لمشاكل التسجيل ودخول المنتدى يرجى مراسلتنا على الايميل liilasvb3@gmail.com






العودة   منتديات ليلاس > قسم الارشيف والمواضيع القديمة > الارشيف
التسجيل مشاركات اليوم اجعل كافة الأقسام مقروءة

بحث بشبكة ليلاس الثقافية

الارشيف يحتوي على مواضيع قديمة او مواضيع مكررة او محتوى روابط غير عاملة لقدمها


 
نسخ الرابط
نسخ للمنتديات
 
LinkBack أدوات الموضوع انواع عرض الموضوع
قديم 16-09-07, 03:25 PM   المشاركة رقم: 11
المعلومات
الكاتب:
اللقب:
ليلاس متالق


البيانات
التسجيل: Jun 2006
العضوية: 6878
المشاركات: 209
الجنس أنثى
معدل التقييم: nargis عضو بحاجه الى تحسين وضعه
نقاط التقييم: 16

االدولة
البلدSweden
 
مدونتي

 

الإتصالات
الحالة:
nargis غير متواجد حالياً
وسائل الإتصال:

كاتب الموضوع : nargis المنتدى : الارشيف
افتراضي

 

Chapter 8

She still hadn't gotten her kiss.

It was noon. Her mother had been awake, though groggy, when they went
to see her this morning, and that had frightened Billy. Carolyn had
calmed him down as best she could, then talked him into going to school
for the afternoon-with the lure of the annual class Halloween party
that afternoon as the major inducement--because she didn't want him to
be frightened any more than he already was by the sight of her mother
in this hospital.

She'd spoken with her mother's doctor, who remained optimistic that
Grace McKay's condition had to do with stress, rather than a physical
problem with her heart. She'd welcomed her aunt Ellen, who'd arrived
unexpectedly around midday, because she was worried about both Grace
and Carolyn herself. She'd run into some old friends from high school
and friends of her mother's--putting them off as best she could when
they asked why she was in town, why Drew Delaney was in town, and
exactly what his car had been doing outside her mother's house all
night long.

She'd barely seen Drew. He was already showered and dressed when she'd
awoken. And he'd been on the phone all morning, no doubt arranging for
someone to bring those clothes here for her to identify. Carolyn put
Drew in touch with Hope House's computer expert, and the two of them
had started a search through the data banks for any other cases that
might be linked to Annie's. She'd left Drew at the house, without a
word passing between them about what had happened last night before
they went to their separate beds2

With her life in such total chaos, Carolyn couldn't understand where
she found the time to think of anything as trivial as a kiss she'd
never received. But she did. She sat in the waiting area across from
her mother's hospital room, trying to keep her head down or her face
turned away so that she wouldn't he recognized by anyone She knew and
be asked the inevitable questions that would follow. And she thought
of Drew and The kiss he'd promised her.

She thought about the child they'd shared in the small est of ways--and
in none of the ways that really mattered.

Should she tell him? Would it only hurt him more to know? Would he,
in turn, whether from anger or haste or an honest desire to be a father
to his son, end 'up hurting

Billy in some way? It would have to hurt Billy to discover he'd been
lied to all these years, that the parents he'd known and loved from the
time he was a baby hadn't been his real parents. And, selfishly,
Carolyn wondered if Billy would come to hate her.

Carolyn couldn't even plead ignorance. She'd made a conscious decision
to give up her son. But Drew never had. "Carolyn?"

Startled, she looked up to see that her aunt had returned.

"I'm sorry, dear. I didn't mean to frighten you."

Carolyn shook her head. "I was just thinking,"

"I got us some decent coffee from that little cafe around the corner,
and some sandwiches." She handed Carolyn a cup, then set her own down
on the table and opened up a brown bag she'd tucked into her purse.
"Any word?"

"No, not yet," Carolyn said, sipping the coffee. She took the sandwich
her aunt offered, placed it on her lap. She couldn't even think about
food right now. "They're still running tests."

"I'm sure she's going to be fine, dear. Your mother's a very strong
woman. Think of how much she's endured in her lifetime,"

"I know, Aunt Ellen. It's just that it hasn't been that long since
Daddy died, and to have this thing with Annie coming so close on top of
it... I have to wonder how much she can take. And I hate to see what'
this is doing to Billy. He's"

She broke off when Drew came strolling into the waiting area. His gaze
locked on to hers, and for a moment her thoughts ran back in time, to
the night before, when she'd felt how much he wanted her, felt the
emotions warring inside him. She'd thought that he might actually tell
her he loved her still, she'd imagined what it would he like to hear
that again, maybe even to let herself believe it.

It would be something to hold on to in the days ahead, when everything
was sure to turn crazy. She'd held on to Drew's love before, and it
had gotten her through a 10t.

"Hello," she heard Drew say, as he held out his hand to the woman
beside her.

"I'm Carolyn's/aunt, Ellen Monroe."

The two were shaking hands before Carolyn even realized how rude she
was being. "I'm sorry," she said. "II guess I'm a little distracted
today. Aunt Ellen, this is Drew Delaney."

"I'm the one who's sorry," her aunt said. "I know I should have
remembered your name, because your face looks so familiar, but I just
can't place it."

Drew didn't say anything, though his curiosity was clearly aroused.

It was all Carolyn could do to stand there and remain silent while she
watched and waited for ten years' worth of lies to dissolve in front of
her eyes.

"I don't believe we've met," Drew said. "Unless you used to live
here?"

"No, I never did. My sister moved here when her late husband got a job
here, just before Carolyn was born," Ellen said, clearly as puzzled as
Drew. "You used to live here?"

"Ten years ago," he said.

Carolyn fought to keep the terror she was feeling from showing on her
face.

She should have told trim last night, when she had the chance. Either
then, or ten years ago, when she gave birth to his child.

"Oh." The little sound her aunt made spoke volumes to Carolyn, who
shot her a pleading look.

"Drew's with the FBI" she managed to say in a somewhat steady voice.
"He's the one who picked up on the link between the other little
girl's. kidnapping and An rile's. He recognized the clothes."

"Oh," her aunt said again.

"Are they here yet?" Carolyn, desperate to change the subject, said to
D~ew.

"What?" he asked, obviously aware that there were hhings going on in
this room that he didn't understand. "The clothes? Did they come
yet?"

"Yes." He gave her the strangest look, then held up his briefcase.
"That's why I'm here."

That was all the excuse Carolyn needed. She no longer had to hide the
fear that threatened to overwhelm her. "I

want to get this over with as soon as possible. "

"Are you sure?" He put his hand on her arm, perhaps bemuse he realized
she could fall over at any moment. Her legs felt like rubber and she
had to get him away from her aunt before Ellen said any more.

"I'm sure. Is there somewhere we can g~, besides here?"

"Of course," he offered.

"Aunt Ellen, you'll stay here, in case there's any news about Mom?"

"Yes, dear," she said, but her eyes told Carolyn something quite
different;.

He's the one, isn't he?

Carolyn nodded. Then she turned and headed for the door, pausing only
when Drew didn't immediately follow her. He stood in the middle of the
room, looking from Carolyn to' her aunt, then back again. Finally, he
turned to Ellen and once again held out his hand. "It's been a
pleasure meeting you," he said

When she didn't add anything else, he walked across the room to Carolyn
and put his hand at the small of her back, and they started walking
down the hallway.

Carolyn 'was still worried that they were going to run into someone
else who'd recognize him, someone who knew Billy and would put two and
two together;

"I took a room at that bed-and-breakfast you mentioned," Drew said.
"It's only three blocks from here. We could talk there, ~you like?"

"You can stay at the house again, tonight. We have the room," Carolyn
said.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea."

Carolyn thought of the sexual tension that had flared between them last
evening. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea for Drew to be sleeping so
close by. "All right. We can go to your room at the inn."

-" How's your mother?"

"They'~ still doing tests."

The elevator doors closed, giving them a moment of privacy. Drew
stepped closer, pulling her against his side, reassuring her with his
touch. "Did your mother remember talking to me yesterday?"

"I think so. She wouldn't talk about it. Or... actually, she wouldn't
let me talk about Annie. But I think she re, members."

"Want to tell me what was going on back there with your aunt?"

Carolyn shivered, but not from the cold. "I will," she said,
committing herself to getting the truth out. "Just... not now. Not
here. All right?"

The elevator doors opened, revealing a crowd that parted to let them
make their way out. Thankfully, amazingly, she didn't recognize
anyone.

"This way," Drew said, leading her-out the side entrance and into the
sunshine.

They walked briskly through the clear but cool day, toward two of the
grimmest tasks Carolyn had ever faced. Wordlessly they made their way
inside the stately old house of white stone, up the winding staircase
and into Drew's quarters.

She was studying the *******s of the room--a huge antique four-poster
bed, a comfortable-looking sofa done in a bright floral print, fresh
flowers on the bureau, bright sunshine streaming in through the long,
flowing lace curtains--when she heard the lock click shut and turned to
face Drew.

"I didn't think you'd want to be disturbed," he said as be stood by the
door.

She shook her head. "I just... I need to get this over with ."

"Sit down," he said, motioning toward the couch.

She sat with her hands clenched in her lap and her eyes closed.
"First," she said, "would you kiss me? Just once? '

"Carolyn, you don't"

"Please. Just once."

It was a ridiculous request, considering why they'd come here and what
she had to do. And she was definitely stalling, even though she
claimed to want this over with as quickly as possible. But she needed
him right now. She needed to be in his arms, to feel close to him, one
more time, before it all dissolved away.

"Just once," she repeated, afraid to even open her eyes. Carolyn felt
the couch give with his weight beside. her, felt him haul her into his
arms and, when that wasn't enough--when they still weren't close
enough--lift her up and sit her on his lap. Drew leaned back into the
corner of the sofa, his arms pulling her head down to the hollow
between his neck and his shoulders. He squeezed her tight, his heat
soaking into the chill that seemed to go all the way down to ~her
bones. His breath was warm against her cheek, and his hands tenderly
stroked through her long hair.

She waited for the touch of his lips against hers, but it didn't come.
Instead, they settled high on her cheek, next to her ear.

"Sweetheart," he whispered against her skin, "you don't have to look at
anything. Do you understand that? I

already looked myself. "

"You did?"

He nodded. "I would have told you at the hospital, but I didn't want
to do it with a bunch of people around."

"And they're Annie's clothes, aren't they?"

Carolyn hadn't even realized her tears were falling again. She hadn't
been sure she had any left to cry, but they just poured out of her now,
and Drew wiped them away.

"I found the initials," he said. "They're faded, but they're there."

He held her tighter then. For a moment, she would have sworn he was
the only thing holding her together.

He'd found Annie's clothes. He'd found a link between her and another
little girl, who'd gotten away,.

Why couldn't Annie have gotten away?

"I still miss her," Carolynsaid. "When I come home, I still go and sit
in her room at night and imagine that she's going to come running
through that door, still thirteen years old."

Drew just held on to her. It was the most amazing feel-ingin the
world. She felt safe and secure and--did she dare think it? --loved.
And even that~ even after all this time, seemed traitorous to her lost
little sister.

"She Was my best friend," Carolyn said. "And she never should have
disappeared. It shouldn't have happened to her. It should have been
me."

"No," Drew said. "I'm not going to let you do this to yourself."

"I sent her there," Carolyn said. "I was supposed to be the one to go
back to the, house, because my mother asked me to go, but I sent Annie
instead. Don't you see? It should have been me. I should have"

And then she couldn't talk through her tears any longer. She couldn't
remember the last time the guilt had come on strong enough that it
seemed capable of driving a hole through her heart this way.

She didn't remember the last time anyone had been willing to listen to
her talk this way about the little sister she'd lost. She couldn't
remember when she'd last felt comfortable enough with someone to show
what Annie's disappearance had done to her, what it still did to her
today.

Drew understood. He'd been there. He'd lived throt~gh it with her,
and it was different, sharing these old feelings with him, from the way
it had been to tell them to someone who hadn't ever known Annie or
loved her.

She cried until she felt drained of all emotion and all energy. Cried
until that blessed feeling of being washed clean inside came over
her.

And he held her through it all. He didn't try to stop her or' rush
her. He simply accepted what she was feeling, and let her get it
out.

"I'm here," he said, when the sobbing subsided.

He kissed her hair, kissed her wet cheeks, and Carolyn found herself
wanting more than anything to press her lips against his and lose
herself in the magic of his touch.

It was still magical. It was still there between them, this
connection, this attraction. It was still there--and likely still~ as
doomed as ever.

She watched as the world seemed to slow down around them, as she could
see only him, feel only the warmth of his touch and, for an instant,
think only of him.

There hadn't been anyone else, not in all these years, who managed to
touch her heart the way he had. From time to time she'd tried, in
desperation, to feel just a little of what she'd felt for him with
someone else, but it had never happened. She wondered now if i~ever
would, wondered why it should be this way. Why she was destined to
feel like this only with Drew, when she didn't see how they could ever
make things work between them.

~Still, in this moment when there was nothing in the world but the two
of them" she wanted him. She wanted him so much, and she was tempted
to take what he was offering her, with no word to him about what she'd
done, and no thought to the future.

After all, she hadn't seen him in ten agonizingly long years. Surely
it wouldn't be so bad to take one night, out of ten years of lonely
nights, to be with him.

He would likely hate her before morning, anyway, because she had to
tell him. She'd been living on borrowed time ever since he'd come
back. She didn'tthink she would get another chance to tell him herself
before someone else put the pieces together and let the truth slip out.
And she knew that the news had to come from her. In the back of her
mind, she thought that might count for something--that she'd chosen to
tell him rather than let him find out from someone else.

Carolyn watched, fascinated, as his face came down to hers. His lips
closed over hers, and she felt as if she'd opened up her soul to him.
As if she could simply let go of the years of loneliness and longing
now, because he was finally her with her.

"I don't know how I ever stayed away," he took the time to say, before
kissing her again.

"I wish you hadn't," she said, perilously close to tears again.

She wanted to hang on to him, wanted to hold back the hands of time and
give the two of them just a few moments together.

She hadn't realized how much she missed him, how much she needed him,
how terribly lonely she'd been without him.

The kiss was devastating, turning her bones to mush, her resolve to
sheer indecision. Her body, which might as well have been in some sort
of deep freeze for the past ten years, had come roaring back to life,
the feeling overloading her ability to think and reason.

She was vaguely aware that his hands had come up to her face again,
that his lips had left hers again, and then she felt the tears. He'd
found them before she realized they were there, and now he followed the
tracks of her tears with the side of his thumb.

"It won't always be like this," he said, and she thought he meant it as
a promise to her, but, of course, he didn't know everything yet.
Otherwise, he wouldn't make promises like that. 'll0

Carolyn closed her eyes and kissed him again, urgently this time,
wishing she could sink back into the wonderful oblivion of his tough
and forget everything else.

He kissed her back, just once, so hard and fast that the blood went
pounding through her heart. And then he pulled back an dit was all
over.

"I'm sorry," she said, unable to figure out exactly what she was
sorriest about. The list seemed endless. "Why?"

"Because... because I'm so afraid that I'll never get to be with you
again like this, that I'll never feel like this again. And I don't see
how I can get through the rest of my life without any of that."

"Why won't you ever be with me again like this?" Hastily she dried the
rest of her tears' and put a little distance between them. Time for
the hard part. Time for her confession. God help her, it was time to
own up to the mistakes she'd made all those years ago.

"Oh, Drew..." She barely managed to get the words out. "I'm so
afraid."

