Drawn Into Darkness (28 page)

Having Justin back, he meant. Their son was going to need a lot of help. “I know.”

“Are we . . . are we on the same page?”

Amy felt like splattering her jellyfish self of anguish all over the interior of Chad's precious truck. Even calling her “honey,” he still sounded as if he were talking about a working partnership, planning a job, and Amy needed so, so much more.

“That depends. Charles Stuart Bradley,” she demanded, “do you love me?”

The truck swerved across the road's center line, then toward its dark edge, as if Chad were drunk. Amy thought he would curse, but he just took his foot off the gas, applied the brakes, and pulled over to the side of the road.

Still without speaking, he turned to her and reached for her over the console with both hands. This time he did not retract. He took hold of her firmly yet tenderly, and he kissed her—Amy had to close her eyes, dizzied by sheer hope. Chad's mouth did not try to dominate hers; his lips coaxed her to respond, and she did. It was the perfect kiss.

He laid his head on her shoulder and said gruffly, “God, yes, I love you.”

“No more jellyfish,” Amy murmured.

“Huh?”

“Never mind. I love you always, honey. Feel better?”

“Yes. Amy, sweetheart, you've been right all along and I was wrong.”

“Shush. That
so
doesn't matter anymore. Let's go find our son.”

•   •   •

Within moments after Chad got the truck back on the road, he asked Amy to try another phone call, and this time someone picked up: a sheriff's deputy named Morales.

Chad made it to the Maypop County Sheriff's Office by following the directions Amy relayed to him from Deputy Morales, who stayed on the line with them the whole time, coaching them and cautioning them to drive carefully. Chad felt he might not have made it without him. He felt as if he were carrying a tremendous weight made up mostly of his own overfull heart. He felt breathless and strained, sweating as if he were running a marathon. Which in a way he was, and he hadn't trained. For the past year he'd been lounging in a kind of emotional La-Z-Boy, and now here he was in a lather of desperate hope and fear and wanting his son and loving his wife and feeling unworthy and feeling—feeling so much he could have drowned in his own bellyful of blood, sweat, and tears.

Finally at the sheriff's office, Chad tried to park his big pickup neatly between the lines and failed, but for once he didn't make a second attempt to get it right. He jumped out and got around to the passenger side of his truck in time to help Amy get down; Chad kept meaning to install a step for her and kept forgetting. The way he felt right now, he hated himself for that one small neglected act.

He held his wife's hand as they started across the parking lot toward the double-wide trailer building occupied by the Maypop County Sheriff's Office, but they didn't get far.

A kid, looked like a teenager, jumped out of an old beater of a cruiser and sprinted to meet them, and Chad's heart riffed like a crazed drummer inside his chest, but he couldn't see the boy's face; Justin—please, it had to be Justin—kept his head down, his eyes shielded by the bill of a baseball cap.

Quite spontaneously, because his legs no longer seemed willing to support him, Chad got down on his knees.

He saw Justin's face.

Justin, yes! But—God, this wasn't the Justin he remembered. Justin had the hollow, haunted look of a war survivor aged and hardened beyond his years, yet at the same time he looked paradoxically, childishly young and hurt and vulnerable.

“Justin!” A mother's potent call. Amy ran to her lost child and wrapped him in her arms.

Justin said, “M-M-Mom,” and broke into tears.

An instant later Chad got there to bear-hug both of them. He felt his son sobbing uncontrollably. And his wife. And, unashamedly, himself.

•   •   •

Justin had told himself and told himself that he was not going to bawl like a baby. But the instant he had seen his parents, the most potent upheaval of emotion ever in his life had overpowered him to shoot him straight into their arms, then turn him inside out while they held him, they kept holding him, standing strong and holding him together when he felt like he was nothing, nothing at all except tears.

It wasn't until Bernie Morales came and offered everyone a box of tissues that he noticed Mom and Dad were crying too. They didn't act embarrassed, so why should he?

“I feel for you all in my heart.” Bernie stretched out his arms in a fatherly sort of way, herding them toward the Sheriff's Office. “You come inside, we try to make this quick, get you out of here before the nosy people find out, yes?”

Oh, God, Justin realized, it wasn't over yet. It was going to be days before it was really over, maybe weeks, maybe—never.

Bernie took them inside to a room with a table, where Justin slumped in a chair with his face hidden under the bill of his cap. “Sweetie, take off your hat,” said his mom, her voice so warm he realized she was kind of teasing.

“Sit up straight,” said his dad the same way.

