The liars child, p.17
The Liar's Child, page 17
“No. Just my dad’s. See?” Cassie thrust out her phone to show Sara the screen, triumphant.
Why the hell did people even want kids?
The food arrived. Boon eyed his plate, waiting for something. Permission? “Why aren’t you eating?” Sara asked.
Cassie splatted enough ketchup onto her plate to feed a small nation. “He’s scared of you.”
Sara sighed, tapped the boy’s placemat. “Go ahead. Eat.”
Obediently, he picked up his burger with both hands. Melted cheese glopped down onto the plate.
Sara watched the people around them, leaning close to talk to one another, or riveted by the TV screens. Over by the hostess stand, a woman in a brilliant emerald sari jiggled a howling baby, her hand cupped against the back of the child’s head. The restaurant door opened, admitting a blast of cold wind and a cluster of dazed-looking senior citizens. No one glanced back at Sara. No one stood out as anything but a wet and frazzled refugee from the storm.
“What about your caseworker?”
“Who?” Cassie said around a mouthful.
Sara searched for the name. “Robin.” Caseworkers wouldn’t be listed by name on the county directory. Sara would have to call the main number and hope someone could help her. Not now, of course, but as soon as the office reopened. She wondered when that might be. Days, probably. The TVs were showing palm trees blowing sideways. “Do you have Robin’s phone number?” The caseworker would have given it to Cassie, pressed the card into the girl’s palm and told her very seriously that she could call her anytime, day or night.
The girl dragged a chicken nugget through the pond of ketchup, lifted it drenched. “Not with me.”
The waitress slapped the bill on the table. “I’m real sorry to hurry you folks along, but we’re closing. Raleigh’s getting wind gusts up to seventy.”
They’d just driven through Raleigh. Sara looked out the window. Headlights swept through slanted rain. She dreaded getting back into her car. “Of course. No problem. Do you know how the roads are?”
The woman adjusted the headband above her shiny forehead. “Ninety-five’s shut down both ways. Far as I know, Forty’s still open. At least I hope it is. That’s my route home.” The lights flickered and she gasped. “Oh, Lord. I’d better check on my other tables. You folks be real careful now.”
They wrapped Boon’s cheeseburger and Cassie’s chicken nuggets in paper napkins and dashed across the lot through the cold rain. Sara opened the driver’s door, then belatedly realized Boon needed help with his rear door. Rain drove hard against the hood and shoulders of the silver raincoat as she swung open the door for him. He seemed to take forever to climb inside and swing his legs free of the door. She slammed it behind him and ducked into her own seat. She shook off the raincoat and tossed it on the seat beside her.
“Where are we going?” Cassie demanded.
“I don’t know.” Sara turned the key in the ignition. The engine coughed, then caught. She pulled her car out of the parking space and eased into the queue of vehicles waiting to enter onto the highway choked with slow-moving traffic. Everyone, it seemed, was headed west. She couldn’t leave the kids at a rest stop. There’d be cameras, aimed at the parking lot, fixed to stoplights. Even if she managed to avoid detection, her car wouldn’t. Damn it.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Just that.”
“So we’re just driving around? I thought we were looking for a shelter.”
“We were.” She peered through the foggy rain. Her headlights flickered. She was driving blind. Literally.
“But we’re not now?”
“I doubt there are any shelters out here.” She needed to get off the major arteries, find someplace off the beaten path, where she could hole up and figure out how she was going to get hold of a new car. She couldn’t do that with two kids. She should have left them at that shelter or at the restaurant, taken her chances. But here she was.
“This is crazy. We don’t even know you.”
“I didn’t have to take you with me, Cassie. I could have left you at the Paradise.” Without warning, the pickup beside them swerved into their lane. Sara swung the steering wheel to avoid a collision. A rooster tail of water sprayed across her windshield.
“No one asked you to!”
Sara flicked the wipers to a higher speed. “You haven’t said thank you. Not once.”
