He drove well, checking rearview mirrors regularly and changing lanes smoothly. It was at least a quarter hour before he spoke again.
“How did you find me?” When he wasn’t angry, his English had no trace of an accent. It’s not uncommon for Canadians to be flawlessly bilingual, especially Québécois who move in both anglophone and francophone worlds. Although some never learn English, and others have a heavy accent.
“Paul told me your names, and I searched on the internet until I found your company and its address. I mean, I assumed it was you.”
“You live in Lake Placid.”
“Yes,” I said. And then, because talking, however inanely, seemed better than sitting in silence for the rest of this three-hour drive, I told him where I’d grown up, where I went to school, about working for the newspaper, and what work I did now. I’m not usually a rambler, but something had to fill this silence. He asked no questions. Neither did I.
Suddenly I thought of Baker—I needed to let her know we were on our way. I didn’t want to be left sitting tensely with Dumond in their driveway waiting for them if they had gone out. And I owed her some warning: Hey, Bake, I’m about to arrive at your house with Paul’s father, who I’m hoping like hell didn’t have anything to do with the kidnapping.
I pulled out my cell phone and gestured with it. “I should tell Baker that we’re coming.”
“Baker?”
“My friend that Paul’s with.”
He thought a moment and then nodded, pulling a cell phone out of a cradle I hadn’t noticed. “Use this one.”
Fine by me. He’d have a record of the call, but since I was taking him to Baker’s, it hardly mattered. I punched in the numbers. Baker answered.
“Bake, it’s me. How’s Paul?”
“He’s fine,” she said mildly. “The boys are home from school and teaching him all kinds of naughty slang. Did you talk to his father?”
“Yep. I’m in his car. We’ve crossed the border, as a matter of fact.”
Silence for a moment. “So you’re coming down here. And you’ve decided he’s not the bad guy.”
“Yep and yep. I mean, yep, I’ve decided, pretty much anyway.”
“Should I expect squad cars to descend on us?”
“No, he just wants to see Paul for now. I wanted to give you a heads-up. We’ll be there in about an hour.” What I wasn’t saying was In case I’ve guessed wrong and this man is a homicidal lunatic, have Mike on hand and the kids tucked away safely. But Baker was smart, with a mother’s instincts. She’d probably send the boys to Holly’s. And Mike was an Adirondacker—he hunted, had more than one gun, and knew how to use them.
Dumond watched as I carefully put the phone back in its slot. “Who is this Baker?”
“She’s a good friend of mine, in Saranac Lake. She’s got kids, and Paul likes them, so he’s fine with her.” I was starting to babble.
“She has been keeping Paul?”
“No, he’s been at my house; I just left him at Baker’s today while I went to see you.”
We were quiet the rest of the way, me speaking only to direct him at intersections. By the time we pulled into the driveway Dumond was stiff with tension, and I could hear my heart pounding.
Then we were out of the car, Dumond at my side, gripping my elbow, his fingers tight on my arm. Baker was in the driveway, moving toward us with a slight frown, her eyes worried, her very posture telling me something was wrong. She glanced at Dumond and then spoke to me.
“Troy, he’s gone.” I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach. A harsh exclamation, a sudden movement from the man beside me. I ignored him.
“What do you mean, gone?” The words were thick in my mouth. Oh God, oh God, oh God, ran a little voice in my head. Please tell me that Child Services got him or he’s in the hospital. Please please please …
She gestured toward the doorway, where sturdy Mike was standing, looking like a lumberjack in his jeans and plaid shirt, their sons lined up in front of him, his hands on the shoulders of the two youngest. “They were playing Sardines outside but then they couldn’t find Paul, and finally gave up and came and told me.”
I knew Sardines was a hide-and-seek game: when you found the first person hiding, you squeezed in, until the whole group was squished in together and only one left searching.
Dumond whirled on me and began to spout a torrent of French so furious I was glad it was too fast to understand. Midway he switched to English, just as fast and almost as angry. “What game are you playing that you bring me here and pretend you have my son? How dare you …”
I jerked my arm free and faced him. “Look,” I said hotly. “You have to believe us. Paul was here; he’s your son, he has to be. How many Paul Dumonds have been kidnapped from Montreal? Why would we make this up?” He was staring at me angrily, and I remembered something I’d tucked into my satchel. I grabbed it and pulled out the paper where Paul had written his and his parents’ names, and held it out. “Look, he wrote down his name and your names. He wasn’t lying and I’m not lying.”