Somehow, just by being annoying parents, they helped him lift his head and face Bernie, who was turning on a tape recorder. “Justin, we talk just about today, okay?”

Okay. Whatever.

Bernie Morales recorded the date and Justin's name, then coached, “Start with what made you go into Liana Clymer's house.”

“We heard her scream.”

Bernie pretty much led him through it. All that his questions required of Justin was quick, simple answers. Somebody brought in cans of soda pop as if this were just a little get-together. But toward the end, Justin felt something fearsome and akin to Stoat trying to turn him inside out again. “I had to kill him,” he blurted. “I didn't want to. Am I going to jail?”

“No, no, not if this is true.” Bernie turned off the tape recorder and stood up. “Okay, I must go put this in writing for Justin to sign, and then we are done for today, okay?”

Once Bernie had left the room, Dad and Mom both got up, came over to Justin, and hugged him again. His voice thick with emotion, Dad said, “Son, you're a hero.”

“I don't feel like a hero. I feel bad.”

Dad asked simply and gently, “Why?”

Justin barely managed to choke out part of it. “B-be-because I killed Unc—I mean Stoat.”

“Unc?” Dad asked just as gently.

“Uncle Steve.”

“You called him Uncle Steve.”

“He told me to.”

Dad's voice became only slightly harder. “So he made it like you were family.”

“Yes, and—and—he wasn't bad to me sometimes, and—and I had to go and kill him!”
Don't goddamn cry,
Justin ordered himself. He was nearly crying but not quite.
Don't.

There was a long moment of silence. Justin stiffened, expecting Dad to tell him Stoat deserved to be killed. But instead, Dad said, “Son, whatever you feel is how you feel. We all have a lot of sorting out to do.”

Mom said, “I see a family therapist in our future.”

Dad nodded, looked Justin straight in the eye, and said, “Speaking of family, let me make a phone call.” He got out his cell phone.

Justin stared, struck by the sight of the BlackBerry yet oddly comforted. “Is that your same old—”

“Some things stay the same but some things change.” Into the phone, his father said, “Hi, Dad, how is it going?”

Justin felt astonishment lift his head and his heart.

“Are Kyle and Kayla still up?”

“Grandpa?” Justin gasped.

Smiling with blessedly genuine warmth and ease, his father nodded at him. To the phone he said, “Listen, Dad, great news. You can tell them we found Justin.”

Justin could hear the joyful noise on the phone from where he sat. Three voices, one old and two young, yelling and crying. And a dog barking.

“Grandpa's dog,” Mom told Justin, very matter-of-fact.

“Yes, he's right here,” Dad was saying into the cellular. “Howsabout you put the phone on speaker?” He did the same at his end, then handed his BlackBerry over to Justin with a grin, assuring Justin he would do just fine.

“Hi, squirts,” he said, and in answer to the resultant clamor, “Yes, it's me. I've been in a dungeon. It's a long story. Grandpa?”

“Yes, Justin.” The elderly voice sounded all choked up. Unbelievable, to have a grandfather who cared about him waiting for him at home.

“Hi, Grandpa.”

“Justin, I'm so glad you're coming home, I can't see straight.”

“Um, good, I guess.” Trying to change the subject, Justin asked, “What's your dog's name?”

“Oliver.”

Kayla yelled, “And he likes Meatloaf!”

“You feed him meat loaf?”

For some reason everyone started laughing, and Justin laughed along with them without knowing why.

D
escartes should have spent some time in Maypop Medical. Thinking had nothing to do with the definition of existence; here it was hello, I had a bowel movement, therefore I am. I'm afraid I was not a patient patient. Because Stoat had smashed my forearm rather thoroughly, I required surgery to pin the bones back in place, which had to wait until the swelling went down, so between that and a hairline fracture of my skull and a bruised spleen from being kicked and a few cracked ribs, I was stuck in the hospital for five days in order to heal. But I think the most important healing that took place there occurred between me and my sons.

“Where's Schweitzer?” I remember asking none too lucidly. Those days I wasn't quite firmly in residence in my own body. My face, cut and bruised with blackened eyes, made me barely recognizable to myself. Some sort of intravenous lotus juice dripping into me all the time kept me a bit muddled.

My sons exchanged glances. Forrest asked cautiously, “You mean Schweitzer's body?”

“Yes.”

“We buried him in the front yard.”

“Oh. Good.” I meant good, Schweitzer had not been taken away by strangers or thrown into the garbage; Schweitzer had been interred by people who knew him and were fond of him. If I had tried to say any of this, I would have sounded like a maudlin drunk, so I dozed off—not an unusual occurrence. An image of a small grave in front of a pink house formed in my mind, but the pink house wasn't my cute pink shack anymore. Some unseen hands of my mind pulled it into goo like taffy, a bloody gory mess. I woke up.

