Prodigal

by TA Moore

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  More from TA Moore

  Readers love TA Moore

  About the Author

  By TA Moore

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  Prodigal

  By TA Moore

  Lost and Found

  Fifteen years ago Sammy Calloway disappeared on his way home from school. Now he’s back… or is he?

  Boyd Maccabbee has spent his life second-guessing his actions on that fateful day. What if he’d done something differently? Maybe Sammy would have made it home safe and never become Cutters Gap’s most tragic famous son. Or would it have been Boyd who was never seen again? When the police find new evidence on the disappearance, Boyd hopes to finally get some answers.

  The last thing Morgan Graves needs is to be dragged into some old case about a missing kid. He doesn’t know why police hit on his DNA, but he’s not Sammy Calloway. He thinks he’d remember being kidnapped.

  He knows he’d remember firefighter Boyd.

  Drawn into the complex web of suspicion, grief, and anger that has knit Cutters Gap together in the years since Sammy’s disappearance, Morgan struggles to hang on to himself when everyone already assumes they know him.

  And somewhere, the truth about Sammy Calloway is waiting.

  Acknowledgments

  TO MY mum, who’s always believed in me no matter what I wanted to do. And to the Five, who told me to get on with doing what I wanted to do. Finally, and always, to my grandparents, who loved me no matter what I did.

  Prologue

  BOYD MACCABEE was eight years old. His doctor was halfway to an ADHD diagnosis for him, his parents were two-thirds of the way to divorce, and he had his tenth black eye. None of that was his fault, but no one but him seemed to believe that.

  “That’s it,” his mom snapped as she dragged him out of the school by the arm. “No TV for you this weekend, no ice cream, no baseball with your father.”

  “That’s not fair,” Boyd protested. “It wasn’t my fault.”

  His mom stopped abruptly and looked at the sky. “For strength,” she’d always say when he asked, but he knew she didn’t believe in God. After a moment she let go of his hand and crouched down on the concrete, her navy-blue pencil skirt tight over her knees and her best heels creased across the toe.

  “So whose fault was it?”

  Robbie Fernfield, whose daddy was a lawyer and whose mommy always wore big movie-star sunglasses like they were in California, not West Virginia. He hadn’t hit Boyd, but it was still his fault. It was Robbie who pushed Sammy, Boyd’s best friend, and called him names. And it was when Boyd shoved Robbie that Sammy punched Boyd.

  The connecting lines between Robbie’s taunts and Sammy’s anger weren’t really clear to Boyd. His name wasn’t short for “boyfriend,” and Sammy had stuck up for him enough times. He was still pretty sure it was Robbie’s fault.

  But everyone else believed Robbie, and Robbie said it was Boyd’s.

  “Talk to me, Boyd,” his mom said. “Since when do you start fights? Bully other kids?”

  Jess Maccabee was twenty-six years old. She had half a law degree and a job as a paralegal where her butt got patted more than she liked, and her boss had started to look sour about all the time off she took because her son had gotten into trouble at school again. The pressure—from her family, from the school, from the people at church who glared when Boyd couldn’t sit still—was to just make Boyd behave, whatever it took.

  She still wanted to understand.

  But the one rule Boyd understood was that you didn’t tell tales, so he just shrugged and stared at his toes as he scuffed them over the chalk lines on the pavement.

  His mom sighed in frustration. “Then I have to assume it is your fault, don’t I?” she said as she stood up. “So you don’t get to go to your gran’s next week either.”

  She dragged him out to the parking lot.

  Sammy was already there, his backpack between his feet and an old iPhone in his hands as he texted someone. He had a split lip and blood on his T-shirt. Jess stopped in front of him and pushed the back of Boyd’s head.

  “Do you want to apologize to Sammy?” she asked pointedly.

  Most of the time Boyd felt so full of energy that his skin could split from him. Now it itched as he tried to reconcile the fact he hadn’t done anything wrong with how much he wanted Sammy to stop being mad at him.

  “I…. Sorry,” he said at last, the need to make up triumphant over his aggrieved innocence. “If you wanna come over and play firefighters, you can wear Dad’s jacket this time?”

  It was a big deal to offer that, but Sammy just shrugged with an angry jerk of his bony shoulders. “It’s a dumb game anyhow.”

  Boyd was caught flat-footed again because obviously it wasn’t. They always played firefighters, and one day they’d be firefighters for real. That was the plan.

  “Just get in the car,” Jess told him when he spluttered. She added firmly, when he hesitated, “The car. Now.”

  He slouched off and climbed into the back seat. It felt a lot bigger on his own. Boyd swung his feet and fidgeted while his mom talked to Sammy. In the end she left him there and stalked back over to the car.

  “Sammy’s brother is going to come and get him,” she said as she started the engine. Her eyes flicked up to the mirror, and her expression softened. “He’ll have forgotten he’s even mad by tomorrow, Boyd. Friends like you two, they don’t come around very often.”

  She pulled away from the curb and hit the horn as she drove past Sammy. Maybe he’d already thought better about calling the firefighter game stupid, because he raised his hand to wave goodbye.

