“So,” I started hesitantly, “do you listen to the radio a lot? Aren’t there more accurate warnings on TV or online?”
“Spend about five minutes in Argentum and you’ll see we’re a bit behind the times. Internet service is for shit up here, and no company is going to invest in fiber lines for a small town with less than five hundred people. Plus, most folks here like living off the grid, it’s why they’re here. Our major news source is pretty much AM radio. We don’t even get the Denver TV stations.”
At least there’s one town in America that doesn’t think I’m insane, I thought.
“It’s been nice talking to you, Joe, but I really have to go.”
“You be careful Miss Lynn. You run into any problems, you know where to find me. Especially if you get stuck!”
I waved as I walked out.
“Jesus, did you give him your number?” Roxy said as I climbed in. “Give me that coffee and those Doritos, in that order. So, what did Mr. Handsome have to say?”
“I didn’t realize you were watching that closely through the window.”
“That’s a fine-looking man, Lynn, like you didn’t notice. I may be postmenopausal, but I’m not dead. Maybe he’s the one who left you the note.”
“I flat-out asked him.” I sipped at the coffee.
“Well, someone left her shyness back in Tennessee.”
“What are we going to do if we get snowed in?”
“We best get a move on and do whatever it is we’re going to do, and maybe drive back towards the interstate for a bit to try and get a signal to call Tom. Did Romeo in there have any suggestions as where to start?”
“Poor man, he doesn’t even know if he’s from here. He doesn’t remember—”
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” Roxy put down her coffee.
“He said he can’t remember anything from his childhood, had amnesia of some sort—”
“He really said that?”
“Yes. Why does that matter?”
“Because if you were eavesdropping properly last night, you would have heard young Sarah at the front desk say she doesn’t remember her last name. And she doesn’t remember where she’s from either. That’s why she freaked out when I demanded to know who owned the inn. She said she was afraid she’d lose her job if he found out, because who would hire a girl who didn’t even know her last name.”
Roxy placed her hand on my leg. “Lynn, my God. My God.”
“What?”
“You always thought that brain tumor caused you to lose your memory as a kid. You always said your first memory was waking up and not recognizing your father. You had to relearn everything. But your father’s letter stated you never had a brain tumor. What if, Lynn, you were just like them?”
I remembered Daddy’s words from his letter to Steven: I’ve always been plagued with guilt that she doesn’t know her own true story.
I felt hot all over, regretting the coffee. I tapped the power window to allow a crack, letting the icy air brush my face. Daddy had concocted the story. Faked the medical records. All to cover up the fact that his daughter had no memory and couldn’t explain why to anyone.
I lowered the window even more, taking several deep breaths, the air stinging my lungs.
“Lynn?”
“Let’s just drive.”
“I could be wrong. Let me turn down the heat—”
“I just need some more air. I promise to roll it up in a minute.”
We drove down the same few streets, seeing no one. Finally, we found one woman walking her corgi. She shook her head sadly at William’s picture. “He’s a handsome boy. A few of the kids play up at the old ball field around the corner; you might find someone there who has seen him.”
“You should have asked her if she knew her last name,” Roxy said as we drove away.
We arrived at the park and found it to be as deserted and neglected as the rest of the town. A tiny yellow bus was parked nearby, and a few kids ran and screamed on a weary-looking playground.
“Hang around here. I know you said Mr. Hot Stuff back at the store got all his news from crappy radio, and so far no one has recognized you or William, but let me take it from here. Looks like there are a few houses around the baseball diamond down there. I’ll look for signs of life. I’ll be right back.”
“I need to walk a bit. But I’ll stay close.”
We both exited the Suburban, and I watched as Roxy walked away. I huddled in my coat, wishing I had bought thicker gloves. I’d gone from hot to bitter cold quickly, and I shuffled along to keep up the circulation.
I brought out my phone to power it up. Maybe I could get cell reception out here. I needed to call Anne—
A laugh in the distance caused me to almost drop the phone.
Four boys on the other side of the park were playing a game of touch football. One of them had dropped his hat, exposing his red hair.
The boy turned around. For a split second, I saw his face.
William pulled his hat over his ears and laughed.
SIXTEEN
“William?”
I started at a jog, not daring to take my eyes off the boy chasing the others. “William! William!”
He was giggling, holding his sides at whatever joke someone had said. I had heard that laughter a hundred times before, at SpongeBob on television, when Chris tossed him over his shoulder, as Tom pretended to gnaw off his fingers when ice cream dripped on his little hands.
“William! Baby, it’s Nanna! William!” I was sobbing as I reached him. I grabbed the sides of his face, seeing replicas of Anne’s eyes, my own freckles on his cheeks, his dimpled chin.
“Oh, thank you God, thank you,” I pulled him close. “Oh baby.…”
I felt his small hands push away as he stammered back. “Miss Cliff,” he said, looking around, his eyes wide with confusion.
I reached out and took off his hat, running my fingers through the hair that I had combed for two summers, when he would take a bath at my house before Anne came to take him home, knowing he would fall asleep on the two-minute drive. “Oh, baby. It’s me, it’s Nanna.”
