The liars child, p.24
The Liar's Child, page 24
She swung open the closet door and saw Boon curled up on the floor inside. “Boon,” she said, impatiently. “You need to move. I have to get my shoes.” He was lying right on top of them, his knees tucked to his chest. Wolf’s head poked out from the crook of his arm.
He didn’t move.
“Boon,” she said, sharply. “Now!”
Boon looked up. His mouth crumpled. “I don’t feel good,” he whimpered.
CHAPTER 40
Hank
THE TOW TRUCK beeped to a stop behind Joyce’s place, pulling along a small dark sedan. Hank stood by his dining room window, glass in hand, and watched through the line of poplars separating his property from Joyce’s as Steve climbed out of the truck and ran to knock on the motel room door. After a moment, it opened and a woman stepped out into the yellow circle of light. She stood there talking with Steve. From this angle, Hank could see a glimpse of her profile, her arms crossed in front of her chest. She nodded, and Steve turned to walk back out into the rain.
Everyone comes back, though. Right? that boy had wanted to know.
Steve’s headlights lit up the unruly bushes in Hank’s yard. It used to be Barb’s garden and it had been something in its day, a profusion of roses, hydrangeas, dogwoods she managed to coax into blooming, jonquils in the spring and fire-red lilies in the summer. Morning glories and lilies of the valley, so sweet they’d make a person’s head spin. Now, the rock garden was thick with weeds. Vines had pulled down the lattice. The roses hadn’t bloomed all summer. The yard lay tumbled and overgrown, not a splash of color among the muddy leaves. Barb would weep if she saw it. It hadn’t taken long for the earth to snatch back what was hers. Hank had stood by this window and let it.
It had been the garden that won Barb over. She hadn’t been sure about moving in next to a motel. She’d eyed the place as they drove up and parked in the driveway. It’s so close, she’d murmured. Family-run, Hank had pointed out, wanting her to agree. The location was convenient. The price was good, the sellers motivated—as if they’d known what tragedy was to befall the new occupants of the place. Barb said nothing as the realtor showed them around, the living room with the fireplace that needed just a little work, the root cellar. Then the realtor swung open the kitchen door to show them the yard, and Barb clutched Hank’s sleeve. Oh, she exulted, and he knew she had come around.
Joyce and Chester had turned out to be decent, hardworking people. Good neighbors. Barb had marveled that it really wasn’t a problem at all living next door to a motel. All the guests coming and going provided a source of gossip, a source of entertainment. In those days, none of them gave a second thought to any of the people renting rooms at Joyce and Chester’s place. Until the stranger vanished into that long-ago autumn night, along with Hank and Barb’s ten-year-old son. The whole town changed after.
Hank took another sip of whiskey. Rain blurred the panes. Lightning forked, too close. The tow truck drove around the corner. Headlights flashed across the windowpanes, blinding him momentarily. He blinked, craned to see through the trees. The woman had gone back inside. Her car sat parked in front of her door.
Hank turned from the window and went into the study. Barb’s word. His mother would have called it the front room. The thick, patterned drapes reached to the floor. Barb had wanted something heavy to keep out the winter freeze. Later, it kept out the prying eyes of their neighbors and the press.
His old leather chair creaked beneath him. He reached over to switch on the lamp, then ran his fingertip across the framed photograph on the desk to dust it. Barb had insisted on having the portrait taken. Hank had grumbled at the expense, at the sentimentality, but now he thanked the good Lord she had prevailed.
He turned on his desktop computer, checked his email. There was an alert waiting. He tapped the link, and the story bloomed across the screen. The news had just broken. The toddler had been found in a stream not far from his mother’s house. She’d made up the story of his being snatched from the shopping cart to hide the truth—the boy had wandered outside while she was passed out on the floor of her house. Opioids, just as Hank suspected. Same blurry photo of the boy staring out. Was it the only one taken in his brief life? Hank spun in his chair and studied the wall of photographs, found Christopher’s, added just the day before. Nineteen months. The boy never had a chance.
George had wanted to be a pilot. That was all he ever talked about, from the moment he looked up into the sky and saw the contrails puffing like popcorn from behind a plane. Wazzat, Daddy? He’d cupped his hands to his eyes. Wazzat? Hank picked up a model plane from his desk, turned it in his hands. George and he had built this one together. The paint was a little sloppy on the wing, the decal crooked. What war is this from? George had wanted to know. Were you a soldier, Dad? Then, I want to join the Army. He was going to see all seven wonders of the world. He was going to travel across the ocean in both directions. George had made Hank see the world through his eyes. Every day with him was a miracle of discovery.
Hank drained his glass, pushed himself up. Had to be getting on to dinnertime.
As he washed his hands at the kitchen sink, he watched the small TV on the counter. He was hoping for an update about the dead toddler—maybe a press conference, a chance to hear the investigating officers speak about the case—but the coverage was still focused on the hurricane, now churning along the Virginia coast. The Outer Banks was drying out, but the devastation the storm had left behind was massive. Might be a while before the TV caught up with the online story. The two mediums didn’t always synchronize. He’d learned to monitor both, especially when there was an active case.