“Thank you, Sara. Thank you so very much. You’re amazing. When I grow up, I want to be just like you.”
“Jesus, Cassie. No wonder your mother left you. If I was your mother, I’d have done the same thing.”
A shocked silence, then Cassie muttered. “Wow, what a bitch.”
Boon was staring at her in the rearview mirror, his eyes starting to fill. She’d frightened him. Again. Did she have to watch everything she said? Had she been that thin-skinned as a child? She doubted it. Her father would never have stood for any emotion that slowed him down. They’d been a team. She’d prided herself on that. Sara took a soft breath and pushed down her irritation. “We’re going to have to play it by ear. Maybe your dad can meet us somewhere. Okay?”
Boon clutched his stuffed toy, eyes on her face. He nodded. Cassie was scowling out the window at the lashing rain, deliberately mute.
“Try your dad again, Cassie.” The man would answer his phone. He’d be desperately looking for his kids, wondering where the hell they were.
CHAPTER 27
Whit
“CASSIE’S A SMART girl.” His mother struck a match and held it to the burner beneath the pot. The kitchen leaped with shadows. They’d lost power hours before. Candles stood here and there. The wind shrieked outside. “She’ll figure out something.”
He was bone-tired. Did he imagine the faint stench of sewage hanging around him? His hands ached from gripping the steering wheel. His left eye twitched. He’d been driving into the storm instead of out of it. It had taken hours to retrace his steps. Three o’clock in the afternoon. Felt like the middle of the night. “Cassie’s just a kid.” Playing grown-up in a skimpy bikini, hanging out with kids way too old for her. Beneath it all, a little girl. But she knew to stay clear of the windows, didn’t she? He tried to push away the image of something crashing through the glass, spraying the kids with jagged shards.
“She’s been through storms before. She’ll sit tight.”
“She won’t know what to do if the power goes off.”
“For all we know, honey, the power’s still on.”
They knew nothing. They sat in the dark as the storm battered the windows. They were almost fifty miles inland. It would be far worse on the Outer Banks. Boon would be sobbing. Cassie would be helpless with fear. He picked up his phone and pressed redial. Nothing.
“The Paradise has been around for years, Whit. It’s withstood plenty of hurricanes. And they’re on the top floor. There’s no way the water could reach that high.”
The Paradise wasn’t a fortress. The windows could explode. A gas line could break. He pinched the bridge of his nose, sucked in some shallow breaths, tried not to think of them trapped in a fire. Four stories up—what would they do?
“Bet you one of your neighbors took them in.” His mother ladled soup into bowls, set one on a tray. His father had reinjured himself that morning, tripped as he came into the house, going down hard on the kitchen floor. He wouldn’t let her near enough to check how bad. He’d taken a couple aspirins and hobbled off to the back bedroom. From time to time, she went to check on him, returned with her lips pressed in a tight line.
Who would think to check on his kids? They didn’t know their neighbors. It wasn’t that kind of community. Whit had stood staring at the water raging across the bridge until the cop had yelled at him to get back. He’d checked the shelters, waited with hope lodged in his throat while aid workers thumbed through index cards and scanned clipboards, only to look up at Whit and shake their heads. One of them had rested her hand on his arm. What about you, Mr. Nelson? Where are you staying?
“The police are aware of the situation, Whit. As soon as they can, they’ll check on them. And then they’ll let you know.” She placed a bowl in front of him. “Eat.”
He looked down. Tomato soup. His kids had dry cereal, marshmallows, junk food. His stomach clenched.
“Please, honey. You need to keep up your strength.”
He had no strength. It took everything he had to pick up the phone again. He called the number the cop on the bridge had given him. It rang endlessly. Maybe everyone was out dealing with the hurricane. Maybe the phone line had been knocked out of service. He turned off the phone, set it back down.
She sat and clasped his hands between icy fingers. Her face sagged. She looked so old. She was worrying, too, he reminded himself. “We’ll know more soon,” he made himself say, feeling like it was a lie when she glanced up at him, startled.