“Miss Cliff!” William practically screamed.
The boys that had gathered around us began to part, making way for a slow-moving woman whose face was lined with wrinkles.
“What’s going on here?”
“This is my grandson.” I smiled through tears. “I’ve been looking for him. Oh William, I can’t believe it—”
“Miss, I think you have the wrong boy,” the woman said, placing a weathered but protective hand on William, who moved in closer to her.
“You don’t understand. William, it’s Nanna.”
“Miss Cliff,” he said anxiously.
“Your birthday is June 26.” I kneeled down, flinching as he stepped farther away. “You hate peas. You love dinosaurs. If you pull up your pants leg, you’ll see the birthmark you have on the back of your right thigh—”
“Miss, you’re scaring the children. Boys, take Alan and go to the bus.”
“No!” I cried out as William and the boys turned and ran.
Miss Cliff shuffled in front of me, her ancient voice lowering to a whisper. “You need to go. Right now. Whoever you are, get out of here now.”
“No.” I tried to step around her.
“I warned you,” Miss Cliff said, looking back to the bus. “Security! I mean, officer, can you please come here?”
“William!” I screamed, seeing him look back once more before hurrying on the bus.
I easily sidestepped the woman and ran, seeing a figure emerge from a car that I hadn’t noticed was parked behind the bus. A man, wearing a dark blue jacket and matching pants, put out his arms.
“What’s going on here?” he said.
“That’s my grandson!” I cried out, pointing to the bus. At the door, the hunched-over figure of Miss Cliff was herding the other children on, pointing one curved and bony finger to hasten their step.
“Please calm
down, ma’am, and tell me what’s going on,” the man said, blocking me.
“My name is Lynn Roseworth, my husband is Senator Tom Roseworth. We’ve gone on television to say our grandson is missing. And he’s right there!”
“OK, OK, calm down.”
“Lynn!” Roxy waved as she hurried over. “Lynn, what’s happening?”
“He’s on the bus! He’s in there! William’s in there!”
The doors to the bus closed and the engine fired up.
“Lynn, are you sure?” Roxy was almost out of breath.
“Ma’am, just relax,” the officer said.
“It’s leaving!” I said as the wheels of the bus shuddered and turned. “No! Stop that bus!”
“Ma’am, that’s enough. You’re going to have to calm down—”
“And who the hell are you?” Roxy demanded.
“I’m police—”
“If my friend says her missing grandson is on that bus, then you better stop that bus.”
The man murmured into the speaker on his shoulder. “Five-ninety, please send a car to the north end of the park.”
“No!” I watched the bus drive way. “Roxy, no.…”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Roxy squared off with the man. “Stop that bus!”
“You both have caused quite the scene out here. That bus is only going up to the day care, and once you’ve calmed down, we’ll see about going up there and checking this out. But I saw that little boy, ma’am, and he didn’t know you from Adam.”
A white car pulled up, its red light lazily spinning on the dashboard. I turned to Roxy with frantic eyes. “He didn’t recognize me, Roxy. He didn’t know it was me. He didn’t remember.”
Roxy’s hand went to her mouth. She reached into her purse and began to dig around for her phone.
“What’s going on?” another officer, also dressed in dark blue, asked as he approached, looking intently at Roxy as she tore into her purse.
“I’m going to call her husband right now, who happens to be a US senator.”
“What we’re all going to do is calm down,” the first officer said. “Let’s take a ride and go over all this.”
“Let’s go.” The second officer took Roxy gently by the arm.
“Get your hands off.” She tried to jerk away, until she looked closely at his face.
He sucked his teeth loudly. Even I could smell fried chicken from where I was standing.
“Jesus,” Roxy said softly.
“You have a good memory,” the man said, opening the door to the squad car.
* * *
The front hallway of the building the officers called their police station was sparsely decorated with historic photographs of Argentum in cheap frames, including one of an old barbershop in which a mural was painted with a waterfall spilling into a creek. Where the Water Falls was written in decorative letters in the stream.
That photograph melted into my blur of panic. I knew I’d been wild-eyed in my demands for my phone to call Tom, practically screaming at the officers as I kept looking out the back window of the squad car for any sign of the bus. Even when they ushered us into the building, I took another glance before the door shut, hoping to catch a glimpse, to even know the direction William was going.
I had him. And I let him go.
The men took us to a back room, telling Roxy to try and calm me down. She responded with a colorful tirade of curse words interspersed with idle threats. They shut the door and said through the glass that they were getting in touch with the FBI.
“Google her, you assholes!” Roxy shook the locked handle. “Lynn Roseworth! Wife of Senator Tom Roseworth! Her grandson’s disappearance has been announced all over the world! What kind of rock have you been living underneath?”
I paced the room, my fingers entangled in my hair. “What the hell is going on, Lynn? What is wrong with this place? That officer was the gas station creepo yesterday, now he’s a cop?”
“She didn’t call them officers at first,” I said, my eyes darting.
“What?”
“The woman with William and the other children. She told me I needed to leave, and then said she tried to warn me. She called ‘security,’ and then quickly referred to him as officer.”