"Why? Because of Annie? Because of something that happened ten years
ago, when we were just kids? You're going to let that ruin everything
between us, all over again?"

"Not just that."

"Then what?"

She felt sick to her stomach then. There it was, the perfect opening.
And she didn't see how she could take it. Her courage had totally
deserted her.

"Ok, l~t's go down the list," he said. "Annie's disappearance. " Why
does that still have to be between us? How can you let it? Because it
wonrt bring her back. And you can't believe that she'd want her
disappearance to keep us apart. "

"Itshould have been me," she said, knowing. she'd said it. before
knowing how truly irrational her feelings about this were. "My mother
sent me back to the house, and I'm the one who sent Annie instead."

"So do you blame your mother, too? Or the town, for having a picnic
that day? Or whoever turned that day in August into a town holiday and
scheduled a picnic celebration?" Drew asked. "You don't blame them,
do you?"

"No."

"Do you blame me? I'm the one who wanted to be with you. I'm the one
your parents didn't want you to see."

"No; I never blamed you."

"Carolyn, you couldn't stand to have me touch you after she left. You
didn, t even want to be in the same room with me, Did you think I
couldn't see that? Or that I didn't understand why?"

Drew knew he had to be careful. He had to watch that the memories that
had been dragged up, and the emotions that went along with them, didn,t
choke him.

They hadn't done anything so terribly wrong, anything that hundreds of
thousands of kids didn't do every day. There'd been this town picnic.
He'd missed Carolyn. Her parents hadn't wantS her to see him, because
they. didn,t approve of him. He'd been a little too rough, and his
family had been too poor and his father too big a drinker, for him to
he associating with their daughter. But that hadn't stopped them from
sneaking off to see each other. After all, they'd been in love.

He'd seen her at the picnic, but stayed out of sight because he didn't
want her parents to see him. When she left to walk the three blocks
from the park to her house to get the fresh-baked bread her mother had
left at home, Drew had followed. He'd caught up with her as she left
the park, and suggested that they find someplace where they could he
alone for a while.

Carolyn had agreed. And Annie had shown up just then, She'd been a
beautiful child, just starting to grow a little taller, still tom
boyishly thin, her long, pale blond hair shining in the sunlight. She'd
liked Drew, even though she knew her parents didn't. She'd promised
not to tell her parents that she'd seen Carolyn and Drew together. And
Annie had been the one who ended up going back to the house to' get the
bread for her mother.

Carolyn had asked Annie to do that, after Drew pressured her into
sneaking away from the picnic with him.

They'd been necking behind a huge old tree at the edge of the park
while that man snatched Annie.

Drew would never forget the way her mother had questioned Carolyn, the
way Carolyn had. broken down and sobbed when it became clear that her
sister was nowhere to be found.

Day after agonizing day had gone by, with no word, no clue. The days
had turned into weeks, the hopes fading away with each day that passed.
Carolyn hadn't been able to look at him. She hadn't let him touch her
for the longest time. She'd simply withdrawn from him and from cry
thing else.

He knew now that some people dealt with grief that way; that otherwise
stable marriages dissolved under the stress of the disappearance of a
child. They'd just been two teenagers in love. Carolyn had been
seventeen, Draw nearly nineteen. It was no wonder that Annie's
disappearance had torn them apart.

Of course, he could have stayed. He could have waited it out.
Eventually they might have overcome the grief and guilt. But he hadn't
stuck around to see that happen. He'd gotten angry and impatient and
scared, because he hadn't been able to find a way to make things better
for Carolyn, no matter how hard he tried.

And if he'd failed her then, when she needed him more than she ever
had, he was sure to fail her again. At least that was what he'd
thought back then.

He'd gotten angry one night. Drew had always hated Hope, Illinois, and
without Carolyn, there had been nothing there for him. He'd enlisted
in the army a few months after Annie disappeared.

He'd come to Carolyn's house one night and boldly knocked on the front
door, enraging her mother in the process, and calmly told Carolyn that
he was leaving. He could have asked her to write, to call, to wait for
him. But he hadn't.

He'd been tired of shouldering the blame for something that wasn't his
fault, tired of trying to make it better for Carolyn and failing
miserably.

He'd just walked away and left her.

She'd cried. She'd asked him not to leave her. She'd said she needed
him, but he'd thought that more than anything she needed to forget
about him' and all the guilt she'd come to associate with their
relationship. But he hadn't told her that. He'd said that he couldn't
help her any more than he already had and he couldn't take the guilt
any longer.

He'd never come back. He'd been tempted, but he'd stayed away--another
mistake to add to his list. He recognized them so clearly now. He
should never have left. And even then, even if he'd had to go, he
should never have stayed away from her, because he had this sneaking
suspicion that he was still in love with her.

it sounded crazy, after all these years, when he'd spent not even
twenty-four hours with her in the past ten years, but that was how he
felt.

Still, there was so much between them. Annie's disappearance still
being the biggest obstacle, his own desertion weighing in as a strong
second.

Yet he couldn't deny how strong his feelings were for her. He was
shaking, caught up in the past, still angry about it, still resentful
about what had happened. But he hoped that they could overcome all
that now, because he desperately wanted another chance with her. The
knowledge simply burst forth from somewhere deep inside him,

leaving him a little dazed but feeling more alive than he had in
years.

He'd spent too much time needing Carolyn and denying that need or
trying to simply kill it off, too much time telling himself that it was
too late for them and that he couldn't change what' he done any more
than he could bring Annie McKay back.

And then, amazing as it was, Annie had been the one to bring him
back.

Drew wasn't a religious man, but he had the oddest feeling that he
needed to thank her for that, that she was somehow watching over them
all and had brought him home again. Crazy as it sounded, he offered
her his silent thanks for drawing him back to this little town.

"Carolyn?" She was still in his arms, and he wanted never to let go of
her. He kissed her hair, dried her tears, and wondered what he could
do to make her smile for him now.

"I didn't blame you," she said shakily. "I blamed my-serf. Not
you."

"Sweetheart, you didn't want to be with me after Annie disappeahxl. You
didn't want me touching you, couldn't stand me kissing you."

"Because I felt too guilty. Before, ~I wanted you so much that nothing
else mattered. I would have done anything to be with you that day, and
if I hadn't felt that way, if I'd been thinking about anything or
anyone more than I'd been thinking about be' rag with you, this might
never have happened. Annie might still be here."

"No," ~he told her. "If there hadn't been some sick man out there who
liked little girls, Annie would still be here. If he hadn't decided to
come to Hope on that day ten years ago, Annie would still be here. If
Annie hadn't caught eye somehow, she would still be here. Orif someone
me had been doing their job a little better, and caught the son of a
bitch long before he ever turned to Annie, she'd still be here. That's
why stuff like this happens. Not because two teenagers wanted to spend
ten minutes alone together.

"You know it's true," he told her. "You work with missing kids. You
know there are always a million little things that any number of people
could have done differently to change everything--to make the
difference in any one child's life. It only takes a split second for
everything to change. And once it does, nothing can turn things back
to the way they used to be."

"I do know that," she finally admitted. "In my head, yes, I know it.
But my heart--I can't convince myself of that in my heart. She was my
sister. She looked up to me. She thought I was perfect, and that I
had all the answers, but I didn't."

He looked down into her tearstained face, the despair there enough to
break his heart all over again, if it hadn't been broken so irrevocably
the day he'd left her ten years ago. "None of us is perfect, Carolyn:
Thankfully, none of us is held to that high a standard."

"I know it's irrational, Drew. Believe me, I know that.. But it
doesn't change how I feel."

"Look at me, Carolyn." He pulled hack just enough that she could look
him in the eye. "It's not your fault. And you know that. It was that
man who took her--it was his fault, and I'm going to find him. I'm
going to find out what he did to Annie, and then I'm going to be damned
lucky if I don't kill the guy myself."

She paled at that, and he took a moment to try to calm down. "I've
spent ten years of my life trying to make up for this," he said, when
he could speak more calmly. "I feel sick inside every time I hear
about another child who's missing. I feel it in my gut, every minute
we're looking, every minute some creep gets a little farther away from
us with some little kid. I do that day in and day out, week after
week, year after year, because Fm still trying to make up for what
happened to Annie."

He didn't like admitting that to her. He didn't like admitting it to
himself. It was as irrational as the way she blamed herself, but it
was all he knew. Punishment or penance, he couldn't be sure which. He
only knew that the job satisfied some deep-seated need in him, in a way
nothing else did2 In much the same way lpeing with her, holding her in
his arms again, satisfied him on the most basic level.

He wouldn't think about all that he'd lost when he gave her up so long
ago. He wouldn't rage at the injustice that both of them were still
trying to somehow make up for.

He'd thought her guilt was tied up with him and with their
relationship, that she was punishing herself and him by denying them
any chance at happiness. That the guilt had twisted things so badly in
her mind that she didn't think they deserved to be happy because Annie
was gone.

And he'd thought that by leaving her, he could somehow take away the
guilt, as well.

But now he knew. He'd left for nothing. He hadn't spared her anything
at all. If anything, he'd probably made things worse by walking out on
her.

How would he ever explain that to her? How would he make her
understand something he couldn't understand himself? He didn't know,
but he'd find a way. He'd make a second chance for them.

"Carolyn," he began, "I told you last night that I never should have
left you, that I'll regret it till the day I die. Do you believe
that?"

"Yes," she said, hesitant now.

"Do you think you can ever forgive me for that?"

"Oh, Drew..." She looked scared now, and he wondered if he was pushing
too hard, too fast.

"I want us to have another chance. Last night, you said you could give
that to me."

"Speechless? I love leaving my women speechless." She almost smiled
then, and he knew how much she needed to. But it' did bring up a
terrible thought. There weren't any other women in his life. There
hadn't been for a long time. He was too busy, and honestly not that
interested. But he'd never even asked if there was a man in her life.
Just because she still used her maiden name and there was no ring on
her finger, that didn't mean she was free.

"There isn't anyone else, is there?" he asked, when she still looked
worded.

"No, it's not that."

"Then what? I know my timing's lousy, but I can't help it. I can't
wait, when I don't know how long it's going to take before things get
back to normal."

She hesitated, composed now, but still obviously frightened. Of him?
Surely not. Of being involved with anyone? He could understand her
being apprehensive, but that wasn't what he was seeing here. It was
out-and-out fear. God knew he'd seen that emotion often enough to
recognize it.

Why would she be so frightened?

He wanted to make her smile again, wanted to wrap his arms around her
and keep her safe from anything and everything in this world that had
the power to hurt her. He wanted her in his bed and in his Yffe,
forever. He would not leave Hope again without her.

Drew waited a minute as the realizations clicked into place inside him.
It felt . right. It felt as if everything were right with his
world--a crazy sentiment, in the midst of all this insanity. But that
was how it felt. He was with Carolyn again, and he wasn't ever going
to let her go.

This was what he'd been waiting for, what he'd been missing his 'whole
life. This would make him complete and whole and happy. Carolyn.
Somehow, it had always been Carolyn. He was so relieved to finally
admit it to himself.

Now to convince her of that. He chose his words carefully, not wanting
to frighten her, and careful not to belittle the things standing in
their way. He knew there were many obstacles, but they could overcome
all of them. Nothing would stop him from making it happen.

"It won't always be like this," he told her. "I'm going to find out
what happened to Annie, and we're going to let go of all the guilt and
the anger. It's time, Carolyn. We don't need to be beating ourselves
up over this anymore.

And we can't let it keep i~s apart any longer. "

"It's not that simple," she said.

"It is. It's in the past, and no matter what we do, we can't change
it. And you can't tell me that you're willing to give up on us again
because of what happened to Annie."

Carolyn sighed wearily. The past, she thought. Unchangeable as
something set in stone, and all-powerful. He understood that, and he
was asking her not to let it stand in their way. But how would he feel
when he was the one who had to do the forgetting and the forgiving?
When he had to understand that some decisions, once made, could not be
undone? Woul~d he be able to put the past behind them?

She was almost certain the man was about to tell her he was still in
love with her, and she couldn't as she longed to hear the words from
him couldn't let him say them now. Not when he still didn't know

She knew. She felt the love in him, knew she was this close to getting
him back, only to lose him all over again. But she couldn't think of
that now. Not now. There was no time, and it would only make this
more difficult.

"Drew, it's not just Annie," she said, turning her back to him and
searching for strength. "God knows I still feel guilty about what
happened to her, but she's not the only thing standing between us right
now."

 
 

 

عرض البوم صور nargis  
قديم 16-09-07, 03:27 PM   المشاركة رقم: 12
المعلومات
الكاتب:
اللقب:
ليلاس متالق


البيانات
التسجيل: Jun 2006
العضوية: 6878
المشاركات: 209
الجنس أنثى
معدل التقييم: nargis عضو بحاجه الى تحسين وضعه
نقاط التقييم: 16

االدولة
البلدSweden
 
مدونتي

 

الإتصالات
الحالة:
nargis غير متواجد حالياً
وسائل الإتصال:

كاتب الموضوع : nargis المنتدى : الارشيف
افتراضي

 

Chapter 9

Drew had a sixth sense about bad news. He would have called it a
premonition, if he believed in such things. But then, the label wasn't
that important; it was the feeling that mattered. He knew now that
something very bad was about to happen.

He took hold of Carolyn's shoulder, turned her around to face him
again, and he saw it right away.

Guilt. He could read it as clearly on some people's faces as he could
a sign on the side of the road. The woman looked guilty as hell; and
that simply didn't make any sense. What could she possibly have to
feel guilty about?

"There's no other man?" he asked, wanting to get that out of the way
right now.

"Not the kind you think."

"You're not involved with anyone? In love with anyone? Sleeping with
anyone?" Irrationally, he felt murderous at the possibility, though he
had no right to do so. "No."

"Then what?" he said, waiting to be blindsided.

"There are things I haven't told you, things I should have told you
years ago."

"Okay," he replied, wondering how people felt when they turned around
on the street and found a car barreling toward them. In that instant
before they were sent flying through the air, did they have the time to
think the situation through? How it would feel? How badly it would
hurt? What they could do to stop it?

"Carolyn, you're frightening me." And he wasn't a man who was easily
scared.

She looked like a woman ~whose heart had been recently broken. Clearly,
the wound was still fresh. He watched while she gathered herself
together.

"I need to tell you about what happened after you left," she said
finally.

He braced himself even more, if that was possible. He deserved this,
he reminded himself. He'd left her, and he deserved to hear about the
pain that desertion ~had caused her. But that wasn't all there was to
this. He was certain of

"Tell me," he insisted. He could take it.

"I... I thought I-was going to die. I think I could have died,
happily, for a long time afterward. This town, the house, the pictures
on the walls of fitnnie, and the pictures in my mind of you and I" She
just shook her head. "The memories were everywhere. Sometimes at
night, I'd swear that once I stopped crying, I could hear my mother
crying in Annie's room and my father sobbing in their bedroom. Our
house was the most awful place in the world.

"I want you to understand how they were--my parents, I mean. They were
devastated. Annie was such a joy to them. She was like sunshine, she
just lit up the room. And the way she laughed... I'll never forget her
laughter.

"Anyway, when she was gone, once we all accepted the fact that she
wasn't coming back, it was like no one would ever smile again. No one
would laugh. I didn't see how we were going to go on, because there
just wasn't any reason to."

Drew suddenly felt sick to his stomach. "Are you trying to tell me
that you tried to kill yourself?"

"No," she said tentatively, "although there were times when I wished
God would just take me, when I tried to tell him to bring back Annie
and take me instead."

