The Day I Died

by Lori Rader-Day

  And who would emerge from the car when it finally stopped? The woman? Or Bo?

  The car took an abrupt turn onto a gravel road, kicking up dust. I slowed further, letting the car get some distance. When I reached the road, there were the white feathered signs pointing into the woods: Reynolds, Carter’s Cozy, Fuerole’s, Hodag’s Hide-a-Way. I couldn’t read them all before my fear of losing the car forced me around the corner—only to find the sedan stopped a few hundred feet ahead, brake lights bright. I hurried into a three-point turnaround, catching a brief glimpse of the woman reaching out her window for the mailbox at the end of a drive. She didn’t seem to notice me at all.

  I drove back to Digger’s and sat in the lot for a while, my heart racing. I dug out my phone again. No service. Digger’s was dark, the parking lot empty.

  No phone. No houses anywhere in view. The Sweetheart Lake cops had already brushed me off as a nut. I wished for Russ—the Russ who would help me, not the one looking for the easiest way to brush me off, too.

  I couldn’t think of what to do but drive back to the road and take that private drive. Pull up the path behind the sedan, cut the engine, and hope that a plan would meet me halfway.

  I retraced my route, nothing coming to mind. No houses, no cars. I found myself easing into the drive behind the woman’s car and taking a look at the house. It was as pink as a birthday cupcake with white gingerbread trim like a chalet or someone’s idea of one. The house was old, and was starting to look uncared for. It sat on a wide lot but the woods still came up to the house on two sides. Only the view to the lake had been cleared, but the view surely made up for anything the house lacked. The house turned its open face to the wide, smooth water.

  As I got out, the screen door creaked open and the woman I’d seen leaned out.

  “Hi,” I said, managing to keep my voice from quaking.

  The woman frowned. She clung to the door, half hidden. Where was her other hand? I stopped. Gun, knife, baseball bat.

  “There’s a no-trespassing sign back there,” she said.

  “I didn’t see one.” It was the truth.

  “Oh. Well, there used to be. What do you want?”

  “One of the old Northwoods families, huh?”

  The woman eyed me. “What do you want, I said.”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you.” I tried to keep from looking wildly toward the house’s windows. If Bo was here, it was over. “I—I heard you were, uh. Looking for a job.”

  The woman stepped out, letting the door smack behind her. She looked suspicious, but the frown was gone and if she’d had anything in her hand behind the door, she’d dropped it. “How’d you hear that?”

  “The owner of the T-shirt shop on Pine. Well, one of them. Never paid any attention to the store name, you see it so often.”

  The woman’s scowl returned. She reminded me of a beautiful child who was used to getting her way. “That bitch. She was so—she thinks she’s better than me because she owns a T-shirt store?” She looked me up and down. “What job?”

  Something thunked against the door behind her. Inside, a child began to cry.

  “Just a sec,” she said. Her sleek brown ponytail swung around as she went to the door and opened it. A chubby little blond boy spilled out of the door onto the step, wailing. Aidan. It was really Aidan. He had a red spot on his forehead. The woman scooped him up and gave him a comforting bounce. “You’re OK now, you’re fine.”

  “Child care,” I said. “A babysitter.”

  The woman patted Aidan’s back. “I do plenty of that.”

  “You have a real skill,” I said. “Yours?”

  “How old is your kid?”

  “The same age, about. Two?”

  The woman bounced Aidan to her hip. “Mikey’s two.”

  I watched the woman smooth the boy’s hair away from his forehead and kiss his temple. Michael. The kid really did look like Aidan. And wasn’t Aidan’s middle name Michael? I remembered my hand writing it into my notes, the physical memory of the word leaving my pen. My nerves began to jangle and buzz. “Mine’s a handful. I bet yours is, too.” The woman said nothing. I stepped forward and tutted over Aidan’s forehead. “Poor guy. I’m—Leeanna.”

  “Bonnie. How much do you pay?”

  The job was a good ruse, but the details were killing me. “I’d want to, you know—make it worth your time.”