A commercial played as he dried his hands. An actor Barb had admired hawking life insurance. Let’s go to the movies tonight, sweetheart.
Hank would give anything to hear her voice now.
There wasn’t much in the refrigerator. When had he last shopped? Behind him, the news was on.
…a small Outer Banks town hallmarked by tragedy. Diane Nelson, forty-two, first hit the headlines when she left her son alone in a car on a hot summer day while she went to work. The boy survived and was returned home, but Diane herself went missing a few weeks later. Her body has just been discovered buried in her in-laws’ backyard. In a final, tragic twist, both her children, Cassandra, twelve, and Whit Junior, six, are now also missing. Were they swept out to sea during the hurricane—
The child left sleeping in the backseat. Hank remembered seeing something about that. He was surprised to hear they’d returned the boy to his parents. He pulled out a package of ground beef, peeled back the plastic wrap, sniffed, and grimaced. He turned to toss it in the trash, glanced at the screen.
A narrow-faced blond girl. A dark-haired boy. The image changed before he could be certain.
CHAPTER 41
Sara
BOON LAY FLAT on his back. His eyes were open, staring up at the hangers dangling over his head.
“How don’t you feel good?” Sara asked.
He drew his gaze to hers, blinked. His eyes seemed to glitter. “I think…” His voice fell away.
Instinctively, Sara crouched and put her hand to his forehead. He felt warm. But he always felt warm to her, every time he slid his hand into hers, or leaned against her. Were his cheeks flushed? “Do you feel hot?”
He dipped his chin.
“Do you feel too hot?”
He shook his head.
“Does anything hurt?”
Peering up at her, he put his hand to his throat.
She didn’t know anything about sick kids. But weren’t kids always sneezing, wiping their runny noses? They were hotbeds of germs, weren’t they? “Are you thirsty? Do you want some water?”
“He wants medicine.” Cassie twisted a stringy lock of hair so tightly around her finger Sara wanted to yank her hand away. “Obviously.”
“Like what?”
“Like, how do I know?”
Sara glared at her, picked up the motel phone, called the front desk. It rang a dozen times before Joyce answered. She sounded sympathetic, told Sara she could help herself to whatever she had in her medicine cabinet. Sara thanked her and hung up. “I’ll be right back,” she told Cassie. She threw one more glance at Boon, who still lay staring up at the empty hangers, and let herself out into the rainy night.
Joyce stood waiting in the lobby, bundled in a pink quilted bathrobe. She unlatched the glass door and held it open for Sara. “I made you a box,” she said, indicating the plastic bin on the front desk. “I just tossed everything I had in there. Help yourself.”
“Thank you so much.” Inside the box was a jumble of cold medications, pills and tubes, and a thermometer.
“Try not to worry, honey. Kids always get sick in the middle of the night, fevers especially. They give you a real scare, and then. Poof. It’s nothing.” She patted Sara on the shoulder, smiling.
Sara hoped the woman was right. She couldn’t take Boon to the doctor. That was the last thing she could do. She elbowed her way back out into the chilly downpour. “He threw up,” Cassie announced, even before Sara had pushed open the door. “I got him to the toilet. Thank God.”
Boon slumped on the bathroom floor, cheek pressed against the rough floor tiles. The toilet lid was propped open.
“Let’s get you into bed, okay?” Sara set down Joyce’s box and stooped to slide her hands beneath his armpits. He was surprisingly heavy.
He wrapped his legs around her waist and howled, “Wolf!”
Sara stumbled a step. “Cassie, grab that thing, will you?”
“Ew. No way.”
“Cassie!”
“Fine.” Cassie crouched, gingerly rolled Wolf over with a fingertip, then pinched him up by the ear, dangling. “But you owe me.”
“Have we been keeping score?” Sara shot back, tartly.
Boon slung his arms around Sara’s neck, put his forehead against her shoulder. Now even his breath felt hot. “I wanna sit,” he whimpered.
Maybe that was wise, given that he’d just vomited. Sara ladled him into the chair by the desk. “Want me to get you some ginger ale?”
He just shook his head, refusing to look at her.
“You’ll be okay,” she reassured him. After all, he’d been fine just hours before. He was a sensitive kid. Everything set him off. He rested his forehead on his folded arms, Wolf in his lap. “Does your throat still hurt?”
He started to cry.
She pulled a box of cough drops from Joyce’s box, scanned the directions. Boon was six, over the age of concern. He might like the sweet honey flavoring. She tipped the box over and squinted at the tiny lettering stamped into the cardboard. The drops had expired seven years before. Would he know not to swallow them? She tossed the box aside. “What about your head? Do you have a headache?”
“Uh-huh.” Tears slicked his cheeks. He hiccuped.
She sorted through the bottles. Why didn’t people throw old medicines away? Maybe he hadn’t been fine earlier. Maybe this—whatever it was—had been brewing for a while. He’d sat for hours in the backseat yesterday, completely drenched. He hadn’t complained. She hadn’t thought twice about it. She hadn’t even thought once about it. She held up the aspirin.
