See Tom Run

by Scott Wittenburg

  “No, I’m going to be fine. Just as crazy as I’ve always been, so they tell me.”

  “I’ll bet that was scary.”

  “Oh, it was very scary. I was fortunate that someone found me when they did. Otherwise, that customer would have been dead right.”

  Erin fell silent as Tom pulled into the Starbucks on North High Street.

  “Actually, the whole experience was scary for other reasons, too,” Tom said.

  “What do you mean?”

  I’ll tell you when we get inside.”

  Tom bought them both a cafe mocha and led the way to a table.

  “This is really good-thanks,” Erin said after taking a sip of her espresso-laced hot cocoa.

  “You are more than welcome.”

  “Okay, so tell me what you meant a minute ago.”

  Tom hesitated a moment before beginning. It was so strange sitting there with this girl! The feeling of deja vu was both surreal and overwhelming as he flashed back to the times that he and she had sat together just like this, in the Jeep, in his house, at the Waldorf Astoria, sharing their thoughts and fears, running for their lives in a lonely, frightening world.

  “I warn you, this is going to sound really strange.”

  “Okay.”

  “Well, while I was unconscious in the Jeep, I apparently had a dream-a very long dream. And you were in it.”

  Erin gazed at him with a combination of shock and fascination as Tom proceeded to recount the dream in its entirety. When he was finished, he explained to Erin that he had asked to speak to her because he wanted to be absolutely certain that she couldn’t possibly be his daughter, as crazy and far out as that may sound.

  When she replied to this, Erin stared at him with eyes that expressed great compassion.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Why are you sorry?”

  “That I’m not your daughter.”

  Her blunt, unexpected comment hurt Tom more than he could easily conceal from the girl. Although he hadn’t really expected her to be his daughter, he hadn’t given himself time to prepare for the reality of the fact.

  “How can you be so sure?” he asked weakly, his voice nearly cracking.

  “I just know I’m not. First of all, my last name isn’t Myers, it’s Landry. But since this was just a dream, my last name could probably have been anything. But you will see that I am obviously my father’s daughter once you take a look at this.”

  She opened her purse, took out her wallet and showed him the first picture on the top. Tom realized what she meant when he saw the tall smiling man in the Landry family portrait, who no doubt was her father. She was a spitting image of him.

  Tom forced a laugh. “I see what you mean. Your brother resembles your dad quite a bit, too.”

  “Yes, he does. My mom is always joking that she is on the short end of the gene pool when it comes to her kids.”

  Tom gazed at Erin’s mother in the portrait and had to agree. She was blonde, blue-eyed and very short, quite unlike her husband and children.

  So Erin Landry wasn’t his daughter after all. No real surprise there, so why was he so damn disappointed?

  Partly, because he was now back to wondering why he had had the dream in the first place. And partly because deep down inside he wanted her to be his daughter.

  He wondered why that was so but couldn’t come up with an answer. Not now, anyway.

  “You look sad, Mr. Grayson. I’m sorry this didn’t turn out the way you wanted it to.”

  The girl’s insight was remarkable, Tom thought. She seemed able to read him like a book.

  Just as Erin Myers had…

  “I’m okay, Erin. And I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to present you with this rather strange situation.”

  “No problem. I have enjoyed talking to you, Mr. Grayson.”

  “Please, call me Tom.”

  “Okay, Tom. If I tell you something, will you promise me that you won’t get mad?”

  “Of course. I couldn’t possibly get angry at you.”

  “Well, I sort of have a theory on why you had your dream, if you’d like to hear it.”

  “I’d love to.”

  “Well, it’s sort of obvious why the girl in your dream looked like me, since I was the last girl you saw before you went back to your car yesterday. You also no doubt saw my name tag, so you gave her my name.”

  “That’s a fair enough theory,” Tom agreed.

  “You said that this Mindy woman had called to tell you she was pregnant, right?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “And in your dream, you realized that Erin could have been the child that Mindy had been pregnant with after you saw the picture of the two of them together.”

  Tom nodded.

  “Well, Erin had been an orphan and apparently had had a pretty horrible life, it sounds like. I think you wanted Erin to be your daughter in the dream so you could finally be assured that your child was alive and safe, now that you had found her. “

  Tom wasn’t sure what she was getting at. “You sort of lost me there.”

  “I’m not sure how to put this,” she said, hesitating a moment. Her eyes looked past Tom then refocused on him. “Maybe after all of these years you felt sort of guilty about this child you never knew and if Erin had ended up not being your daughter, that meant that your child could possibly be, uh, gone forever.”

  Now he knew what she was driving at.

  And he realized that this young girl had just hit the nail on the head.

  Because now that he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that Erin Landry wasn’t his daughter in real life, he had no idea what had ever happened to the child Mindy Conkel had given birth to. And since Donnie Shortridge had been only a figment of his imagination, he couldn’t even be certain that the child had been put up for adoption He was going to have to find out what had ever happened to his child. For all he knew, his child could still be living in Smithtown, Ohio.

  Tom said, “Your theory is quite sound, Erin.”

