LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Come inside,” he repeated. “You’re trembling.”

      “How did Charlie sound?” she asked as she allowed him to guide her up the stairs.

      “Not bad,” Chance said because he couldn’t bear to tell her how frightened the boy had seemed. “I don’t know why he called here looking for you.”

      “It’s my fault. I drilled this number into his head last summer when my cell phone died.”

      The dogs hung back at the door. Chance led Lily to a stool and she sank down with a shuddering sigh. He found mugs and poured coffee. “I contacted the local police and asked a detective friend for help.”

      “The police?” She took off the thick glasses and closed her eyes, squeezing the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. “I wish you hadn’t done that,” she said, looking back at him. Without the glasses, her rich brown eyes came into focus and she looked more the way he remembered her.

      “Yeah, I can understand why you’d rather not have to discuss your husband with the cops,” he said. “Did you know there’s a warrant for your arrest?”

      “It doesn’t surprise me. It’s probably the first thing Jeremy did when he realized I wasn’t coming back.”

      “What’s it for?”

      “I’d lay my money on kidnapping my own child.”

      “Because of your troubled past?”

      She narrowed her eyes and he saw a flash of the old Lily. “I don’t have a troubled past. That’s Jeremy’s story, not mine. Where’s your dad?”

      “He’s gone. He won’t be back for a few days. Tell me why you stole off into the night with Charlie. Not the time you did it three months ago when you left here. Before that, when you left Jeremy.”

      She shook her head as she undoubtedly picked up the anger his words hadn’t been too successful at disguising. “You don’t need to know.”

      “Listen, Lily. Jerk me around all you want but in the end, who else is going to help you? Dad is off in Oregon. There’s a good chance he’s out of signal range. Unless you have legions of friends I don’t know about, maybe we should just level with each other.”

      “Don’t start this, Chance. You and I can’t agree on anything. There’s no point in involving you—”

      “Involving me?” he snapped. “You come here in the middle of the night dressed like you’re auditioning for the role of the prim librarian in It’s a Wonderful Life. Your son, the best thing you’ve ever done as far as I can see, has been taken by his psycho father and you’re so frightened your eyes are spinning. Trust me, I’m involved.”

      “I don’t want you—”

      “I know. You made that real clear last summer. I’m not asking you to sleep with me, I’m asking you to let me help Charlie. Now, what do you say?”

      She rubbed her forehead and he wondered how long she’d been driving. Where had she gone after she left the ranch? He waited for her to make up her mind, and when it seemed they would sit there in silence forever, he decided to wade in. “Block told the police Jodie Brown was acting on his own to take revenge on him for convicting him twelve years ago. By the way, Jodie died in a traffic accident before the police could question him. The case is closed as far as they’re concerned.

      “Furthermore, Block is claiming you had a history of being unstable and that you took your son without giving him a chance to work something out with you.”

      “He didn’t want a chance to work things out,” she said. “You don’t understand—”

      “Of course I don’t,” Chance said. “You haven’t given me the opportunity to understand because you haven’t said anything. Start with something easy. How was Charlie snatched?”

      Her fingers tightened on her mug as she leaned forward. “I had a flat tire yesterday so I was running late to meet him at the bus stop. Everything just seemed to go wrong and it got later and later. I called the school but the bus had already left so I called one of the other mothers and she said she would pick him up when she got her own child. I went to her house but Charlie wasn’t there. She said she’d arrived a minute late and seen him getting into a car with a man but he was smiling so she figured I sent another friend. She described him. It sounded enough like Jeremy—I could guess what was happening.”

      “But it wasn’t Jeremy. Charlie told me a man he didn’t know told him he’d take him to see you but he drove to Boise instead.”

      “Poor Charlie,” she cried. “He must have been frantic. Why didn’t I have a better plan for days like that one? Why did I live so far away from his school that he had to ride a bus? He hates buses. I should have found a different job closer to his school—”

      “Calm down,” Chance said, patting her hand. “Is he in any danger from his father?”

      She stared at him for a second. The look in her eyes twisted his heart but he ignored it. Then she finally shook her head. “Not immediate danger, no. Jeremy is in love with the idea of having a son, making a legacy, although the reality of it bores him. He can be violent, but mainly toward me. Near the end the violence was trickling down to Charlie. He’s not suitable to raise a child.”

      “I guess that’s what he says about you, too,” Chance observed.

      “I know. He’s twenty years older than I am. When you’re adrift and all of nineteen, that kind of attention from a man like him is pretty exciting. He could do anything, or so I thought. He raced cars, he rode horses, he flew a plane—anything. Long story short, I wound up pregnant. He insisted we get married and I thought I’d hit the jackpot. At first I barely noticed the way he didn’t want me associating with my friends or holding down a job. I just thought he wanted to take care of me. My father was an alcoholic. It was...nice...to have a man take charge for a change.”

      “But eventually?”

      “After Charlie was born, Jeremy started taking on high-profile cases to make a name for himself. It wasn’t enough to just be a prosecutor anymore. He wanted me as arm candy at parties to impress the ‘right’ people. I hated those parties and he knew it. In fact, I suspect he knew my heart wasn’t in our marriage anymore. At some of those parties, I felt so light-headed and disconnected I was afraid I was going to pass out. People looked at me funny and made comments I wasn’t supposed to hear about how I was a drunk like my father. The thing was, I didn’t drink anything but seltzer. Jeremy told me it was my nerves and for a while I kind of believed that. I was so blasted stupid I made things easy for him.

      “Then one day I found a bottle of barbiturates in Jeremy’s desk drawer and I knew in a flash that he’d been drugging me so I’d appear intoxicated in front of other people. I worked up the courage to ask for a divorce. He said I was welcome to leave as long as I left alone. I protested, of course. I planned to take Charlie, but Jeremy promised that would never happen. He said everyone knew how paranoid I’d become, and that I drank. He said I’d trapped him by getting pregnant and everyone knew that, too, and felt bad for him. He said it would be better all the way around if I just died. That way he would get total control of Charlie and be a sympathetic widower to boot. He laughed when he said it, but you have to know Jeremy. His laugh has nothing to do with humor.”

      “So you bolted,” Chance said. With her now austere hair and colorless clothes, she actually looked like the kind of person life beat into submission. He suddenly missed her bleached hair and dangling earrings and then it occurred to him that perhaps that persona had been as much a facade as this one.

      “More or less,” she said. “I started gathering every scrap of paper I could find, every receipt, anything that looked potentially valuable. I found a few photographs, made copies of records... Anyway, they’re all in a safety-deposit box in Boise. I’ve never tried to make sense of them, there was never time. I just knew I needed

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