Firefly Island (17 page)

What if he'd figured out how to open the gates, then left the safety of the yard? There were all sorts of potential dangers out there. Horses in the barn, cattle in the pasture, wild animals hiding in the woods, coyotes that howled at night, rattlesnakes curled up in the shade beneath prickly pear cacti . . .

“Nick?” My voice cracked the silence, high, sharp, demanding. “Nick, if you can hear me, answer right now! Where are you?” Wiping flour on my shorts, I ran to the back door, pushed open the screen, yelled into the yard, listened, threatened, and listened again. Nick had never hidden from me
before—not unless we were playing our little games of hide-and-seek. Surely he could tell from my voice that I wasn't playing now.

Panic swelled as the echo of my voice died. The yard was sun-filled, incredibly still. Nick's little collection of toys sat basking in the golden light, a tiny yellow bulldozer with a mound of sand piled in front of it, poised for action, a miniature stack of tree bark ready to be used in the building of a fence or a house. Nick seemed to have abandoned his game in midstream.

Letting the door fall closed, I hurried through the house, checking every place I could think of, yelling Nick's name. Tears blurred my eyes and my heart hammered, the sound beating faster, faster, faster. When I'd gone through the house again, I checked the yard inch by inch, every bush, flower bed, and hidden space. There was no sign of Nick anywhere.

Fear like I had never experienced seized me as I raced back to the house, stumbled through the door, and grabbed the phone. I tried Daniel's cell. No answer. My hands trembled as I searched for the West Research lab number in the yellowed Rolodex Jack had given us.

“Please, please, please . . .” Moments seemed to stretch painfully as I waited for Daniel to pick up. He'd told me he would be in the lab all day, since Jack was gone to some sort of business meetings in Dallas.

One ring, another, another. What was I going to say?
I've lost Nick? I don't know where he is? I forgot about him while I was trying to bake those stupid peach pies to keep Jack West happy?

“No,
no
 . . .” The click of the answering machine left me desperately alone. “Please, God. Please let him be all right . . .” There was water all around us—the shallow creek behind the barn and the lakeshore across the pasture. Could Nick
walk that far? Would he? Could he have set out for the lake on his own? He didn't even know how to swim without his floaties. . . .

I imagined Nick slowly walking into the water, the waves sweeping over him. No. No, he couldn't be by the water. The yard gates were all closed. The latches were too heavy for Nick. Where could he have gone?

Was it possible that someone had taken him from the yard? Who? No one ever came here but the UPS man and the ranch hands. None of them would have let Nick out of the yard without telling me. The dog was gone, too. Pecos never left Nick's side. During our weeks at the ranch, they'd become so tightly bonded that Pecos slept on the ground outside Nick's window at night.

I called the lab again, got the answering machine. “Daniel, I need you. I can't find Nick!” I slammed the phone into the cradle, paced the kitchen, trying to think. Should I get in the car and drive down to the lake, look for Nick there? What if he was still somewhere around the house? What if he came back, and I was gone? I needed help. I needed somebody. Who could I call? Al didn't carry a cell phone, and she wouldn't be in the house this time of the day. The sheriff's department was miles away. Town was miles away. Did we have a phone book for the area?

“Stupid.
Stupid
.” This was my fault. I hadn't even bothered to gather up emergency numbers and keep them by the phone.

I ran to the bedroom and dumped my purse out onto the bed, dug through the mess for the sticky note with Chrissy's work number on the back. By the time she picked up the phone at the pharmacy, I was in tears on the other end. I blurted out the story between sobs and moans of regret. A voice in the back of my head admonished,
See? See? What made you think you could be someone's mother?
Meanwhile,
Chrissy repeated details to the pharmacist, her voice taking on a breathless sense of drama that heightened my fear and reinforced the idea that I wasn't panicking over nothing.

Before Chrissy and the pharmacist could decide whether it would be better to relay information to the county sheriff's department or round up some volunteers to search for Nick, a silver BMW convertible melted out of the heat waves on the driveway. The low undercarriage scraped the grassy hump in the center of the road, sending up a silty cloud of caliche dust that overtook the car. Wandering peafowl scattered in all directions as the incongruous vehicle whipped into a parking spot beside Jack's ranch truck. Jack was in the passenger seat, the driver a distinguished-looking man in a suit. The two of them were engaged in what looked like a business conversation.