“I can't live there anymore,” I said to no one except myself, and it was true. With a swampy feeling I realized I could never again feel comfortable in the fuchsia shack surrounded by fuzzy-blossomed mimosa trees. Not even if I bought a sofa cover and put down a new carpet. Every day when darkness fell, it would be as if my mind were spraying Luminol, and I would see blood fluorescing like soul rot. Schweitzer's blood. My blood. And Stoat's. I had either a fainting memory or a disturbing dream of his hot blood splashing all over me as he died.

“I can't go back to that pink shack,” I told my sons the next time I saw them.

“Come back up north with us, then,” said Forrie. “We'll find you someplace to live where you won't run into Dad.”

“Your father's okay.” I must explain that aftermath is the stubble left after something is mowed down, and those days I was pretty much all aftermath of Stoat. I had lost all resentment of Georg; compared to Stoat, the man was an effing role model. Hacked down to the root emotions, cut off from embarrassment or inhibition, I felt like an open-backed hospital gown mentally as well as literally—a new experience to both me and my sons. They gawked at me.

“New sense of proportion,” I explained, and the provenance of my remark led me to ask, “Have you heard from Justin?”

They hadn't, not directly, although they had their own inside source, a sheriff's deputy named Bernie Morales. Quinn had contacted him to get his cell phone back, then gone to see him for the same reason, and Bernie had not only provided the phone but also told him Justin was doing well. That Bernie had witnessed the boy's tearful, wholehearted reunion with his mom and dad. That Justin was not allowed to leave Maypop for a few days, so he and his parents had gone into seclusion to avoid the media.

“We could check the TV,” Forrie said, meaning CNN.

“Nah. I've seen enough of Stoat to last me a lifetime.” Having learned of the Justin Bradley connection, newscasters were all over the story, which included me. My sons told me there was a news posse parked outside the hospital waiting for me to appear. Quinn and Forrest were in collusion with the hospital staff to come and go through the laundry bay. They were my only visitors except for the police who had taken my statement.

Hearing my full story, Forrest had said with a stunned look, “My God, Mom.” He had said it more than once. “I can't believe what you've been through. And what you did.”

And Quinn had blurted, “It's no wonder Justin wouldn't quit until he'd found you.”

I told my sons nothing of the absurd daydreams I was having about Justin. As soon as Justin felt well enough, he and I could start making megabucks doing TV interviews. Gee, what would I wear to talk with Piers Morgan, and how would I get my hair done? Maybe somebody would want to write a book, or even better, somebody would want to make a movie. Who would star as Justin and who would star as me? There would be big money, but Justin and I wouldn't argue about who got how much, not after what we'd been through together. We would be like heroes who had gone through war side by side, buddies for life.

Semper Fi.
I wanted to see Justin, and find out how he was doing, and talk with him.

I had two sons who loved me. Yet I wanted Justin so much that I had to ask myself a few questions and come to some hard answers.

Luckily I did so in time. Before Justin and his parents came to visit.

•   •   •

They came by my hospital room on their way home to Alabama. I assumed Bernie Morales had sneaked them in through the laundry bay.

It was the day before I was due to be discharged. Forrie and Quinn were out at the pink shack packing my things into a storage container, and I was trying to ignore whatever was on daytime TV. I wondered whether zoos thought constant videos were good for caged monkeys.

Justin walked in.

I forgot TV was ever invented. Justin looked as if he had put on a year's growth in the week or so since I had seen him. He wore all new clothes; he stood solid; he walked tall. I almost didn't recognize him. Yet I knew him to the heart of my bones.

I gasped, “Justin!”

“Hi, Lee.” So far Justin was the only person in the world who called me that, and the way he said it told me a lot. That, and the fact that he took my hand, leaned over my bed, and kissed me on the not-quite-so-beat-up side of my head.

Only my decision kept me from blushing like a sunset. “Justin,” I ordered, “sit down, tell me everyth— Hello, are these your parents?” Because there in my room stood a good-looking, smiling man in a trucker hat and a pretty woman with a pot of pansies in her hands and her face all in bloom with gladness.

“Yes. Mom, Dad, this is Lee.” He stood back as if displaying a prize exhibit. This is the crazy woman who knocked on Stoat's door and saw the right advertisement at the wrong time.

Dad shook my hand awkwardly and very gently. “I need to thank you so much I don't know what to say.”