"Carolyn..." he began, but she stopped him by laying a hand on his
arm.

"That's not what this is about," she said. "I want--no, I need--for
you to understand what it was like here~ I don't know how we all
survived it, how we got through the days. They all just blurred
together after a while, and nothing mattered. Not anything.

"And then Billy came along." She shook her head in wonder, obviously
going back in time to those days. "It was like a miracle. We weren't
sure of that at first, and we were all so scared of caring about
someone else. We knew there just weren't any guarantees in life. One
day, you have someone. The next, you don't. It's so different once
you understand that. It,s so much harder to love someone, knowing how
easily and how quickly you could lose them.

'~"Anyway, we were scared about Billy, but he turned out to be the best
thing that could have happened to us. He gave us all a reason to keep
going, and eventually he taught us how to laugh again and to smile and
to look forward to each day.

"You have to understand that, Drew. Without him, I don't think we
would have survived. My parents... Billy meant the world to them. And
when you left, I thought that you just didn't love me anymore. That
you never had. That whatever was between us just hadn't meant that
much to you."

"That's not true," he said.

"I know. Now, I see that so clearly. I think I have for years. But
then, I didn't. I was just so hurt and so scared and so alone... " Oh.
" She paused, clearly lost. " Where was I? " Drew shook his head.

"I'm not making much sense, am I?"

"No."

She nodded. She'd already known that.

"Carolyn, whatever it is, you can tell me."

"I just thought, if you understood the way it was back then, that you
might he able to see the rest of it the way I did. I regret losing
you, but I can't regret what I did. I've watched, over the years, and
I know how much they needed Billy, and he's been happy with them, Drew.
I know it looks bad now, but it's only been this way since my father
died. Other than these past six months, Billy's been happy and safe
and loved.

"I couldn't have asked for more than that for him, and you have to
understand. At least, I thought you'd understand a little... I thought
that would mean something to you.

"I did the best thing that I knew to do. And you can't ask me-to be
sorry for that or for him, but I'mso sorry for you... for what I did to
you."

"Carolyn, you're not making any sense."

"Billy," she said. "It's about Billy. He's ours. At least, he was
ours.,

"Our child?" he said incredulously.

She nodded.

"You're telling me that we have a child?"

"We did. He's theirs now. My parents."

Drew wasn't sure. exactly what he said then, or what he did. But he
could hear her voice. It seemed to be coming to him from so far
away.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Drew, I'm so sorry."

Drew didn't exactly know how he felt. He was surprised, and people so
seldom surprised him. He usually knew what they were going to do or
what they were going to say. It came from years on the job, years of
watching people and understanding what made them tick.

But this? This had come out of nowhere.

Because it was so ingrained in him to analyze each and every piece of
information he received, to try to figure out in hindsight what he'd
missed along the way in any investigation, and where he'd gone wrong,
he ran through the clues he'd missed from the beginning. Besides, that
kept him from thinking about the real issue here. He forced it out of
his head for another moment.

When he came here, to Grace McKay's home, she'd said some strange
things to him, something about knowing why he was here. Yes, he could
see it now. She'd acted as if she already knew why he'd come ba~ck.
But she Couldn't have known he'd come about Annie. So she must have
thought he'd come because he'd found out about Billy.

And the doctor, the man who'd been the family doctor for years, had
acted strangely, too. He'd have to have known all along that Grace
McKay hadn't given birth to her child. And Drew would have bet the man
had put everything together when he returned. Carolyn too, had seemed
so frightened at first, almost afraid of him, even, before he told her
about Annie. He remembered now, and saw it for what it was; she'd
actually been shocked when she found out he wasn't here about Billy.

He should have seen her reaction for what k was. Carolyn wouldn't he
afraid of him. Angry at him, maybe,. unsettled by his unexpected
return, apprehensive, perhaps, but not afraid. He'd never given her
reason to be afraid of him. He wouldn't do that now, though the
temptation to give in to the rage that he felt was overwhelming.

She was still here . still in the same room with him. She was sitting
on the corner of the couch, her tears dry now,

as she waited for him to say something.

God, what could he say?

He stood at the window and looked out at the main road of this town he
had come to hate more than any other--and had missed more than it
seemed possible.

He'd missed Carolyn, too, but he'd never even had a chance to miss
their son, because he hadn't known about him. His son.

Drew slammed his fist against the windowsill. He heard Carolyn gasp as
the window rattled, though it didn't break. He felt a little better
for having tried to drive his hand into the wooden casing around the
window, and considered doing it again. It might ~eel even better the
second time. And it might help dissipate some of the all-consuming
rage he felt at this moment.

Curiously, Drew realized, he wasn't that angry at Carolyn, It was life
that had him so enraged. It was the circumstances that had led her to
make the decision she'd made.

If he believed there truly was a God, he'd be cursing him right now.
How could he play with people's lives this way? How could he let evil,
such as the man who'd taken An-hie, exist in this world to hurt little
children and mess up so many lives in the aftermath?

It made no sense. There was simply no logic to it. And Drew still
wanted the world to make some sense at times, feeling he was owed that,
at least.

Otherwise, he had to accept the fact that random acts of violence were
simply that--random, careless acts. That at any moment he could get
his brains blown out, or could crash his car into a concrete wall or
drive it over the side of a mountain, and that there was nothing' he
could do about it. That he had no control over this world in which he
was living, even over his own life. And he just couldn't accept
that.

Show me the purpose in this, he railed to the sky outside his [محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف]
Make sense of this for me.

He dared anyone to do so.

Once more, because he had all this energy that he had to expend, he
slammed his hand against the windowsill.

He turned toward the door without looking at Carolyn. "I have to go,"
he said, latching on to the job that had been his life for years now.
It was certainly easier to deal with than reality at this moment.

"Drew?"

"There's a psychiatrist coming in from Chicago to be with Sara Parker
while we question her tonight. It's to be at one of the field offices
in Indiana, and I'm going to be there. I've got to ask Sara about the
clothes, and about Annie."

He gathered up his briefcase, his jacket, the keys to his rental car
and to the room, and headed for the door. Carolyn hadn't moved, and
he. he just didn't care at the moment. He didn't have anything he
could say to her right now about the things that were uppermost in his
mind, and she'd just have to understand that. He had enough to do,
trying to understand himself.

But first, he had a job to do.

"I'm going to find out what happened to Annie," he told her. "The rest
of this will have to wait until then."

"Drew." She came to stand in front of him. He'thought for a moment
that she might ask him not to go. That she might even beg him. She'd
done that once before, and he hadn't listened.

"I have to go," he told her, and walked out the door.

Carolyn wasn't sure how long she sat in Drew's room. She didn't want
to lift her hand to look at her wristwatch, b~ause she was afraid if
she moved, she'd fall apart.

Drew had simply left the room. He hadn't said that he hated her, that
he'd never forgive her, that he wished he'd known. anything like
that.

And he hadn't given her any indication of what he was going to do, now
that he knew about Billy.

Carolyn didn't want to think of the possibilities. She didn't want to
acknowledge the fact that there was a real chance Billy would be
hurt.

She and Drew had never talked about having children. They hadn't
gotten to the point in their relationship where they daydreamed about
being married and raising a family of, their own. She didn't even know
if he had any desire to be married, let alone have children. Yet
they'd had a child. Once upon a time.

But they didn't anymore.

She had to make him understand that they didn't have any rights to
Billy. They couldn't take him away from the person who'd been caring
for him and demand to have him back.

Children belonged to the people who loved them and cared for them, not
the ones who happened to have given birth to them.

Yet it was true that she'd never given Drew a choice or a say in the
matter.

Drew had rights; if he insisted, he could exercise them in the courts.
She would have to convince him not to.

While she was at it, maybe she could convince him not to hate her, as
well.

Carolyn finally risked moving enough to check her watch. It was ten to
three. Time to go get Billy from school. If she left now, she could
catch him before he got on the bus, then take him to the hospital to
see his mother. And then she needed to explain to her mother what
she'd done.

Billy told Carolyn that he'd had a good afternoon at school. He'd
enjoyed the Halloween party and gotten lots of candy. Carolyn was glad
she'd insisted that he go, be. cause he'd needed to get away from the
hospital for a while.

She'd checked on her mother's condition by phone he-fore she left, and
been told she was awake. and alert, so She and Billy went straight to
the hospital. He was eager to see his mother, and Carolyn was afraid
that if she didn't force herself to tell her mother what she'd done
this afternoon, she might lose her nerve.

It wasn't going to be pretty. And she'd have to clear the situation
with Grace's doctor first. But her mother had to be told.

Because Carolyn had no idea what Drew was going to do next, and they
had to be prepared.

It occurred to her now, after she'd panicked and told him, that he had
far more legal rights to Bffiy than she did. Hope House did a lot of
work on children's rights, on the laws affecting children and on court
precedences. Lately, courts had again and again reaffirmed the rights
of biological fathers in cases of adoption.

Carolyn had relinquished all rights to her son at his birth. She'd
simply signed them away. Drew had not. He'd never been told the child
existed, and that gave him incredible power in the courts--if he
decided to press the issue that way.

She looked over at Billy, who was happily digging into his bag of
Halloween treats, and saw again how very much he looked. like his
father.

She didn't think Drew would hurt him like that, not once he'd had a
chance to calm down and to think things through. But right now, when
he was so angry, she wasn't

"Billy," she said to the boy, trying to keep that quavering tone out of
her voice, "I love you cry much."

He barely glanced up from the candy bag. "Love you, too, Carolyn."

They arrived at the hospital shortly, then took 'the elevator up to
Grace McKay's room. Billy paused in the doorway and called softly,
"Mom?"

Grace was lying on the bed, dozing, but she woke up right away and'
turned to him with a smile. "Billy!" She threw her arms open wide,
and Billy ran to her.

He loved her so much. Carolyn reassured herself of that right then.
Billy had a good life with the parents she'd given him. Drew would
have to understand that.

She watched as her mother caught Billy close and squeezed him tight.
Above the boy's head, Grace McKay looked at her daughter, and the smile
faded. Uncertainty, maybe even fear, replaced the joy.

Carolyn looked away then. When she couldn't be sure she could control
her own emotions, she backed out of the room and went across the hall.
Thankfully, she found the waiting room empty. She went inside and
closed the door behind her, then tried to block out the image of her
mother's face. Her own mother was afraid of her. She was afraid of
what Carolyn was going to do.

It was the stuff of nightmares, and she didn't have anyone she could
talk to about this. Drew was furious with her, and her mother . this
whole mess was pulling the two of them apart.

Ca~olyn's aunt walked into the waiting room about fifteen minutes
later. She graciously offered to take Billy home, and didn't ask any
questions that Carolyn didn't want to answer. All Carolyn had to say
was that she needed to talk to her mother, and Aunt Ellen understood.

She knocked quickly on her mother's hospital room door and then went
in. As she'd noticed before, her mother seemed to have aged overnight.
The tiny lines around the corners of her eyes and her lips were-more
pronounced. The gray in her hair seemed to stand out more than usual,
and she still had a fragile air about her that Carolyn found
frightening. She'd hoped that her mother's appearance was temporary,
that it would disappear after a day of rest, but it hadn't.

The doctor had assured her that all his tests had found nothing
physically wrong with Grace. But emotionally she was exhausted. He'd
warned Carolyn to be careful, but she didn't see how she could avoid
telling her that Drew now knew everything.

"Well, come on over here and tell me what you've done, Carolyn," her
mother said, making her feel as if she were eight years old.

"You went and told him, didn't you?" Grace stated, saving Carolyn from
having to say it herself. "God help us

"I had to," she replied, wishing that she was a little girl again, that
she could pour out her troubles to a mother who would make everything
all better. "He and Billy look exactly alike. Dr. Moore saw it.
Aunt Ellen saw it. It was only a matter of time before someone else
saw it and said something to him, or until he figured it. out
himself"

"What did he say?" the older woman asked matter-of. factly, clearly
in cOntrol again.

Carolyn shrugged helplessly and looked away, glad to see thi. ~
take-charge side of her mother coming back again, but wishing the
reemergance of her mother's true disposition could have held off a
little longer.

"Carolyn?" Grace said, prodding her. "He was stunned. He was angry.
He..."

"And what's he going to do?"

Carolyn swallowed hard. "I don't know."

"He can't have Billy," her mother said, sounding amazingly strong for
someone who'd been rushed to the hospital just a day before. "He can't
come back here after ten years and take Billy away from me."

"We never gave him a chance all those years ago." Carolyn was
defending Drew, and maybe trying to defend herself, as well. "He never
had a choice in the first place."

"He can't take Billy."

"It was wrong," Carolyn said. "What we did to him was wrong."

"We did what was best for Billy," her mother insisted. "I believe
that, and I think we can make Drew understand that, but that still
doesn't make what we did to him right." Or what we did to me, she
considered~ though she didn't voice it out loud.

She thought again of that awful day when her mother had suggested this
way out ~for her, when Carolyn had known for certain how much her
mother wanted and needed Billy.

Carolyn had needed him, too, even if she was a seven-teen-year-old
scared to death at the thought of being responsible for another
person's life. What if she messed up? What if he got hurt? Or lost?
She couldn't even face that possibility.

She'd jumped at the idea of giving Billy to her parents to raise. It
would mean that she could still see him. She'd always know that he was
okay. She could still hold him in her arms to reassure herself of
that. It hadn't sounded nearly as difficult as giving him up to some
strangers. i

And it had been the right thing to do for Billy at the time. But what
about now? she wanted to ask her mother. Looking down at the older
woman, who was still uncharacteristically fragile looking and plainly
weakened by this ordeal, Carolyn decided this wasn't the time to take
this argument any further. Particularly when they had so many other
things to deal with.

"I don't know how to tell you the rest of it," Carolyn said, wishing
she knew what her mother remembered and what she didn't about the
events that had led up to her attack. "Drew... he thinks there's a
chance that whoever took that little girl from Chicago last weekend
could be the same man who took Annie."

Sara Parker was still in southern Indiana, near where she'd been found.
She was leaving for her home tonight. But first, a child psychiatrist
who frequently worked with the police and the FBI on cases such as this
had come from Chicago to talk to her about what happened to her. They
hoped that keeping her in the area would help her to remember.

Drew had to be there while they questioned the girl. This was his job,
something he could finally understand. The criminals, the victims,
their families--the things that. happened to them seldom made sense,
but his job did. He found the kids, and he caught the bad guys. It
was wonderfully simple, all-absorbing; it was often mentally and
physically exhausting, as well, but he didn't care.

He threw himself into his work, because then he didn't have time to
think about what Carolyn had told him or to begin to imagine what he
was going to do.

Drew arrived at the hospital room where Sara had been kept overnight
for observation, just in time for the session with the psychiatrist to
begin. He had already met Dr. Nicholas Garrett, and he was glad the
man was here to help them. The psychiatrist was kind, soft-spoken,
low-key, and he started by talking about nothing more than the kinds of
dolls Sara liked to play with and her favorite TV shows.

Sara looked almost normal today. She sat cross-legged on the hospital
bed, wearing Cinderella PJs. She held a ragged-looking doll in her
lap, and one of Sara's tiny hands was swallowed by that of her mother.
Slowly, carefully, she answered all the questions Dr. Garrett put to
her, all the time keeping her eyes steadily on his.

