20
AT SEVEN-THIRTY, WHEN Hal came back into the house after dropping Warren off at the airport, the tenuous truce between Ruth and Ellen that had held since Katie disappeared seemed to have come unraveled. His stepmother was sitting on the living room couch, nursing a glass of clear liquid with ice cubes. She did not get up, merely turned her head and nodded.
“Is everything all right?” Hal asked her.
“Not exactly, no.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Your daughter. She can be an exasperating little girl, you know that?”
“She’s lost her mother, Ruth. I can’t blame her if she’s having a hard time. And you shouldn’t, either. Where is she?”
“Last seen in your bedroom. I closed the door. Don’t worry. She’s perfectly safe. She just needed a time-out.”
“I’m going to go see her.”
Ruth lifted her glass. “Please. Help yourself.”
His shoulders sagging under the strain, he went down the hallway and knocked, then opened his bedroom door. “Ellen?” He switched on the lights and saw his daughter wedged into a corner on the floor, holding one of the bed’s pillows against her. “Hey,” he said gently, crossing over to her. “Are you okay? Want to give your dad a hug?”
She shook her head. “Where’s Mommy?”
“We don’t know. We’re looking for her.”
“Grandma isn’t. She wouldn’t tell me where she was.”
“She doesn’t know where she is, sweetie. Nobody knows. That’s the problem.”
“Why didn’t Grandma just tell me that? That she didn’t know. That nobody knows. Why don’t they know? Where did she go?”
Hal slowly lowered himself to sit in front of her. “If you give me your pillow, it’ll make my lap softer.”
She stared him down for a moment, then handed the pillow across and finally crawled into his lap, where she started to cry. “I want Mommy.”
He smoothed her hair and let her lean against him and cry herself out. At last, he asked, “Do you think you want to go to sleep?”
She shook her head. “I want to know where Mommy is.”
He kissed the top of her head. “We all want that. We just have to keep trying to find her.”
“But where? And why would she go away?”
Hal shook his head and rocked her against him, and time stopped while he kept rocking and she settled against him and started to breathe with a deep and easy regularity.
Blessed sleep.
Gradually, he managed to get all the way up without waking her, then carried her into the bedroom she shared with Will. Putting her down in her bed, he covered her and tucked the blankets around her, then leaned down to plant a kiss on her forehead. On the way out, he pulled the door, leaving it a little bit open so that he could hear either of them if they called out or needed him.
It looked as though Ruth hadn’t moved an inch, except now her glass was nearly full. She glanced up at Hal. “She wouldn’t go to sleep for me,” she said.
“She’s worried about where Katie is, Ruth. I don’t think that’s so inappropriate.”
“No, I don’t suppose so. But she was so willful. I told her it was time for bed and we could talk about all this tomorrow, but now she was tired and she needed to be a big girl and do what I told her.”
“She’s not used to you, Ruth, that’s all.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means how can they get to know me if I’m never around?”
“Ruth. Come on. You know you are always welcome. You’ve always been welcome.”
She broke into a chilly smile. “You know that’s not true, Hal. Maybe welcome to you, but Katie wouldn’t let anybody else have any influence on those children. That’s the way she was.”
“ ‘Is.’ Let’s go with ‘is’ until we know something different.”
“I didn’t mean anything by that.”
“I know.” Hal let out a heavy sigh. “I’m going to get a beer. Do you want a refill?”
“No, thanks. I’ve had one.” At his questioning look, she said, “One. Really.”
He went to the refrigerator, opened his beer, returned to the living room, and sat down across from her. “I really appreciate all you’ve done this past week, Ruth. I don’t blame you if it’s getting tiresome. I’ve got the time off if you’re burning out.”
“It’s not tiresome, Hal, and I’m nowhere near burning out. These are my grandchildren, and I’m just so happy I’m finally getting to spend some time with them. Not that I’m happy about the circumstances. Of course they’re heartrending. But then I see the way Katie . . . well, how Ellen got so belligerent so fast when I told her she had to go to sleep. Has she ever not gotten her way? I thought it would do her good to have somebody tell her no.”
Hal pulled at his beer. “I don’t want to talk about Katie’s mothering, Ruth. We didn’t always agree about that, but this isn’t the time, all right? I think she was getting more flexible; at least I hope she was. And I’m sorry we didn’t have you over more often, but we’d stopped seeing many people because a lot of times we weren’t having much fun.”
Ruth waved him off. “That’s all right. I’m a big girl. I just think that maybe I could have helped, and gotten to know my grandchildren a little more in the bargain. But Katie wouldn’t let that happen. You know that’s true.”
“If we find her, that’s going to change. Lots of things are going to change.”
“I hope so,” Ruth said. “That would be very nice.”