“My God, now that I think about it, they weren’t wearing any badges.…”
“I shouldn’t have let that bus go. How can I ever tell Anne that I had him, and I let him go?”
“You could have hung on to the back of that bus and it wouldn’t have made a difference,” Roxy said, then she added quietly. “Are you sure, Lynn? Are you sure it was him?”
“It was him.”
“Dammit,” Roxy stood, wincing. She had run too fast from the other end of the park when she saw the commotion. “Why didn’t we call Tom, or Ed, or anyone for that matter, to tell them where we are?”
“Because I know what they would have said. I could blame the cell service, which doesn’t seem to exist here. But I could have called from the road. I knew the second I called, I would hear Anne plead for me to come to Champaign, or Tom would remind me how reckless this is and all the damage I’ve caused.”
“Speaking of Tom, and I know you hate to hear this, but you’re both public figures, and they can’t keep you locked up in here. One search online and they’ll see everything they need to know. We’re going to get William, Lynn.”
“He didn’t recognize me. Is that what’s happening here? People who are kidnapped are brought to this town? Joe at the general store woke up in the hospital in this town without his memory. Sarah at the inn doesn’t remember anything of her life, either. Roxy, is this is where Daddy found me? I didn’t have a memory either.”
“Well, we know two things: that Dr. Richards was both right and wrong about William being here. Your boy ended up in this town, but obviously wasn’t abducted by aliens and isn’t soaring around the cosmos in a spaceship.”
“So what, then? He was taken by someone, maybe some sort of group, and the people they abduct end up with memory loss?”
“And it doesn’t explain how Dr. Richards knew he would be here. If I had my phone…”
“They’re not going to give us our phones.”
“Well, my patience has officially run out. We’ve done nothing wrong, they can’t lock us up in here when we haven’t committed any crime—”
The door handle turned and a small man stepped in, quietly closing the door behind him. His thinning hair was parted to cover a sizable bald spot, his skin color an ashen gray. He fumbled in his suit coat to bring out a pack of cigarettes. Every bit of clothing on him, from his head to his shoes, was black.
“We have a pretty bad storm approaching, ladies. It’s best that you get out of here before it hits.”
“I don’t think so,” Roxy said. “I don’t know who you are, but we have come here to find my friend’s grandson, who she just saw at a park in this town. And I’m happy to remind you again who she is married to—”
“We will be pleased to arrange for transportation out of here.” The man fired up a cigarette. “We’ll make sure you get out safely.”
“I will not leave my grandson.”
“We want to return you to your family, Mrs. Roseworth,” the man said, taking a deep drag. “We understand you must be very desperate. In light of what’s on the news websites now, I know it must be hard to admit he’s gone. No one is sure, though, why you thought he would end up here—”
“Because she saw him,” Roxy interjected.
The man ignored her and kept looking at me. “Your family has gone through a great loss. Please don’t make them go through another.”
“I will not leave him—”
“Lynn, I want to go home.” Roxy reached out and touched my arm. “I can’t do this anymore. I need to get home to Ed. My back hurts, I can’t go through a storm like that without my pain meds, and I’m out. Let’s do this. Obviously you were wrong. If it were William, he would have recognized you. You must be delir
ious or something. We have to admit that now. Let’s take this ride out of town. I’m done.”
She squeezed a bit harder. “I’m too tired to do this anymore.”
I looked at her, and under her weepy eyes, Roxy flared her nostrils.
“Thank you, we’ll take that ride,” I said.
“Good,” the man said, already finishing off the cigarette. “I have a car pulled around. We’ll take you by the inn to get your things.”
“We’ll need our purses,” Roxy said.
“Of course. It’s all waiting for you in the car.”
“Thank you,” she said, wincing as she stepped. As the man walked out, Roxy mouthed words to me: “Act old.”
“What are we doing?” I mouthed back.
We walked out of the building as slowly as possible. The white unmarked car waited outside, with the red light still spinning beneath the windshield. “Is it OK if I sit in the front?” Roxy asked. “I can never get comfortable in the back.”
“Of course,” the man in the black suit said, nodding.
“Welcome, ladies,” said the teeth sucker as we got into the car.
Roxy slid into the front seat. “Lynnie, is my purse back there? I need to see if I have any of my OxyContin left. My hip is killing me.”
“It’s here.”
“I have a bum leg too,” Teeth Sucker said, pulling the gear into drive. “Tough living with the pain.”
I looked out the window, making eye contact briefly with the man in the black suit. He lit a cigarette and watched us drive away.
Roxy dug around in her purse. “Can’t barely move without my meds.”
“If you’re looking for your phone, it’s in there, but damn it all if the batteries aren’t dead. You must have left it on too long without charging it.”
“Oh, that’s fine.” Roxy gave a careless wave. “I just need my medicine. Don’t have anybody to call anyway.”
Teeth Sucker began to hum as we drove. “You must be busy, working the gas station and being a police officer,” Roxy commented.
He grinned. “We’re all called to serve.”
I looked out through the back window, seeing the downtown disappearing behind us. Soon the police building was gone over a hill. I couldn’t see any of Argentum. The panic was rising to my throat.
The Darkest Time of Night Page 19
