“Home,” she whispered to Steve, motioning toward the backseat.
Steve glanced in the rearview at Cole sleeping, and nodded. He made a left onto Rainer Street, taking the back way, under the canopy of bowed beech trees on Mayfair Lane. Those trees had always seemed so magical and mysterious when Barbara was little, riding in the back of one of her dad’s Al’s Autobody pickups. Now they just looked ugly and evil.
She turned to look at Steve as he drove on. He was trying to seem relaxed, unconcerned, but she could see the worry gathered at the corners of his eyes. He’d actually seemed off ever since he came home to bring them to the appointment, even though he’d been fine that morning. Barbara hadn’t asked what had happened in the intervening four hours at work. She wasn’t going to, either. She didn’t care about any investigation right now, not even one about some poor baby.
What Barbara cared about was her baby. She would have preferred that Steve hadn’t gone into work at all that morning, but that was her husband: Duty calls, he goes. And now here he was, distracted again. She especially hated this particular faraway, worried look. She’d seen it before, and nothing good ever came of it.
Barbara had never liked the parties in the woods. Too out of control for her taste. Of course, that was what most of the other kids in Ridgedale High School loved about them. Sometimes as many as a hundred kids spread out all over the place—couples hooking up, boys playing their stupid game, girls gossiping in their cliques. Everyone drunk on the beers and whiskey they’d stolen from or been given at home. It was impossible to find any of your friends, and even when you did, everyone was too messed up to have an actual conversation. Barbara put up with the stupid parties, though, because Steve thought they were fun, especially “drunk obstacle,” not that he was ever allowed to play. He was never drunk enough.
Steve hadn’t proposed yet, but she knew he was planning to once they’d graduated. Sometimes she wondered if he’d already talked to her father about it. There was tension between Al and Steve whenever they were in the same room. But that might have been because the two men didn’t really like each other. Al had built the lucrative Al’s Autobody from the ground up, and he’d been looking forward to Barbara marrying someone to take over the family business. Instead, she had fallen in love with Steve, whose father had been a police sergeant killed in the line of duty back in Houston when he was six. Raised by the forever-frosty Wanda, who’d come to Ridgedale for a fresh start—a second cousin had offered her a good job at his insurance agency—Steve had always wanted to be a police officer like his father. He wasn’t going to give that up for Al’s Autobody, no matter how easy the money.
Even with a proposal in the works, Barbara knew she shouldn’t keep Steve on too short a leash. They’d be grown-ups before long, and Barbara didn’t want Steve to have regrets. And it was their senior year and, as Steve kept reminding her, their last chance to have fun. So she’d learned to bite her tongue and go to the parties in the muddy woods where she always ended up getting some piece of clothing smudged or torn. She tried to pretend to have fun sitting around on those soggy logs, talking to girls who’d been her friends for years but who she wouldn’t miss after graduation. And she let Steve go off with his teammates to play their stupid game and forget about her for an hour or an entire evening. Because he always came back when he was ready, every single time.
It wasn’t as easy to let him roam, though, once she started buzzing around, talking to Steve about her perfectly nice family who didn’t like her or the boys she loved who didn’t love her back or the boys who (naturally) dumped her once she’d lifted her skirt. Jenna had no shame, either. She couldn’t have cared less that Steve belonged to someone else. Not that Barbara was worried, because honestly, how could you take a girl like that seriously—garbage is as garbage does. And Steve knew better than to fall for Jenna’s bells and whistles. He loved Barbara. They complemented each other perfectly. Barbara was their head. Steve was their heart. He was just too nice to turn his back on some pathetic whore with no self-respect. And that might not have been a nice thing for Barbara to think, but that didn’t make it any less true.
By that last Saturday in May of their senior spring, Barbara had had enough of the parties. Still, she’d gone out to the woods again to make Steve happy, even though she’d had a splitting headache. Her only request was that they leave early. But when she wanted to go, she couldn’t find Steve anywhere. She looked for him for at least twenty minutes before she spotted him—not with the other boys, like she’d thought. Instead, there he was, at least a five- or ten-minute walk down the creek, sitting on a rock. With Jenna.
