I was leaning toward him, pleading. He was unmoved and silent.
“I can tell you one thing,” I said, turning back to the steering wheel. “You’re not like him.”
I was about to start the truck again when, finally, in a voice as even and unconcerned as though he were asking about math, he said, “How do you know?”
“Because I do,” I said, gripping the wheel with both hands. “I know him and I know you. I’m in a pretty good place to judge. You’re smarter, kinder. You’re already a better man than your dad had a chance of being.”
He let his head fall against the window. “Did you read it in my handwriting?”
“No. I didn’t read it anywhere,” I said. “Haven’t you ever heard of intuition?” I wanted to place a hand on him, but didn’t. “I don’t need to see it in your handwriting. I can just feel it.”
He looked at me, and I knew what he wasn’t saying. I didn’t rely on intuition. Sometimes I didn’t seem to have any.
But then his eyes went wide. I turned my head to find a dark figure outside my window. I threw my elbow on the door’s lock button as a set of knuckles landed on the glass.
I finally recognized the gold buttons of the uniform, and then the sheriff’s hat. I cranked down the window, still shaking.
“Ms. Winger, is everything fine here?” He ducked low to see across the expanse of the front seat.
“We’re just having a little talk, sort of unexpectedly. I—Sheriff, this is my son, Joshua,” I said. “Joshua, this is Sheriff Keller.”
The sheriff leaned across me and put out his hand. “Well, nice to meet you, sir. Your mother thought you were too good a guy for us to meet, but here we are.”
Joshua pumped the offered hand a few times, giving up a smile kept tight and cautious.
“School going OK, then?” the sheriff asked, pulling back outside and leaning on the window with folded arms.
“Yeah, it’s OK. Except math.” Joshua shot me a look. “But I’m on it.”
“Good, good.” Keller nodded. “Ms. Winger, I was just over at the Ransey house to talk with Bo.”
I glanced into the sideview mirror at the vehicle behind ours. A black SUV. Of course.
“Damnedest thing, I thought I saw you out at Sugar Creek Park yesterday after our chat, too. I’m running into you everywhere I go.” I looked away from his self-satisfied grin. “I was just reassuring Bo Ransey how hard we’re working to get Aidan back. I left you out of that. I don’t think he needs to know my methods. But I told him I have all my best people on it.”
The process was tainted, irrevocably. Meeting Bo—even twice, even having a conversation with him—might have been forgiven. But I had broken my own rules by going to the house, and what had I gained? Nothing useful. Seeing the Ransey house had confirmed something for me, given me a moment of relief. Now I saw that I had driven there for that very thing, a sense of superiority.
Joshua scooted in from his side of the seat. “How many people do you have?”
“Ah, son. It’s a small town,” Keller said, smiling. “My best people is just one guy. Me.”
Joshua’s laugh was full and loud.
“And my chief deputy. And your mom, of course. She’s been the consummate professional,” Keller said, giving me a heavy-lidded look. “She’s so good at her job I’d like to have her come back by to help me out with another lead.”
Extortion. None of this would have happened if I’d just minded my own business. “A new lead?”
“Maybe, maybe nothing, but I have to follow every single lead I get, even if it is a far shot in the dark,” he said, turning his head to give a sharp look to a car passing too quickly. The car slowed, an arm poking out the window to wave. “Frank Hart,” the sheriff said, shaking his head, and then turned back to us. “Trying to make my town a better place to live, all the time, so of course I’m going to track down every last bit of a lead. If I can’t spend too much time on the hocus-pocus, it’s because I have a boy to get home before the trail gets cold.”
I rubbed my arms, feeling the evening chill now. There was something in his tone that I remembered—a sudden memory of a knock on the tin-can trailer I’d rented on a patch of nowhere in Tennessee. The state trooper with the apologetic eyes.
I hadn’t thought of that man in a long time. That man. He was the one who’d found me and had to report me alive—but he’d also set me free. You don’t have to sit here, waiting, he’d said. Is there someplace you can go? There hadn’t been, but I had hoped someday there would be.
I turned and studied the sheriff’s face.
“—shoot anybody?” Joshua was asking.
“Joshua.”
“Well, now, we don’t like to do that if we don’t have to,” Keller said.
I said, “So. Your best man is on the case.”
“He certainly is,” Keller said. “I’ve been out to the Ransey place quite a lot in my tenure. I send my chief deputy even more. He’s on Ransey duty most of the time. If Mr. Ransey needs attention, we’ve got it to spare—but he doesn’t get to decide what we pay that attention to. Understand? Now, I don’t want to keep you. Good evening, Ms. Winger, Mr. Winger.”
I sat for a moment after he was gone, finally coming out of the conversation as if from a deep sleep. At last I rolled up the window.
“Mom,” Joshua said. “Did you hear that?”
I wasn’t sure what I had heard and what my mind had filled in. “What? Did I hear what, honey?”
“He called me Mister Winger.” He turned in his seat to watch the sheriff pull away. Keller flipped the siren to let it whoop-whoop at us. I laughed at Joshua’s surprise, relieved by how good it felt to take air deep into my lungs. How long had I been holding my breath?
I leaned over and put a hand on the back of Joshua’s neck, gently. “Well. Why not? I was telling you. That’s who you are.”
Joshua, of course, brushed my hand away.
Chapter Eight
The Dairy Bar parking lot was full, a crowd gathered around the picnic tables. I would have pulled back out again and gone home, except that Joshua seemed interested in dinner out, even a crappy malt. But I couldn’t help thinking that most of the people had come to gawk or compare notes on the Ranseys in what amounted to their own front yard. I made our order at the window—to go, I confirmed twice.
When I turned back from paying, Joshua was walking off toward the tables. “Hey,” I called, but the girl at the window was pulling me back for my change.
“I need quarters,” she yelled over her shoulder.