She remembered more now than she had before, although she said she'd
seen little and hadn't recognized anything about the place where she
was kept. The bad man had pulled his truck to a stop beside her as she
walked along the street. He'd told her that her house had caught on
fire, and that she couldn't go home. He'd offered to take her to her
mother and father, and he'd had a fireman's helmet lying on the front
seat of his truck and been wearing what looked to her like a fireman's
coat. She'd gone willingly, without making a sound, and he'd let her
wear the fire helmet.

Just great~ Drew thought. The firemen taught kids not to be afraid of
going with them while they wore their oxygen masks and fireproof suits
if their houses ever cauglat on LIFE. And now he needed to tell kids
not to trust strangers with fire helmets who told them their houses had
burned to the ground. They should be careful about people who looked
like policemen and told them their parents had been hurt in a car
accident, and nice-looking strangers who claimed to have lost their
puppies, too. That was another favorite they used. "Littlegirl, I've
lost my puppy, and I was wondering if you could hdp me find it," Off
went the kid into the wood~ with a total stranger.

It made Drew sick~

He sat there in silence while Sara told them that the man had soon
blindfolded her, tied her hands and feet and tossed he ring the back
seat, under a blanket. She couldn't r~member ~how long they'd driven,
because she'd cried herself to sleep. They'd spent the night
somewhere--she didn't know where. She'd just slept and slept.
Obviously the man had drugged her.

She didn't know where he'd taken her next, or when, but it had been
dark when they got there. She remembered what had sounded like the
interior of a cabin.

Sara had thrown up on the man when he told her that her parents were
dead, that they weren't ever coming back, that he'd be her father from
now on. And the next day, before he could hurt her too badly,
something had frightened him. There'd been a loud noise--like the
sound of a firecracker.

"Hunters?" Drew mouthed the word to his boss, Bob Rossi, who was
standing across the room.

It was a logical assumption, if they'd been off in the woods at some
cabin used for hunting and fishing. And that kind of place would
certainly provide the man with the privacy he needed.

Sara continued her story. The noise had seemed to scare the man as
much as it did her, and they'd left the place quickly. This time he
hadn't taken the time to tie her up. They'd driven for hours, until
the man cursed and screamed as he beat on the dashboard of the truck.
He'd been nearly out of gas. She wasn't sure where they. were then,
but he'd found this country store in an isolated area. And when he
went in to pay, she'd slipped out of the truck and into the back of
another one and the vehicle had taken off before the mean man came back
outside the store.

She'd tried not to look at the man, because he'd frightened her. He
wasn't anyone she knew. At least she didn't remember him.

Her description of him was vague to the point that it might as well
have been nonexistent. He was Caucasian, older than her father, who
was twenty-seven but looked ancient these days. He had dark, short
hair. She hadn't looked at his eyes, had no idea of their color. He
was a little overweight and smoked a lot of cigarettes.

Dr. Garrett conferred with Bob Rossi, Drew and the two other agents in
the room. He told them that he didn't think they were going to get
anything else out of Sara today regarding the man who'd taken her.
Finally, it was Drew's

"Hi, Sara," he said, trying not to look grim. He didn't want to
frighten her. "Remember me? I'm Drew."

She nodded. "I found my mommy again."

"I know." He actually managed to smile. "I told you that you'd find
her." ~

"I want to go home now," Sara said. "My mommy promised, if I~talked to
this nice man, I could go home.;' " Just another minute," he told
her.

He started running a hand over the various pockets in his jacket and
his shirt, until he found the imprint of the Polaroid of her he'd taken
and the one he had of Annie in the little red suit. He was more
nervous than he remembered being on any other job.

Of course, he'd never worked on a case where he'd known the victim, and
that, he saw, changed everything. ~ He wanted to solve everyJcase on
which he worked, but this one--he needed to solve this one; He was
desperate to'do so, and this little girl's memories were essential to
him.

"We just need one more thing," he said. "About clothes? The ones you
were wearing when you got away? Where did you get them, Sara?"

She looked confused for a minute.

Drew pulled out the picture, selecting the first. "These," he said.
"Remember, Sara? It's tant. Where did you get them?"

She glanced at the picture and quickly turned Obviously she didn't like
looking at it. "The man. bad man."

"He gave them to you?"

She nodded.

Drew thought he was going to choke before he through this interview. He
waft ted to know would tfiis man give her these particular clothes hold
some significance for him? Some memory Annie?

But he was afraid to ask, because he didn't want to ask Sara why the
man had taken the clothes she was wearing or what he'd tried. to do to
her afterward.

The doctors who'd examined her said she hadn't been raped, and the only
bruises they'd found on her were on her upper arms, no doubt from being
held against her will. But that didn't mean much. There were all
kinds of ways a man could hurt a little girl, and not all of them. left
bruises.

Drew backed up. Sara said the bad man had given her the clothes. That
was a starting point. He would go from there. "When did he give
yot/the clothes? At the cabin... the place where you heard the
firecrackers?"

She nodded. Dr. Garrett looked nervous. Drew realized he was in
dangerous territory.

"Did he say why he wanted you to wear those clothes?"

Drew asked, holding his breath.

Sara shook her head. "No."

Drew pulled out the other picture, and when "Sara turned away without
even looking at it, he moved it around until it came into her line of
vision, even though she obviously didn't want to see. Dr. Garrett
rose to stand behind him, no doubt ready to cut him off, but he put up
a hand to tell him to back away.

"This is a friend of mine," he told Sara,-fighting to keep his voice
steady. "This is a little girl named Annie, and I've been looking for
her for a long time. She disappeared many years ago, and she had a
little red suit just like the one this man gave you to wear?"

Sara said nothing, but she was visibly upset. Drew felt his
opportunity slipping away from him, and he wanted to scream at the
injustice of it. "Sara, did he say anything to you about Annie? Did
he tell you where he got the clothes? Or why he kept them? Or why he
wanted you to wear them?"

She started to cry then. Her lower lip quivered, and then the tears
began to fall.

She knew something. She knew something she wasn't telling him,
something she was afraid to tell him. And he couldn't make her.

Her mother gathered her close in her arms, burying

Sara's face against her chest and covering the little girl's ears with
her hands. She looked at Drew as if he were lower than pond scum.

"That's enough," Dr. Garrett said, pulling him back.

He had to fight to make himself turn and go. God alone knew when he'd
get another chance to talk to Sara.

was the only person who could help him figure out had happened ten
years ago and how it was connected to her disappearance.

Moving on sheer force of will alone, he made it to the door. It was
killing him to walk away when he knew he was so close, but he made
himself do it.

"Hey, mister?" he heard a tiny little voice sa3

hind him.

He whirled around, hope surging within him. "Yes?"

Sara peeked out from the curve of her mother's protective embrace.
"The' other little girl-- ?"

"Annie." He was barely able to say the name.

Sara looked pained when she heard it. "Did she ever back home
again?"

Drew took the innocent question like a kick in the

He couldn't believe how hard it was for even after all these years,
couldn't believe hurt. ~ ~:

He looked at Sara Parker, her eyes locked on tears not quite dry. He
watched her, safe in embrace, ready for her trip home, and hie.

"Not yet, Sara:' He had to stop and clear

"She hasn't made it home yet."

 
 

 

عرض البوم صور nargis  
قديم 16-09-07, 03:28 PM   المشاركة رقم: 13
المعلومات
الكاتب:
اللقب:
ليلاس متالق


البيانات
التسجيل: Jun 2006
العضوية: 6878
المشاركات: 209
الجنس أنثى
معدل التقييم: nargis عضو بحاجه الى تحسين وضعه
نقاط التقييم: 16

االدولة
البلدSweden
 
مدونتي

 

الإتصالات
الحالة:
nargis غير متواجد حالياً
وسائل الإتصال:

كاتب الموضوع : nargis المنتدى : الارشيف
افتراضي

 

Chapter 10

It was late when Drew returned. The bed-and-breakfast was dark, but
one of the keys he'd been given opened the front door. The agent in
him wondered how many other such keys had been given out, how many were
ever returned and who could get into this house at any time if they
wanted. But the man sun ply didn't care about any of that right
then.

He was going to his room. Then he was going to do his damnedest to
forget everything that had happened to him since he'd come back to this
town. He still couldn't believe someone had the nerve to name this
place Hope. Hopeless, they should have called it. It was simply
hopeless.

Sara Parker had summed it all up with her innocent question about

Did she ever get back home again?

And what had he said? Not yet.

Who was he kidding? It had been ten damn years. An-hie McKay wasn't
ever coming back home again. Why had he ever thought she would, or
that anything he could do now would somehow make a difference about
what had happened all those years ago?

Had he thought he could simply erase everything that had gone on in the
past ten years? Had he thought he could go back in time, pick up where
he'd left off with Carolyn and relive those years he'd spent without
her?

He was crazy. This whole situation had made him crazy ten years ago,
and it was still doing that to him, even now.

It was the past, he told himself sternly, and he could' not change
it.

Nothing that happened now, nothing he did to find out. what happened
to Pmni , could change all that had gone on since she'd disappeared.

He and Carolyn had a son, and he'd never even seen him until a day and
a half ago. Billy had lived the first years of his life without Drew,
and he migh it, as well, without ever knowing Drew was his father.

Drew thought about turning around and going outside, maybe going for a
long, mind-numbing through the darkened streets, or just walking and
stopping.

He took a minute to assess the situation. It was midnight. He was
exhausted, and he honestly he could have walked to the next county and
still able to clear his head.

In the meantime, he found himself at the door room. He went inside and
not bothering to flick on light, threw his coat across the chair, tool
socks, then headed for the bathroom.

It was a telling indication of how caught ut he was that he'd spent at
least forty-five room before he realized there was someone else
ready.

Carolyn was in the corner, curled up in the chair.

He uttered a single, blasphemous curse, louder than he intended. It
seemed to reverberate around the room for an eternity, and had her
nearly jumping out of the chair.

Drew turned his back, not wanting to see what the day had cost her, not
wanting her to see what it had done to him.

"I don't have anything to say to you tonight," he told her, his tone
dead even. The furor of his emotions had left him drained and empty.

And then he headed for the bathroom and closed the door behind him. He
brushed his teeth, washed his face, then started pacing while he waited
for the sound of the door closing behind her. The only problem was,
the bathroom was too damned small for walking, and he could have sworn,
from what he heard and what he sensed, that she hadn't budged from the
chair. ~

He could not deal with this tonight. Grimly he turned to the door,
wrenched it open and stalked back out. He didn't care to make any
explanations to anyone tonight--least of all her.

And he didn't owe her any, dammit.

She might feel she owed him some more, but he wasn't. interested in
hearing them.

"Not tonight, Carolyn," he said when he saw that he was right. She
hadn't budged yet.

Drew looked longingly at the wall he'd nearly put his fist through, at
the glass he couldn't afford to break. He wasn't a violent man, but he
certainly felt like one tonight.

"What do you want from me?" he asked,~ unable to think of any other
way to get her to leave. "What?"

It didn't mean he'd answer her; but maybe if she at least got the
chance to say whatever she felt compelled to say, she'd go and leave
him alone.

"I didn't tell Billy yet," she said, rushing along. "I told my mother,
but I didn't tell Billy. He doesn't have a clue--about any of this. I
know you're angry, and I know you have a right to be, but I had to ask
that you give this some time before you tell him--if you want to tell
him, that is."

"I'm not going to tell him anything tonight, okay? Will you please go
now?"

She stood, still in the shadows. He couldn't see her face or anything
of her expression, but he felt some hope that this would soon be
over.

"Billy's very upset right now," she continued. "My father... his
father... He thinks his father just died a few months ago, and now my
mother's ill. He's frightened. It's going to take some time. If you
could just give it some time. "

She took three steps across the room toward him. He counted them.
Mentally he judged the distance left between them, and saw that it
wasn't enough, With his mind, he willed her to cut to the left, to walk
around him and keep on going to the door, through it and into the
night, so that he could be alone. But, of course, she didn't.

She put her hand on his arm, and he couldn't help himself. He
flinched, then threw out his hand in an effort to tell her without
words to get the hell away from him.

And, dammit, he'd frightened her. Hell, he was frightening himself
tonight, and that was one reason he didn't want her anywhere near
him.

This kind of rage, this out-of-control feeling was one he'd never
experienced so sharply. He wasn't afraid that he'd hurt her
physically; he wasn't that far-gone. But he couldn't be sure of what
he might say to her right now. Some things couldn't be taken back.

"Please," he said, wondering how long it had been s'nice he'd actually
begged anyone for anything. "Please, just go."

"I'm sorry," she said, sounding as miserable as he felt. Drew closed
his eyes, willing himself not to look at her, not to stop her, not to
explain. Not tonight.

She. turned abruptly in the direction of the door. He was aware of
every move she made, and he probably knew he-fore she did that she'd
thrown herself off-balance on the claw foot of the ottoman. He whirled
and caught her as she pitched forward, saving her from hitting the
floor and putting her squarely in his arms.

Helplessly he looked over her face. It was stamped with tension,
weariness, pride, all mingling with some emotion that he couldn't begin
to read.

He pushed~ her away. from him, putting some distance between their
bodies, but hanging on to her with two hands that remained on her upper
arms, not letting her go at all, but not allowing her any closer.

"You understand, don't you?" He held her still, this old familiar
power humming hetweenthem now. It was like a tangible force, something
that bound them together, yet wasn't powerful enough to negate all the
other influences. that seemed determined to tear them apart.

She understood that. He would have sworn that she must, because it was
so clear to him. That was what was making him so crazy tonight.

"It's right here," he said to her. "Everything I've been missing all
these years, everything I've wanted. Every, thing I threw away--it's
right here, no more than an arm's length away from me. It's so close,
I can touch it, but I can't hang on to it. I can't figure out how to
push everything else out of the way and make you mine. Forever."

The last part was the stickler. He wanted forever--with Carolyn.

And Billy and Annie and her mother--they were all standing here between
them. He could have handled her mother's objections. He was working
to somehow assuage the guilt that would always he associated with
Annie. But Billy?

He had to take a very deep, slow breath and try to hold it for a minute
in order to steady himself.

Billy was the immovable object now. And Carolyn wanted Drew to leave
the boy alone. She wanted him to be ******* just to know him in some
small way, but to leave him with the woman he believed to be his mother
and to let him think his father was dead and buried. She didn't want
him to tear apart everything Billy believed to be true about his life
and his family.

He couldn't have said that he didn't understand her wanting that. God
knew he'd seen enough families torn apart to realize what it did to the
kids.

But he didn't see how he could walk away from the boy, either. And he
didn't see how he could build a life with Carolyn and not have Billy
planted firmly between them in the process. He saw more than enough
anger and resentment between him and Carolyn to rip them apart all over
again.

That was why he was angry tonight. He didn't see any way to fix the
situation they were in. And he wanted her so badly; he'd wanted her
like this for years.

What in the world was he going to do about that? It would only end up
causing them even more pain than be, fore.

"It's hopeless, Carolyn," he finally told her. "It, s absolutely
hopeless."

"Don't say that."

"Nothing's changed between us. Nothing," he pea ted "I still want you.
I still need you. The feelings have for you haven't changed. If
anything, stronger. And it's still absolutely hopeless. You stand
that, don't you?"

But he didn't think she did. Carolyn looked as he felt, and he
couldn't take the half-truths and evasions between them any longer.

"I'm still in love with you." He blurted out the not afraid of letting
her see the anger that them, even as he pulled her a little bit closer
to him, even as he came a little bit closer to the point of madness.

He wanted her. Ten years' worth of longing had simmered inside him for
too long. Now it threatened to explode around them.