There was plenty of space between them, their hips weren’t even close to touching, and all they were doing was talking. But it was the way they were talking that made Barbara’s heart feel like it had been cleaved in two. Worse was the way Steve looked at Barbara as he tried to explain on the way back to his truck. His eyes were so filled with regret, not about what had happened but about what was going to happen. What Steve was helpless to stop.
“It’s okay,” Barbara had said, smiling hard and waving his explanations away like she didn’t have a care in the world. “You’re trying to help her, I know.”
Because the last thing in the world she wanted was for him to make excuses. She didn’t want to hear how much thought he’d already put into the whole situation.
“I do feel bad for her,” Steve had said once they reached his truck. And then he paused. There was a “but” there. But that’s not . . . Barbara had no interest in hearing the ending.
“Because you’re a nice guy, Steve.” She leaned over to kiss him before he could say anything else. “And that’s why I love you.”
As Steve carried Cole up to bed, Barbara sat down at the kitchen table with her coat still on. Their morning coffee cups were on the table, and there was unopened mail on the counter, and the pile of unfolded laundry and scattered toys. Ever since that meeting with Rhea, Barbara had been too distracted to worry about housework. After just a day of inattention, the house was falling into disarray. The mess couldn’t be helping Cole. Maybe it was making things worse.
Barbara jumped to her feet, snatched up a mug in each hand, and marched toward the sink, where the caked breakfast plates were piled up. Underneath were their dinner dishes from the night before in several inches of brownish, foul-smelling water. It was revolting. All of it. But she’d barely made it through dinner with Caroline after seeing that drawing—a drawing Cole seemed not to fully remember doing—never mind doing the dishes afterward.
She’d left it to Steve to get them an appointment with Dr. Kellerman in the morning. No matter what it took, she’d said before taking Cole up to bed. Steve surely had to pull strings, maybe throw his status around, to get them in so quickly. She was grateful he hadn’t felt the need to tell her about it.
Barbara was staring down at the disgusting filth when Steve came back downstairs.
“Well, he’s out cold,” he said with forced cheer, as usual trying to pump her up so he could sneak out the door. “If nothing else, that Dr. Kellerman sure knocks him out. Reason enough to go back.”
“I’m never going back there.” Barbara jammed her hands into the crowded sink. “And neither is my son.”
Why had she let herself think about that stupid party all those years ago? Because now here she was, about to have yet another fight with Steve without him knowing what they were actually fighting about. But she was suddenly so angry at him. Furious. All that history, he was responsible for every last page. Maybe if Barbara hadn’t been so distracted by her being back, she would have been paying more attention to whatever was happening with Cole.
As Barbara tumbled her hands around the sink, a glass stacked on top of one of the dinner plates slid off to the side. She grabbed for it, but it slipped through her fingers and shattered, the pieces vanishing into the grimy water below.
“Dammit!” Barbara yelled as she jerked off her coat and threw it on the floor.
Then she grabbed the edge of the sink and started to cry.
“Whoa, hey,” Steve said as he came up behind her. She waited to feel his hands on her arms, but he didn’t touch her. “It’s going to be okay. Cole is going to be okay.”
Barbara turned around and pressed her face against his chest so she wouldn’t start screaming at him. Because everything seemed like his fault suddenly. She stayed there for a long time, until Steve finally patted her shoulders.
“You should get back to work,” she said, when he still hadn’t hugged her. Because that was what he wanted, wasn’t it? To get back to the job that Barbara was beginning to wonder if he might not love more than her. Anyway, if he stayed, she couldn’t be sure what she’d say. “I’ll be fine, really. I’ll be even better when I see you on the news announcing that you’ve arrested the person responsible for what happened to that poor baby.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t hold your breath.” Steve shook his head, then scrubbed his hands over his face.