  Bonnie liked this. “My time is pretty valuable.”

  “You spend all your time chasing after your son, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah,” she said, but there was a wistful quality to her voice. She set the boy down and watched him run a few feet. I took a step to follow, but Bonnie just watched. He found a stick and settled himself into a patch of red dirt to dig. “This one’s my nephew.”

  Another loose piece of the puzzle. Nephew? Or cover story? “Oh, yeah? You seem like such a natural.”

  Bonnie peered at me as though she thought she was being made fun of. “Well. I have one of my own, too. I just don’t—”

  Don’t know where he is.

  But then the downcast image of Steve Ransey came to me. Of course. If Aidan was really her nephew—

  “Custody is a bitch sometimes,” I said.

  Bonnie folded her arms across her chest. Her hands fists. “Such a crock. I was a mess but I can raise a kid. And who gets custody? Does this make sense to you? My mother. She raised me so damn well I had my kid taken away and who do they give him to?”

  I shook my head, which was beginning to spin off my shoulders. This was really Steve’s mom. But why steal Aidan? And to get away with it this long? Wouldn’t the Ransey family tree have been shaken pretty hard as part of the investigation? I hated to doubt the sheriff again, but here it was: Aidan Ransey sat with dusty legs two feet from his own aunt. But maybe Bonnie wasn’t the mastermind. I glanced uneasily at the house.

  “I mean, I’m great with kids now,” Bonnie said. “Don’t worry. I was messed up when I was young. The place I come from—well, it’s not all pine trees and fudge shops there, let me tell you.”

  She was talking about Parks, I realized. But maybe Bonnie had a point. No place was only pine trees and fudge shops. Even this place.

  Bonnie sniffed. “So when?”

  I’d been looking over the house and had lost the thread of our conversation. “What? Oh.” The job. “Next week or so?”

  “What’s your kid’s name?”

  “Uh,” I said, and Bonnie narrowed her eyes. “Josh.” It was the only name that came to mind the way the truth would. “If you have some paper, maybe we could work out the details.” I nodded toward the house. “How much I could pay you, how many hours.”

  I waited for the deal to fall through, for the woman to balk at letting a stranger inside the house.

  Bonnie gazed out at the lake, twisting her mouth. “Yeah. Cool.” She went to Aidan, propped him up, dusted off the seat of his pants. He began to howl and wave his stick at her face. She held him away from herself, forcing the stick out of his hand even as he began to scream. “Time to go inside, mister. None of that.” Her tone was singsongy, ready-made for the audition. She led me up the steps, letting Aidan dangle over her shoulder. Aidan stopped crying and regarded me.

  Bonnie held the door for me with her foot. “Welcome to the crazy house.”

  I stopped in the doorway. Inside, the house seemed normal if a little run-down and messy. “What’s so crazy about it?”

  Aidan, kicking for freedom, was let down. He stomped away, tramping toys as he went. Bonnie watched him disappear down a dark hallway and then turned back to me, her eyes flicking toward the open door at my back. “Long story.”

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  I glanced over my shoulder. No one was there, but the trees had begun a seductive wave in the rising wind.

  “I love a long story if it’s got crazy in it.”

  Bonnie was sweeping a pile of papers and empty plates off the table.

  I said, “You can leave that.
I know about messes, believe me.”

  The woman moved the detritus in her hands to the kitchen counter behind her. The rooms were all wide and open. The disaster continued into the kitchen, where the sink was heaped with dirty dishes, and into the living area, where a lumpy couch held two cushions’ worth of laundry to fold.

  I sat at the end of the table cleared for me, casting about, while Bonnie’s back was turned, for anything interesting on the table. “So how long have you been coming up here?”

  The woman sighed.

  “You called me nosey,” I said, forcing myself into joviality. I hated the woman I was pretending to be. The Booster Club mom. “You didn’t realize how right you were.”

  Bonnie’s fake smile was weak. “Family’s had the place for a long time. Like, forever. I don’t come up much now.”