Heedless of that, he settled her trembling body against his, noted in
some corner of his mind that she made no objections to her position.

Oh, he wanted her. He had no business feeling that way right now, but
it was another of the things that were driving him crazy tonight.

He had to make her understand that. He had to explain it to her,
because he couldn't be the only one to feel this way.

"I could take you in my arms right now and make you mine again, but it
wouldn't last. No matter how hard I tried, it wouldn't last," he said,
feeling his body harden at the thought of finally being with her
again.

"I feel like someone's playing a vicious game with us. Like he brought
us back here, let us remember how this felt, let us ache for each other
all over again, only to yank it away."

She didn't say anything. Her lower lip trembled, but she didn't cry,
didn't try to escape from his embrace.

"Explain it to me," he demanded, getting right' up in her face. He was
scaring himself now. "Tell me why it all happened this way. Tell me
why it had to end this way."

"I don't know," she said, so close he could see the little green flecks
in her dark eyes. "I know you're mad at them"

"Carolyn, I'm mad at the whole world tonight. Everyone and everything
under the sun. Tonight I'm downright dangerous." ~

Disgusted with himself and the whole situation, he dropped his arms
down to his sides and turned his back to her.

When she didn't move, he added, "You need to go home. Right now."

Carolyn swallowed hard and stood' her ground. She was still caught up
in a whirlwind of emotions, back at the point where she could have
sworn he'd. said he still loved ~her.

How in the world could he still love her?

Of course, in the same breath, he'd told her that this whole thing
between them would never work, that it was hopeless.

She could understand his thinking it would never work, but she had a
hard time with the hopeless part. True, one seemed to be much the same
as the other, but she needed the fine luxury of hope, especially since
she didn't see any reason for that hope.

Until he said he still loved her.

No one had loved her in years. No one had ever wanted her the way Drew
did. No one had ever made her feel. the way he did. She hadn't
wanted to fight for anyone else ~ the way she was ready to fight for
him.

And where there was love, she wouldn't give up. couldn't, either.
Surely the worst was over between now. He knew what she'd done. She
knew why her. It was all out in the open now, and they couldn't up.

She wished she had the courage to tell him. thought he loved her; if
he still wanted her, after all he couldn't give up now.

Just as he'd said, it was all within their reach.

right here beside her, and she had to make him stand that it wasn't
hopeless at 'all.

Not if he loved her.

Not if she loved him--and she most certainly did.

He was downright dangerous, he'd warned her. everyone and everything,
and downright

Well, if that was what he felt tonight, they'd just have to work with
it. She'd just have to show him that nothing was impossible.

Afraid to breathe, afraid to even think farther ahead than her next
move, she inched closer to face him. Unable to meet his eyes-at the
moment, Carolyn concentrated on the hard set of his jaw and what she
knew was the softness of his lips.

And, in an instant, the tension, the outpouring of emotion, the danger
he'd warned her about,4urned sexual. She watched as the awareness shot
through him, as the temperature in the room skyrocketed.

"Go away," he said, catching her where she stood to keep her from
getting too close. Then, as, if through sheer force of will, he pried
his fingers off her again. "Go right now." '

"I can't," she told him. "I'm scared that if I do, I won't ever get
this close to you again. I'm scared that you'll put up a wall between
us that I'll never break through."

"Carolyn, there's a bed over there. I can't remember the last time I
had sex with a woman, and I've never in my life needed or want~t a
woman more than I want you right now. I want to lose myself in you. I
want to forget everything standing between us, and fool myself for a
little while into thinking this is going to work out."

"And there's a problem there?" she said, marveling at her own nerve.
"Because I didn't pick up on it."

Drew swore softly, but stayed where he was. His hand settled against
the side of her face. The pad of one thumb traced its way across her
bottom lip, sending her pulse into overdrive, and her self-confidence
threatened to desert her here and now.

"You're playing with fire," he warned her, probably as much as he was
warning himself.

"I don't care anymore," she replied, feeling as reckless as he claimed
to be, real:~zing in some elemental way that she'd pushed him right to
the edge, that any second he wfis going to topple over it with her.
"Don't you see? I don't have anything to lose anymore. I haven't
since I watched you walk away from me, then walked away from here
myself, without my baby. My life is ... it's so empty, so lonely. And
I can't stand it anymore. I just don't have anything or anyone, so if
there's a chance for us, I'm not going to walk away from it without a
fight."

"It's only going to complicate matters," he said. "They're complicated
enough as it is, and our being together won't solve anything."

"Does that mean you don't want me?"

"It means I feel reckless tonight. I feel cheated and lied to, and I
think I'm entitled to a hell of a lot more than one night with you."

He kissed her once then, kissed her hard and fast, his touch rougher
than any she'd ever known from him, his strength barely contained.

"Don't you understand?" he said. "I don't want be hurt any more by
this than you already ]

I don't want to hurt any more, either. "

He wanted to leave his mark on this woman to so hard and so fast, to
get so fax inside her, could ever tear them apart again. as his, to so
clearly imprint his possession of her on body and her mind that she
would never forget him,

stop missing him, never stop wanting him.

And even that wouldn't be enough.

She would do the exact same thing to him. He never touch another woman
intimately ~

Carolyn and wishing he could be with her instead. would be ruined,
forever.

"We had everything," he told her. "We had it all: we lost it all. And
that's making me a little night;"

When she didn't leave this time, he kissed her again. When she didn't
protest, he did it once more. He simply couldn't get enough of her,
couldn't get close enough, couldntt hold her tightly enough

Somehow, they made it to the bed without him having to let go of her or
break off the kiss. He could barely breathe then, as he quickly shed
his clothes and followed her down. He'd never turned on the lights, so
he couldn't see her as clearly as he would have liked, but the picture
of her was so clearly etched on his mind that it didn't matter. And
her body, beneath his hands, was nearly as familiar as his own. After
all, a man didn't forget the feel of a woman who'd lived in his dreams
for years.

With the' last of his self-control, he slowed down long enough to undo
the buttons of the shiny pink blouse she wore, to undo the snap of her
bra and to pull down her slacks. He slid them off and threw them
somewhere, pulled and tugged and flung at the rest of her clothes until
neither of them had a stitch of clothing left.

"Don't be frightened of me," he said, looking down al~ her through the
darkness.

"I'm not." Though she didn't sound c~nvinced, her hand came up. to
caress his chest.

He let his mouth settle over the delicate skin at the base of her neck,
searching for that ultra sensitive spot that he remembered so well.
Pleasure shot through her, bringing her whole body up off the bed as
she gasped his name. Tremors of pleasure shot through his body, as
well, because he got absolutely high off the idea of pleasing her this
way again.

He thought of all the little things he used to do that turned her on,
thought again about how much he simply needed to join his body with
hers in this instant, before he lost the chance at all.

This moment, this link between them, was so fragile, so tenuous, that
he felt certain someone or something was going to snatch her away from
him again, that they were going to be denied even this one moment in
time.

It drove him on, even though he badly needed to prolong this, because
he knew very well there might not be a next time.

She was writhing beneath him, struggling to somehow get closer to him.
Her legs parted easily for him, and the heat of her was nearly his
undoing.

As he settled himself on top of her, as he felt her arms close around
him, her nails biting into his hack and urging him on, he remembered
that they had to be careful this time. And that made him mad. That
made him think of what had happened before and of why he thought. this
was all so hopeless. And, irrationally, he didn't want anything
between them right now. Nothing.

Still, he managed to grab a condom from the wallet in his pants on the
floor beside the bed, managed to rip the packet open and put it on.

The process cleared his head for a'moment, and he tried to squelch the
feeling of desperation that had been driw ing him on.

"There has to be more than tonight," he told her, kissing again and
again and again. "There has to be."

He put one hand on her pretty little breasts while he' drank from her
mouth. Then he let the hand go testing to see if she was ready for
him, finding that she was:'

There would be other nights, he. promised sitioning himself above her,
tensing for the heat pressure inside her.

"I love you," he told her, tensing the muscles in ~ thighs and his
buttocks, moving slowly inside her, when he wanted was to 'quickly bury
himself there. "I never: stopped loving you."

The pressure gave way as she finally relaxed, letting inside, and then,
in the same instant, it s over again. She was so tight, so hot, so
familiar. He sweating and fighting for all he was worth to slow down,
but it was too late.

"Don't stop," she told him, her nails digging into his back. "Don't
you dare stop now."

He ground his hips against hers, once, twice. And then she splintered
beneath him, coming apart in his arms, only

-moments before he did the same. Wave after wave of pleasure rocked
him. He couldn't get. close enough to her, couldn't hold her tightly
enough, couldn't hang on to this moment that he wanted never to end.

"Mine," he told her, resting heavily on top of her. "You were meant to
be mine."

And there would be other nights.

He'd fight the devil himself, if that was what it took, but there would
be other nights for them.

They hadn't even made it under the covers, and when the heat finally
subsided and the chill set in, he pulled the covers off the other side
of the bed and threw them over top of them both. He adjusted their
positions, so that she was lying on top of him, then pushed her head
down to his chest.

Reality was slowly closing in on Drew, though he didn't want it to. He
wanted to stay like this, with her body draped over his and his mind
blessedly blank to everything but his blinding need to take possession
of her.

He thought, disgusted with himself, that he'd taken her virginity with
more finesse than this, with more patience and more concern for her
pleasure.

And even now he felt this near-violent desire to have her again. This
urgent coupling had done little, if anything, to blunt that blinding
need. He wasn't sure anything would, except making love to her
morning, noon and night for the next decade or so.

Drew closed his hand around a tangle of Carolyn's hair that was now
draped across his chest. He liked the feel of it in his hands, hadn't
had time before to experience that particular pleasure. It gave him
something to hang on to. He needed desperately to hang on to her.

"Are you all right?" he asked, the words coming out almost as a
growl.

She tensed above him, the sweet aftermath of lethargy gone in an
instant, giving him yet one more reason to curse himself.

"I meant..." He backed up and tried again. "Did I hurt you?"

"No."

But he didn't quite believe her. "I begged you to go," he said, though
he blamed himself for this.

"I know."

He tugged a little harder on that handful of hair, cause he had to see
her face. It was dark, so he had to trust his hand, as well. He found
the tears on her cheeks. "I did hurt you."

"No... I just.... I haven't done this... in forever." He bit back the
obvious question--how long it been--because he didn't want to know. No
matter long it was, it hadn't been long enough. Because he want anyone
else ever to have been inside had.

"I'm a little overwhelmed," she said. "I'd how... personal it is. How
you can't hold back. thing... or hide anything."

And he thought that if he let her, she'd be off him this bed, into
every stitch of clothes she had and room so fast it would make his head
spin. ~

He held her even tighter. "I'm sorry. Fm not so..." He couldn't
think of any word to describe myriad things he had felt. Desperate?
Impatient Scared? Frustrated? He could have gone on all not covered
them all. "I don't know how I'm ever going to let you go,
sweetheart."

Carolyn shivered, and he held her closer. She closed her eyes and knew
she'd finally figured out what he was trying to tell her. That he
loved her, that he didn't want her to ever forget about him. But that
this was goodbye.

"You can't do this," she told him, feeling desperate now. "You can't
tell me one minute that you love me and then tell me goodbye. You
can't."

It took awhile for her words to sink in. She hadn't been sure what to
make of all of this. She'd only known that if she let him go tonight,
he was going to put up all these walls between them, ones that she
might never break down.

And then the whole thing had exploded on them. She still had the
feeling of being sucked down into a whirlwind, into a flash of need and
passion over which she had no control. Blindly, eagerly, she'd
followed where he led. And the only thing she regretted was the fact
that it was over.

She didn't want it to be. And he'd better not dare try to tell her
this was goodbye, because for the first time in years she felt alive.
She felt loved and wanted and needed again. "I begged you to go," he
said. "And you wanted me to stay."

"But I didn't want to hurt you."

"Well, then, don't hurt me now, by trying to tell me this didn't mean
anything to you."

"It didn't solve anything," be told her. "And it will only make it
harder, in the end, when I go."

She thought about telling him, in no uncertain terms, that he wasn't
going anywhere, because she wasn't going to let him. But she wasn't
sure he was ready to hear that.

Instead, she asked him a question she'd already answered for herself.
"Could it get any harder than it already will be to let each other go a
second time?"

He swore, the~ rolled with her, so that sl~ was lying with her back on
the bed. For a second, she thought he was going to kiss her again, but
he didn't. He rolled back over, leaving her there while he threw off
the covers, sat up and started putting his clothes on.

"It's not hopeless," she told him as he put on his pants. She'd do
anything to prove that to him.

So what if there was yet another mountain between them, another river
to cross? This time, they'd cross them all. They weren't running away
anymore, and they weren't lying to each other.

And surely it had to be easier at twenty-seven and~ twenty-nine than it
had been at seventeen and nineteen. Surely they could haadle things
now. She knew she'd certainly work harder at it, because she realized
now how rare ~ and how precious this thing between them was.

She had tonight to convince him that it wasn't hopeless: at all.

"Make love to me again," she said, sitting up in the bed and dragging
the covers with her.

He swore.

Carolyn . sin' fled Clearly, she'd thrown him and it gave her hope.

"Make love to me again. Tell me you love me z me I'm yours, and that
you're never going to let man' touch me again, and then tell me dare
you."

He bent over, picked up her bra and shirt and them at her. "Put your
clothes on, Carolyn," he she knew he'd shut her out.

Tears flooded her eyes. She stared up tried to blink them back.

"I don't know how to fix this," he said. "It's going to be between us,
Carolyn. And I don't see fix it."

"Maybe not tonight, but someday we will. Give it some time, at least.
You just found out, for God's sake. We can take a little time now to
try to figure it all out, can't we?"

"Your mother hates me. She has for years, long before Billy became the
issue."

"So? It didn't stop us from being together ten years ago. It
certainly won't stop us now," she said. The cold was starting to sink
in, now that he was all the way across the room.

"What about the guilt?"

~ "What about it?" She pulled on her shirt and held the ~ends closed
around her. It hung to her knees, coveting everything that had to be
covered, but there was no way she could manage the buttons right now.

"It's still there between us."

"But it doesn't have to tear us apart this time~" "what about Billy?"
That was his trump card, the one she couldn't explain away. "You want
me to stay away from him, don't you? You don't want him to ever know
the truth."

"I don't want him hurt, and I don't want you to take him away from the
only mother he's ever known."

"Which is another way of saying leave him alone. Well, I don't knOW if
I can live with that. And if I could, I'd sure as hell resent it. I'd
resent you because of it. I see it eating away at us forever, like
some poison in our relationship. Tell me what to do about that."

"I don't know," she Said. "But I" -- What could she say after that?
She loved him.

He'd told her he loved her. He'd said she was meant to be his, and she
wanted to belong to him, just as she wanted him to belong to her.

Surely that had to count for something, didn't it?

Carolyn was no longer naive enough to believe that love conquered all,
but dam reit it had to count for something.

"I don't want to lose you again," she said, with as much pride as she
could muster when all she really wanted to do was latch on to him and
never let go. She couldn't stand to lose him again. That was what she
meant, what her pride wouldn't let herself tell him.

And then she was all out of arguments, and he still hadn't budged.
Feeling more miserable than she'd been in years, Carolyn struggled back
into her underwear and her slacks, found her shoes, her purse, her
keys, and went to stand by the door with her back to him.

Don't let me go, she prayed, but she got no answer from him. She
rislCed one glance back at the bed they'd shared not more than five
minutes ago. It seemed impossible to go from that to this so
quickly.