Now I was almost shouting. His eyes and posture told me he wasn’t buying it, any of it. Baker had stepped away from us and reappeared, silently pushing something into my hand. I looked down, and saw a small digital camera. “Mike Jr.’s,” she said. “They took pictures today.”
I lifted the camera and looked at the viewing screen. Baker’s middle son, Rick, was grinning a toothy grin, with Paul beside him. I turned to Dumond and silently held out the camera.
He took it and looked down at it. He looked at it a long time, then across the driveway at Rick, wearing the same shirt as in the photo. Now I saw what I’d been looking for and what did, at last, put an end to that horrible am-I-doing-the-right-thing doubt. His face was etched with agony, so stark and pained it made my stomach jolt.
“Yes,” he said. “This is my son.”
MIKE STRODE FORWARD AND INTRODUCED HIMSELF. “FIRST thing to do is contact the local police,” he said. “I’ll call Jimmy Dupuis down at the station and he’ll have everyone keeping an eye out, even the Staties.”
Dumond nodded. Mike normally stays in the background and lets Baker manage things, but when action is required—like when Mike Jr. took a baseball to the forehead and spouted blood like a geyser—he moves, and moves quickly.
We plugged the camera’s memory card into their computer; I selected the best shot of Paul’s face, cropped out the other kids, and printed copies. Mike emailed one to his friend at the police station. They couldn’t do an AMBER Alert, he told us, because we had nothing to suggest that Paul hadn’t just wandered off. Holly and her husband, Tom, appeared, and she herded the kids into the living room to watch a movie.
Mike shook out a map of Saranac Lake onto the kitchen table. “Phil and I will drive this section of town.” He slashed red crayon lines up and down streets. “Tom and Holly will drive this section.” He marked off more streets with a blue crayon. “Troy can search the immediate area on foot and check with neighbors. Susan will stay here in case Paul comes back, and she can alert all of us if anyone finds him.”
For a moment I wondered who Susan was, before I remembered it was Baker’s first name.
I searched for over an hour, knocking on doors and peering into backyards. Excuse me, have you seen a small boy about this size, who looks like this? I was trying not to panic or despair, but I saw only three possibilities: Paul had gotten lost, Paul had run away, Paul had been abducted. One, two, three. None good. After I’d circled the neighborhood, I stopped back at the house for a bathroom break. My head was pounding and my gut felt hollow. The kitchen door creaked as I came in, and Baker looked up from the kitchen table.
“When did you eat last?” she asked.
“Mmm. Breakfast.” She pointed, and I pulled out a chair and sat. Within minutes she had a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich and a cup of steaming Earl Grey in front of me.
My fear, one that I kept probing at like a sore tooth, was that I’d toss
ed away the miracle I’d been handed—of having saved Paul’s life—by leaving him to be snatched again. I had to struggle not to envision his body in Lake Clear or one of the other nearby lakes. How simple it would be to stop to pretend you’re looking at the view and slip a small bundle into the water. This time they’d be sure he was unconscious or dead first.
Baker spoke as if she were reading my mind. “It’s not likely that someone took him, Troy. The other kids would have seen someone, they’d have seen a strange car. And someone would have had to follow you here this morning; you’d have noticed them.”
She’s not inclined to platitudes, but that’s what this sounded like. I shook my head. “I can’t imagine him just wandering off, Bake. He’s stuck close to me ever since I found him. He wouldn’t feel safe enough to go off on his own. And he had no idea where I was or what I was doing.”
Baker shook her head. “Well, maybe he did.” She took a sip of tea, involuntarily grimacing. She probably would have preferred a shot of Jack Daniel’s—I always bring her back a bottle when I visit Tennessee. I assume you can buy it here, but she seems to prefer it from closer to the source. “When I was talking to you on the phone, the kids came into the kitchen to get something to drink. It never occurred to me that Paul could understand me, or that—”
I finished the sentence. “That he’d run away from his father.” I chewed a bite of sandwich as I thought. “I don’t believe Dumond had anything to do with his son being kidnapped, but I’m not sure that Paul knows that. No telling what the kidnappers said to him. And his father not coming to rescue him would seem like abandonment to a kid.”