I dropped the phone and ran outside, throwing open the gate before they were out of the car. If I'd previously been intimidated by Jack West, in that moment I wouldn't have cared if he were Attila the Hun. I wanted someone to help me find Nick. Alive and well and unharmed.

“Nick's gone!” I blurted. “I can't find him anywhere. I've checked the house and the yard, and . . . and I was in the kitchen . . . and then I realized I hadn't heard him . . . and I don't know how long . . .” The story tumbled out, almost unintelligible. I felt time ticking away, the possibility of this turning out to be an innocent, harmless incident growing thinner and thinner as the minutes passed.

Jack patted the air, his expression hard to read in the shadows of his cowboy hat, his voice matter-of-fact. “Kids wander off. Where's the last place you saw the boy?”

I repeated the details again.

He turned to the man in the business suit, who was standing with his hands clasped, his face impassive, as if he were
waiting for Jack to tell him what his reaction should be. “Jankowski, grab the radio in my truck, there, and see if any of the hands are around. Track down Daniel, too. Could be he came by and picked up the boy and didn't check in.”

“Daniel would never do that,” I insisted. “He always lets me know if he's taking Nick. We always tell each other. He wouldn't . . .” I stopped mid-sentence. Jack was already walking away. I followed along as the man in the suit, Jankowski, crossed to Jack's truck.

“Yard gates weren't open?” Jack seemed strangely detached from the situation—as if the outcome didn't worry him in the least.

“No, they were all
closed
. Nick can't open the latches, and there's no way he could climb over the fence. But he's not in the yard. I just don't . . .”

Jack held up a hand, silencing me. He scanned the area, seeming to listen for something. A peacock strolled by, dragging a folded fan of tail feathers, and he watched it pass. “You seen the dog lately?” In the past month, Pecos had gone from
my
dog to
the
dog, in Jack's vernacular. “Dog wouldn't just leave the yard without the boy.”

Inside, I was screaming,
Stop standing here talking! We have to do something!
Jack started toward the yard, toward the one place I was certain Nick
wasn't
. “They're not there. I looked. I searched everywhere.” My mind flashed a picture of Nick wandering into the surf. We didn't have time to waste looking where I'd already searched.

“You check in the garage buildin'?”

“I
said
I've been
everywhere
. They're not in the yard.”

Right now, Jack looked as though he didn't care whether Nick lived or died. What kind of man was he?

“I can't raise anyone on this thing,” Jankowski yelled, and even he seemed more concerned than Jack.

My stomach fell. The world spun. I felt like I was going to be sick. We needed help, and we needed it now. “We have to call the sheriff, or somebody, before any more time goes by.”

Jack held up a hand to silence me again. I wasn't inclined to obey this time. I whirled toward him, intent on taking control of the situation.

“You check in the little house?” he asked.

“What . . . no, it's . . . the doors are locked.” If Nick had somehow managed to let himself into Jack's house, surely he would have heard me when I was running around the yard calling his name.

A slow heel turn swiveled Jack toward the gate, and he strode through, dismissing me in midsentence. Left with little other choice, I followed to the little house, again protesting the waste of time. His glance was dismissive as he took a skeleton key from the porch light and turned the old-fashioned lock. The door creaked open, and he paused to replace the key, his countenance still annoyingly calm.

A soft sound jingled in the silent air, barely audible. I listened again and heard nothing except the fall of Jack's boots against the hollow floors, his passage quieted by seventies-vintage linoleum in an avocado-green print. The kitchen décor seemed to be of the same era, the wallpaper covered in sprays of tiny sunflowers. The L-shaped row of cabinets looked to be a deep shade of olive green, now gray with dust. A saucepan sat on the stove next to a china canister that read
Oatmeal
, and a dust-covered metal spoon struggled to reflect the weak afternoon light filtered through partially disintegrated lace curtains.

