A Father's Quest (18 page)

Jonas looked toward the motor home, where the remaining GoodFriends, including Cheryl, were supposedly praying for Birdie’s safe return.

Jonas could honestly admit to himself that he was wrong about Brother Thom. He’d let his worst fears take him down a dangerous road. He owed the man an apology but that wouldn’t come until Birdie was safe. If not for Brother Thom and his charismatic persona, Cheryl and Birdie never would have been in this particular hellhole.

He grabbed the last water bottle from the sack in the backseat and took a swig. Two things hit him at once. There should have been more bottles and he hadn’t seen Remy in quite a while.

“Remy?” he called out, looking around for her bright-colored pants.

It had crossed his mind earlier that she’d been trying to tell him something when the cops arrived, but he’d brushed her off. Maybe, he thought, she’d found a quiet spot to hunker down and do a little lucid dreaming. Not that he was completely clear on how that worked.

He started toward the GoodFriends’s bus. He didn’t think for a second Remy would want to be around Cheryl, who had nearly attacked her. But she might have told Brother Thom—her supposed half brother—where she was going.

Half brother. Jonas had spent a good chunk of his life thinking he was her brother. This whole twisted, convoluted mess was the thing of fiction, not real life. Or was it? His mother used to say they were all connected in one way or another.

He had his hand raised to knock on the side of the motor home, when the door suddenly opened. Thom trotted down the steps. “I want to volunteer. Cheryl’s resting. We got her to take another pill.” He rubbed a hand across his face and sighed. “You do know she needs to be institutionalized for at least a short time, don’t you? I blame myself for not recognizing the signs of her breakdown sooner, but depression has been the norm around here lately. I underestimated the extent of hers.”

Jonas didn’t want to talk about his ex-wife. “Have you seen Remy?”

“No. Not since we talked in the chapel.”

Jonas turned on one heel and started toward the center of the plaza. “Remy?” he called at the top of his lungs. The word echoed off the dilapidated loading dock.

“Damn,” he cussed. “Now, we have two people missing.”

“She probably joined one of the search parties,” Thom said, watching Jonas intently.

The theory made sense. Why had Jonas immediately thought the worst? He looked at Thom. “I was wrong about you. I’ve been wrong about a lot of things lately.”

The man put a hand on Jonas’s shoulder. “You’ve lost your faith. That can happen when the people you should be able to count on let you down.”

His father, for instance. His mother and Remy’s. Two women he’d trusted and believed. Even Cheryl, who hadn’t been truthful about her health issues when he married her. And then there was Remy.

“I got lost when I was a kid. I ran away from home and fell in a well. Remy found me. Or, so her mother claimed. Remy saw me in her dream and told the police where to find me.”

“God isn’t greedy with his gifts, but most people aren’t brave enough to cultivate them. It takes a special kind of person to come to peace with being different. Maybe she’s following another dream to find your daughter.”

Hope—almost as painful as fear—blossomed in his chest. “I can’t stand around and wait.”

“You can always try prayer.”

He could…if he believed. But his trust in a higher power died when his father took his own life. Where was God when his dad had needed a source of hope? Where was Dad when Jonas and his mother needed him?

A voice cackled to life over the walkie-talkie one of the cops had given him. Jonas hurried back to his car, where he’d left the small, high-tech device. “Galloway, here. What have you found?”

“Two lovely ladies. One, Remy Bouchard. And a Miss Brigitte Galloway. ETA in ten. Over.”

Jonas was grateful for the hood of his car because his knees gave out a second later. His daughter was safe. And Remy had found her. He didn’t know how. He didn’t care how. All he knew was he had his life back. Or would very soon. And he wasn’t ever going to let Birdie—or Remy—out of his sight again.

“Birdie, Birdie, Birdie,” Jonas cried, touching her hair, her face, then holding her chin steady so he could look deep into her eyes. “I missed you so much. I was so afraid I wouldn’t be able to find you.”