I never should have left Paul. What I should have done, I wasn’t sure. I’d stopped being entirely logical the moment I’d dived into the water.
The phone rang, and we both jumped. Baker grabbed it, spoke a few terse words, and returned to the table. “That was Mike. They’re heading back here for coffee.”
I let the tiny hope fade that had formed when the phone rang. I pulled one thought from the tumbling mass in my brain. If Paul had been snatched, we couldn’t find him. But if he’d wandered or run away, we could. And to have evaded us this long, he’d have had to find somewhere to go.
“Baker, do any of the kids around here have a hideout, a clubhouse or anything? Something they might have told Paul about that he could have thought would make a good hideaway?”
“Maybe,” she said, frowning. “Let’s ask them.”
In the living room the kids were intent on Free Willy. The whale was about to sail over the wall to escape to the ocean, so we politely waited until he leaped, and then hit the Pause button, freezing him just before he splashed down on the other side.
“Hey, guys,” Baker said genially, “we need to talk a little.” Seven solemn sets of eyes looked at her. “You know that Paul’s missing, that he may have wandered off somewhere or gone to hide.” Her tone was amiable. Seven solemn nods. “What we need to know is if anybody may have mentioned something about a cool place to hide or a fun place to explore, that maybe Paul thought he’d check out.”
It took a while to convince them that they weren’t in trouble, but eventually Mike Jr. and Holly’s older son, Jack, admitted they’d mentioned a scary cave on the hill behind Jack’s house, and, well, maybe bragged about having explored it and how it was much too hard to find and much too scary for anyone younger than them. By now Tom and Holly had returned, and Holly joined us while Tom poured himself some coffee in the kitchen.
“But Paul doesn’t understand English,” Holly protested, pushing her hair away from her face.
“I think he knows more than we realize,” I said. “I think he can understand a lot. And kids are good at communicating.”
Baker had already assembled a row of flashlights on the counter, and was piling up jackets, because the sun was beginning to sink and it was cooling off. Suddenly I thought of something. I jumped up. “Tiger. I’ll bet Tiger could find him.” I grabbed the kitchen phone and dialed. I was in luck—Zach was home and so was Dave, with his car. They’d be right over. I rattled off directions.
Mike and Dumond strode into the kitchen while I was on the phone, arriving like the next set of characters in a play. It was clear they had no news, and I could see Baker relaying to them what the kids had told us. As I hung up, Mike nodded. “I figured that’d be the next place to search anyway,” he said, wiping his brow. “There is an old cave up there, but the opening’s pretty small and it’s hard to find. He could be anywhere up there, so we’ll have to cover the whole hill.”
Baker looked over at Dumond, still in his brown Armani, now slightly bedraggled. “Do you have any other clothes?” she asked.
He blinked. “A few things, yes. But …”
“You’re going to need something sturdier than that, and shoes that won’t slip.”
He started to speak again, then turned and headed out to his car for his bag. The clothes I had on weren’t fancy, but they were the best I had. No point in ruining them. “I’ll change, too,” I said, and ran out to get the bag with the clothes I’d brought in case I’d needed to stay over in Canada.
In Baker’s downstairs bathroom I pulled on jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers. When I came out, Dumond had changed to khakis, a button-down shirt, and soft leather lace-up shoes. Scrambling around on the hillside would probably ruin these clothes, but at least they were sturdier. And less expensive.
Baker insisted that everyone gulp mugs of coffee and eat sandwiches while she filled a thermos and gathered supplies. Then I heard the sound of Dave’s rattletrap old Pontiac, and ran to the door. The car doors opened and bodies piled out: Tiger, then Zach, Dave, and Patrick—young, muscular, full of energy, wearing sweatshirts and faded jeans, almost like a uniform. I ran to meet them and they surrounded me, a warm protective ring, not quite touching me, but close.
“Sixteen minutes, flat,” Dave said proudly, shaking his shaggy hair out of his eyes. Patrick balanced on the balls of his feet, bouncing up and down; Zach gave my arm a little punch.