  “Weather’s turning. If you’re getting a job, though—you’re not going home soon?”

  The smile faltered. “Do you want some coffee or something?”

  “Glass of water?”

  As soon as Bonnie turned toward the kitchen, my eyes raked the table. Newspapers, shopping bags, flyers from the local grocery chain, a fast-food job application. I heard a clink in the kitchen and looked up. Bonnie was choosing a glass from the overloaded sink. She flicked on the tap and ran the glass under water. I took a quick look around the room. Nothing seemed out of place, really, for a lake house in which a child was staying the summer. Except there were no swimsuits or beach towels hanging off the backs of the chairs, no sandy footprints on the linoleum. The house felt empty, even with the three of us there.

  Bonnie crossed the room with the glass dripping in her hand. “I’m going to go check on Mikey. Just a sec.”

  As soon as she’d gone, I turned back to the table. The newspapers were local, the headlines mundane. The bags held hot dog buns and insect repellent. There was nothing of interest until I lifted the edge of the job application and saw a scrap of handwriting on pink paper. My pulse quickened.

  I slipped the paper out and into my palm just as a door down the hallway opened and Bonnie reappeared. I moved my hand to my lap and left the scrap of paper there on my crossed leg under the table. “He’s OK?”

  “He’s the youngest kid I’ve ever met who puts himself to bed.”

  This seemed remarkably sad, but the mask had to be put back on. “Oh? You’ve really trained that one. Your son must be so well-behaved.”

  Bonnie snorted. She sat across the table, the hump of the stuff in front of her hiding all but her shoulders and head. “I don’t hear much, that’s part of the deal. But I doubt it.”

  The deal? “Why not?”

  “Rotten role models. Who’s he going to take after? Me? His damn father? His no-good uncle? My kid didn’t have a chance. But if we’re all bad for him, why not me?”

  I took a drink of water and tasted dish soap.

  Bonnie dug under the papers in front of her, shuffling so roughly that the newspaper on top slid off the other side of the table. I reached for it. “Leave it,” Bonnie said.

  The newspaper on the floor was a copy of the Parks County Spectator.

  My stomach dropped. The boy really was Aidan. This woman really was a kidnapper. She reached over the mess and offered a pen and notepad. “See if this works,” she said.

  I coughed to cover the sound of crumpling paper under the table and shoved the stolen sample into my pocket as I reached for the pad.

  I didn’t want to see my own handwriting. I knew where the tight enclosures on o’s and a’s showed my need for control; I knew how many characters I could get through before my inner analyst lit up and started paying more attention to the lines of my own hand than what I wrote, how my script would come to a self-conscious halt in the middle of a word. Plus, my hands were shaking.

  “I forgot my glasses,” I said. “At home. Could you?” I handed the pad back. “How much do you think you’d need an hour?”

  Bonnie brightened, brought the pen cap to her lips. A cry started down the hall, and she slumped again, sighing. “This is why I’m getting my own place.”

  Her own place? Who lived here, other than her? For the first time since being in Bonnie’s presence, I wondered how much danger the little boy was in. How had he come to be here, and who was due back home anytime? “I’ll go check on him,” I said. “If that’s not too weird.”

  Bonnie didn’t seem to see anything wrong with the offer. She held her hands up in surrender. “Fine by me.”

  I stood and picked my way through the toy minefield. Bonnie was leaving the family compound. That might explain why she was searching as far away as Sweetheart Lake for a job, but what did it mean? What would happen to Aidan? What was “the deal” she’d made?

  The hall was dark, all the doorways closed but one. I made for the strip of light there, my skin tingling. I could just walk in there and grab him? It was going to be this easy? Surely, the room would have a window—and then around the house to my truck. I pictured the back of the house and the woods. If I could find a path through the scrub without crackling leaves. If Aidan would play along. If all the pieces fell into place, I could get Aidan almost all the way to my truck before I’d be visible from where Bonnie sat.

  I eased the door open and stuck my head in. The dark room held a set of bunk beds, everything in shadow from the heavy drapes over the window. Aidan sat in the lower bunk, his thumb in his mouth.