Birdie threw her arms around his neck. “It’s okay, Daddy. I knew you’d come. I was looking for a town so I could call you.”

He squeezed her again. “Oh, my sweet, brave girl. I love you so much. I’m never going away again, honey. Never.”

Remy felt swamped by emotions she couldn’t completely describe and was half-afraid to acknowledge. She was happy for Jonas. And grateful that Birdie was safe and sound and reunited with her father. She’d come to care deeply for the little girl with the crooked smile and bright red hair. She could almost bring herself to acknowledge that, deep down, the thought had crossed her mind that Birdie could have—should have—been hers. Might have been…if things had been different.

“Is Mommy okay?” Birdie asked.

But things were the way they were.

Remy didn’t wait to hear Jonas’s answer. Instead, she followed the others. Cheryl was Birdie’s mother and she would always be a part of Jonas’s life. An immutable fact that Remy had thought she was prepared to accept. But was she? She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure about anything. Except that she was happy to see Birdie safe in her father’s arms.

Birdie let out a high-pitched giggle a moment later. Remy glanced over her shoulder to see the child clinging piggyback to her father’s back. Arms locked behind him to keep Birdie safe, Jonas jogged to catch up with Remy. He looked happy and relieved—as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders.

“Wait, Rem,” Jonas called. “I haven’t had a chance to thank you. You did it,” he said, his smile identical to his daughter’s. “There simply aren’t words enough to ever tell you how much this means to me.”

“I’m just glad she’s safe.”

“She is now, and once I get her home…” He let the thought languish. Remy had no idea what came next; did he? From the expression on his face, she didn’t think so.

They met up with one of the other search parties a few seconds later. Jonas shook hands with every member and introduced them to Birdie, who suddenly turned shy and kept her chin buried in her father’s neck. Remy understood the feeling completely. She did her best to remain out of the limelight, too.

A cackling order over one of the walkie-talkies got the group moving again. Remy and Jonas wound up walking side by side. “You didn’t tell me how you found her,” Jonas said. “One minute you were standing by the car, the next thing I knew, you were gone. Scared the you-know-what out of me.”

He gave her a stern look. Fatherly, maybe? She started to explain that he’d been too distracted to listen so she followed her hunch, when he added, “You shouldn’t have left like that, Remy. If you’d gotten lost in the woods, we might have needed to set up a second search party.”

She doubted that he meant his words to sound like criticism. The intensity of the situation made people say things with less diplomacy than they might use later on. She got that. What she didn’t appreciate was him bringing this up in front of strangers. “I was never in any danger, Jonas. The railroad tracks are as good a navigational tool as a compass. Even Birdie figured that out and she’s only seven.”

“And a half,” his daughter put in.

Birdie looked at Remy from her perch on her father’s back. Her skinny arms were fastened tight around Jonas’s neck. Her gaze was intelligent and watchful. She missed nothing, Remy decided.
The same way I was at her age.
“Seven and a half,” Remy corrected, giving Birdie a little wink. “And a very smart seven and a half, too.”

“I agree. But going off alone could have compromised the search. What if you’d fallen and broken your leg? Or bumped into an alligator? Or got bit by a poisonous snake?”

She stopped abruptly, reached into her purse and pulled out her phone. “I would have called someone,” she said, trying hard to keep her emotions under control. “Maybe even you. Or not,” she added under her breath.

Jonas seemed a little taken aback by her reaction. He reached out as if to touch her, comfort her, maybe. But Remy didn’t want his apology. Or his thanks. Or anything else. She didn’t know what she wanted at the moment, but she was pretty sure whatever it was, he couldn’t provide it.

“My feet hurt,” she said, spinning to leave. “I need to get these scratches cleaned before they get infected.”

“What scratches?”

“The bush attacked her, Daddy. The one I pulled in front of my hidey-hole in the tree. Remy’s hands are bigger than mine. The thorns poked her.”