  She blushed. “Well, I’ve sort of always wanted to be a psychologist. In fact, I’m majoring in psych at Ohio State.”

  “I think you’ve made the right career choice.”

  “I hope so-thanks for your encouragement.”

  Tom glanced at his watch. “I’ve kept you long enough. I am so grateful to you for letting me unload all of this on you. You’ve been most kind and helpful, Erin.”

  “No problem. And thanks for the treat.”

  “It’s the least I could do. Ready to go?”

  “Yeah.”

  They arose from the table and left the coffee shop. When Tom pulled into Erin’s driveway to drop her off, she leaned over and gave him a heartfelt hug. Then she faced him with her expressive brown eyes and said softly, “I hope you find her.”

  “Thanks, Erin. So do I.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Tom had just pulled away from Erin’s house when his cell phone rang. He glanced at the LCD, saw that it was Peg calling and cursed out loud. She was going to ream him a new one!

  He flipped the phone open, brought it to his ear and said. “I’m sorry, honey. I’m on my way now.”

  “You have got to be kidding, Tom! Do you realize that you were supposed to be home an hour ago? What have you been doing all this time?”

  Her question caught completely off guard as he floundered for some kind of excuse. He realized that he couldn’t come up with one quick enough.

  “Are you still there?” Peg snapped, absolutely livid now.

  He finally said, “Yes, dear. I decided to stop off at the library and look for something decent to read. I guess I lost track of the time.”

  “You are kidding, aren’t you? You are a horrible liar, Tom, and I don’t believe that for a second! Not only have you screwed up dinner but you’ve probably ruined the milk, too. That is if you even remembered to get it!”

  “I got the milk and it will be fine, Peg. I’ll be home in five m
inutes.”

  “Your cold, over-cooked dinner will be awaiting you-”

  Click.

  Tom flipped the phone closed and stepped down hard on the accelerator. He couldn’t blame Peg for being angry-he had gotten so caught up with Erin and his dream that he had totally lost track of the time.

  It was scary how compulsive he’d become lately. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was screw up his relationship with Peg. They had had plenty of scrapes through the years but had always managed to keep it together and mend things if they ever got broken. Sometimes he wondered how she put up with him as long as she had, considering his absent-minded ways and crispy-fried memory. He meant well most of the time, but the old gourd just wasn’t quite as sharp as it used be.

  A little too much partying in his former, single life?

  Duh!

  He nearly broadsided a car as he sped around a corner, prompting him to slow down his speed. What he didn’t need now was a car accident.

  After he got home and cooled Peg down, he was going to have to come up with an excuse for driving down to Smithtown tomorrow. This was not going to be easy, especially on such short notice and with the New Year’s Eve party happening the following day. Whatever he came up with was going to have to be really good.

  Should he invite her and the kids along? No, that wouldn’t work at all. There would be no way he could track down Mindy Conkel with his family there with him.

  Whatever he schemed to do, he knew that Peg was going to be suspicious. After all, he no longer had any family in Smithtown since his parents had migrated south to bask in the Florida sun. So what on god’s green earth could prompt him to suddenly have to make the two-hour drive to his former hometown?

  All of a sudden, he had an idea.

  Frank!

  Instead of making up an excuse for driving to Smithtown, he would pretend to be going somewhere with Frank for the day. He would ask his friend to cover for him so that he could take a very important out of town trip. Frank would no doubt assume that this had something to do the secret affair he had alluded to, which would be fine-he had almost seemed to think it was cool that Tom had played around on his wife.

  So what could he tell Peg that he and Frank were going to do for an entire day? Then he remembered Frank suggesting that they drive up to Cleveland sometime and check out the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

  Perfect.

  Later on tonight, he would call Frank to see if he would be game for this scheme. The hardest part would be how to deal with Frank’s wife, Julie. Frank would have to make himself scarce for the day in case Julie and Peg touched base with each other-there was no way he could have him tagging along while he looked for Mindy Conkel in Smithtown. Maybe Frank would be willing to go to Cleveland by himself.

  Tom realized that this would be asking an awful lot of his friend. Frank was as true-blue a friend as could be, but this just might be a bit more than he’d be willing to do. Lying was one thing; having to find a way to spend an entire day incognito was really pushing it.

  But luckily for Tom, Frank Warren owed him a favor. A big favor. Earlier that year, Frank had run into some financial problems and covertly asked Tom to loan him a fairly large sum of money. Frank had a weakness for gambling and had lost a bundle in a real estate investment scheme that his wife didn’t know about. One day, the Warrens needed money for an emergency situation but Frank had all but drained their savings account dry. So Tom had saved the day, and Frank’s ass, by loaning him the money under the table.

  Frank had only paid a fraction of the loan off so far. He had promised Tom that he would pay off the balance before the year’s end.

  And the year was all but over.

  Tom smiled to himself. If Frank was hesitant about helping him out with his plot, he would simply remind him of the debt he still owed him.

  When Tom pulled into his driveway, more than the wheels on Peg’s car were spinning.

  CHAPTER 19

  It was a beautiful winter morning-cold and crisp with a cloudless blue sky. Tom walked out of the service department at the Jeep/Chrysler auto mall, spotted his beloved vehicle parked on the other side of the lot and walked briskly toward it.