'

Don't let me go.

But he did.

Hastily she swiped the tears off her cheeks, then held her head high.
"What are you go' rag to do now?" she asked, "About Billy?"

Carolyn nodded. "I don't know."

She didn't even bother to ask what, if anything, planned to do about
her.

 
 

 

عرض البوم صور nargis  
قديم 16-09-07, 03:30 PM   المشاركة رقم: 14
المعلومات
الكاتب:
اللقب:
ليلاس متالق


البيانات
التسجيل: Jun 2006
العضوية: 6878
المشاركات: 209
الجنس أنثى
معدل التقييم: nargis عضو بحاجه الى تحسين وضعه
نقاط التقييم: 16

االدولة
البلدSweden
 
مدونتي

 

الإتصالات
الحالة:
nargis غير متواجد حالياً
وسائل الإتصال:

كاتب الموضوع : nargis المنتدى : الارشيف
افتراضي

 

Chapter 11

Carolyn didn't want to get out of bed the next morn: She'd arrived home
around two-thirty that morning, f ing like a teenager trying to sneak
in after curfew.

She'd brought her mother home from the hospital ~ terday afternoon, and
she was sure Grace had heard come in last night. Her mother certainly
didn't have to: where she'd been or who she'd been with. Though,
doubt, she was wait' rag for some explanation.

For some reason, when Carolyn had just turned seventeen, a rebel of a
boy named Drew Delaney' had caught attention, and she'd never managed
to forget him. He had worn his brown hair long--to his collar, he'd
had a beard and ridden a motorcycle. Her straitlaced parents had been
horrified that their little girl, an honor student volunteer at the
local hospital, head of the debate tea had wanted to go out with such a
boy.

He'd graduated from high school the year before, but hadn't gone on to
college. He'd worked. at Eddie's Garage instead, living with his
grandmother. And he'd been well-known as the son of one of the towifs
loudest drunks.

Carolyn had met him when her car broke down one day and Drew pulled his
motorcycle off to the side of the road and volunteered to help. When
he couldn't get the car running, he'd offered to give her a lift back
to town, then invited her to hop on the back of his bike.

Remembering the way he'dlooked that day, his hair tied back carelessly
in a loose ponytail, the front of it blown every which way by the wind,
she was still amazed she'd ever gotten on that bike. He'd worn a black
leather jacket, boots, and a killer grin. And something absolutely
wicked had-been lurking in those nearly black eyes of his.

He'd been the most dangerous man she'd ever seen, riding to town with
him had been the most reckless thing she'd ever done.

She'd been fascinated with him from the start, probably been half in
love with him by the time he to a stop in front of her house, the bike
on otherwise quiet street, her parents both coming see what in the
world had happened to their poor LITTLE

They'd disliked him on sight, her mother

They'd worried about his drunk of a father, what someone like Drew
could have to offer their ter.

Carolyn had talked a mile a minute for months,

to make them see that Drew wasn't anything like his father, that he
drove the bike because it had ~ cheap, he wore his hair long these if
the town had already pegged him as maker like his father, then he'd
hate to disappoint

But he hadn't been bad. Or dangerous. Or hadn't been like that at
all.

Maybe, if she had more time, she would have to convince her parents of
that.

But Annie had disappeared not long after they fork her to see Drew
anymore. And in that instant, whet, their lives changed forever, she'd
been with Drew.

Irrationally, her parents had blamed him. In that s irrational manner,
she'd blamed herself and her love Drew Delaney. And once he was gone,
she'd often r~ nalized that she'd deserved to lose him, that she didn't
any right to be happy with him when Annie was gone.

Carolyn rolled over in the little twin bed she'd slept i a girl and
listened for the sounds of the house coming to ~life again. Surely her
mother couldn't hate Drew to day. Surely she saw now how irrational
their feelings al him had been.

But now her mother had even: more reason to dislike him, even to fear
him. Grace McKay worried that D was going to take Billy away from her.
And as long as saw Drew as a threat, she was bound to. be upset ak
Carolyn having anything to do with him--particularl she stayed out till
nearly three in the morning with him

Nervously Carolyn wondered if her mother would figure out what else
they'd done last night.

Carolyn could hardly believe it herself. It had be~ disaster, and yet
it been like nothing she'd ever enced before--at least not since Drew
had left~ nearly years ago.

Over the years, she'd lied to herself. She'd told her the memories she
had of the two of them together could~ possibly be accurate, that it
couldn't have been as w derful as she remembered.

But it was.

He'd been lying there on top of. ~her, his eyes boi down into hers,
swearing that she was meant to be his, she'd thought that settled it.
She felt the same way--~ they belonged together and nothing could tear
them ap~

But that wasn't what he had been telling her. The frustration must
have been eating away at him at that point. That was what he'd wanted
her to see.

She was meant to be his, but she wouldn't be.

Carolyn nearly jumped off the bed when someone knocked. Aunt Ellen
called her name.

"Yes?" Carolyn replied, clutching the covers to her, wondering
guiltily if he'd left some mark on her, either physical or emotional,
that everyone would see.

"Phone's for you, dear," her~ aunt said, walking into the room and
handing Carolyn the cordless phone.

She was afraid to take it. Carolyn was sure it was Drew and she hadn't
begun to figure out what to say this morning.

Finally, she forced herself to grab hold of the phone; then press the
palm of' her hand over the mouthpiece. "Is More up yet?"

Aunt Ellen was studying her too closely for comfort, "She's awake, but
still in bed."

"And Billy?"

"He's having breakfast."

"What about school?" They hadn't discussed what. do about that. Billy
was feeling much bet mr now mother was home from the hospital, but he
was still a the unsettled. "Does be want to go to school? Do he
should?"

"If he goes, your mother will probably get

And the doctor wants her to take it easy the neat days. "

"Okay," Carolyn said, figuring She'd stalled she reasonably could.
"I'll be down in just, to him. And thanks, Aunt Ellen. I don't know
would have done without your help." She waited until her aunt backed
out of the closed the door behind her before forcing herself to phone
to her ear.

Closing her eyes, she tried not to picture Drew in the darkness of his
room last night. The lines in his face had been etched deeply, the
despair clearly readable for anyone to see.

"Drew," she said into the phone.

"No, Carolyn~ it's Brian." Brian, from Hope House. She clasped a hand
over her mouth to stifle any involuntary sound she might make. "I've
been here for almost twenty hours straight staring at my computer
screen, and I've found three other possibilities."

"What?" It was all she could manage. ~ Yesterday she'd called he~
colleague Brian Wilson, a man who could do extraordinary things with a
computer,

and told him about Annie and Sara Parker. She'd asked for some
information on other unsolved child abductions that might be connected
with the two girls.

And now he had three--three other families who~e lives had been ripped
apart, just like hers.

It sickened her.

"Carolyn?" Brian asked. "You okay?"

"Yes," she fibbed.

"I can go over this with Drew, if you'd rather."

"He'll probably want to talk to you," she managed to get out. "But go
ahead and tell me what you've got."

"A little girl, age ten, taken six years ago from a suburb of
Louisville, Kentucky. Another one, age nine, taken three years ago
from Cincinnati. A third, age seven, taken a year and a half ago from
her aunt's, near Fort Wayne, Indiana."

Carolyn closed her eyes and tried not to put faces to the statistics he
rattled off. "None of them were ever found?"

"No. All of them snatched off the sidewalk or the streets of their own
neighborhoods and never seen again?"

And then she didn't say anything. What else was there to say?

"Listen," Brian said finally, "why don't I print all this stuff out and
express-mail it to you? You can have it tomorrow morning."

"Thank you." She gave him her mother's address.

"Carolyn, if you need anything else--and I mean any-thing--you'll call
me, right?"

"I will. Thanks again."

Carolyn was simply numb for the next two or three hours. She tried to
call Drew at the bed-and-breakfast, but he was out, and she didn't know
how else to reach him.

She showered, dressed, walked Billy to the bus stop and waited there
with him until he was safely on the bus, then made a point of avoiding
her mother's room altogether.

She just couldn't stop thinking about those three other girls.

Around ten-thirty, as she was pacing the floor, wondering where Drew
could have gone ing, the phone finally rang, and Carolyn grabbed
"Hello?"

"Carolyn?" a familiar female voice said. "I'd heard were back in
town. This is Emily. Emily Forester."

The name meant nothing to Carolyn. "I'm sorry..."

"F~mily Bradshaw, I should say. I've been married so long now,.
sometimes I forget I ever had a

Ill,lie. "

"Oh, of course" "Carolyn said. Emily had lived down the street. " How
are you?

"I'm fine, and I don't want to alarm you,

you should know. I work at the elementary andw"

Carolyn jumped in. '"Billy? He's all right?"

"He's fine," Emily assured her. "But his class side on the playground
right now, and his you should know--there's a man across the just
sitting there watching them play. His teacher swears the man hasn't
taken his eyes off Billy the whole time they've been outside. And
we're probably being silly even worrying about it, but you know how
things are these days. You can't be too careful, so we thought you or
your mother should know."

Carolyn panicked at first. After all, the man who'd taken her sister
had probably watched her for a long time first. Child kidnappers often
did. They picked their victims, then watched and waited for the right
opportunity to snatch them.

And if Brian Wilson was right, that man had taken three other little
children, as well.

Of course, that was crazy--thinking that the man who'd taken Annie
would ever. come back and take Billy from them, as well. But so was
the idea of a stranger grabbing a child and vanishing into thin air,
and that happened. So this "Drew," she said, when the idea hit her,
cutting off the wild turn her thoughts had taken. "Emily, is it
Drew?"

"Drew Delaney?" The way the name had obviously popped into the woman's
head, when he'd been gone for ten years, told Carolyn that the gossip
was moving through the community at lightning speed, just as she had
suspected. "I didn't get a good look at him, but now that you mention
it ... he's got that deep brown hair, the beard, the mustache, that
dark, kind of dangerous look. Yes, it could be Drew ." '

Carolyn was sure it was. "I'll be right there, Emily."

"Should we call the children inside? Do you think Billy in danger?"

"No." Carolyn tried to calm herself long enough to re, assure her old
friend. "Drew would never hurt Billy."

And all the way to the school, she prayed that she was right.

The school wasn't five minutes away. Carolyn parked in front of the
building, then walked to the side where the playground faced Chestnut
Street. That was where she found him.

There was a chain-link fence, there more to keep the kids off the
street than to keep strangers out, and Drew was standing against the
fence, his forearms resting on top of it, his chin on top of his folded
arms.

He didn't seem to care that more than a few of the people who worked at
the school had gathered in the corner by the lunchroom to stare at him,
just as he was staring so intently at Billy.

He surprised her now, looking like the Drew she'd known so long ago,
rather than the government agent in a subdued suit and He.

He had on an old pair of jeans, a button-down shirt and a
buttery-soft-looking brown bomber jacket. She wouldn't have been
surprised to look around and find that old motorcycle of his somewhere
nearby.

Dark and dangerous, her old friend Emily had said, and he definitely
looked it today.

A part of her wished he had the old bike, wished they could just hop on
the back and roar right out of town, at least for a little while. She
used to fantasize about that--about him just taking her away from
anything and everything that stood in the way of the two of them being
together.

Carolyn was reminded of an old bluesy rock-and-roll song about a man
picking up this woman and taking her off into the night, where nothing
could come between them. That was the stuff her dreams had been made
of, back when she still believed that dreams could come true.

Well, they definitely couldn't run away from this, not anymore.
Resigned to that, she crossed the fifty yards or so between them and
went to stand beside Drew at the fence.

He turned to stare at her, his~. eyes dark and brooding, his face
seemingly etched in stone, as if nothing could touch him anymore,
nothing could hurt him.

Just then the wind kicked up and a few strands of hair escaped from the
clasp at the back of her head and flew across her face.

"Drew reached out and brushed them away before she could, then stared
down at her for a moment, before the hair flew back across her eyes.
Carefully, gently, he tucked the strands behind her right ear.

A long, slow tremor passed through her, and the next, thing she knew,
he was slipping out of the brown leather jacket and wrapping it around
her shoulders.

"It's damn near freezing out here this morning," he said. "Where's
your coat?"

"I... I didn't realize it was so cold."

He appeared puzzled for a second. Obviously, it was hard to miss the
cold on a morning like this. Then he looked around, as if to take
their surroundings in for the first time. The kids were playing some
kind of dodge ball game, and their teachers were gathered in a cluster
in the corner outside the cafeteria, all staring at the two of them.
"They called you" he said.

She shrugged her shoulders and breathed in the warm, leathery scent
that clung to his jacket--his scent. "The teachers didn't recognize
you. They saw someone watching Billy, and got a little nervous."

"That's good," he said. "They should be watching out for anyone who
stands here in the cold, staring at these kids."

She nodded and closed her eyes, trying not to think that a mere ten
hours ago she'd been in bed with him.

"I just needed to see him, Carolyn. That's all."

"It's all right," she replied, wishing she could sink down inside his
jacket--it was still warm from his body--and hide from all her problems
for a little while. "I under stand that, but ... you're not going to
tell him, are you? Not now, not right here?"

He looked absolutely murderous for a moment. leaning heavily into the
fence, laying his forehead on the top of it and staring down at the
ground, he let out a soft string of expletives. She flinched at the
thinly Veiled anger evident in the words.

Turning her back to him, she stared across the playground to the spot
in the corner where Billy was laughing and chasing a ball, his legs
getting tangled up in another boy's, sending them both to the ground.
They rolled over and came up laughing, still trying to beat each other
to the ball.

"He's happy," she said. "I know you're hurt and you'~

angry, but look at him. He's happy. And he's had a good life, Drew. I
know you want to be a part of his life now,.

and God knows, I do, too. I've always wanted to be more i to him than
just his sister, but I don't see how to make that. ,

happen. I don't want to hurt him? "

"Neither do I," he said.

She closed her eyes and thanked God for that. '~

Then he added, "But I can't just walk away." ~

"Oh," she said, then felt compelled, in the name honesty at last, to
say, "You know, if you tried, you he able to win custody away from my
mother."

He shot her a purely incredulous look to cut off the very air she
breathed.

"What?" he asked.

She was actually relic wed to reaY~. e that he ready been thinking
along those lines, even if brought up the idea. It would tually, and
she didn't want to wait that long would react to it. So she forced
herself to go on. '~

"You have legal rights that you've never signed away, and more and more
the courts are recognizing the rights of birth fathers in adoption
cases. If you wanted to take him, legally, you might be able to, but
I'd beg you not totay to do that. The legal battle could go on for
years, and you know it would only upset Billy"

"Carolyn?" He took her by the arms and turned her to face him. "What
in hell are you talking about?"

"The courts?" She shook her head, not sure what he was getting at.
"Your rights, legally."

"Carolyn." It was a warning, and she heeded it.

The bottom line was so simple for her, and that was what he was asking
for here. "Don't take him away from us. Please don't do that."

"Aw, dammit..." he said, turning away again and letting her go. He
walked five steps in the other direction, nervous energy radiating from
him.

"I don't know how my mother would handle it," she called after him. "I
don't know how I'd handle it, and Billy... Think about what it would do
to Billy."

"What do you think I am?" he yelled back. "Some kind of monster?"

"No." Anything but that, in fact;-she acknowledged to herself. She'd
seen. the edge to him when they were teenagers, that attitude he'd
adopted ~because he was sick of being compared to his drunken father
and sick of knowing that the whole town didn't expect any more from him
than to follow in his old man's footstepa. And, yes, he might have
looked a little dangerous, a bit of a rebel. But that wasn't who he
was.