His entire life, his mother had cast out reassurances that meant nothing. Your father will come around. He just wants the best for you. Stick with it, honey. Hard work always pays off. Believe in yourself. Meaningless words. It was when she didn’t say anything—that long, gasping silence—that Whit felt his stomach curdle with true terror. That night six weeks before, he had pressed the phone to his ear, terrified and heartsick, and waiting for her to say something, anything. Finally, she had said, Come here. Your father and I will help you.
And she had, hadn’t she? They had. Here they were, the three of them, bound together by ties that went against all nature.
“Honey.” His mother’s voice was gentle. “You need to stop torturing yourself.”
A horror flick, that tide of water shooting across four lanes of highway. He’d left his kids unprotected in that. When would the bridges be traversable? Would anything be left of the towns up and down the Outer Banks? Something occurred to him. “I’ll take Dad’s boat.”
“Don’t be foolish, Whit. It’s a fishing boat.”
“I can’t just sit here.”
“You can’t put that boat in a hurricane. Be realistic, please.”
“It’s only a mile of open water. I’ll take it slow.”
“Think it through, for pity’s sake. Something happens to you, where will your children be then?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
“Wanting that to be true doesn’t make it so.” She stood abruptly, picked up the tray, and went down the hall.
He thought of the note he’d left the kids. He had signed it Dad. Nothing about love. Just last week, he’d forgotten his own son’s birthday. Cassie had texted him at work, accusation vibrating through every typed word, and he’d hurriedly stopped for an ice cream cake on the way home, gone into the toy section and blankly looked at the shelves. He couldn’t remember what Lego sets Boon already had. He didn’t know if his son was too old for Play-Doh, too young for a telescope. That had been Diane’s domain. She had prided herself on knowing exactly what to give their children, what was the latest thing and where to find it on sale.
Whit had tried everything. He’d worked to control his temper. He’d stuck by Diane, even after she almost killed their son. He’d swallowed insult after insult to hold on to a job to provide for his family. But in the end, the ugly truth was plain. He had turned out exactly like his old man.
Whit shoved his chair back, went to the window, pushed aside the curtain. The trees thrashed against the sky. Down at the bottom of the hill lay the fallen tree, not visible from this vantage point. Next door, a man in a flapping windbreaker ran up his porch steps. The front door quickly opened to admit him. Whit imagined the man’s family welcoming him home. They’d been worried for his safety. They’d pummel him with questions. When would the power resume? Would they lose the roof? Their normal lives.
What Whit wouldn’t give to go back to a normal time.
What if that night hadn’t happened? All the mistakes he’d made. He was the worst kind of father.
“Whit!” his mother called. “Your father’s not in the bedroom.”
Whit spun away from the window, hurried toward her urgent voice. In the hall, her face was stricken, shadows leaping from the flashlight she carried. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know, Whit. I didn’t hear him leave.”
“He’s gone to the police.”
“No. He would never do that.”
“That’s exactly the damn stupid kind of thing he would do.”
“Oh, Whit. No. Don’t say that.”
“How did he do it? Did someone pick him up?”
“Who, Whit?”
It was true. His father had no friends. But he had people who owed him, which he considered better than friendship. Can’t count on a person’s good side. He’d said it more than once. But you can always count on their bad side. People told lies for all sorts of reasons. Whit’s father collected them like currency, trading them in when it suited him. He must have decided that it was time to turn Whit in. Teaching him a lesson, maybe. Showing him who was boss.
Whit was already yanking on his boots. He grabbed his jacket from the closet, opened the front door. The wind lashed in. He shook off his mother’s clutching hand, stepped onto the porch.
He had to get to his kids. Steal a boat, find a way around the police barricades. He’d get to his kids and then he’d figure out what to do. His father only thought he knew what had happened to Dee.