I protested, “But, Mr. Bradley—”

“Chad. Everybody calls me Chad.”

“And I'm Amy,” said Justin's mom, setting the pansies down to kiss me—not a typical feminine air kiss, but a motherly kiss on the cheek. “Thank you for giving us our son back.”

“But Justin's the one who saved
my
life. Twice. No, three times.”

“Bull.” Justin came forward to take possession of me once again. “You and Forrest and Quinn—”

He became bashful. I covered for him. “Sit down, all of you. Please.”

They did, pulling chairs close to my bedside while I kept my big mouth going. “The other children?” I asked Amy. “The twins? How—”

“We've been on the phone to them
and their grandfather
every day.” I wondered why she put such a special stress on “grandfather,” and smiled at Chad as she said it. “They're waiting at home like it's Christmas. We finally get to take Justin home today.”

“We've been hiding out in a motel,” Justin told me. “I had to stay to explain to the cops about Stoat and stuff.”

I saw my chance to maybe help. “Do you miss Stoat much?”

Justin opened his mouth without speaking. Chad asked, “You're joking, right?”

“No, not at all. Justin, do you miss him?”

“I—I'm not sure. I mean, I killed him. I had to. But then I felt bad.”

“Of course you did,” I said. “Stoat had a kind of creepy charm, and you lived with him for two years. You couldn't
not
like him a little. I did.”

“But at the end—”

“I know. So I hated him too.” I rolled my eyes, mocking myself. “Human feelings are wacko. A person can feel two or three or half a dozen ways all at the same time.”

Justin only ducked his head, but Chad sat bolt upright and exclaimed, “That was me for the past year.”

Although I had no idea what he was talking about, I nodded. “Me too.”

Justin surprised me by asking, “Lee, are you going to be okay?”

“Sure. I'll be out of here tomorrow.”

“Good! I bet you'll be glad to get home,” said Justin eagerly. “You know, I never noticed the inside of your house. I like the mimosa trees, though.”

And his mother turned to look straight at me. Her eyes met mine. Not demanding, not pleading, just asking: did I understand what was really going on here, about the mixed emotions Justin could not yet control or even comprehend?

I nodded. Yes. Yes, I did understand. I had some very mixed feelings myself. It's not that I wasn't tempted.

But he was
her
son.

“No, actually, Justin,” I said quite simply and easily, “I don't want to live there anymore. I'm going back up north.”

He stared at me, startled, maybe even stricken.
“What?”

“I'm going to stay with my sons for a while, until the busted parts of me get better—”

“And then you'll be back?”

“No.” I made it sound like no big deal when the truth was I wanted him for my surrogate son almost as badly as he wanted me for his surrogate mom. But now that he had his real mom back, the right thing for me to do was get out of her way.

And out of Justin's.

If I really cared about him, I had to want the best for him. Sure, I dreamed of forming a lifetime bond based on our mutual experience of Steven Stoat. But Justin was young. He shouldn't build a career based on memories of Stoat the Goat, for God's sake, no matter how lucrative it might be. Far from it. He should forget the bastard, as much as possible, and move on, and have a life.

“No,” I said, “once I feel better, I'll find someplace to live near my old friends and my family. You know, I was kind of running away from home when I moved down here.”

He was having a little trouble speaking. “But I was looking forward to visiting you all the time.”

I doubt he realized how much he wanted to come back to revisit familiar misery, seeing the blue shack across the road from mine, turning away from the hard work of recovery, feeling more comfortable in his passive past.

I must never let him know how much of an understanding I shared with him. He wanted understanding too much for his own good.

Forcing myself to sound like any obtuse and well-meaning adult, I said, “Well, you can come see me once I find a place to stay. I'm sure we'll keep in touch.”

“Um, sure, of course.” He and his mother and father stood up at the same time. He didn't kiss me or come near me again, just said, “Thanks for everything, Lee.”

“No, Justin, thank
you
.”

No longer looking at me, he shrugged and stood back. But Chad warmly shook my hand, and Amy hugged me and kissed me. And everything Justin's parents couldn't say to me showed in their eyes as they left my room with their son.

•   •   •

Quinn and Forrest came in shortly afterward to find me staring moodily at a pot of pansies. Forrie asked, “What's the matter, Mom?”

“I hate good-byes.”

“Justin was here?”

“Yes, and I rode away into the sunset.”

“Well, then that's where we live. So hello.” He and Quinn both grinned at me.

My sons. My
family
.

I smiled in response to them. Actually, I think I beamed. “You're right, you two. Hello.”