  After he slid into the driver’s seat and fired up the engine, memories of the longest dream in history returned with a vengeance. It dawned on Tom that he hadn’t been in this car since the day that the paramedics had pulled him out and rushed him to the hospital. The familiar feel of the soft leather seats and his grip on the steering wheel triggered the vibe like taking hold of a live electric wire. He glanced over at the passenger seat, half expecting to see Erin Myers telling him about her grim, unhappy life as an orphan. But the seat was of course unoccupied.

  Tom dismissed his disappointment and focused on getting out of the tight parking space. He pulled out onto the street and checked the fuel gauge, elated to see that he had a full tank. He turned on the CD player, selected the third disk and pressed ‘play.’ Steely Dan’s Hey Nineteen shot out of the speakers and into his head like a jolt of strong coffee.

  Tom’s thoughts were a mishmash of hurtling fragments. In the back of his mind was the huge lie he was living by driving to Smithtown. He had never been comfortable with lying and for that reason was a notoriously lousy liar. But the present situation forced him to go against his better judgment and spin an incredibly lame alibi to cover what could only be considered a compulsive, irrational shot in the dark-or just plain madness.

  Here he was, a grown adult with a fairly intact grip on reality, embarking on a two-hour road trip in order to track down a woman he had only seen once in his life nearly twenty years ago. And why was he undertaking this ill-conceived mission? Because he had finally decided after all this time to find out what had ever happened to the child this woman had told him was his.

  Maybe not exactly grounds for institutionalization, but certainly a valid argument for OCD.

  Because in the midst of all of this deceit and irrationality, Tom was still asking himself the same thing over and over: Why?

  Why was he doing this in the first place? What did he expect would come from all of this in the unlikely event that he did locate Mindy Conkel and she in turn granted him what he sought? The peace of mind in knowing once and for all that he had an illegitimate kid running around somewhere? A kid who would be a young adult by now and probably didn’t give two shits who his or her father was-the father who had not only abandoned him or her but hadn’t even been willing to admit paternity?

  What good could possibly come from this?

  Tom couldn’t think of any, really.

  But he could certainly think of plenty of bad things that could come from this-one being that if Peg were to catch him sneaking around like this, he might as well pack his bags and leave town. There was no doubt that she would throw him out of the house-he was certain of that. He and his wife had based their entire marriage on mutual trust and honesty. Not only had he failed to mention this “blemish” in this former life, he had gone a step further and lied to her about this whole ridiculous mission.

  Peg would ream him a new asshole and file for divorce all in the same breath.

  Tom considered calling the whole thing off as he drove west toward I-71 south. He could call Frank on his cell phone and catch him before he drove all the way to Cleveland by himself. Then he could either join him or they could both simply go back to their respective homes and tell the wives they had changed their minds about going to the Rock and Roll Museum.

  But Tom knew he wouldn’t do this. Because something deep inside was telling him that he must follow through this. It was the same thing that had told him to track down Erin Landry.

  He needed to know the truth.

  He pulled onto the I-71 south ramp, cranked up the volume on the CD player and sat back comfortably in his seat. In a couple of hours, he would get to the bottom of what this was all about.

  CHAPTER 20

  As he neared the Smithtown city limits, Tom
was barraged with childhood memories. It had been nearly six years since he’d visited his hometown and he wondered how much of the small southern Ohio burg had changed. He didn’t expect much since the town of 20,000 always seemed to be standing still in the grand scheme of things. Smithtown had been under economical duress for as long as he could remember and suffered from the same ills as the other small towns in Appalachia: high unemployment rates, low wages, sub-par health care and an alarming rate of poverty. The few friends he knew of that still lived in the area were either doctors or drunks-there seemed to be little else in between.

  He passed by the several gas stations that greeted him and continued south until he spotted a phone booth in a small strip mall. He pulled into the parking lot, went into the booth and began thumbing through the white pages.

  He looked under the C’s and wasn’t particularly surprised to discover that there was no listing for a Mindy Conkel. There was an M. Conkel, however, so he dug into his pocket for his cell phone and keyed in the number. After a few rings, a man answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Uh, hi. I’m trying to locate a Mindy Conkel and was wondering if this was her number.”

  “No Mindy here,” the man replied in a thick hillbilly drawl.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Do you by any chance know a Mindy Conkel?”

  “Nope. Never heard of her.”

  “Okay. Well thanks, anyway.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Click.

  Time for Plan Two, Tom thought. He thumbed through the pages until he reached the S’s and found a few Shortridges but no Donny nor any D. or M. Shortridges. This came as no surprise either, but it was at least worth a shot.

  Plan Three was to track down his old friend, Alan Hughes, and see if he could help him locate Mindy. Although he had doubts that Alan knew her, he figured that his friend might at least give him some ideas of where to start looking. Smithtown was, after all, not a very big place.

  He looked up Alan’s number and gave him a ring, only to get a recording that the number had been disconnected. No forwarding number was given so Tom snapped the phone shut in disappointment.