The real man was--always had been--incredibly 'gentle. He was
intelligent, hardworking, determined, and she'd depended on him so much
back then--maybe too much. She'd thought after Annie died that he
could somehow make everything better for her again, and he couldn't. No
one could have.

"I'm sorry, Drew," she said. It was too little, too late. "I'm... I'm
just so scared. I don't know what's going to happen next, and I'm
worried about Billy and about you and my mother and... Annie. I don't
know that I really want to know anymore what really happened to her. I
think it's just going to cause us all a lot of pain."

"Are you asking me to drop this case?" he asked. "No."

"Because I can't."

Their conversation all ran together, and it took a minute for him to
realize that she wasn't asking him to do that.

"The man's still out there," he said. "He grabbed Sara Parker five
days ago, and if we don't catch him, he'll grab someone else's little
girl."

"I know that." "So I can't stop." "I know."

"And whatever's between us is just going to have to take a back seat to
this case, at least for now. I don't have any answers for you, anyway.
I don't know what to do about Billy. I don't have any idea."

She believed he was telling her the truth. He hadn't had time to get
used to the idea, much less figure out what he was going to d~yabout
it.

In the distant, a bell rang out, and she flinched at the unexpected
sound. The kids on the playground grumbled as their teachers started
getting them lined up to go inside.

Billy and his friend got in line, pushing each other good-nature ally
He had a big smile on his face, which brought tears to Carolyn's eyes
as she watched him go inside and bade him a silent goodbye.

This goodbye reminded her of all the others. Some. times it seemed as
if she'd spent her whole life either saying goodbye to him or trying to
push him over into some small, carefully regimented corner of her
heart, where she could love him and miss him and at the same time
maintain some control over those feelings. She couldn't let loose and
love him in the all-consuming, lavishly encompassing way she would have
liked. She couldn't throw open her arms and latch on to him, because
she'd never be able to let go.

"Carolyn?" Drew said her name softly. He was closer to her than she'd
realized. She looked up and found herself nearly nose to nose with
him. The wind cut through his hair, and his long, dark lashes came
down, keeping her from seeing anything she might have been able to read
in his eyes.

But in the next instant, his gloved hands were on her face, the leather
cool and supple against her skin until he pulled off one glove and
wiped the back of his thumb across her cheek. She blinked back the
next tear before it had a chance to fall, but before he could pull away
from her, she caught his hand and held it against her face.

"Last night..." She had to rush ahead before she lost her nerve. "Last
night you said-you still loved me."

He looked bleak. She thought he might kiss her, but then he seemed to
change his mind. Pulling his hand from beneath hers, he backed
slightly away.

"But I didn't say it made a difference about anything," he said
bitterly. "Tell me what, if anything, changes he-cause of that."

"I don't..." she began, then faltered. What could she say? That it
mattered to her? That a few men had claimed to love her over the
years, but she either hadn't believed them or hadn't felt as if they
were capable of loving anyone? That none of them had come close to
mattering as much to her as Drew did, that no one ever would?

She was sure of that now. No one's love would ever mean as much to her
as his did.

"Drew?" She put her hand on his arm, but he shrugged it off and held
up a hand to keep her from coming any closer.

"Dammit, Carolyn, why do you think I'm so mad? Loving you just doesn't
change anything."

She was quiet for a moment, and when she looked up, she saw that he'd
put on his glove and pulled out his car keys. Obviously, he was ready
to leave.

"Wait," she Said. "With all this, I forgot to tell you. Brian Wilson
called me this morning. You remember, he's the computer expert I was
telling you about. He went digging through ten years' worth of
unsolved child-abduction cases, and he found three that he thought
might be connected to Annie's and Sara Parker's disappearances."

That stopped him faster than anything else she could have said. "This
guy did what?"

"He found three other cases." "When?" Drew said.

"I called him yesterday morningi~He's been working on it all day and
all night. Why? What's wrong?"

Drew shook his head. ~ "I drove to the FBI office in Danville this
morning to get on a secured line. I asked one of our data specialists
to look through what we pulled from the computer banks when Sara Parker
was kidnapped. He's searching for the same kind of information. I
just don't understand how your friend could have accessed these
resources so quickly.y

"We have our owns data banks, and we're linked to information
clearinghouses maintained by each state."

"And what did this guy find out?"

"Three cases of missing girls, starting S'LX years ago. One was near
Louisville, one in Cincinnati and one near Fort Wayne."

He thought about the information for a minute, she could see the
possibilities churning in his mind. "Picture that in your mind," he
told her. Louisville, Cincinnati,

,auy ~yter ~ayes ~ov

Fort Wayne, and where Sara was taken from, outside Chicago. "

"What?" 'she said.

"Come here and look at this."

He started walking toward his car--a dark brown sedan, no doubt
something the government furnished him with. He opened the door and
pulled an oversize book from the passenger side, a road atlas. He
flipped it open to a map of the whole country, then, with a pen he'd
taken from his pocket, made some dots on the cities they'd been talking
about. He held up the marked map for her to see.

"It makes half of a circle," he said. "And look what's in the center
of that circle. Or at least near the center. Hope, Illinois."

Carollm went cold all over, and it had nothing to do with the
temperature outside. She felt her stomach flip-flop inside her, and
she thought for a moment she might be sick. She knew what was
coming.

"He's right here, Carolyn. Or somewhere close by. He's been here the
whole time, and we're going to find him,"

 
 

 

عرض البوم صور nargis  
قديم 16-09-07, 03:32 PM   المشاركة رقم: 15
المعلومات
الكاتب:
اللقب:
ليلاس متالق


البيانات
التسجيل: Jun 2006
العضوية: 6878
المشاركات: 209
الجنس أنثى
معدل التقييم: nargis عضو بحاجه الى تحسين وضعه
نقاط التقييم: 16

االدولة
البلدSweden
 
مدونتي

 

الإتصالات
الحالة:
nargis غير متواجد حالياً
وسائل الإتصال:

كاتب الموضوع : nargis المنتدى : الارشيف
افتراضي

 

Chapter 12

Carolyn didn't want to believe it, but the logic in it told her it was
true. ~The man was probably right here--if not in Hope, at least
within twenty or thirty miles of town.

It was so clear, once Drew plotted it on the map. Child molesters
didn't just snatch one kid. That wasn't enough for them. In fact, as
grim and as difficult as it was to believe, child molesters on average
had more than a hundred v)etims before they were ever caught. So
whoever had taken Annie had probably taken other children, as well.

Drew showed Carolyn the pattern, not only the [محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف]s where the
children were taken, but the timing of the disappearances. Annie's ten
years ago. Another six years ago, then one three years ago, then one a
year and a half ago. Now Sara Parker. Either the man was getting more
confident of his ability to get away with it, or whatever urges drove
him on were getting stronger, because he was waiting less and less time
between abductions. And that fit with what they knew about the kind of
person who grabbed little kids off the streets. They grew more
desperate as time went on and had less and less control over. their
urges.

She and Drew-walked around downtown until they found a fax machine they
could use, then called her friend Brian at Hope House and had him fax
the most pertinent information on the other missing girls, so that Drew
could have it right away.

He called the FBI office in Chicago and had ~omeone there pick up the
information from Brian and crosscheck it with the FBI's own files. As
big and as powerful as the FBI was, it was woefully behind in its
efforts in computefization, and that was one place where Carolyn's
organization could help.

As she and Drew sat in the back corner booth at the local coffee shop,
scanning the records, he pointed out to her one other reason he
believed the man who took Annie was nearby. The man had been careful.
Before Sara Parker's disappearance, he'd snatched children from three
different states--Illinois, Kentucky and Ohio--but still from within a
relatively small area.

Drew thought he'd done that so that he didn't have to travel any
farther than necessary with the children, because he was coming from
somewhere nearby, either in-Indiana or in Illinois. He'd wanted to
cross state lines because, with children missing-from four different
states, it meant that initially four different state law-enforcement
agencies, plus local sheriff's or city police departments, were looking
for him.

Criminals were smart. enough ~to know how piecemeal crime-fighting
efforts could be. They knew, for instance, that they could use the
same method of Operation for a crime in one town, then the same one in
three or four other towns or counties around it. Most likely, it would
be a while before four separate law-enforcement agencies caught on to
the fact that they were chasing the same~ crook.

"I can't believe he's been somewhere around here the whole time," she
said. "What do we do now?"

Drew put down his cup of coffee. "We go over every bit of paperwork we
can find on the cases, interview the people involved all over again,
then try to find something that links these five kids together. Find
out what they could have in common that would have brought this man
into their lives. Then we find the bastard."

And then what? she wanted to add. What happens once you do find him?
But she wasn't sure she was up to hearing the answer.

"I need to go," he said. "We've still got people wandering around in
the woods near the place where Sara Parker was found, and one of them
is my boss. I need to check in with him and tell him what we've
found."

He stood up, but she didn't. "I think I'll have another cup of coffee,
and then I have to check in with my aunt and make sure my mother's all
right."

"She, s home from the hospital," he stated. Carolyn nodded. "Since
yesterday afternoon."

"She knows I'm here about Annie?" "And that you know about Billy."

He drummed his fingers on the edge of the table. "I don't know what
you can tell her."

She didn't even look at him then. She couldn't. Not two days ago,
he'd been telling her how much he'd missed her, how he wished he'd
never left her. Last night . he thought last night was nothing but a
mig take that loving her didn't change anything. So she didn't even
look at him now. She couldn't.

"Carolyn," he said. "I know your mother's worried, and she's probably
looking for some kind of answers. But I'm looking for them, too, and I
haven't come up with any yet. So she'll just have to wait."

"The doctors..." Carolyn began. "They're worried about her emotional
state right now." 173

"And what about Billy? Grace is mothering our son, too. And as far as
he's concerned, his father died six months ago, and she's all he's got
left. Have you thought about that?"

"How do you think that makes him feel?" Drew asked. "I saw him after
Grace collapsed, and he was scared to death. He thought he was going
to lose her, and he didn't think he'd have anyone else to take care of
him if that happened."

"I talked with him. I told him he'd have me, and he understands."

"But he doesn't knorr he'd still have his real mother and father. Maybe
he needs to know~ Have you ever thought about it that way?"

"Yes, I have." She tried to keep her voice down, but it was difficult.
She knew very well what he was getting at. "I've thought about it a
lot since my father died, and even more so since my mother was taken to
the hospital. But what can I do? Billy thinks she's him mother, and
I've trained myself to think of her that way, too. I can't just ask
her to give him back to me."

Drew kept silent.

"Please sit down, Drew. Just for a minute." Even though they'd been
quiet, they were attracting more attention than she'd have liked. And
she had to make him understand this one point, at least.

He had his back to the rest of the place, but now he turned and looked
around. P~people quickly turned away, but it was clear that they had
been the center of attention. Carolyn felt her checks burn at the
idea. Soon the whole town would know that she and Drew had been
arguing over coffee this morning.

"Let's get out of here," he offered.

Carolyn thought it a much better suggestion than hers. She grabbed her
purse while he threw a dollar on the table for the waitress, then
hurried to the door, trying not to meet anyone's eyes as they left.

On the street, she didn't know where to turn. She couldn't take him to
her mother's house, because there was no telling what Grace would say
to him. And she wasn't going back to his room at the
bed-and-breakfast, not after last night.

"In the car," he said, a hand on her back guiding her to it. He opened
the passenger door and urged her inside. He moved to the other side
and got in, as well. Carolyn could almost feel Drew's warmth as he sat
beside her.

This was impossible. And, unfortunately for her, this was what her
life had become--one impossible situation after another.

They drove for almost fifteen minutes, ending up at one of their old
hideouts, a deserted country road that came to a dead end at the
river.

"Sorry," he said. "I didn't know where else to go." She couldn't have
begun to count the number of times they'd either sat near the shore or
sat here in a car, watching the water rushing by. Sometimes, she would
wish they could just jump in and let the current take them
some-where--anywhere except thi. ~ impossible town, where they~
wouldn't have to face her parents' disapproval of Drew, where no one
knew his father was a bad-tempered drunk or judged Drew based solely on
that fact.

"Okay." He put the car in park and pulled the emergency brake. on,
but left the motor running. It was getting colder by the minute. "Tell
me whatever you think you have to tell me about your mother and our
son."

"He's not ours anymore." She figured that was as good a place to start
as any. She could have come at it from a much less confrontational
position, but they would have ended up at this point sooner or later,
anyway. And he'd given her the perfect opening.

"All right," he said. "If you want to look at it that way, he never
was our son."

She chose to ignore that and focus on what she had to say. "I mean, my
mother's raised him from the time he came home from the hospital, when
he was three days old, and I can't just go to her and tell her I want
Billy back, like he was some piece of property that belonged to me.
He's a little boy, and he loves her. She's the only mother he's ever
known."

Drew tensed beside her. She could tell that he was working hard not to
let this turn into a full-blown argument.

"Believe me," he said, "I understand that all too well. But you can't
ask me to walk away and never see him again, never even know where he
is or what he's doing or how he looks. You can't ask me to do that."

So there they were at another standoff. Carolyn wondered what she
could do to make this situation better without hurting anyone. And it
was clear that she couldn't. Either way, someone was going to be
hurt.

She wanted out of the car, away from Drew,just for a moment. She was
getting ready to go when his hand touched her arm, just enough to get
her attention, then withdrew. Carolyn looked up into his face, saw his
guished expression, saw what could only be tears in his beautiful brown
eyes.

"How could you give him up?" he asked.

In an instant, she was shaking. Tears filled her own eyes, and she had
to hold her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out,

He hadn't asked in anger, hadn't accused her of anything. Maybe she
could have handled either of those easier than his calmly voiced
question.

"Make me understand that," he said huskily. "Because I need to
understand. How in the world could you give him up?"

She swallowed hard and took her hand away. Somewhere deep inside, the
door she'd forced shut years ago, the one that protected the most
vulnerable part of her, was opening again. The pain she'd stored there
was as fresh and as strong as it had been that day she first held Billy
in her arms, the day she said her goodbyes to him and handed him over
to her mother. She'd known she could never go back on that decision,
that once it was made, she couldn't second-guess herself or try to.
change the situation.

She'd held that pain inside all these years, only to have him ask her
to unleash it again. True, she owed him that much. But still, the
pain was staggering.

Where could She start? How could she explain? How would he
understand, when she couldn't herself?

"I ... I knew you weren't coming back. I knew how much you wanted to
get out of this town, and I didn't think I'd'

ever see you again. "

She risked one quick glance at his face. He'd lowered his eyes,
shielding them from view, and she decided to do the same. It was
easier not to look at him and see how much this hurt him, as well.

"I didn't even suspect I was pregnant for a long time, because... we
were careful." She'd been on the Pill since right after their first
time together. "But after Annie died, everything got crazy. I was so
torn up. I had trouble keeping anything in my stomach for a few weeks,
and I didn't even realize that if the food was coming back up, the
pills were, too. And I didn't think..

"You couldn't stand to have me touch you anymore," he finished for
her.

"No, Drew, it was never that."

"It was that last time, wasn't it? Right before I left. I thought ...
I thought then we had a chance. We finally got to be together again,
and then afterward... I don't know, Carolyn. What happened
afterward?"

She'd just fallen apart. She? d cried until she thought she'd never
he able to stop. She'd felt guilty about evep. bit of pleasure she'd
found with him when her sister was out there somewhere, God-knew-what
happening to her, The guilt had just been too much.

