A Son's Tale

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Cal didn’t think the guy sounded sorry at all, and he didn’t bother to reply.

  “It’s my duty to inform you that a box containing some of your personal information is missing from the archives of the Comfort Cove Police Department, Mr. Whittier. Your fingerprints, as well as those of Emma Sanderson, were in that box. As was a shirt you were wearing on the morning of the abduction.”

  “What about the tape containing my testimony?” It was that tape that he’d have stolen, if he could. Stolen and destroyed. Just as the things he’d put on that tape had destroyed his father.

  “That, too.”

  Shit.

  “And you have no idea who took the evidence? Or why?”

  Could the real perp be behind this?

  Or someone who suspected that Claire was still alive?

  “Not at this time, no.”

  “Have you contacted Emma Sanderson?”

  “We’re in the process of doing so.”

  He wanted to ask more questions. To know where Emma was living.

  Had she gone to college? Did she have a career? Kids of her own?

  “Just out of curiosity,” he said instead, “how did you come to find the evidence missing?” Obviously someone was looking at the case, for some reason. Unless the Comfort Cove police had unlimited resources allowing them to randomly check evidence lists for every cold case on the docket.

  “I was following a lead.”

  “On Claire’s case?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say any more at this time.”

  “Has someone found Claire?”

  “No. And I really cannot disclose anything else at this time.”

  “But you’ll let me know if you find the missing evidence?”

  “Yes, Mr. Whittier. You can rest assured, I’ll be in touch.”

  Cal hung up with a bad feeling in his gut. He hadn’t liked the sound of that last promise.

  And he was going to make damned certain that his father didn’t catch wind of any of this.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MORGAN HAD A HARD time dropping Sammie off at school on Monday morning.

  “You understand that you’re going to be under constant surveillance for the rest of summer school, right?” she asked as she turned the corner to approach Rouse Elementary.

  “I know.”

  “It was either that or be suspended. It’s only because you’ve never been in real trouble before—other than the acting-out in class last semester—and because you’re a good student, and because of Julie speaking up for you, that you’re even allowed to go back to summer school.” She had to get through to him. To impress upon him the seriousness of what he’d done.

  “I know.” He looked her straight in the eye, his gaze so open and so childlike-sweet she almost choked up again.

  “These are the consequences you pay for breaking the rules, Sammie.”

  “I know.” He nodded again, looking down and back up again. “I swear, Mom, I’m going to follow the rules and I’m not going to run away again.”

  Pulling up in front of the school she studied her son for a long moment. She wanted to believe him, but she had no idea if he was telling her the truth.

  “I didn’t think about the police part.” He repeated what he’d told her when he’d come home to her on Saturday. “I didn’t think you’d call them. And I didn’t think about you being so worried. I just wanted to show you that I’m grown up.”

  His eyes were wide and moist, like he was fighting tears. A little boy trying so hard to be a man.

  “And don’t you see, Sammie, a grown-up would have thought of all those things—the police and the way everyone would worry. That’s why you have me. To think about the things that wouldn’t occur to you.”

  She reached over and hugged him as best she could with the console between them. He kissed her cheek, just like every other morning that they parted ways.

  “Remember we have our first meeting with Amanda Rohn tonight.” The counselor had come as a recommendation from Detective Martin.

  “I know,” Sammie said again. “But we don’t need her. I just stayed out one night. I was coming home by myself. We didn’t need the cops.”

  He’d told her all of that before, too. And it was his lack of understanding of the seriousness of his actions that scared her more than anything at this point. It was the mixture of mature thoughts with the innocence of childhood. Like the time he’d seen something on the news and thought that she could call the president of the United States and offer a solution.

  Hopefully the counselor would be able to help her get through to him.

  “Don’t worry, Mom, nothing bad’s going to happen,” Sammie said, and slid out of the car, slamming the door behind him before trotting off to the closest entrance. His backpack swung behind him, almost bigger than his torso.

  Maybe Sammie was right and she had nothing to worry about. Maybe she should just trust him like he kept saying. Or maybe her son was planning his next adventure.

  She prayed that it was the former.

  * * *

  MORGAN DIDN’T EVEN get both feet on the ground at the university before people were calling out to her, congratulating her on her son’s safe return.

  Being older than most of her fellow students meant that while Morgan was friendly with them, none of them were really friends. She didn’t hang out or go to bars or coffeehouses. She went to class and home to Sammie.

  But she’d been attending Wallace for more than four years. She’d sat in a lot of classrooms, chatted with a lot of people, worked on group projects and participated in discussions. It seemed to her, as she walked to class Monday morning, that every single individual she’d ever made eye contact with, or breathed the same air as, spoke to her. Some asked questions. Some expressed relief. Others curiosity.