“Hey, don’t w-w-worry,” he said. “We’ll find him.”
We walked in silence to Holly and Tom’s house, armed with flashlights. The sky was starting to dim and we could feel the incoming chill. Holly shooed all the kids inside, where her younger sister was waiting to watch them. Baker set up a base at the bottom of the hillside with a lawn chair, spare flashlights and batteries, first aid kit, thermos, blankets, and air horn. She’d rounded up these things with so little effort that I could only assume that households with three small boys keep them stashed away for emergencies. Dumond was restless, impatient to get started, but waited for Mike’s instructions.
Two neighbors Holly had called joined us. We’d sweep up the hill in rows in pairs, Mike said, and try to cover every inch of ground and every place a small boy might take shelter. Dumond teamed with me, which somehow I’d expected.
I’d had Zach bring over the clothes Paul had worn yesterday, and Tiger obligingly sniffed them. I had no idea if she knew what I wanted, but she can track an invisible squirrel across a field and find a peanut that’s rolled under a couch, so maybe she could find a lost little boy on a steep, overgrown hillside.
For the next hour we plunged through dense underbrush, Tiger scooting under thick bushes and tree branches we had to battle through. Sometimes I got down on my hands and knees and crawled, holding the flashlight in my teeth, with the light shining crazily off to the side. Sometimes I had to call to Tiger to wait. Sweat was trickling down my back despite the coolness of the evening. I was very aware of Dumond’s presence. I was praying silently, over and over, Please let us find him, please let me have been right about his father. Please please please. Now Tiger was sniffing at the ground, following a scent, and I hoped we weren’t painstakingly tracking a deer or a squirrel. We seemed to be zigzagging, and occasionally I’d catch sight of a bobbing light from someone else’s flashlight. So much for Mike’s plan of careful linear searching.
Then Tiger
plunged ahead, into a thick bramble, woofing. I knelt and played the flashlight ahead of me. I could see a tunnel-like opening in the brush, about the diameter a small child could crawl through, too small for either of us. Tiger dived in. I strained to hear. Was she nudging, licking, greeting a small boy? My pulse quickened. Dumond’s hand was gripping my shoulder. He didn’t speak—maybe he couldn’t. What could you say when you might see the son you thought you’d lost forever?
“Paul, Paul,” I called softly. “C’est Troy. Tu es là? Are you there?”
Silence. I called again, “Paul, please come out. Il n’y a rien de dangereux ici. You are safe. Please come out. Paul, Paul, come on, sweetie.”
Beside me, on his knees, Dumond didn’t move, but I could feel the pressure of his fingers on my shoulder. A tiny rustle, then another. The grip on my shoulder tightened. A small figure appeared, slowly, crawling through the tiny space, and then we could see Paul’s face, tear-streaked and more than a little grimy, with Tiger close behind, as if she was herding him out. I held out my arms and he scampered the rest of the way and fell into them.
“Vous êtes revenue,” he squeaked. “Vous êtes revenue pour moi.” You came back for me. I could feel Dumond beside me, shaking in tiny tremors.
My heart did that funny twisting thing again. I clung to Paul. I could feel the breath going in and out of his body, in unison with my own. “Chéri, chéri, chéri,” I whispered. “Tu es fou de te cacher. You are silly to hide like this.” Dumond must have moved or made a sound, because Paul lifted his head and saw him. Paul’s small body tensed in my arms. I turned his face toward me. “Paul, ton père est ici. Il était inquiet pour toi. Tu lui as beaucoup manqué.” Your father is here; he is worried about you; he has missed you a lot.
In the glow of the flashlight, Dumond’s face was haggard, naked with emotion so raw my stomach turned over. Now Paul was trembling a little. I gave him a nudge, and then he was in his father’s arms, and Dumond was murmuring French so fast and low I couldn’t understand a word. Paul was saying, “Papa, Papa, Papa,” over and over. They were both crying, the dark heads close together. I backed away and sat against a log. I was drained. I’d reunited a father and child; I’d lost a child who was never mine. I’d filled a hole in Dumond’s life, but had carved one in mine. Only now did I realize how intense had been my dream of keeping Paul, protecting him, loving him, watching him grow up.
Learning to Swim Page 7
