Single Mom Seeks... (15 page)

“You don’t have to,” his uncle mouthed to him.

Jake grabbed the receiver and took it, liked how it pissed his uncle off, this newfound need to test him physically. Maybe he wasn’t all that much stronger than Jake.

“Aunt Joan,” he said, “how are you?”

And all the time he was talking to her, he was glaring at his uncle, knowing he couldn’t make any kind of fuss about the way Jake had snatched the phone from his hand while he was talking to his aunt.

Jake listened to her for a few minutes, then finally escaped by saying he had homework to do.

He laid the phone down, intending to disappear into his room for hours, but his uncle stopped him by grabbing him by one arm and turning him around.

“Does everything have to be a battle now, Jake?” his uncle asked, right up in his face, seeming massive and just overwhelming.

He’d been an absolute bear ever since he’d broken off with Lily.

Jake shrugged, a little intimidated, but still mad. “Doesn’t matter to me.”

“Well, I really don’t like it. Could we just stop? Couldn’t things go back to the way they were? We were doing okay, weren’t we?”

“Back when I thought you trusted me. When I thought you were staying,” Jake shot back at him.

“Hey, I’m right here,” Nick said. “I haven’t gone anywhere.”

“You just walked away from Lily. You just turned your back and walked away. How could you do that to her? She’s beautiful, and she’s really special. I mean, I know I don’t know a lot about women, but Lily…” To Jake, that said it all. That his uncle could leave Lily. Jake rolled his eyes and swore. “Do you really think there’s anything out there in the world that could be better for you than her? Anyone who’d be better to you? I mean, you almost seemed human these last few weeks. And you almost seemed happy. But if you can’t even stay here for her, there’s no way you’ll stay for me.”

“Jake, we’re talking about you and me. Not me and Lily—”

“We’re talking about your life,” Jake yelled back at him. “What do you do out there in the world that’s so damned great? Are you always looking for something that’s going to be better? Something more exciting, more dangerous, just something…I don’t know. More? I mean, what do you think there is, waiting for you out there that you haven’t already seen or tried or had?”

“You and me, Jake. Let’s talk about you and me—”

“It’s one thing not to want to be saddled with a teenager you never wanted, but you could have her. You could have a life here. Her girls are still little. They still need a father, and they’re silly and they giggle a lot and they talk way too much. But they’re fun to be around, and it’s really easy to make them happy. They liked you a lot until you yelled at their mom that night we had a fight. You could have all of that, and you’re just going to walk away. I’ll never understand that, but honestly, I wish you’d just go ahead and do it. And we can get on with our lives without you.”

“That’s what you want?” Nick asked him. “You want me to go?”

“I never thought you’d stay,” Jake admitted.

He’d hoped he was wrong, but deep down, he’d never really believed it.

He’d been waiting for this day to come.

Nick looked like somebody had kicked him in the gut, like he just hurt.

“We’re not done,” he called out as Jake stalked out of the room. “Jake!”

But Jake just kept on going.

He went to his room and slammed the door, emptied his backpack of all his school books, just dumping everything on the floor, and started stuffing some clothes into it. Another pair of jeans, a handful of T-shirts, some underwear, some socks.

He wasn’t sure where he was going, but he was going.

He’d wait until it got dark, until his uncle went to bed, and then he’d go.

Jake had fallen asleep waiting for it to get dark when his phone woke him. He grabbed it and groggily said, “Hello.”

“Jake? It’s Andie.”

He sat up, wondering if he was dreaming, hoping he wasn’t. “Hi. What’s up?”

“I’m really sorry about this,” she said, and she was crying. Crying really hard. “I just didn’t know who to else call.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I need help. I really need your help. Can you come and get me?”

N
ick wasn’t sure what woke him.

A sound, a feeling, instincts honed over the years.

Something wasn’t right.

The clock read 2:43 a.m.

He waited, giving his eyes time to adjust to the dim light, then reached for the locked box he kept under the bed and keyed in the code to open it.