  And all of the attention took her mind off the English class she was about to attend—off the man who taught the class.

  She was a little nervous as she entered the room. He was Professor Whittier today.

  Not Cal, the man who’d appeared on her doorstep Friday afternoon and remained steadfastly by her side through the worst nightmare of her life, the man who’d disappeared before she even had a chance to thank him, or introduce him to her son. He’d arrived, and then vanished without a trace.

  All day Sunday she’d waited for his call. She’d had no way to reach him. No home phone number. No cell. And no permission to use either.

  Her mind was filled with the things she’d say to him, the details she’d give, the thoughts she had. Julie had called. Morgan had been glad. But she’d kept her internal confusion to herself. She’d been waiting for Cal. She wanted his opinion—an outside source that she trusted with her life, with her son’s life.

  He hadn’t called.

  It was as though Cal had existed only in her imagination. An angel to see her through the trauma. A special gift of strength when her own would have failed her.

  Prior to Friday they’d talked, but always at school—in his office or after class. They’d never even so much as had a soda together.

  Now he’d spent the night in her house. He’d seen her at her worst.

  They couldn’t go back.

  She’d like to go forward.

  But what did he want?

  He’d been a crush. And then a best friend in her time of greatest need. She felt something for him that she’d never felt for any other man in her life.<
br />
  But was she anything more than a student in need to him?

  “I was so glad to hear that Sammie made it home safely!” Bella, the thin, blonde college girl personified said, taking the seat next to Morgan’s just before class was due to start.

  The girl’s eyes were wide and brown and brimming with authenticity. Morgan was a little ashamed at having judged her so harshly before. It wasn’t like her.

  “Yeah,” she said now, “me, too.”

  “Where had he been all night?”

  “He camped out in a spot he’d arranged at the back of my folks’ property.” Somewhere in the back forty acres. By the stream Morgan had run to as a kid anytime she needed to get away from her father’s domineering presence.

  “So he’d been planning the whole thing?”

  “Yep.” Planned it while visiting his grandparents. Food and shelter financed by her mother’s basketball shoe money.

  Professor Whittier had arrived, coming in through a side door in the front of the room.

  Judging by the way he was looking at her, he’d overheard the last part of her conversation.

  Her father had kept the facts of Sammie’s escapade out of the news. A brief mention of her son’s safe return was all that had been aired.

  Professor Whittier didn’t say a word to her. He didn’t nod, or smile, or greet her in any way.

  As though this was any other day, he put his leather satchel down on the table in front of him and started class.

  * * *

  HE’D SPENT AN UNCOMFORTABLE couple of days. The one element Cal could count on in his life was not counting on anything that he couldn’t have. He didn’t count on emotional support. Or happiness. He didn’t plan the American dream, or even think about getting a dog. Dogs attracted attention. They barked. People were naturally drawn to them. Cal couldn’t afford to have people drawn to him for any reason.

  He counted on being able to work. On being a decent person and doing a good job. Helping his students to reach for their dreams. He counted on caring for his father. On food on his table and a roof over his head. A car to drive and things to interest him.

  He counted on sex once in a while.

  He counted on his alone time to write. The relationship between him and the words that poured out of him late at night were all the emotional sustenance he sought.

  He counted on living peacefully.

  And then Sammie Lowen had gone missing and he’d found himself facing a confusing array of conflicting internal pressures. The pressure to help one of his students who seemed to need him. And something else, too. Some long-ago something that was fighting for release.

  Closure, maybe?

  Or anger?

  He wasn’t sure what was going on, which was why he’d stayed clear of Morgan Lowen the second he’d known her son was okay on Saturday.

  And it was also why he handed her an envelope at the end of class on Monday, inviting her to stop by his office if she wanted to.

  He could walk away from the weekend and leave things as they were. He’d helped a lot of students over the years and then never heard from them again. She could be one more.

  Yet he wanted to see her. To speak with her. Like there was some unfinished business to the weekend they’d shared.

  He’d expected her to come up immediately after class.

  She didn’t.

  And that left him uncomfortable, too.

  His phone rang instead.

  Seeing his father’s cell phone number on the display, he answered immediately.

  “How is she?”

  Sitting back in his desk chair, staring out the wall of windows that looked down on the green expanse of Wallace’s campus, Cal could picture the old man on the other end of the phone.

  Off work for what should have been a week of fishing, Frank Whittier would be sitting in his chair in his room, probably reading, the lines on his face getting deeper by the day.

  “She seems fine.”

  “You didn’t speak with her?”