Jonas caught Remy’s arm and made her stop. “Good grief, Remy. Why didn’t you say something? We have a medic here.”

One more criticism. Unintended, perhaps, but the straw that made her snap. Her fingers closed around the phone in her hand. Her phone. “You guys go on ahead. I need to call Jessie and let her know we found Birdie.”

“Can’t it wait? Your hand needs immediate attention,” Jonas argued.

She looked ahead. A couple of members of the search party were still in view. “Come on, you two,” one of the men called out. “We’re almost there.”

No, she thought, the gash on her hand was nothing compared to the one that was going to appear on her heart when she watched Jonas’s family reunite. Birdie was safe; Cheryl was alive and presumably well enough to go back to Memphis. Jonas was free to rebuild his life any way he wanted.

“I’ll catch up in a minute, Jonas. Go on. Please. Those people deserve a chance to see Birdie and celebrate.”

“But…”

“I have to go potty, Daddy. And I wanna see Mommy.”

Remy held up her phone and wobbled it. “I’ll be right behind you. I promise.”

Jonas started walking but with obvious reluctance. Remy watched until he was out of sight before she let out a long, deep sigh. She needed a minute or two alone to get control of her emotions. Being snappish and defensive wasn’t her usual style. But, understandably, she was worried about what was going to happen next.

She couldn’t picture herself hanging around, waiting while Jonas figured out exactly how she fit into his old life. The GoodFriends were in transition, too. As much as she wanted to know about Thom, now wasn’t the time.

Besides that, Remy felt different. Changed. Something happened to her when she found Birdie. Maybe it was simple validation. She’d listened to her instincts, correctly interpreted the images in her dreams and made something good happen.

Would the searchers have found Birdie eventually? Yes, Remy had no doubt.
But I got there first.
Why? Because she hadn’t let self-doubt trip her up. The revelation felt big but fragile, like a piece of blown glass that hadn’t completely cooled. She knew she wasn’t ready to answer the inevitable questions that would come during the wrap-up phase of this search. Jonas was the cross-every-T kind of guy. He could handle the paperwork. She was going home.

She dropped her phone into her purse. She could have called any of the Bullies and asked them to come pick her up, but she didn’t plan to. From listening to the search-and-rescue guys, she knew that the closest big town was under thirty minutes away. She’d catch a ride with one of them, then rent a car.

That would free up Jonas to collect his family and go wherever he needed to go. The thought brought a swift, knifing pain, but no tears. So much had happened. She’d learned more than she could possibly have hoped to learn from this quest. In truth, she couldn’t wait to get home and call Jessie and tell her everything.

Home.
The word had a certain ring to it.

“Nobody will see?”

Modesty. He smiled. “I’ll guard the spot. I promise.”

“Okay.”

They moved off the path until she found a likely spot. “Turn around, please.”

Nice manners. Had she always been this polite? He couldn’t remember. He turned his back on her but didn’t move away. “I missed you something fierce, honey girl. I thought about you a million times a day while I was in Iraq. No, a zillion.”

“A bagillion-trillion?”

“At least.”

“Me, too.”

A second later, she was back at his side, fumbling with the clasp on her jeans. The pants looked too small. “Are these yours?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I took them from my friend, David. I decided I needed pants in case I got chased by a gator.”

He made a face of pure horror. She laughed and tossed her head in a way that made him fight back tears. His poor baby girl. His very special, brave little girl.

“Where’s David, now?”

She shrugged. “He and his mommy left today. She used to be Brother Thom’s special friend, but then she decided she didn’t want to live here anymore so they left.

I didn’t want to be the oldest kid, Daddy. So, like Remy said, I followed the railroad till I got tired.”

He took her hand and they started walking. “You were smart to hide, but I would have found you sooner if you hadn’t run away.”

“I know, but you ran away once. Grandma Charlotte told me. You fell in a well and nobody could find you. Until a little girl told them where you were.”

