“But you haven’t found him.” Theresa gestured toward the flyers nodding from the top of my bag. “Who’s that, then?”
“Further complications. I thought I saw this kid here. He’s missing from—from where I’ve been living.” I handed her one of the copies, trying to drag the woman and child from my memory again. Was I sure? “I mean—I think I saw him. It’s possible I’m losing my mind. They need to put me in the nuthouse. Is Riverdale still open for business?” Riverdale Center was a childhood taunt, the place where the crazies got sent. As an adult I understood it was a home for the elderly and fragile, not a psych ward at all.
Theresa looked like she wanted to say something but turned to the flyer instead. She studied it for a long time.
The girl who’d welcomed me stood outside the propped-open front doors, clicking through racks of clearance T-shirts. At this distance and angle, I saw that the girl must be Theresa’s daughter. I supposed I didn’t deserve to hear about her.
“I can’t be sure,” Theresa said.
An electric thrill shot up my spine. “You’ve seen him?”
“Well, I don’t know. There was a woman with a little boy in here—yesterday, I guess. She was looking for a job, but we don’t have anything. I wish I’d had her do an application.”
“She’s younger than us, brown hair, ponytail? If this was yesterday, she was wearing a . . . like a sleeveless black T-shirt and jeans. Not a job interview outfit.”
“That’s the one,” Theresa said. “I thought she might be looking for a place to rob. That was the vibe.”
“They passed me on the street. I was so caught up in my own thing.”
Theresa gave me an appraising look. “No wonder,” she said.
But it hadn’t been about Joshua at the moment the woman and Aidan had swept past me. I’d been locked into a dead-eyed gaze with the past and had forgotten the present altogether. I hadn’t been thinking about Joshua at all, and Aidan had looked right at me.
When had I become so self-involved?
The mistake with the murdered executive came back to me. I’d been caught up in my own drama then, too. If something happened to Aidan now, I’d never forgive myself. And Joshua—what was I missing? What had I seen and not paid attention to? I’d spent thirteen years with my head to the ground listening for approaching hoofbeats. Listening so hard for what wouldn’t come that I’d missed everything else. How could I still be down there on my knees, my ear pressed to the dirt, while missing boys walked right past me?
“You didn’t recognize the woman?” I said. “There’s no reason for that woman to come back to the shop?”
“I was pretty straightforward. No job here. No jobs in town, really, since it’s off-season. Doesn’t mean she’s not still in the area, though.” Theresa thought for a moment. “She seemed like she might be from here, but I can’t tell you why I thought so. Maybe she’s got a place nearby.”
Those winding roads, peeling off again and again to encircle the lakes. A hundred lakes, a thousand. The task was too big. A few color copies weren’t going to bring Aidan in. If anything, I might scare the woman away.
I dropped my bag to the ground and ripped it open. At last I found the original news clipping again. Under the large color image of Aidan was the small, grainy photo of his mother. I stood and held it out to Theresa. “What about her?”
“That wasn’t her.”
“But do you recognize this one? That’s his mother.”
She took the paper. “Nope. But you know how many people come here every summer. It was slow, economy and all, but still—maybe she was here this summer with all the rest of the crowds.”
But I knew where this woman had been for several days now, and where she’d been before that. That Indiana hotel receipt she’d signed seemed like it had been in front of me a year ago, not just last week.
Theresa unfolded the newspaper to read the front page. “Indiana, huh?”
I felt my face go red, as though I’d been caught in a lie. I hadn’t told the sheriff about Wisconsin and now I wouldn’t tell Theresa about Indiana. Holding my old life apart from the new, just as I always had. “We lived a couple of places. Before there.”
“How many times did you move?”
“Lost count.”
Theresa wouldn’t look away.
“Eight, ten times, city to city. Six states. Joshua is tired of it.”
I reached for the paper, but she had opened it to an inside page. “What’s this place like? Will you go back?”
“Not sure. No plans until I find—”
“Hey.” Theresa parachuted the newspaper open and folded the pages back. “I think I know this one.”
She turned the paper around, and there he was: Bo Ransey. The story from the front page continued inside, with the photo of Bo in front of his tumbling front porch.
“You’re not kidding, are you?”
“Why would I kid about that redneck? I’m sure I saw him over at The Shaw in Rhinelander once. Remember The Shaw? I don’t drink anymore.” Theresa dipped her head at the paper, so that I had a sense of how much drinking had gone by. Maybe I had been the cause. Another thing to apologize for. “But we still go for burgers sometimes. I wouldn’t remember him,” she said, “except he seemed like such an ass.”
I rushed from thought to thought, but nothing lined up behind what I knew. Nothing made sense. Bo Ransey hadn’t kidnapped his own child. He hadn’t left town. Had he? Had he paid someone to do it? But then how was he still in Parks bothering the sheriff every day?
“Do you remember when you saw him?” I said.
“Sometime this summer.”
“Not in the last two weeks?”
Theresa leaned on a T-shirt rack. “No, it was early this summer. May, maybe April.”
If only I knew what it meant. I’d been given a handful of puzzle pieces, but not enough of them to build the picture.
“So,” she said, handing the newspaper back. “I hate to bring this up, but you know your dad is still kicking, right?”
Ray and Mamie, now Theresa. They were determined to tell me the things I didn’t want to know.
“I’ve been made aware of it,” I said.
“He’s at Riverdale, Lee,” Theresa said. “A couple of years now.”
Riverdale. So this was the news that Ray had wanted me to have. My dad was alive, and he was stowed in the bogeyman place of my childhood, the cuckoo’s nest, a haunted house made real.
“That’s probably fine for him,” I said.
“I know how you feel about him, but—”
“I won’t be going out there,” I said. “How does everyone seem to know about his being alive except me? Never mind.”
“Everyone?”
I sighed, picked up my bag, and faced Theresa over crossed arms. “I stayed with Ray and his wife last night. Please don’t ask how that happened, because I’m still not sure myself.”
“So he told you?” She sounded so surprised, I could tell there was more to hear.
“What? Just—out with it.”
“He didn’t tell you.”
“I think you’ll have to tell me to find out.”