  “We talked about some of the social issues that Twain raised in Huck Finn as part of the class discussion.”

  “And after class?”

  “No. I had some students with questions. She left.”

  “You spent the night with her, Cal.”

  His father had asked him no less than half a dozen times since Saturday if he’d called “that poor girl.”

  “Not hardly.”

  “You felt compelled to stay with her through the trauma but didn’t ask how she’s holding up after?”

  “It’s not my business.”

  “You made it your business.”

  “You ever think of Rose Sanderson, Dad?” They didn’t talk about what had happened. Ever. His father had established the rule early on. That way they never made mistakes, spoke out of turn, or were overheard.

  “Yes.”

  The rule of silence had been established for a young Cal. But the habit had stuck. Cal wasn’t sure what he was doing.

  “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her.”

  He wasn’t surprised. They didn’t have to speak about the past to know that it lived with them.

  “You still hate her that much?”

  His father had practically spit the woman’s name when he’d told Cal never to speak of her again.

  Cal had hated her, too. For a lot of years.

  “No, I don’t hate her. If I ever did, it wasn’t for long.”

  Cal lay back in his chair and looked to the ceiling. “But you’re angry with her.”

  “No, son, I’m not angry with her. I feel sorry for her.”

  Cal wondered again why he was instigating this conversation. Why everything was changing just because a young boy had run away.

  And because he’d had a call from the Comfort Cove Police Department.

  Two things that didn’t really affect their lives at all.

  “You feel sorry for her?” He felt strangely removed from the situation.

  “Of course, who wouldn’t? She had her two-year-old daughter snatched away from her. Gone. And no explanation. No answers. No chance for goodbyes. Or even closure. Her whole world fell apart. I should have been stronger. More understanding.”

  He sat forward, his gaze skimming the files on his desk. “You’re kidding me.”

  “No.”

  “Dad, she said she loved you. That she would marry you and honor and cherish you—and me—for the rest of her life. And then the first time that love was challenged, she turned on you. She didn’t trust you at all. She believed you’d hurt her child! She told the police so. She threw us out and wouldn’t even let us get our stuff. She ruined our lives.”

  “She was out of her head with grief. She had to blame someone. I was there.”

  Morgan had been beside herself with worry and fear, but she hadn’t blamed anyone. Except herself.

  “She turned on you within the first hour of Claire going missing and never changed her mind. Never came to her senses or remembered that we were family.”

  “We don’t know that. We had no contact with her after those first few weeks.”

  “Because she got a restraining order.” Any further contact had been up to her. If she’d ever missed them, wanted to speak with them, she could have sought them out. Lord knew, Cal had spent years hoping…

  “I can understand if she just didn’t have anything left to give us,” he said now. “But she didn’t have to take our lives fr
om us.”

  “She had to do whatever it took to get her daughter back.”

  His conversation with Ramsey came to mind. Again. Claire was still missing. So what Rose Sanderson had done hadn’t worked.

  And his father, whose life Rose stole, was just waiting to grow old enough to die.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  DRESSED IN A SHORT denim skirt, black tank top and black sandals, Morgan had been on the way to Professor Whittier’s office when her cell had rung, causing an instantaneous flood of panic to surge through her. Phone already in hand, she opened it, weak with relief when she saw that her caller was not Julie. Or anyone else at Sammie’s school.

  Sliding the flip phone beneath the blond hair hanging past her shoulders, she pushed the call button.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Morgan? Sweetie? We need to talk… .”

  * * *

  IF HIS DOOR WAS CLOSED she was not going to disturb him. If he wasn’t there, she wasn’t going to leave a message, or in any other way indicate that she’d stopped by.

  She shouldn’t be there. Cal Whittier was her English professor. Nothing more.

  But he’d left the note for her to come by.

  Probably just something to do with the half class she’d missed on Friday.

  The day seemed forever ago.

  In some ways it had been.

  She entered Cal’s building. Looked at the bank of elevators, any of which would take her up to the fourth floor. People were there. Waiting to cram inside the small space together.

  She took the stairs.

  He’d given her the note. Asked her to stop by.

  She climbed a flight, her pack digging into her back. And then climbed another. Toward Cal.

  At the moment, it was all she knew. To reach for Cal. And once she was with him, she’d begin to think.

  * * *

  ON THE LANDING at the top of the third flight of stairs, Morgan paused, pulled out her phone and hit speed dial.

  “He’s in class, sitting right up front, looking at the teacher,” Julie’s voice announced after half a ring. It was the fourth time she’d reported in that morning. She’d kept one of the surveillance screens tuned into Sammie’s classroom since he’d arrived.