Barbara took a breath: Make nice, ask about it. Steve hated it when she was cold, absolutely hated it. He didn’t ever say that, of course. Steve was never one to criticize, but he’d draw right back into that shell of his. And once he was tucked in there, it was impossible to pry him out.
“What about that girl in the hospital?” she asked.
He shook his head. “There’s something not right with that situation, given the way she took off,” he said. “But her baby isn’t that baby. Midwife swears she gave birth three weeks ago to an eight-pound baby. The ME isn’t ready to make an official announcement yet, but he’s sure the baby wasn’t that old.”
“But she ran away.”
“Who knows? Maybe your friend Stella put her up to that.” He was joking, that was clear. “Apparently, Stella really likes drama.”
“Drama? Who told you that?” Serious or not, he’d gotten the idea from somewhere.
“Oh, her friend Molly—Ella’s mom. The reporter for the Ridgedale Reader.”
“Did she mention Will or Cole? What did she mean, ‘drama’?”
“No, no, no.” Steve waved a finger back and forth. “I shouldn’t have even mentioned Stella. There’s no reason to think that she has anything to do with what’s going on with Cole.”
“But he heard or saw something somewhere, Steve. And it wasn’t here.”
“First of all, you’re deciding that’s true. That’s not what Dr. Kellerman said.”
“I know it’s true, Steve. Something happened to Cole when he was with Will. At his house.”
“Barbara, you can’t know that. Even Dr. Kellerman said it could be some kind of preexisting—”
“Steve, stop it!” Barbara shouted. “Stop making excuses so I won’t get angry at some woman you have no proof is innocent and who you don’t even know!”
His jaw set. He was losing patience with her. But that was it. That was as mad as he’d get. Soon he’d disappear, retreat. Off to work, into his precious shell. Sometimes Barbara would have done anything for him to start screaming at her.
“I’m not trying to protect her,” he said, the picture of reason. “But focusing on her instead of Cole isn’t going to help anything.”
He picked up his keys. Because he was going to go anyway, of course, whether or not Barbara needed him to stay.
“Promise me you’ll leave it,” he said. “That you’ll drop it with Stella.”
“Sure,” she said. And if he believed that—the way she’d said it—he was even more distracted than she’d thought.
“Did they help Cole?” Hannah asked the second she got home from school, looking around downstairs like she was trying to find him.
“Cole’s fine, honey,” Barbara said, specifically not answering Hannah’s question. “He’s tired and a little stressed, that’s all. How was the AP calculus practice test?”
Hannah shrugged. “Okay, I guess. It was kind of hard to concentrate.”
“‘Okay, I guess.’” Barbara mimicked Hannah’s shrug and her tone of voice. There were better ways to handle Hannah’s worry about Cole’s worry than mocking her. But Barbara wasn’t perfect. She’d never pretended to be. “Cornell may have accepted you early, but they won’t be very impressed if you don’t pass those APs you’ve promised them.”
“Sorry, I didn’t . . .” Hannah looked wounded. “I think I probably did okay enough. Thanks for asking.”
“Wait, it’s Wednesday, isn’t it? Do you have tutoring today?” Barbara hoped not. She’d been counting the minutes until Hannah got home so she could leave.
“She couldn’t make it,” Hannah said, blinking up at Barbara guiltily. She probably felt responsible for that girl’s bad choices, too.
Barbara shook her head and exhaled. “It’ll hardly be your fault when that girl doesn’t get her GED.”
“Mom, that’s mean.” She recoiled when Barbara’s eyes shot over to her. “I just— Sandy tries really hard.”
“Trust me, Hannah.” Barbara laughed, trying not to let her annoyance get the best of her. But mean? Really, how dare she? “Girls like that never know what’s good for them.”
“But you’ve never even met her,” Hannah said. And there she went, defending some girl she barely knew. Just like her father. God help her. The heartbreak that lay ahead for that bleeding heart of hers.
“Oh, honey, someday you’ll understand. I don’t need to have met her to know what kind of girl she is.” Barbara smiled angrily as she grabbed her keys off the counter. “Cole is napping, and I need to run out for a little. Don’t wake him—he was just so exhausted—but if he does get up, have him watch TV. I need him to stay calm.”