A child's cereal bowl and mug waited on a cream-colored breakfast table by the window. The chair was pulled out slightly, as if someone had left to grab the milk from the refrigerator and forgotten to come back. Without wanting
to, I slid my gaze over the breakfast set.
Fruity Pebbles
ran in multicolored letters along the rim. Nick's favorite cereal.

Where was the boy who'd owned that bowl? Why would it have been left on the table if he'd gone to Mexico with his mother for a long-term trip? Why did it look more like someone had been here making his breakfast, and then suddenly disappeared?

What if Jack's wife and her little boy had never gone to Mexico at all? What if they'd never left the ranch?

I turned and watched Jack moving through the room, emotionless, not looking left or right. Had something unthinkable happened here? Had he done something unthinkable . . . and then left this place as . . . as what? A shrine? A trophy? A strange act of denial?

Behind me, the other man, Jankowski, stopped in the doorway. I didn't blame him. This tiny house was filled with the presence of the woman and child who had been here—Jack's wife and her young son.

I wanted to turn and run out the door, but I couldn't. If Nick was in here, I had to find him, but how could he possibly be? The back door was locked. The other doors were, too.

Jack stepped through a darkened passageway into another room. Taking a breath of mildew and stillness, I followed him into the shadows, then emerged in a tiny living room with two sofas, a console television, and various antique end tables. The shades were pulled over bay windows at the opposite end, casting pallor over everything.

A beautiful painting hung over the sofa—a little blond-haired boy squatting in the grass, picking flowers. Rain lilies, like the ones that had bloomed in our yard. A lump rose in my throat as I followed Jack through another doorway into a hall that was narrow by modern standards, the striped wallpaper making the walls seem to close in. Jack traversed
the distance in three long strides and crossed through another doorway into a sunlit bedroom. He stopped just inside the door, and I stopped just outside it.

Moving a few inches closer, I studied the interior with both foreboding and fascination. It was a child's room, a boy's, the bed constructed of miniature wagon wheels, the dresser fronts decorated with wood-burned cattle brands, the toy box and the shelves beside the closet door stocked with tiny trucks and tractors from a mixture of eras—some even old enough that they might have belonged to Jack.

Clothes hung in the closet. T-shirts, jeans, a suede jacket with fringe. A boy's clothes. There was a photo beside the closet door. A woman with long blond hair, kneeling by the lakeshore with a little boy, both of them smiling at the camera. Firefly Island lay behind them, across the water. I knew exactly where the picture had been taken. I'd been there not long ago with Chrissy and Tag.

My head swam. I reached for the doorframe, steadied myself, felt a wave of grief mixed with the rush of desperation and adrenaline inside me.

Jack motioned toward the floor. I pulled my gaze downward, unwillingly grazing over another picture frame on the corner of the desk. A smiling little face underneath a cowboy hat. He couldn't have been much older than Nick then . . .

I glanced downward still, past the legs of the desk, across the round rag rug that covered the wooden floor, and then, near the footboard of the bed, I saw them—Nick and Pecos, sound asleep on the floor, surrounded by an assortment of toys.

They'd been in here . . . playing?

“Looks like that answers your question,” Jack said, and Pecos opened his eyes. He rolled upright and surveyed the room, seeming surprised and slightly embarrassed to find
himself here. Noticing Jack, he ducked his head and tucked his ears.

“Must've climbed in through the doggy door on the side of the house.” Jack turned to leave the room, and for an instant, there was emotion on his face. Grief? Pain? Regret? I couldn't tell. As quickly as it came, it was gone, but suddenly I understood that there was a reason he'd known to look inside the little house even though the doors were locked. Nick wasn't the first child to come in that way.

“I'll get him.” I moved past Jack, stubbed my toe against a little red tractor, and watched it skitter across the room. Nick had trespassed where he shouldn't have, touched things that had been closeted away for years. “I'm sorry.” My voice choked with a mixture of feelings I couldn't even begin to sort out. “I . . . I had no idea he could . . . get in here.” Threading through the toys, I tried to decide whether to pick them up or leave them. The photo of the little boy and his mother pulled at me again. I didn't want to look. I didn't want to touch anything. I just wanted to grab Nick, get him out of this place, explain to him why he should never come here again.