’t dare take the time.
The prints turned toward a clump of weeds and brush and followed the outer ridge of the mine. Cam did the same. As she stood up on the highest point, she could see a creek below. The prints slid in that direction.
She lost her balance halfway down and ended up sliding on her back, the sting and burn of gravel and dirt biting into her.
“Is someone there?” The voice was tiny but distinct.
“Jeremiah? J, is that you?”
“Help me. I’m slipping down.”
Jeremiah clung to a branch, midway down the embankment. The flow of water below him wasn’t fast, but it was more than Cam figured a six-year-old could fight against.
“Hang on,” she yelled, hoping Jeremiah wouldn’t hear the panic in her voice.
Cam took a couple of steps down the bank, but the ground sucked at her feet and threatened to swallow her. She figured she could get down to Jeremiah but didn’t know what she’d do once she got there. Without some rope, she’d just end up stuck alongside him.
Nesting Page 19
