Sally let herself be led upstairs and helped into bed, and she didn’t resist when Steve drew her close. But when he spoke again, her body went rigid.
“Maybe we should have another baby,” she heard him saying. “Maybe we should start one right away.”
Silently, Sally moved away from him, and as the hours of the night wore on, she felt the gulf between herself and her husband slowly widening.
Chapter 11
LUCY CORLISS GLANCED at the clock. It was nearly eleven, and another day, the third since Randy had disappeared, was nearly over. “Here’s to tomorrow,” she said bitterly, raising her empty cup. “Want some more coffee?”
Jim shook his head and watched as Lucy moved to the stove. They’d been sitting at the kitchen table all evening, Jim doing his best to keep Lucy calm. It had begun six hours ago, when he’d shown up at her door, his face pale. “What is it?” she’d asked. “Did you hear something?”
Jim had shaken his head. “Not really. Could I come in?”
Puzzled, Lucy had let him into the house and taken him to the kitchen. To Jim, it had seemed a sign of acceptance; when he was growing up, his mother had entertained her friends only in the kitchen—the living room was for the minister.
“I just came from the police station,” he told her after she’d poured him the first of the endless pots of coffee the two of them had consumed during the evening. “I talked to Sergeant Bronski.”
“And?” Lucy prompted when Jim seemed reluctant to goon.
“And he started talking about statistics.”
“What sort of statistics?”
“About cases like ours,” Jim replied, his eyes meeting hers. “Cases like Randy.”
“I see,” Lucy said softly. Her mind wandered back over the day she had just spent talking to people, knocking on every door along Randy’s route to school, pleading with people, begging them to try to remember anything they’d seen that day, anything that might give her a hint as to what had happened to her son. Always the answer had been the same.
People were sorry, but they had seen nothing, heard nothing, noticed nothing. And all of them, both before and after the search of the forest, had been interviewed by the police.
“Lucy,” she heard Jim saying, “they told me we have to prepare ourselves for the fact that when Randy is found—if he’s found …” His voice trailed off, and he felt tears brimming in his eyes. He looked away from Lucy.
“… hell be dead?” Lucy asked, her voice devoid of emotion. “I know that, Jim. Anyway, I’ve been told that. I don’t believe it I just have a feeling—”
“Lucy,” Jim groaned. “Lucy, I know what you think, I know how you feel. But you have to be ready. Bronski told me that if there were anything—a note, or a phone call, or even some sign of a struggle somewhere, it would be one thing. But with nothing, no clues, all they can think is that Randy either ran away, or—or whoever took him wasn’t interested in ransom.”
“You mean some pervert picking him up for sex?” Lucy asked, her voice uncannily level. “Raping him, and then killing him?”
“Something like that—” Jim faltered.
“That didn’t happen,” Lucy stated. “If that had happened, I’d know it. Deep in my heart, I’d know it. He’s not dead, Jim, and he didn’t run away.”
“Then where is he? Why haven’t we heard something?”
But Lucy had only shaken her head. “Jim, I’ve talked to everyone I can think of, asked questions, looked for God-knows-what, and all I can think of is that in a book, or in a movie, it’s always different. The mother goes out looking for her child and she finds him. But it’s not that easy. I haven’t found anything. Not one damned thing. All I’ve got after three days is this.”
She had picked up the file that the school nurse had given her and tossed it across the table to her ex-husband, who flipped through it, then put it aside. It still lay on the table, where it had lain all through the evening as they ate dinner, talked, sipped at their coffee, tried to figure out what to do next, talked of other things, and always, inexorably, returned to the subject of their son.
Now, as Lucy refilled her cup and came back to the table again, Jim picked up the report once more. He looked through it.
The only tiling about it that made it unique was the picture it painted of a remarkably