Gun in hand, he heard what sounded like a car door closing, then an engine.

His first thought was that Jake had snuck out and was now coming back home. Jesus, had he missed that, too?

Drinking and sneaking out?

Nick moved silently to the window, pushed open the blinds and saw a car driving away.

No? Saw his own car drive away?

That couldn’t be right.

He took off downstairs, pulling on his jeans as he went, out the door and into the street, watching it go.

Somebody had stolen his car out of his own damned driveway?

Then he had an even worse thought.

Back inside, up the stairs, storming into Jake’s room…

It was empty.

Drawers were open, clothes spilling out, the drawers seeming half-empty.

Jake had dumped his schoolbooks on the floor, but his backpack wasn’t there.

Neither was Jake.

Minutes later, he’d locked the gun back up, had shoes and a shirt on, had grabbed his phone, tried Jake’s cell three times and gotten no answer. He’d looked, but found that the set of keys he used daily was missing.

Then he was standing outside Lily’s back door.

He knew Jake wasn’t there. He’d watched his car go down the street, after all, but he still had to hope somehow Jake wasn’t in it. That he’d gone to Lily’s again.

That it could all be this simple.

He dialed her number, heard her soft, sleepy voice say, “Hello?”

“Lily, it’s me. Jake’s gone again.”

“What?”

“Wake up for me, Lily. Jake ran away. He doesn’t have a key to your house, does he?”

“No,” she said, still sleepy. “He’s not in the tree house?”

“I’m going to check. I didn’t want to scare you by doing that and having you wake up and see someone in your backyard. Will you check your house? To make sure he didn’t sneak in somehow?”

“Okay. Yeah. I will.”

He thought again of Jake’s accusations.

You just walked away from Lily. How could you do that to her?

Do you really think there’s anything out there in the world that could be better for you than her?

And the worst:
I never thought you’d stay.

Nick climbed up into the tree house.

Nothing.

Dammit!

He went back to Lily’s and a moment later, she opened the back door.

Her hair was a tousled mess, and she wasn’t wearing anything but a little cotton camisole and her pajama bottoms, and he had to look away, she looked so soft and good and inviting.

“He’s not here,” she said.

“Do you mind if I look anyway. Just in case?”

“No. Go ahead,” she said, stepping back to let him in. “What happened? Did you two have another fight?”

“Yeah.” He took off through the house, opening closet doors, checking all the dark corners, hoping against hope.

Lily followed him. “About what?”

“Me walking away from you and him,” Nick said, disgusted with himself and the whole world right then.

And terrified.

The kid terrified him.

The idea of Jake getting hurt, doing something stupid, being all alone out there somewhere, left Nick terrified.

“I didn’t say anything to him about us,” Lily told him.

“I didn’t think you did, but the kid’s got eyes, Lily. And he really cares about you. He just knew.”

They headed upstairs, checking the girls’ rooms quietly and then even Lily’s.

Nothing.

“What are you going to do now?” Lily asked.

“Wake up his friends and his friends’ parents. Or maybe drive by their houses. I need to borrow your car. I’m pretty sure Jake took mine.”

“What?”

“I woke up and heard someone pulling out of my driveway. I’m afraid it was Jake.”

“Nick, you came to search my house, but you knew Jake took your car?”

He knew how ridiculous that was.

Yeah, he knew.

He’d done it anyway, had kept hoping however irrational it was that Jake would be here.

“I was pretty sure he was the one who took my car. I was hoping I was wrong,” he admitted. “I mean…he doesn’t even know how to drive. At least, I don’t think he does. I didn’t teach him. I don’t know if anybody taught him. But I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“It’s all right. Don’t worry about that.”

“I’m sorry about everything, Lily. Honest to God, I am. I have no idea what I’ve been doing these last few months. I screwed it all up.”