  This time Boyd was too angry to wave back. He just glared out the window as they left.

  If he’d known he wouldn’t see Sammy again, maybe he’d have made a different choice.

  Chapter One

  IT’S ONCE a year. Boyd slouched in the front seat of his running pickup, hands dangled over the wheel, and stared at the run-down, nicotine-orange house at the end of the block. It was what his mom had told him as she straightened his collar and flattened down his cowlick with a spit-wet thumb. His ex had too as he turned his back and returned to work on his computer. They were both gone now—Florida and an Irishman, respectively—so he had to rhyme off the mantra to himself. For her it’s every day. So buck up and go in.

  The problem was, of course, that it just didn’t have the same impact. Unlike his mom and his ex and half the town, Boyd didn’t have any illusions about himself. He wouldn’t be surprised at all to find out he was a coward too afraid to face one old woman.

  He grabbed the rearview mirror and twisted it around to check his reflection. It wasn’t that bad. Apart from the split in his eyebrow that had thumbed blue down around the outer corner of his eye, most of the bruises were hidden under the scruff of stubble that was about four hours from officially being a beard.

  Boyd poked gingerly at the bruise with one finger. The memory of another black eye flashed into his head, stripped fifteen years off his fa
ce, and added floppy bangs his mom had liked. He cringed and twisted the mirror back to its usual place.

  If he didn’t go in now, guilt would get the better of him after his shift. It always did. Then he’d be back here tonight without the get-out-of-jail-free card of work in an hour. He’d have no reason to leave, no excuse to turn down a warm whiskey or close the old photo album.

  That worked.

  Boyd turned the engine off. The minute the air conditioner cut out, the damp unrelenting heat of the day pressed in on him. He grabbed the flowers from the passenger seat as he climbed out. This year they were from a bucket at the gas station. He’d gotten halfway here empty-handed and panicked, so he stopped at the first 7-Eleven sign he saw and paid too much for a scrawny bouquet of halfhearted daisies and a bird of paradise.

  They’d end up in the sink, left to rot until the flies drove someone to throw them out. Like last year and the year before. It just seemed wrong to turn up empty-handed, and nothing else sprung to mind as an appropriate offering.

  Chocolates? Whiskey? Inappropriate and a bad idea, respectively.

  So Boyd clutched the flowers awkwardly in one hand as he crossed the road and knocked on the door. Nobody answered. He shifted his feet on the stoop and looked around.

  The old playset still stood in the yard. It was rusted and bowed, the plastic seat of the swing faded from red to a washed-out pinkish white from nearly two decades of weather. Once, the first year, Boyd had sat on the still-red-then swing and creaked it back and forth. Now he thought it would fall in on itself if he looked at it too hard.

  Untouched mail stuffed the mailbox on the side of the house, damp, wrinkled magazines and fly-shit-speckled envelopes. A week’s worth, Boyd worked out, or more. He knocked on the door again, harder this time, and tried the bell.

  “I’m coming,” he heard from inside. “I’m coming.”

  The tickle of disappointment at the back of Boyd’s throat made him feel guilty… guiltier. He stepped back from the door as it opened.

  “Mrs. Calloway,” he said. Other people in town—teachers, old neighbors, his childhood pediatrician—he’d graduated to their names years ago. Not here. He was always eight years old when he was here, and Donna Calloway was Mrs. because that’s what he called all his friends’ moms. “It’s Boyd.”

  Mrs. Calloway stared at him with tired, bloodshot eyes. “I got that,” she said in a bitter monotone. “I’m drunk, not blind.”

  Boyd rubbed the back of his neck. “I wanted to check in on you,” he said. “It’s—”

  Anger cut through the grease of grief and liquor in Donna’s eyes. “I know,” she cut him off. “Better than you. I know. I suppose you might as well come in.”

  She turned her back on him and disappeared into the dimly lit house. Boyd took a deep breath—the air tasted like shut-up house and liquor—and followed her.

  As always he was surprised at how normal the house looked inside. It wasn’t clean, but it was the clutter of a weeklong bender, not full-time neglect. Most of the year, Donna got up in the morning and went to work, she had her oldest son over for dinner on the weekends, and she slept upstairs in her own bed. Boyd knew that—he did the same thing—but it never really seemed to sink in.

  “I talked to the chief of police yesterday,” she said over her shoulder as she sat down in the big recliner. A bottle of whiskey sat next to it, although it was more bottle than whiskey at this point. “Nothing. You’ll talk to him?”

  “I will,” Boyd said. Some years he’d tried to argue, point out the futility of it. But in the end, why bother? It wouldn’t make her any happier to finally accept her son was dead, not just missing. He hovered uncomfortably in the middle of the room, flowers hung down by his leg. “Do you need anything?”

  Donna shook her head. Gray-blond hair trailed over her forehead, and she pushed it back, the nails on her fingers bitten down to the bloody quick.

  “Nothing you can get.” She looked over at him and waved a hand at the flowers. “Put them in the kitchen and get yourself a drink.”

  He did as he was told. Rituals were what got them both through this. When they went off script, blood was drawn. Of course, Donna always went off script.