“Grandma told you that story?”

She nodded seriously. “She said her and Grandpa were
soo
worried. Grandpa walked around so much he wore a hole in the bottom of his shoe.”

Jonas seriously doubted that. In his mind, his father hadn’t even been involved in the search. Dad had been out of town at the time. Jonas let the subject drop. “Well, I’m glad you were hiding in a tree, not in a well.”

“Me, too. Where’s Remy?”

Jonas looked over his shoulder. “She’s coming.”

“She’s nice, Daddy. I like her.”

“I agree.”
And I owe her more than I can ever repay.

They entered the compound and were greeted by a resounding cheer. Strangers rushed up to them, eager to shake Jonas’s hand and clap Birdie on the shoulder. He did his best to thank everyone personally, but he could sense Birdie’s disquiet. Her grip on his hand intensified.

“One sec,” he told the situation commander when he approached. “What do you need, sweetheart? Are you thirsty? Hungry?”

“I wanna see Mommy.”

“Oh, sorry. I forgot.”

“I’ll take her,” a deep voice said. Brother Thom. “Will you go with me, Birdie? Your mother has been resting in the motor home, but I believe she’s awake now.”

Birdie swallowed hard but nodded her willingness to go with him. She took Thom’s hand and they walked away. The gesture reconfirmed how wrong Jonas had been about the man.

He turned his attention to the situation commander and tried to answer all the questions that came his way. The one he couldn’t explain with any detail was how Remy beat the seasoned searchers to Birdie. He spotted her walking across the plaza a moment later but decided not to call her over. Instead, he excused himself. “One minute. I need to check on something.”

The man didn’t look happy but Jonas didn’t care. Something was up with Remy and he needed to make sure she was okay.

“Hey,” he said, jogging up to her as she walked to his car. “Is everything okay?”

“Great. Is Birdie with her mother?”

“Uh-huh. Can we talk? What’s going on? Is it Jessie? Did you call her?”

She shook her head. “No. I decided to call everyone later. I’m bushed. I need a shower and some serious, dream-free sleep. I’m going home, Jonas.”

“Of course. I’ll drive you. It’ll take a little while to wrap things up here, but—”

“Really, Jonas? You think that’s a good idea?” She tilted her head. “You, me, Birdie and Cheryl in the same car? Now? After everything you’ve been through?”

His Adam’s apple lifted and fell. “I don’t know what Cheryl’s plans are. Thom seems to think she needs to be in a facility for a while.”

“Then, you’ll be busy figuring that out. I don’t need to be part of that.”

His eyes narrowed and he shook his head. “But…”

She headed toward his car. “I’m going to catch a ride into town with one of the search teams,” she said. “I did what you hired me to do, Jonas. I found your daughter.” She opened the rear passenger door and sat, kicking off her shoes with a moan of relief. “I hate athletic shoes,” she said, glancing up.

As she peeled off her socks, she told him, “Don’t worry. We’ll be in touch. You promised me a glowing recommendation, remember?”

The chaos in his mind returned. He could see the situation commander frowning at him from across the plaza. Brother Thom exited the bus, Birdie right behind him. He had so much to juggle and now Remy was leaving. “You can’t just leave. What about Thom? I thought you wanted to get to know him?”

She yanked on a pair of sandals and stood. “You mean, get to know my brother the serial killer?”

Jonas’s cheeks turned hot. “I admit I jumped to the wrong conclusion. I already apologized to him. He accepted.”

Her gaze traveled toward the motor home, where Thom and Birdie were talking to the two women Jonas and Remy saw when they first arrived at Big Stump. “Of course, he did. He’s a man of the cloth. What would Jesus do, right? But, I’m not sure an ‘Oops, I made a mistake’ works for me.”

“What do you mean?”

She took a deep breath and let it out before answering. The look in her eyes told him he wasn’t going to like what she had to say. “I’ve come to the conclusion that for some reason, Jonas, the glass is always half-empty for you. Or maybe a more accurate analogy is the glass is half-filled with arsenic.”

