A Son's Tale

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  As opposed to her father’s?

  “That’s good.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did she ask you a lot of questions?”

  “Not really. She just wanted to talk with Sammie tonight.”

  “When do you see her again?”

  “Thursday night.” He was taking Kelsey out for sushi Thursday night.

  “Okay, well, have a good night.”

  “You, too.”

  Cal hung up and took a long swig of the whiskey that was supposed to last him the rest of the night.

  * * *

  ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, a couple of hours before class, Cal was in his office at the university reading over material for the one Monday/Wednesday/Friday summer class he had that session, when he had another call from Comfort Cove Detective Ramsey Miller.

  Accepting the inevitable, he picked up.

  “Whittier,” he said abruptly into the mouthpiece.

  After identifying himself Miller said, “Tell me again, Professor, how many times have you left the state of Tennessee in the past six months?”

  Miller had already asked that question. And his reply was the same. “None.”

  “Would you like to reconsider that answer?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you explain a receipt at the Starwood Steakhouse in Lexington, Kentucky, in June?”

  Cal drew a blank.

  And then he didn’t. “I was flying from Tyler to Nashville. We were rerouted due to inclement weather. We got meal vouchers. I went to the Starwood Steakhouse, which is in the Lexington Airport, by the way, for dinner while I waited for the storm to pass so I could get home.”

  There was a pause on the line. And then Cal asked, “And what in the hell are you doing looking at my receipts? Am I under investigation for something?”

  “I got a warrant. We have a twenty-five-year-old cold case on a missing child that has had inexplicable activity.” The detective continued. “And everyone involved is being looked at.” Cal’s heart sank. Not again. For the love of heaven, not again.

  He’d bet his ass that they were looking at his father and him with suspicion while everyone else was just being given a fond and concerned glance. “You did your duty and informed me about the missing evidence, Detective, now leave us alone,” he said. And hung up.

  Frank Whittier had, in effect, been punished for a crime he hadn’t commited. He’d become invisible so he could keep Cal with him, so he could make sure Cal was loved and treated well, so Cal would get the education he needed to have a career he enjoyed. And now Cal was going to make damned sure no one touched his father. Ever again.

  * * *

  “SAMMIE? WHAT ARE YOU doing in there?” She stood outside the bathroom door in their duplex, talking to wood paneling.

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, sweetie. You need to eat some breakfast before we go.”

  She’d wanted to run the brush through her hair again, too, now that it had dried. And to put on some eyeliner. But she’d already given up on both of those counts.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Staring at her unpolished toes in their plain brown flip-flops beneath the hem of her cheap, cotton tie-dyed skirt Wednesday morning, Morgan took a deep breath. Maybe the monitor had been a bad idea, after all. Her son hadn’t spoken a kind word to her since Monday night.

  This was the third time he’d locked himself in the bathroom where “she couldn’t hear him breathe.”

  “You’re going to be late for school.” She tried again.

  “No, I’m not.”

  Surely he didn’t think he could just hide out in the bathroom and not go to school?

  She had to get to her class and then to work at the day care.

  The monitor in Sammie’s bedroom might have been a poor choice, but she’d had to discipline him. Her father had stated in his complaint that she didn’t give Sammie enough discipline, that she let him tell her what to do instead of the other way around.

  And maybe she had. She was open-minded. She listened to her son. But she never gave in when his safety or health was involved.

  Anyway, she’d had to do something more than just talk to Sammie after Friday’s misbehavior. Sammie had put his life at risk. She had to take firm action.

  “Sammie, you and I have always at least been able to talk.”

  No answer.

  “I thought we were always honest with each other. What you did on Friday, that was a lie in action. A big one. I can’t just let it go.”

  More silence.

  “Did Ms. Dinsmore tell you who she is and why you’re seeing her?”

  “She said I could call her Leslie.” With emphasis on the “I.”

  Glancing at the large gold watch her mother had given her for Christmas, Morgan calculated distances. They had to leave within six minutes or Sammie was going to be late for school. And so would she.

  Her son was ready, other than having missed breakfast, if you could call dressing in ripped denim shorts and a stained T-shirt dressed.

  Sammie knew she hated it when he dressed like a homeless kid, but she’d also learned a long time ago to pick her battles with her stubborn and too-smart-for-his-own-good ten-year-old going on fifty.

  “Did Leslie tell you why you’re seeing her?” she asked.

  “She didn’t tell. She listened.” His belligerent tone let her know quite clearly what he thought of her own listening skills.

  “This isn’t just about Friday night’s camping trip,” she said. “Our troubles are more serious, Sammie.”

  “You said I’m not in trouble. I heard the cop tell you that they weren’t going to take any action.” Accusation was in every word.

  Her son had betrayed her trust and now he didn’t trust her? They’d gone from bad to worse.

  And she still hadn’t had a full night’s sleep.