“Hey.” She reached for him, pulling him close for a moment, all softness and understanding and a comfort he’d never understand that came in her arms. “You don’t need to do that. Not right now. Just concentrate on finding Jake, and call me when you do, because I’m going to worry about him now. I doubt I’ll be able to sleep, so I’ll watch for him, in case he comes back home.”

Nick dropped his head to her shoulder for a moment, trembling and completely unable to hide it, thinking he really didn’t deserve this woman or her kindness or understanding, and yet here it was, and he needed it desperately.

He gave her a quick kiss, then backed away. “I have to go.”

“Here. Keys.” She grabbed them off a hook by the back door and handed them to him. “Go. I’ll call you if he shows up here.”

Lily couldn’t go back to sleep, so she made a pot of hot tea and sat by the window, where she could see if Jake came home.

He didn’t.

She finally called her sister at five forty-five—Marcy got up at that insane hour to do aerobics—and asked her to come over so Lily could help Nick look for Jake.

Marcy was there by six-thirty when an exhausted, worried Nick returned with no Jake in sight.

Lily made a pot of coffee for him, a ferociously strong brew that she knew he favored, and made him sit down and drink a cup.

Marcy was glaring at him—she’d guessed what had happened between them and was furious, even if Lily was only supposed to be enjoying herself with him—but fortunately Marcy kept her mouth shut that morning.

“You checked with all of his friends?” Lily asked.

“Everyone I know of. I pulled his last cell phone bill and woke up a lot of people. Called the twins. He hasn’t had time to show up at their school yet, but they’ll call if he does or if he calls them. I called a friend of a friend with the local police department and asked them to look out for the car. Called a friend of a friend at the FBI office in Richmond. He’s not at any of the hospitals within fifty miles, and he hasn’t been arrested.” Nick sat here shaking his head. “I don’t know what else to do. I find missing people for a living, and I can’t even find my own nephew.”

“What about his old house?” Lily tried. “That makes sense. If he was upset, wouldn’t he go there?”

“One of the first places I checked. He wasn’t there.”

“How long ago?”

“A couple of hours, why?”

“Let’s go back,” Lily said. “It’s his home. It’s a place where he was happy, and he felt safe. I mean…Where do you go when you feel absolutely lost?”

Nick shot her a look she couldn’t begin to decipher, like she’d torn something open deep inside of him. “For just about all of my adult life, I’d have gone there.”

“Come on. I’ll go with you. Marcy’s going to stay here and get the girls off to school.”

“Thank you,” he told Marcy.

“You don’t deserve it—”

“Marcy, not now!”

“But I like Jake,” Marcy told him. “A lot. So go find him.”

He drove fast, just shy of recklessness, incredibly focused and controlled. Lily sat beside him, her hand on his knee, not saying anything and trying not to make a sound as he got a little too close to a car or took a turn a little too fast.

“Sorry,” he said, when he realized he was scaring her.

“I’m okay.”

“Lily, I’m really glad you came with me. Marcy’s right, I don’t deserve it, but I’m glad you’re here,” he said without taking his eyes off the road.

“I love Jake. And I’m afraid I helped push him away. He asked me yesterday if he could come live with me and the girls, once you left, and…I didn’t tell him no, but I didn’t say yes, either. I tried to explain that it wasn’t up to me and him. That you were his guardian, and if he wasn’t with you…I should have just said yes. I didn’t know he was this close to running away. I mean, he was upset, but I didn’t think it was this bad. What happened?”

“Nothing. I can’t come up with anything that I thought would lead to this. I can’t believe I would have missed things so completely, but he’s gone and he took some clothes with him, so I must have done something.”

“We’ll find him,” she said, wishing she could make him believe it.

Nick shook his head, took a turn that had the tires screeching. “A lot of kids aren’t ever found.”

“And don’t you do that. Don’t start thinking of every bad thing that could happen. I know you know all of those things. I know you’ve seen awful things, but you get the worst of it, Nick. You work on the absolute worst cases, so you have no perspective here. You have to know that.”

“If he’s not home by noon, we’ll have an FBI team. I called in some favors,” he told her.