CHAPTER 28
Sara
THEY WOUND UP at the fourth place Sara tried, a dismal little two-story motel in the Appalachian foothills. Sara had given her name, shown her driver’s license. But when the woman at the front desk then asked for a credit card, Sara explained how she’d left the house without her cards. Any chance she could pay cash? The woman had started to shake her head just like the other three desk clerks had. But Sara had glimpsed that instant of hesitation. She’d glanced meaningfully to Boon crouched over the gumball machine and Cassie leaning against the wall, her arms crossed as usual, and murmured, My husband…The clerk had straightened, looked at the children, then back at Sara. I’ll give you a room in the back. You can’t see it from the road. Joyce, her name was. She owned the place, she said. Sara had spotted the sign from the highway, almost swallowed by overgrowth. The Step On Inn. Joyce patted Sara’s hand after she passed along the old-fashioned metal key, feeling a kinship that wasn’t there. Sara had felt the surge of relief that came with finding her footing. She hadn’t lost her skill at spinning straw into gold. And these two kids were very much straw—bedraggled, irritating bits that clung to hair and skin, dug beneath fingernails.
Sara fit the key into the lock and turned. She swung open the door to the smell of must layered with bleach, reached in to switch on the overhead light. The room sprang into dimension—two sagging beds, cheap wood-paneled walls, an ancient TV squatting on the dresser. No one had stayed in this room for a long time. No one would be looking for her here.
Cassie shoved past Sara, digging her with the sharp point of her elbow. She’d done it on purpose, Sara knew—getting back at her for the wrist incident. The girl raced to the bathroom, screeching, “Dibs!” The door banged behind her. The lock turned with a decisive click.
“She always does that.” Boon dumped his backpack on the floor, shrugged off his windbreaker and let it drop. He kicked off his sneakers and, holding his stuffed dog by the scruff, walked it around the room as if giving it the grand tour. Wolf peered into the closet, crawled under the bed, opened the desk drawer and sniffed around, noisily.
Sara turned on the air conditioner to clear out the mustiness, then slumped down on one of the two double beds. She kicked off her shoes and settled back against the headboard. The pillows were thin. She reached for the remote. The hurricane was inching up the Carolina coast. Virginia was braced for impact. Hundreds of thousands were without power. Damage estimates were mounting. Homes had been washed out to sea. People were feared lost. The weather forecasters were reveling in the chaos of it.
Boon climbed up on the bed and pressed beside her. He smelled of rain. He held out his precious dog, stiff-legged and rank, improbable pink tongue now gray and dingy glued to an open mouth. “You want to hold Wolf?”
Did she look like someone who cuddled with toys, especially one so threadbare? She’d never even had a doll, though she remembered a brief time when she’d longed for one. She’d dropped hints her father never picked up on. “No. But thank you.”
“Okay.” He stared at her uneasily, then reached up and traced a tentative fingertip along her chin. It wasn’t unpleasant, not exactly, but Sara wasn’t a fan of being touched. “Did that hurt?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t remember how I got it.” The scar had always been there. She no longer saw it when she looked in the mirror.
He tilted his chin and showed her his matching scar. “We’re twins.”
“How did that happen?”
“I fell.”
She probably had, too. Had she gotten stitches? She would never know. He cradled Wolf under his arm and stuck his thumb in his mouth. His hand was as filthy as his toy, the fingernails rimed with dirt and ketchup. Sara tapped his wrist. “Better wash that hand first.”
“ ’Kay,” he mumbled but kept his thumb firmly in place.
* * *
—
She had to shake him awake when Cassie finally emerged noisily from the bathroom in a blast of scent. She wore the same black flannel shirt she’d worn all day, hanging to her bare knees. Flecks of mascara dotted the tops of her cheeks. “We’re out of shampoo,” she announced blithely.
Perfect. “All right, Boon. Your turn in the shower. Use bar soap to wash your hair.”
Cassie stood in front of the closet door, opened to reveal a smudged full-length mirror. She dragged her fingers through her damp, clotted tangles, scowled at her reflection. She licked her finger, rubbed beneath her eyes. “You have to run him a bath.”
