Things We Didn't Say - By Kristina Riggle Page 0,37
moments, and then, more calmly, says, “Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. We’re desperate here. Okay, someone will call. Okay.”
She hangs up. Her voice trembles, but her smile is wide. I recognize that face. It’s Mallory Triumphant.
“They’re calling in a detective from home. Can you believe they don’t have detectives scheduled all night? He got all snotty and said, ‘Ma’am, this isn’t New York City.’ Whatever. They’re going to do something kind of like a subpoena but not technically, but anyway they’re going to do that to the e-mail and cell phone companies to see who owns the phone and address.”
We all whirl around at the sound of sniffling on the stairs. Jewel is standing behind us, has been for how long I don’t know.
“Honey, don’t cry.”
“I thought he was just meeting some girl! Something happened to him?”
“No, honey, look, we were just trying to get the police to help us find him, he’s probably fine.”
“But not definitely?”
“We . . . we don’t know what’s going on.”
“And we still wouldn’t know if you had your way, Dad.” Angel sounds so much like her mother. They stand together, both of them with their arms folded.
“Hey, I said I tried, too.”
Mallory tosses her hair. “Well, I convinced them that we’re worried. And I am! And why weren’t you monitoring his online stuff! You’ve got the computer geek right here in the house and you didn’t keep tabs on him! You should have known he was talking to some . . . person in Ohio or something, you could have dug deeper and found out if this Tiffany even existed, and now he’s gone! Our boy is gone! And to think I’m supposed to be the unfit parent here!”
“Enough in front of the kids!”
“Oh yes, we can’t have a fight in front of the children, oh no. Heaven forbid.”
The front door opens. Casey, back in from the porch. She blanches at the sight of Mallory with her fists balled up, stance wide, like a boxer.
“And you! You’re the one home all day, sitting in on his band practices. You should have known! A mother would have known!”
“You didn’t know!”
“Only because I didn’t have the chance. Remember last weekend when my visitation was interrupted by his band festival trip?”
“And the weekend before that you were ill,” Casey shoots back, advancing into the kitchen. She sheds her parka and throws it on a chair.
“Yes, I was! And that makes four weeks since I’ve even seen my baby! And maybe I won’t ever again!”
Jewel gasps, and I turn around to carry her back upstairs. The shouting continues, but I can’t deal with it, I’ll have to let the women in my life tear each other apart for now.
Once she’s tucked under the covers, Jewel creases her forehead, and tears shine in the corners of her eyes. I tell her to pray hard for Dylan and try to sleep and that maybe we’ll have good news by morning, and that he might even call us, and remind her that her mother gets really worked up sometimes and sometimes there’s no reason to be. At this I can see Jewel thinking hard; she looks up at the ceiling, and I can see her running through her memory for times Mallory flew off the handle over nothing.
Her nod to me is false, though. She’s not a good liar like her mother, and I hug her in gratitude for that.
“Do you want me to stay with you until you sleep?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, baby.”
I finally take off my necktie and rest on top of the covers next to her, where she’s curled around her teddy bear like a little kidney bean.
Chapter 13
Casey
How dare you put this on me?” I shout, sinking into the futility, in fact knowing that every time I shout at Mallory, Angel hates me just that much more.
“I just can’t believe that I was supposedly such a terrible parent that I couldn’t have my children and yet here you are, someone I don’t even know, getting to live with them, and then my son gets involved with some stranger on the Internet and runs off, and you! You’re a computer person even, and you just sat back and let it happen! Because you’re an idiot who knows nothing about children!”
“I was respecting his privacy!”
“He’ll have all the privacy he wants if we never see him again!”
I clench my fists. It’s not my fault. It’s not. “Stop with the melodrama, you’re scaring the kids.”