Jack Peter stopped him. “Wait, get those papers first. I’m not finished yet.” He was already busy drawing again.
Mr. Keenan strode into the room, his face red with anger. Hollering at the boys, he raced to shut the window, and he turned on Jack Peter, demanding to know why he was opening all the windows in the house and didn’t he realize the heat was on. But Jack Peter simply withdrew, tapping the pencil against the table. Nick had seen that gesture many times and knew that his friend was retreating deep into himself and would not be reached. Mr. Keenan kept hollering at them to tell the truth. When Jack Peter finally confessed that there was someone on the beach, his father did not believe him at first. He had to go to the window to see for himself, to press his hands and face against the glass, searching the shoreline for what had spooked his son. “What the hell is that?”
In a blur, he dressed in boots and an old winter coat and was out the door searching for what they thought they had seen. The boys watched as he stumbled across the sand and rocks, looking back once as if to ask them for directions or whether to go on, but it was too late, he was too far gone, and he disappeared into the midday nothing, and they were all alone in the empty house.
iv.
Trying to stem the pain, Holly pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. Behind her a line of customers shifted impatiently in place, and the teenaged clerk at the counter waited for a credit card with indifference. Perhaps it was the fluorescent light or the incessant piped-in music or the hustle and bustle of the determined shoppers, each on their merry mission, unaware of the other people in the world, thank you, at least one of whom had a thwacking headache. She hated the mall, and at the moment she was not too fond of Christmas either.
The Rose Art Gift Set, with its sixty-four-piece assortment of premium-quality drawing components, included twenty-four colored pencils, eight watercolor pencils, oils, pastels, duo-tip markers, sharpener, eraser, and illustrated instructions, along with the sixty-sheet Deluxe Sketchbook, may have been overkill, for her son’s interests were often fleeting. There were scads of toys abandoned in his room, gathering dust on the shelves, archived in his old toy box. He’ll like it, she reassured herself, although she never knew with Jack from day to day what he liked, much less what he loved. If he loved.
Shopping bag in hand, she exited the store and threaded her way through the groups of gawkers wandering the faux boulevards. Knots of bored teenagers aimlessly passing another afternoon. Boys in football jackets, girls with wires twisting from their ears, everyone tapping messages to one another on their smart phones. Young husbands, helpless and clueless, searching for that perfect gift for their wives. Young mothers pushing strollers, their babies ordinary as could be. Children queuing for photographs with an ersatz Santa Claus. Holly lingered awhile before a shop window displaying ridiculously expensive women’s boots and wished she were twenty years old again. What different decisions she would make. Better shoes, not the least of them.
In the plate glass window, the reflection of her son appeared. Dressed in a winter coat and a watch cap, Jack was walking directly behind her, hand in hand with a tall blond woman in a long black coat and black boots with silver clasps. By the time Holly realized who she had seen and turned to find them, they had vanished. Sure that she had seen Jack, if only fleetingly, she looked up and down the long broad corridors. They had simply disappeared, though she was certain that the blonde would stand out in the crowd. Convinced that they must have gone into the bookshop directly opposite, she walked briskly to the entrance, whispering his name to herself.
The front of the bookstore was stuffed with tchotchkes, Tshirts printed with portraits of Shakespeare and Austen and Dickens, bookmarks and book lights, playing cards and lap desks, kitschy souvenirs of Maine. She hurried past the fiction and poetry, searching for the pair of them, her son and his kidnapper, and at last Holly spotted the blond woman in the black coat. Transfixed in the cookbook section, she held in her hand a fat book about cupcakes. Jack was missing from her side.
Holly hesitated, caught by the realization of just how illogical her request would seem. She cleared her throat, and the woman in black faced her with an inquisitive stare. Young, too young, to have a ten-year-old boy. Too innocent to have abducted him.
“So sorry to bother you,” Holly said, “but I saw you passing by in the window across the hall, and I thought…”
The blonde smiled at her, signaling to continue.
“I’m looking for my son,” Holly said. “He’s ten years old. A blue coat and watch cap?”
“Sorry, I haven’t seen any little boys. Is he lost?”