He took a step back. “That’s not true.”

“You believed the worst when Mama told us she had an affair with your father.”

“So did you.”

“But she was my mama. I trusted her. And, besides, I didn’t have anybody else to ask. You got on a plane with your mother and never said a word about what happened. Why, Jonas? Why did you give up on us so easily?”

“Marlene made us promise to keep her secret. I was a kid, for God’s sake. What was I supposed to do? Break my mother’s heart?”

“No. You broke mine, instead,” she told him, her tone too flat and cold to be Remy. “And for fifteen years, I thought I loved you enough to overlook that. Maybe I could have…if you hadn’t assumed the worst about Thom. Suddenly it became clear to me that you have trust issues that don’t have anything to do with me—or with our mothers’ lies. I want what Mama was holding out for—someone who will love me no matter what.”

She touched her hand to his cheek. “Your daughter and her mother need you, Jonas. I’m a big girl. I can find my own way home.”

Then she took her suitcase and computer bag and walked to the closest SUV. The driver noticed and rushed to unlock the door for her.

Jonas stood without moving. His brain couldn’t make sense of what was happening. She blamed him for what her mother—and his—did fifteen years earlier? Remy was mad at him for drawing a faulty conclusion from facts that certainly would have raised suspicion about a man who was no perfect angel? If this was her idea of undying love, then who the hell needed it?

He stalked to the big table someone had dragged from inside the old store. He’d wrap up the paperwork, then take his daughter home. Screw love.

Remy watched Jonas storm to the command center. She knew he was mad. She didn’t blame him, but she also knew this was the best choice she could make at the moment. She pushed her bags over to give her room to sit. She’d just reached for her seat belt when she heard a high-pitched voice call her name.

“Remy!”

Birdie raced across the plaza, her bright red braids bobbing behind her. She reached the SUV, breathing hard. “You can’t go without saying goodbye. You found me.”

Remy got out and went down on one knee. “You were never lost, sweet girl. Just misplaced for a moment. You and your daddy have a special bond. He would never let you disappear for good.”

“When will I see you again?”

Remy gave her a squeeze. “I’m going to be working at Shadybrook, where your grandma Charlotte lives. Maybe we can see each other when you come to visit her.”

Birdie looked over her shoulder toward the big motor home. “My mommy doesn’t feel good.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s nobody’s fault. I wanted it to be Brother Thom’s fault, but Daddy says it isn’t.”

Remy was glad to hear that. “Nobody likes to be sick, Birdie. I hope your mother gets better soon.”

The two search-and-rescue volunteers returned. The driver got in, but the passenger held back, waiting for Remy and Birdie to finish their conversation. “I have to go, now, Birdie. It was wonderful getting to meet you. You’re a very special person.”

Acting on impulse, she quickly reached behind her neck and undid the clasp on the chain she always wore. “Here, Birdie,” she said, motioning for the little girl to turn around. “Your daddy gave this to me a long time ago. I want you to have it.”

“Why?”

“Because sometimes you need something tangible to remind you that even when you’re lost, someone who loves you will find you.”

She dropped a quick kiss on the top of Birdie’s head. “Take care, sweetheart, and be good for your daddy.”

Big shiny tears sparkled in Birdie’s eyes when she turned to look at Remy, but she didn’t weep. She touched the little St. Christopher medal, then she smiled and raced to where her father was standing, Thomas Goodson at his side.

Remy felt guilty about not telling her half brother goodbye, but his long-distance nod told her they’d talk again when the time was right. Jonas, on the other hand, didn’t acknowledge her leaving in any way. He picked up Birdie when she reached him and walked away.

Remy honestly couldn’t say that she blamed him. She wasn’t the same girl he thought he’d loved—either in high school or present day. But, finally, she knew who she was—Remy Bouchard. The Dream Girl. And she was done apologizing for being special.