  The fridge was full of beer and takeout. Boyd had to hunt to find the half-drunk six-pack of grape soda in the crisper drawer. It was Sammy’s favorite. He grabbed one and popped the tab to take a deep, bracing gulp of frosty carbonation before he went back in.

  “Has Shay been over?” He took a seat on the edge of the couch, long legs uncomfortably folded under him.

  Donna topped up her glass of whiskey with a glug from the handy bottle. “Not this week. Two drunks don’t make good company. Things are said.”

  She drank. Boyd tried to think of something else to say, but he came up dry. He rolled the cold can of soda between his hands as the silence dragged out between them.

  “If you need anyt—”

  “You said that already.”

  Boyd supposed he had. He carefully shifted position. The bruises on his ribs were harder to see, but he felt them more. He took another drink of soda and looked over at the cabinet where a dozen images of Sammy grinned, gap-toothed and happy, back at him. Just Sammy. A few of the pictures had Shay’s arm, tattoo bold and black against summer-tanned skin, or a slice of Boyd’s head as he grinned at the camera, but Donna had cropped the rest of them out.

  “I remember that summer.” He got up from the couch, relieved to move, as always, and walked over to pick up a photo of a sun-bleached six-year-old. “We went camping.”

  The last great childhood summer. By seven Boyd’s dad had run off with a waitress, and by eight, Sammy was gone. Summers were never the same after that.

  “Two weeks you got that I didn’t,” Donna said. “I could have taken him to the beach. All three of us could have gone hiking as a family.”

  Boyd bit his tongue and put the photo down gently. She never had, before or after that summer, but it wouldn’t be kind to point that out. It wasn’t as though Donna had been a bad mom, not that Sammy ever said, but she never had much time—two jobs, two kids, and when there was a man in her life, they were never up to much.

  “Have you had any trouble?” he asked instead. “With the press or those true crime fans?”

  Most years the anniversary of Sammy’s disappearance stirred up interest among the sort of people who were interested. Some of them were motivated enough to email or call, even travel out here. So far the tenth anniversary had been the worst, with two true crime books that came to mutually conflicting but inescapable conclusions, a podcast series, and a handful of psychics who trailed through town with cameras to record their impressions.

  Donna bent her head over her glass, her face hidden behind pin-straight gray hair. “He called.”

  She waved one hand toward the stack of books in the corner of the room, Ben Sullivan printed in bold red letters on each spine, in case Boyd might have mistaken who she meant. He hadn’t. The local boy reporter turned sensationalist true-crime bottom feeder made his annual pilgrimage to town this month. Boyd was never sure whether to be grateful that he kept the story fresh for the public or resentful of the money the guy made off it.

  “There’s new leads, other cases that could be linked to what happened to Sammy. He thinks he might get another book out of it, maybe even convince the captain to take a look, but he can’t visit this year. I haven’t answered the phone to any of the others.”

  “Good,” Boyd said.

  She glanced up at him through her bangs. “I don’t regret it,” she said in response to what he hadn’t just said. “It would have been worth every penny if they’d found him.”

  Twenty grand. All her savings and five grand she borrowed from Boyd with the lie that she needed it for rehab. Instead she paid two con men to drive her around backroads on the trail of Sammy’s ghost, and they left her high and dry in a motel over in Lexington.

  “I know,” he said. “But they didn’t.”

&n
bsp; She curled up in the recliner, feet tucked under her, and stared at her hands wrapped around the glass. Still unable to think of anything to say, Boyd finished his soda and stood with the empty can in hand. After what felt like an eternity, he glanced at his watch. It had been fifteen minutes. It would be another half hour before he could justifiably beg off to go to work.

  “Busy?” Donna asked, a sharp edge to her voice.

  “Sorry.” Boyd sheepishly stuck his hand in his pocket. He thought she’d been lost in the bottle. “I’ve got a shift this afternoon.”

  She nodded slowly. “Oh, of course, you got the job.”

  “Two years now,” he said.

  Donna drained her glass and filled it again. The level in the bottle had dipped below the label, but her voice was only slightly slurred, and her hands were steady.

  “Doesn’t seem fair, does it?” she said as she lifted the glass. “This was all your fault, but you get to live the life he wanted. You get to live.”

  There the script went. Boyd cleared his throat and ignored the statement. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and checked his watch again, as though a lot of time had passed.

  “I should go,” he said. “Traffic. I still miss him, Mrs. Calloway. He was my best friend.”

  Donna nodded slowly. She waited until he was at the door to reveal that she’d had something to say all along.

  “Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if they’d taken you instead, if my boss had let me leave early, and Jessie’s hadn’t…. If I’d left you to walk home all alone. Do you think Sammy would have visited her every year? Would he have been a firefighter? Would everyone think he was a hero?” Her voice almost gentle, dreamy. “Is it awful that I wish I lived in that world?”

  Boyd let himself out. He stalked over the road and climbed into the cab of his car. It was hot enough from the nearly afternoon sun to prickle sweat under his collar, but he still felt sort of cold. He sat for a second and then hammered his fists on the wheel in frustration. It didn’t help. Boyd leaned forward and rested his forehead against his arms.