  “Hi, buddy,” I whispered. I closed the door behind me and made for the window, slinging back the drapes. It was low enough to the ground. I turned the lock. Halfway open, the window stuck and would go no further. It would be a tight fit.

  I turned to Aidan. He watched me warily.

  “You’re getting so big.” I took a step toward the bed.

  Aidan popped his thumb out of his mouth. I stopped. “Do you want to take a ride in a big truck?”

  His belly rose under his T-shirt with every breath. “Truck,” he said.

  “That’s right. Want to go with me in the truck?” I moved quickly, reaching into the bunk and pulling him out. He lurched for his bed, but I held him tight against my hip. “Let’s go to see the truck, OK, Aidan?”

  He stuck his thumb back into his mouth. I grabbed a stuffed bear from the bed and handed it to him. He heaved it over my head. “OK, OK. No bear.”

  I carried him to the window and tried widening the opening again. The problem revealed itself—I’d have to put Aidan through the window first and then crawl out behind him. There would be a moment of terror for him, outside, alone, a stranger struggling out of the window after him, and this was when the scream would come. “We don’t have much choice, buddy. You and me, we’ll be friends. Can you be really quiet for your friend?”

  Aidan whimpered around his thumb as I slipped his feet through the window. He kicked my hands away. “Easy, easy,” I murmured, and then the door behind me opened.

  “Is he giving you trouble?” Bonnie said. “Hey.”

  I pulled Aidan away from the window and jostled him against my hip. “Oh, we were just—looking at the squirrels. Josh likes to look at the squirrels.”

  Bonnie looked at the window. “Mikey’s afraid of squirrels.”

  “Well, you didn’t tell me that, Mikey,” I said, wedging the false gaiety back into my voice. My heart was pounding in my ears. I couldn’t believe my panic wasn’t written on my face.

  Bonnie reached out both arms, the notepad in one hand. A trade. I bounced Aidan playfully, but he dove toward his aunt. I pretended to give my full attention to Bonnie’s calculations, written in a lumpy script.

  Bonnie walked past me and wrestled the window closed, Aidan clinging to her chest. “I’m going to need at least fifteen dollars an hour.”

  “Fifteen.” I nodded quickly, my mind already racing ahead for a second opportunity. Or maybe now was the time to leave and bring back help. “Of course.”

  “Although,” Bonnie said, rocking Aidan back and forth, “you probably don’t need me that much
.”

  Why couldn’t I just wrench Aidan from Bonnie’s arms and run? “Fifteen an hour is fine.”

  “Your kid couldn’t be that much work.” Bonnie placed her hand on Aidan’s fluffy hair and turned him away. “Being a teenager.”

  I heard only the barest rush of air as something heavy swung toward the back of my head, and then all was black.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  The moaning came from a long way off, then it was inside the room, inside my mouth, my own voice clawing at my throat. It was my own.

  I could stop it.

  Under the silence and my own ragged breath, I heard hisses. Whispers. The whispers stayed where they were.

  I am the moan and they are the whispers.

  They. Bonnie, holding Aidan in her tight arms and turning his face away just as the hammer came down.

  And accomplice. With two-by-four? With baseball bat?

  I reached to feel the wound, but my arm wouldn’t move. Paralyzed.

  My arms were tied. The room, dark. I imagined boots stepping over me to cover the window and began to shake.

  Joshua.

  A moan escaped, loud, unbidden, long. The whispers dropped away.

  Joshua. All I had wanted. And now.

  Baseball bat? Hammer? The entire back of my head was caved in, crushed.

  The whispers rose and fell. I woke again without knowing I’d gone under.

  Boat oar.

  Joshua sat at my side in the dark room. Small Joshua, a baby again. He ran a small fire truck up my arm. “Go,” I groaned. The whispers down the hall stopped. “Go. Before they—”

  The door opened and footsteps landed all around me. A woman’s voice. “Stay the hell out of here.” Hands reached into my view and took him away.