"I thought about Annie," she told him. "I thought that if I hadn't
wanted so much to be with you that day, then Annie wouldn't have
disappeared. I thought it was my fault, and that made it even worse,
making love with you, when she was gone.

"I know it's not logical," she rushed from "But that's how I felt. I
thought I deserved to lose you. That I had no right to be happy with
you, when that's what made us lose Annie. In a way, I thought I
deserved to lose you, and to lose Billy, too."

"Aw, Carolyn..." he said.

"I did," she admitted. "And I was so scared to keep him. I thought
that if I ever loved him, the way I'd loved Annie, and then lost him...
How would I have handled that? I was scared to love him, Drew. I cut.
myself off from him and my whole family, went to school at
Northwest-era, and tried to pretend I hadn't left anything behind when
I went to Chicago. I tried so hard not to think about him, not to see
him, not to even look at the pictun~s of him that my mother sent.

"But I couldn't do that. I loved him from the very beginning, the
first time I looked into that beautiful little face of his and saw so
much of you there. It was so hard to look at him and see you and think
about how much we'd lost."

She stopped for a minute to stare out the window at the water rushing
by, and to think through the barrage of emotions this had set loose
inside-her. She wanted Drew to understand.

"I wanted him so badly," she said. "But at the same time, I was
frightened of the responsibility. Someone had to keep him safe and
happy, and I didn't think I could do that. After all, look what
happened to Annie.

"But I couldn't let him totally go, either. I thought about adoption
with some couple I'd never seen and would never know, but I couldn't
bring myself to do that. It would have been too much like losing

"And then my mother started talking about having a baby in the house
again. She was scared, too, but ... it sort of brought her ba~k to
life again. She had a reason to go on, and she wanted him so badly.

"It seemed like the perfect solution for all of us. I'd still get to
see him. I could watch him grow up, and I'd always know that he was
all right. And he's been happy here, Drew. My parents have done more
to provide a good home for him than I ever could have."

She waited for some reaction from him, but he said nothing. There was
nothing left to do to explain away what she'd done, except. "Drew, I
was seventeen years old, and I did the best thing I knew to do. You
have to understand that."

He didn't say anything, and she was scared to even look at him, so she
just kept talking. "I knew almost right away that I'd made a mistake
in giving him up."

"Then why did you go through with it?" he asked.

"I knew it was a mistake for me--not for him. I think he had as much
love and as much joy and security as a little boy could have. And I
had to think about what was best for him, not what I wanted for
myself."

"But it's different now," he said. "Your father's gone. Your
mother... Can you imagine what it will do to her if we find Annie's
body? Have you thought about that? And if anything happens to her,
Billy's whole world falls apart. What about that?"

"I don't know. I don't have any answers. If I did, I would have told
you. I'm worried. I have been ever since my father died. And I've
tried to talk to my mother about it, but she won't listen. All we've
done is argue about Billy. It got so bad a couple of months ago that
she asked me to stay away until I got over this."

Of course, she hadn't gotten over the need to be with her son, any more
than Drew ever would.

And now he'd always blame her, or at least resent her, for what had
happened. She could see that all too clearly.

That was the reason his loving her didn't solve anything. All it did
was make this situation more difficult for both of them.

"I guess it is hopeless, after all," she said.

He didn't argue with her. They sat there in the car, watching the
water roll by, and they didn't say anything. Finally, he backed up the
car and headed for town.

Drew stood by the window of his room at the bed-and-breakfast watching
the small downtown area empty of people as they left their jobs and
made their way home. It was shortly after five o'clock and this late
in the fall, the sky was starting to get dark earlier. Already the
light was half-gone.

He turned away from the window for a moment, his eyes falling
carelessly across the loom, stumbling over the sight of the bed.

He didn't see how he could spend another night in this room, in that
bed, in the same town with Carolyn, and yet not with her. He couldn't
help but smile at the irony of how he'd wanted to leave his impression
on her the night before, to reach down to her soul and mark her forever
as his. Yet he'd done just the opposite. He'd forever imprinted the
feel and the taste and the smell of her on his brain.

He'd taken the ten-year-old memories of a teenage boy, ones he'd tried
so hard over the years to dismiss as adolescent fantasies that couldn't
possibly have been as good as he remembered, and replaced them with the
all-too-clear experiences of a man. The man who'd been obsessed with
his recollections of a teenage girl for a decade now knew her as a
woman, a beautiful, vulnerable, sensual woman.

She had branded him for life. He didn't have a chance in hell of
forgetting her now. And he didn't see how he could ever have her.

If anything, the situation was getting worse. He saw nothing but the
hopelessness of it now. They were going to clash over Billy sometime
in the very near future, maybe forever. He didn't see how they could
ever resolve the situation without ruining any chance they had of
happiness.

Because he would not walk away from his son, and that was what she
wanted him to do. He was sure that was what her mother wanted him to
do, and he could see Carolyn caught in the middle. If her mother
wanted to, she could poison Billy's mind against the two of them. Drew
wasn't sure the woman was vindictive enough to do that, but it was
possible.

After all, she was the person Billy knew and trusted above all others.
If he asked Carolyn to take his side against her mother, "he he asking
her to risk losing what contact she had now with Billy. She'd never do
that.

He could fight, in court, if he chose. He probably had some sort of
legal tight to the boy, but he wanted more than a piece of paper and
some court-ordered visitation. " He wanted Billy to know him and trust
him, to depend upon him. He wanted his son.

No court could give him that, and he would never put Billy through the
fight.

So they were at an impasse, He had no idea what to do. And he missed
Carolyn already.

As always when he couldn't do anything else, Drew worked. It steadied
him. It challenged him. It gave him an outlet for his energy, and
something to occupy his mind.

He started searching through the faxed [محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف]s he'd received from
Hope House and read summa ties on the three missing girls.

It was possible, he decided, that these might be linked to Sara
Parker's kidnapping--and to Annie's. He would have to wait until
tomorrow to review all the [محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف]s, but it did seem possible.

He had to find a common link. What had connected the five little
girls? If they'd all been taken by the same man, how had he come
across them?

What could these five little girls have had in common? His ruminations
were interrupted by the ringing of the phone. He grabbed the receiver,
his mind still looking for a connection between the girls, and answered
absently, "Drew Delaney."

"Mr. Delaney?" a woman's voice asked tentatively. "This is Jill
Parker... Sara's mother?"

"Yes," he said. The poor woman still sounded [محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف]lshocked at all that
had happened to her and her child.

"You said to call... if Sara remembered anything... or if anything out
of the ordinary happened."

"Well, I wasn't sure if I should bother you. I mean, I'm not sure if
it's important or not, but... Sara was just so upset today."

"It's no bother at all, Mrs. Parker," he said, his instincts telling
him something significant had occurred. Maybe he was about to get a
break for a change. "What happened to upset her?"

"She went back to school today. We weren't sure if she should go so
soon, but the psyehiattist told us to try to make things as normal as
possible for her. And it was class-picture day. We didn't want her'
to miss getting her picture taken with her classmates."

"Go on," Drew urged, the adrenaline starting to rush through his
veins.

'

"She, uh... I don't know how else to put it--she just fell apart. Her
class got in front of the camera, and the flash went off, and she just
started screaming."

"Why?" he asked. "Did someone say something to her? Did she see
someone she recognized?"

"I'm not sure. I stayed with her at school the first thirty minutes or
so, and when she seemed fine, I left. So I wasn't there when it
happened, and it took us forever to get her calmed down enough for 'her
to talk about it."

"What did her teacher say? She was fine until the flash went off? Or
was she edgy before that?"

"I'm not sure," Mrs. Parker replied. "Think about it. It's
important."

He thought back himself to when he'd arrived in Pritchard, Indiana.
When he first saw Sara Parker, she'd been agitated, nervous,
frightened, but quiet and composed. He'd thought at first it was
shock, but after spending a couple of hours with her, trying to
question her and waiting for her parents to arrive, he'd seen how much
control the little girl had. She was one tough kid.

If she'd ended up screaming her head off at school, there was a
reason.

And he would find the reason, because it could lead him to Sara's
kidnapper--and Annie's.

"Think, Mrs. Parker. The man is still out there where, and we have to
find him. Was she all right classroom this morning, after you left?"

"Yes. Her teacher said she was a little quiet,

wise fine. "

"Why'don't you give me the teacher's name?"

"And her phone number, if you have it."

"Of course, if you think it's important."

"I -definitely think it's important. How's

"She didn't move from my side all afternoon. asleep on the couch
beside me right now."

Mrs. Parker gave him the teacher's name and number, and Drew assured
her that she'd done the right thing by calling him. He told her that
someone from the Bureau, and probably the psychiatrist who'd spoken
with Sara before, would be returning to talk to her regarding the
incident at school.

Impatient, he made a series of calls to make sure that happened, then
got Sara's teacher on the phone. Someone else would most likely cover
the same ground with her tomorrow, but he wasn't willing to wait that
long. The woman was still shaken from what had happened that morning
with Sara.

"Think carefully," he told her. "When did Sara start to get upset?"

"She screamed when the flash went off."

"And before that?"

"Well ... now that you mention it, she wasn't sure if she wanted to
have her picture taken'. When she saw the camera, she held back a
little, then came and stood by me. I told her she could be beside me
in the picture, and that seemed to help. But when the photographer
turned up the lights, that scared her, too. And then after that, when
the flash went off, ghe was absolutely hysterical."

Drew took a moment to digest this information. He'd taken Sara's
picture himself with an old Polaroid, right after he got to her that
day. She'd definitely been upset when he photographed her, but he'd
thought it was simpler a delayed reaction, considering all she'd been
through.

~And now she'd done the same thing when someone else took her
picture.

"Did she shy away from the photographer?" he asked. "I don't know. I
don't believe she got that close to him. It was a group picture, and
there are twenty-two children in the class."

"Who was the photographer?"

"I don't know his name. It was one of those school photography
companies. They come to school every year in the fall."

"Sara was at your school last year?"

Yes, she said.

"The same man came this year who took your school pictures last
year?"

"I'm not sure, but it was the same company. It has some cutesy name,
with a phonetic spelling. It's probably on the back of my copy of last
year's class picture."

"Could you g~t it for me?" he asked. "Of course. Just a minute."

It couldn't be that simple, he thought. A photographer would be in
constant contact with children, and if he worked for a company that
kept him on the

~. g groups of schoolchildren g road, shootk~ds each year. , -~ u oe
arouna thousands of Of course, if the man had just Snatched Sara Parker
last week, he'd be a feel to come to her school today and take her
picture again. Not that some criminals weren't fools, Drew reminded
himself. But this didn't sound right to hhn--the guy coming back so
SOon. He would have known Sara went to school there. The odds were
overwhelmingly against the man having picked her at random off the
street. More than likely, he'd followed her, stalked her, before he
grabbed her.

Still, his instincts told him this was important, that this was what
would lead him to Sara Parker's kidnapper, and to Annie's. "Mr.
Delaney," the teacher said. "I have last year's photo right here. It
was taken by a company called School

"Is there an address?" "Chicago, Illinois. That's all."

He thanked the woman, assured her that she had kn very helpful' and
mad~ rash promises that he would d~ nitely find the man who'd taken
little Sara Parker. Then was dang Chicago ~l. nfo ,r~natl o. n. They
had hundreds agents in the city, and the she too nave sent one of them
this company in vet son but he couldn't wait that l1ong. Besides, it
was near/Y sLx, and there was no way he x going to wait until the place
opened for business again morrow.

He was ready to bar~g his head against the wall when got an answering
machine telling him School P/x had deed already closed.

Drew sat down and thought about what he'd learned didn't seem rational
that the same man would abduc little girl one week and show up at her
school the next photograph her. Besides, if he'd been there to take i
picture, where had he come into contact with her here: When he'd taken
pictures the year before? Drew s~ posed it was possible.

On the other ha~d, what if it wasn't that part icu photographer who'd
frightened Sara today? Her teac] said she'd freaked afWr the flashbulb
went off, and tl she'd seemed edgy from~ the time the class got to the
re with the camera and the fights.

What if Sara had been upset not by that man in par, ular, but rather by
the fact that he was a photographer'

Or simply becaus~ 1'~ wanted to take her picture? Ai
all~e'dgottenups~t when Drew took her picture, tother explanatio~ had
possibilities. If the kidnapj just happened to b~ someone who got off
by taking ~ pictures of little kids /~c snatched from the streets, D~
had a long way to go. But if his man was a professio photographer, one
who happened to take pictures thousands of kids ave. ar when he
v/sited their schools, Drew was on to something He had a real lead, a
fighting chance. Maybe his promise about finding Sara Parker's
kidnapper hadn't been so rash, after all.

He started pacing the room then. At one point, he happened to glance
out the window and across the street, to the school Billy attended, the
same one Annie had gone to. Right next door to it was the junior high
she'd attended. He wondered who'd taken her picture when she was
there.

Drew was out the door in seconds. It was almost six, probably too late
to get into the building, but there were still a few cars in the
school's parking lot.

He found one of the doors at the junior high's main entrance still
open, followed the signs directing him to the office. Luck was with
him. A woman was still inside.

Drew introduced himself, and discovered she was the principal. He told
her he was with the Bureau and showed her his credentials.

"I just need a moment of your time," he promised her when she informed
him she was just about to leave. "Someone comes into the school every
year to photograph the children?"

"Yes," she said. She was a matronly-looking woman in her fifties with
salt and-pepper hair.

~"What's the name of the company?" he asked, having trouble getting
out the words. This case meant too much to him, and he shouldn't be
working on it. An agent needed a. clear head to do his job, and this
kind of emotional attachment only interfered with that. No way should
he he working this one. No way was he going to let it go.

"Off the top of my head, I'm not sure," the woman said. "I could check
for you."

"School Pix?" he asked. "Does that sound familiar?" "Oh, yes," she
replied. "We've used them for years:" It might not mean anything, he
told himself. If the company did indeed do bus' mess all over the
Midwest, then it wouldn't be all that surprising to find that all the
little girls on his list had had their picture taken by that same
company at one time or another. Still, it was the only link he had so
far.

"Is there anything else I can do for you?" the woman said.

"I'm sorry." He'd been lost in thought. "Do you know how long you've
done business with that company? Would they have been coming here ten
or eleven years ago?"

"Maybe," the woman said. "I've only been the principal here for six,
and I think we've been using them the whole time I've been here. I
could have someone check for you, in the morning. Honestly, I wouldn't
know where to begin to look up that information."

He was disappointed for a moment. Then he remembered. There was a
much simpler way for him to check this out, and an agent always had to
remember to take the simplest, 'quickest path to the information he
needed.

He remembered sitting in Carolyn's childhood home, with those pictures
of their son on the walls--and next to them, what he'd bet were school
~pictures' of Annie
.

 
 

 

عرض البوم صور nargis  
 

مواقع النشر (المفضلة)
facebook



جديد مواضيع قسم الارشيف
أدوات الموضوع
انواع عرض الموضوع

تعليمات المشاركة
لا تستطيع إضافة مواضيع جديدة
لا تستطيع الرد على المواضيع
لا تستطيع إرفاق ملفات
لا تستطيع تعديل مشاركاتك

BB code is متاحة
كود [IMG] متاحة
كود HTML معطلة
Trackbacks are متاحة
Pingbacks are متاحة
Refbacks are متاحة



الساعة الآن 04:44 PM.


 



Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
SEO by vBSEO 3.3.0 ©2009, Crawlability, Inc.
شبكة ليلاس الثقافية