“It’s not going to come to that.”

They swung past another car, missing its bumper by sheer force of will—Nick’s—and Lily couldn’t look anymore. She closed her eyes until the car finally stopped.

She expected to be in the driveway, but they were at a traffic light instead.

“You’re not going to run it?” Because he had done that more than once already.

“Not this one,” he said grimly. “It’s the one where my sister and her husband died. Their house is right there, on that corner up on the hill.”

Lily turned and looked.

The house was in one of those old neighborhoods of stately, soaring bricks with ivy crawling up the walls, entangling the house and seeming to anchor it to its surroundings even more strongly. Houses that looked like they’d been there forever and always would be. So solid, so strong, so sure.

Lily thought Jake must have felt perfectly secure there and everything about the boy he was now told her he’d been well-loved, too. It made her ache to think of him here and how happy he must have been, how much he’d lost.

“Jake’s room is the first window on the corner on the second floor. He had a perfect view of that spot,” Nick told her. “You can get here without going through that intersection, but everybody goes through it to town, to Jake’s school, to his best friend’s houses. And all of his friends are starting to drive now. Even if Jake never drove himself through that intersection, he’d get in a car with friends and they’d all go through it. He’d sit there and take it, rather than tell them how much he hated it.”

“You did the right thing, to get him away from that,” Lily said.

The light changed. Nick drove up the hill and pulled into the driveway.

Lily hoped to see his car there, but it wasn’t.

Nick led her to the side entrance by the garage, and when he went to unlock the door, he stopped and looked at her. “It’s not locked. It wasn’t even pulled shut all the way.”

“Is there an alarm?”

Nick nodded, stepped cautiously inside, keeping her behind him, and went to the alarm panel. “It hasn’t been tampered with. It’s just not set.”

“So…he must have been here, right?”

“If he was, why would he leave the door unlocked and not set the alarm?” He kept Lily behind him and called out, “Jake?”

No answer.

He kept her behind him in the cool, dark house, going room-to-room downstairs, finding no sign of a break-in, but no sign of Jake, either, until they got to the family room.

“Feel that? It’s warmer than the rest of the house.” He went to the fireplace and stuck out a hand. “Gas logs. They’re still on.”

Lily saw a pile of afghans on the couch and a chair, throw pillows pulled into place like people had been sleeping there.

Did that mean Jake wasn’t alone?

“If he had some kind of party here, I’ll kill him myself for scaring us this way,” Nick said, his voice absolutely calm for once.

“I’d help you,” Lily agreed. “But if that’s all it was, why not just tell you he’s spending the night with a friend and have you drive him or have one of his friends come pick him up? Much less chance of getting caught that way. For him to steal your car in the middle of the night…something had to happen.”

“I’m going to search the upstairs. I’ll be right back.”

Lily wandered around the downstairs, feeling like an intruder into these people’s lives. Like Jake’s parents should be walking in the door at any moment.

Because everything was still in place, like they might just walk back in.

So much loss, she thought. So much life, just gone.

Nick came back, obviously having found nothing. “I don’t know what else to do.”

She took his hand and tugged, leading him back to the family room where it was warmer. Nick sank down into a big, comfy chair next to the fire, looking like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Lily walked over to stand behind the chair he was sitting in, wanting to comfort him and not knowing what to do, what he’d allow or accept from her.

“It seems like this was such a happy place,” she tried.

“It was,” he agreed. “And I can’t believe the family’s just gone. I mean, the boys are still here, but everything’s changed. You think those things should be forever, that someone should get forever and get it right and be happy and safe, and I always thought if anybody could have that, it was them. But if they don’t even get that kind of happiness…it makes me think nobody ever really does.”

Lily put her hand on his shoulder, wanting to do more.

He leaned his head against the back of the chair, and she leaned over the back of his chair and cupped her hand against one side of his face, her cheek against the other. His hand came up and tangled in her hair, holding her there, her tears falling from her face and onto his.