  “She’s a detective and I’m not talking about the police.”

  She heard some shuffling. But Sammie didn’t open the door.

  “Your grandfather claims I’m not a good mother.” Did the responding grunt communicate agreement or disgust with George Lowen?

  “He’s trying to get you to go live with him.” If Sammie wanted to go, her battle was pretty much done before it had begun. And if he continued with this behavior, same thing.

  More shuffling.

  She couldn’t do this now. Couldn’t have him miss any more school or he’d be kicked out.

  And then she’d have to drop out of her summer class and not graduate and spend at least another semester as a slightly-higher-than-average-paid hourly worker at the day care while her son wore cheap basketball shoes and ate school-sponsored lunches. She couldn’t get a promotion in her job until she had a degree.

  “We have to go, Sammie.”

  To her shock, the door opened. Sammie was standing there, dressed in his newest old pair of navy shorts with a clean, short-sleeved, light blue shirt that matched. He was wearing the sneakers she’d bought him, too, instead of the Converse shoes with the hole in the toe. The clothes he’d put on earlier that morning were in a pile on the bathroom floor.

  He glared at her as he walked past, grabbed his book bag and stormed out the front door.

  Grabbing a breakfast pastry and a juice box, Morgan hurried after him.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE ENTIRE TIME Morgan was in class, she fought with herself. Her life was in chaos. She had a probl
em larger than anything she’d dealt with before looming on the horizon.

  What was she doing sitting in English class, discussing Huckleberry Finn and Mark Twain? It seemed so trivial compared to what was going on in her life.

  And what was the matter with her that talking to her English professor made her feel so good? It wasn’t like they were really friends.

  Their give-and-take wasn’t mutual. He knew far more about her than she knew about him.

  And he had no obligation to her whatsoever.

  He was just a nice guy who got caught up in a tragic situation. Sammie was home and fine, and life would go on now.

  “Was Huck a hero? A good guy?” Cal glanced around the surprisingly full classroom, surprising because it was the third Wednesday in July and ninety degrees outside.

  “Nooo.” Bella drew out the word. She smiled at the man in his short-sleeved white dress shirt and striped tie at the head of the room. Cal’s hair was styled impeccably as always. It was long enough to be attractive in a slightly rakish way but still look completely professional.

  Not that Morgan was admiring him or anything. She was just imagining what Cal must look like from Bella’s twenty-year-old perspective.

  “Huck made poor choices.”

  “He flaunted societal mores at every turn,” Dave Armstrong, a fellow education major and a young man Morgan had grown to respect over her college years, chimed in.

  Cal’s gaze bounced from student to student as comments volleyed back and forth, kind of like he was watching a tennis match. And then his gaze landed on her.

  On any other day, she might have joined in the debate. Today it hadn’t seemed to matter a hell of a lot.

  “Morgan? Was Huck a hero?”

  “I think so.”

  “Why?”

  “He did what he thought was right even if it went against the social mores of the time. Those of us lucky enough to read Twain now can learn from Huck’s choices.”

  “You’re saying he was bad for good reason,” Bella said from across the room.

  Maybe. Or he’d been good and no one had seen it.

  Others jumped in. Talked about the type of people we want living among us. Those who lead. And those who follow. Those who challenge the status quo and set trends. Cal watched the debate.

  Morgan watched Cal.

  Most of her classmates, minus the jerkoid with the headphones on, were engaged in the discussion. A couple spoke among themselves. No one was sleeping.

  But Morgan wanted to sleep with her professor.

  * * *

  CAL WAS PLANNING to get a word in with Morgan after class Wednesday. He couldn’t keep calling her up to his office, but he wanted to make certain that she knew he was there to support her through her struggles for as long as she needed him. He’d taken her on and he wasn’t going to desert her.

  He wasn’t a therapist, but teachers often found themselves in a position of trust. He’d be there for any of his students who came to speak with him.

  Besides, Morgan didn’t need another therapist. She needed a friend. And he wanted to be that friend as much as he could be, considering their teacher-student relationship.

  She was taking longer than usual to gather up her things after class. Waiting for him, he surmised. He was glad.

  Bella, who always seemed to be the last to leave, finally exited the classroom. And then, in his peripheral vision, he saw Kelsey Barber hovering in the doorway.

  “Cal?” she called out softly. She was dressed in white gauze from her ankles to her neck, her arms and shoulders bare and tanned to a freckleless golden brown. Her deep red hair flowed in natural curls down her back.

  “Yeah! Kelsey, come on in.” She was attractive. Natural and a little wild, she was just his type of woman.

  The free-spirited type.

  “I’m on my way to the kiln—timer’s about ready to go off—but I just wanted to ask if we could change tomorrow night to seven-thirty instead of seven? I have a student who needs to meet with me after she gets off work.”