It wasn’t until Barbara had pulled the car out of the garage that she realized she’d forgotten her purse on the kitchen counter. She left the car running as she dashed back inside, afraid something might stop her from leaving again. Sure enough, as she crossed the kitchen from the side door, she heard a strange, soft murmuring coming from the living room. Hannah talking on the phone, maybe? But the conversation was oddly one-sided, and Hannah’s voice was strangely high. Barbara inched around the corner to see what she was doing out there.
Hannah was sitting on the couch with Cole’s legs stretched across her lap, the rest of him tucked warmly into the crook of her arm. Hannah must have woken him the second Barbara left the house—exactly as she’d told her not to do. She was reading to him, too, from The Missing Piece, her favorite book when she was little. For years, Hannah had slept with it under her pillow every night.
Barbara swallowed the urge to snap at Hannah for defying her. Instead, she clenched her jaw and forced herself back out to the car. So she could find the person she really needed to be snapping at.
Fifteen minutes later, Barbara was pulling up Stella’s long curved driveway toward the huge mansion at the top of the hill—a new-made-to-look-old structure set deep in the woods. With a stone facade and rambling wraparound porch, the house was big enough for a family of seven, maybe more. And yet there poor, husbandless Stella lived with all her money and her Botox and her two measly messed-up children.
Barbara forced herself to take a deep breath, pasting a smile on her face as she headed up the polished stone walkway, which went on forever before turning toward the front steps and two absurdly huge red doors. Stella wasn’t going to admit that something had happened to Cole in her home. Barbara would need to ease her into it, charm her a little. She took another breath and smiled harder before she rang the bell.
A teenage boy opened the door, Aidan, presumably. He had shaggy surfer hair, a freckled nose, and large golden-brown eyes. Barbara had once asked Hannah what he looked like. She’d said, Cute, I guess, unimpressed in that way Hannah always was by boys. But even Barbara had to admit Aidan was a good-looking kid. She could only imagine the piles of broken hearts he’d left in his wake. What a stroke of luck that he’d answered the door. She was much more likely to get something out of a cocky kid like Aidan—too arrogant to be careful—than Stella.
“You must be Will’s brother, Aidan?” Barbara smiled so hard it made her cheeks ache. “My son, Cole, is in class with Will.”
“Yeah?” He looked past Barbara, staring vacantly as if trying to process Cole not being there behind her. Was he high, or slow, or something? Was that what Stella was hiding? Barbara had also asked Hannah what Aidan was like, but she didn’t know. He was new to school and a year younger and didn’t really hang out with anybody, she’d said. Certainly not, Barbara suspected, the group of popular kids that Hannah counted as her closest friends. Hannah did say there were rumors that Aidan had gotten into trouble at his last school, and he’d already gotten into more than one fight at Ridgedale High.
“Well, Cole’s not here right now, Aidan,” Barbara went on, tilting her head a little to the side to make eye contact. “But Cole has been spending a lot of time here lately. Do you maybe know if the boys saw something here that they weren’t supposed to? Like a TV show or a video game or something?” Or, you know, you doing something horrible. Barbara stepped closer and tried to soften her expression. But her face felt like it was made of rubber. “We don’t think for a second you did anything wrong, Aidan. I’m sure whatever happened was an accident.”
“An accident?” He looked angry all of a sudden. Really, really angry. Like someone who had something horrible to hide. “Seriously, lady, what the hell are you talking about?”
There was a voice then, coming from inside the house. Stella, surely. Shoot. Just when Barbara was getting somewhere. With his hand on the doorknob, Aidan turned to shout back. “Cole’s mom!” And then, annoyed: “How would I know? Why don’t you ask her?”
A second later, Stella appeared in the doorway, shooing Aidan off until he disappeared into the house behind her. “Excuse me, Barbara.” She crossed her long, muscular arms. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes aglow. “But can I help you?”
Where They Found Her: A Novel Page 18