“Stop.” Cassie was standing right behind Sara. “You can’t give him that.”
“I can’t?” Sara looked at the bottle, shook it. What did the girl see that she didn’t?
“Little kids can’t have aspirin.”
Sara brought out a container of ibuprofen and one of acetaminophen. “What about these?”
“Are they kid-strength?”
She studied the labeling on both, shook her head. “Can I just give him less?”
“That’s not how it works. Don’t you know anything?”
Cassie was convincing. She would know more than Sara did about this.
Boon moaned. “My tummy hurts…”
All that crap she’d let him eat. “It’s okay, honey. You’ll be better soon.”
Did he need a doctor? There had to be an ER nearby. Joyce could give her directions. Sara would load Boon into the backseat and set Cassie in the passenger seat beside her. But how would she explain her relationship to the children, provide insurance information? The hospital personnel would insist on seeing Sara’s ID. They’d plug her new social security number into the computer. It would instantly send up a red flag. The Feds would know where she was. Agents would swarm the hospital. They’d set up roadblocks, search surveillance footage. They’d catch her, and the bargain they’d made would be off. She’d go to prison.
“Everything hurts,” he whimpered, miserably.
It occurred to her to check his temperature.
101.2, the thermometer read. Was there a dangerous level for children? How would she know? She sat on her bed, opened her laptop. Quickly, she scrolled through medical websites, selected one run by a pediatrician. The banner showed a colorful cartoon of a smiling teddy bear wearing a stethoscope. The pages she clicked through, though, weren’t as cheerful. Who knew kids could get so many illnesses? Some of them began benignly—a stiff neck, a bruise—then turned deadly, almost without warning. How the hell did kids survive? Because they had a parent taking care of them. Not someone like Sara. She’d never babysat as a teenager, never even once felt the slightest urge to admire someone’s baby.
“Has he had his shots?” she asked Cassie.
The girl shrugged.
“Shots?” Boon lifted his head.
“It’s okay,” Sara assured him, longing to shake his sister. “No shots. What about ticks? Did a tick bite you?” Hadn’t he talked about ticks once? “Or a snake? Did a snake bite you?”
“He’d know if a snake bit him.” Cassie was gnawing her thumbnail. “He’s a big baby, but he’s not stupid.” Like you, her tone implied.
Boon crawled out of the chair to sprawl on the carpet with Wolf wrapped in his arms. He was freezing, he whispered, begged for two blankets, not just one. All she could see of the toy was one threadbare ear poking out from beneath the blue paisley spread she’d stripped off the bed. She decided on the ibuprofen, brought over the bottle and a glass of water. “This will make you feel better,” she tried, shaking the bottle playfully.
He yanked the covers over his head.
“It’s medicine for big boys. Only big boys can take it.”
“I’m hot like fire,” he moaned.
Sara pulled the blankets off him. He lay flat on his back, arms and legs extended, looking impossibly small and unhappy. She dampened a washcloth and patted his cheeks and forehead. She rinsed the washcloth and worked the terry between his fingers and across his palms. She touched the cool, wet material to his wrists, then his chest. “Are you sure you won’t try some medicine, sweetheart? It’ll make you feel better.”
He clamped his mouth shut.
“Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
Sara asked him if he needed help, and he nodded, so meekly that for the first time, a bolt of true alarm flared in her. She helped him lower his shorts and lifted him by his underarms to set him on the toilet. His narrow ribs beneath her hands, his skin so unnaturally hot that she was afraid of holding him too tightly. And then it occurred to her that maybe his getting sick was perfect timing. She could call 911, slip out before the paramedics arrived. Cassie could stay with him. Boon would get real medical attention. She’d be miles away before anyone would think to look for her. It would be a win for everyone.
She helped him down, pulled up his shorts, and flushed the toilet.
“Sara…”
“What can I do for you, honey? What would make you feel better?”
“Can you make me a pillow fort?”
Kids got sick all the time, she reminded herself. Joyce said so. The Web said so. “Sure,” she told him. “I can try.” She dragged the cushions off the chair and the pillows off the beds. She and Cassie constructed an elaborate structure on the floor, over which she draped a sheet. He sat with Wolf gripped by the tail and watched, eyes drooping. When she was done, they all crawled inside.
“How about one teeny-tiny pill now?” Sara coaxed, but he shook his head.
“Can you tell me a story?” His cheeks were ruby red. He looked like a child in a Disney cartoon, almost glowing with health.
Sara had never told anyone a story. Well, except for the lies she’d been telling her entire life. Wasn’t telling a story like that? “There once was a little boy who lived in the forest. He had a warm, cozy house made of stones guarded by an army of acorns. At night, he would watch the stars twinkle and listen to the river singing.” Boon lay on his side, thumb in his mouth, his eyes on her, Wolf protectively under his arm. “All the animals loved him and would talk to him. The birds taught him songs and the squirrels taught him how to climb trees. When other people came, the animals would run away. But they told the little boy every one of their secrets. They showed him where the best berries were, and how to make flour from nuts. He made jam and delicious pies. He grew big and strong.”
“He was all by himself?” Boon spoke around his thumb.