  Morgan could hear. Which made him inexplicably tense. And more eager than ever to lock in time with Kelsey. “Seven-thirty’s fine,” he said.

  “Good.” Her smile held a promise he wanted to explore. “If you’d like, we could head over to my loft rather than having to sit in a busy restaurant and listen to the buzz of other conversations. I make a decent lasagna.”

  He’d asked her about Italian food the first time he’d called her.

  “That sounds great,” he said. And meant it.

  He wanted to spend time with Kelsey. To get to know her.

  He wanted to talk to Morgan, too. But by the time he turned back to her, she was gone, the back door of the classroom closing quietly behind her.

  * * *

  THAT EVENING, AS SOON as his father had turned in for the night, Cal poured his glass of whiskey and shut himself in his office. As far as he knew, his father never set foot in the room that had formerly been a third bedroom—insisting that Cal needed his private space—but tonight he locked the door anyway.

  He was there to write, to work on the compilation of impressions and thoughts that had become a lifelong project to him. Putting his life in book form. A story that was tragic. A hobby that was therapeutic.

  Usually he wrote in sweats. His home office was the only place he allowed himself such casual dress. Tonight he needed the barrier more formal clothes provided. A mental barrier, perhaps, but one he chose to maintain.

  Loosening his tie, he knelt in front of the wooden file cabinet his father had given him when he’d graduated from college. The solid piece of furniture had been one of the few things that had traveled with them through the years.

  In its former days the cabinet had supported the middle sectional piece of the mammoth desk in his father’s headmaster’s office in Massachusetts.

  The bottom drawer slid open to reveal the locked metal box Cal kept hidden away. He hadn’t opened the drawer, or the box large enough to hold several legal pads, in years.

  Tonight he pulled it out, carried it over to his desk, sat down. Using the key from the ring in his pocket, he unlocked the black metal lid and slowly lifted it.

  The first thing he saw made his heart pound. Ramsey had read a list to him of evidence contained in the box that had gone missing from the Comfort Cove Police Department.

  Obviously the detective had never seen the “box.” It had been fluid like an envelope as opposed to hard-sided like a box. Made of some kind of durable plastic material. The kind that lined swimming pools, only a frosted clear color instead of blue.

  At least that was what he’d thought when he was seven years old and had been left alone in a room with that “envelope” sitting on a counter.

  The thing had been big enough to hold books.

  Instead, it had been filled with his things. And Emma’s. And Claire’s. Taken from their rooms. Their home.

  Even the clothes taken from their bodies, underwear included, the day that Claire had gone missing.

  Cal stared at the small, dark tan bear lying on a backdrop of papers and old articles in the black metal box on his lap. The edges of its fur were matted, tips dirty from sticky little fingers, from tears.

  The bear—Teddy, a young Cal had named it— was on Ramsey’s evidence list from that missing envelope.

  But a seven-year-old boy could hardly be blamed for grabbing the bear and hiding it in his jacket. He could hardly be cha
rged with theft for rescuing a child’s toy and smuggling it home.

  Teddy’s golden eyes gazed up at him. One of them could have had a tear seeping out from the crack down the center of it. He remembered the day the bear got hurt. They’d all been piling into the van to head out for ice cream. The sun was high in the sky and Dad and Rose were home so it had to be summer. He was already sweating even though he had on a T-shirt and shorts and the flip-flops Rose had just bought for him because they had the Boston Celtics basketball logo on them.

  God, he’d loved those flip-flops. He’d worn them every day that summer. So proud he’d practically skipped when he walked.

  Not so much because of the Celtics, though they were the coolest and wearing their emblem made him cool. But because he had a mom now. Someone who thought about things he liked, and not just things he needed. Someone who surprised him with gifts just because he was there, because he was in her thoughts. Because he was loved.

  Rose was a teacher, too, just like Cal’s mother had been.

  He coughed. Took a sip of whiskey.

  Teddy. The bear. Claire had been about a year old and was in the throwing-everything-all-the-time stage. It was a game she played with him, and while he grumbled, Cal had secretly loved it that she wanted his attention. She’d throw things and then laugh out loud when he picked them up. Over and over and over again.

  That day she’d thrown Teddy from her car seat, over to his seat by the sliding door in the side of the van just as his dad had slammed the door shut. The bear had escaped. Claire’s screams had muffled Cal’s voice as he tried to tell Rose that Teddy was in the driveway.

  Dad climbed in the passenger’s seat of the van and Rose backed down the drive, all the while telling Claire to just hold on, she’d have her ice cream soon.

  Rose had thought Claire was screaming for ice cream.

  She’d been mourning her bear.

  She got Teddy back. But not until after Rose had backed the van over him.

  Cal had taken all the blame. He’d offered up his allowance money to buy Claire a new bear. But Rose had assured him that Teddy’s injury wasn’t his fault. She said that he’d done the right thing by staying put and trying to tell her what had happened.