The orderly pushed the chair down the sidewalk and around the corner of the building. He tapped the chair’s brake with his foot and pulled out a cigarette. The chair faced the river, but there was no recognition by the patient of the fine sun or the orderly’s smoke drifting across her face. No recognition that she was still alive.
I got out of the truck and took a few steps toward the door. When the orderly glanced my way, the brief acknowledgment was all it took. I retreated.
I hadn’t regained safety in the truck yet when I saw a long, sleek car pass by on the main road.
The dark sedan with the rusted doors. Aidan.
The car moved fast, like a black fish rising to the surface and diving. Before I could get my truck moving, the car was gone. I made a bad turn trying to escape the access road and had to turn around, cursing all roads. At last I found the exit to the street and the turn I needed to follow the sedan west.
As I went, I scanned both sides of the road: storefronts, offices, gas stations. Restaurant parking lots and RV dealerships. A curve ahead. If I could just get around the curve and see a distance . . . but each curve provided a view of the next. I sped up, scoping out each turn, each potential hiding spot, as well as I could. I kept moving. I wouldn’t lose Aidan this time.
The doubt returned.
But then around the next curve, there—just a flash of light off the trunk as the car turned into the pines. I glanced all around for a landmark. We were miles and miles from Sweetheart Lake. Why would the woman with Aidan even look for a job in town? I had to remind myself about desperation—the woman had a lot to lose, but perhaps she had lost a lot already.
I rushed to make the same turn as the sedan and was rewarded by a clear view of the car and the road we shared.
I stayed back, gave the car room, my thoughts leaping ahead. As far from town as we were, I knew this road. Ray had liked to drink at a place called Digger’s, a backwoods pub that had been built onto an old house. And there it was, still open or at least it would be in a few hours, as forlorn and dusty as ever. After Digger’s, though, the road was like any other in the area. There would be nothing but turn-offs, narrow gravel roads that splintered into private drives, a boat launch for the lake. Rentals would be standing empty this late in the season, and very few cars would meet us coming the other way. Wherever the woman was staying, I would have to follow and I’d be hard to miss.
And who would emerge from the car when it finally stopped? The woman? Or Bo?
The car took an abrupt turn onto a gravel road, kicking up dust. I slowed further, letting the car get some distance. When I reached the road, there were the white feathered signs pointing into the woods: Reynolds, Carter’s Cozy, Fuerole’s, Hodag’s Hide-a-Way. I couldn’t read them all before my fear of losing the car forced me around the corner—only to find the sedan stopped a few hundred feet ahead, brake lights bright. I hurried into a three-point turnaround, catching a brief glimpse of the woman reaching out her window for the mailbox at the end of a drive. She didn’t seem to notice me at all.
I drove back to Digger’s and sat in the lot for a while, my heart racing. I dug out my phone again. No service. Digger’s was dark, the parking lot empty.
No phone. No houses anywhere in view. The Sweetheart Lake cops had already brushed me off as a nut. I wished for Russ—the Russ who would help me, not the one looking for the easiest way to brush me off, too.
I couldn’t think of what to do but drive back to the road and take that private drive. Pull up the path behind the sedan, cut the engine, and hope that a plan would meet me halfway.
I retraced my route, nothing coming to mind. No houses, no cars. I found myself easing into the drive behind the woman’s car and taking a look at the house. It was as pink as a birthday cupcake with white gingerbread trim like a chalet or someone’s idea of one. The house was old, and was starting to look uncared for. It sat on a wide lot but the woods still came up to the house on two sides. Only the view to the lake had been cleared, but the view surely made up for anything the house lacked. The house turned its open face to the wide, smooth water.
As I got out, the screen door creaked open and the woman I’d seen leaned out.
“Hi,” I said, managing to keep my voice from quaking.
The woman frowned. She clung to the door, half hidden. Where was her other hand? I stopped. Gun, knife, baseball bat.
“There’s a no-trespassing sign back there,” she said.
“I didn’t see one.” It was the truth.
“Oh. Well, there used to be. What do you want?”
“One of the old Northwoods families, huh?”
The woman eyed me. “What do you want, I said.”
“I’m sorry to disturb you.” I tried to keep from looking wildly toward the house’s windows. If Bo was here, it was over. “I—I heard you were, uh. Looking for a job.”
The woman stepped out, letting the door smack behind her. She looked suspicious, but the frown was gone and if she’d had anything in her hand behind the door, she’d dropped it. “How’d you hear that?”
“The owner of the T-shirt shop on Pine. Well, one of them. Never paid any attention to the store name, you see it so often.”
The woman’s scowl returned. She reminded me of a beautiful child who was used to getting her way. “That bitch. She was so—she thinks she’s better than me because she owns a T-shirt store?” She looked me up and down. “What job?”
Something thunked against the door behind her. Inside, a child began to cry.
“Just a sec,” she said. Her sleek brown ponytail swung around as she went to the door and opened it. A chubby little blond boy spilled out of the door onto the step, wailing. Aidan. It was really Aidan. He had a red spot on his forehead. The woman scooped him up and gave him a comforting bounce. “You’re OK now, you’re fine.”
“Child care,” I said. “A babysitter.”
The woman patted Aidan’s back. “I do plenty of that.”
“You have a real skill,” I said. “Yours?”
“How old is your kid?”
“The same age, about. Two?”
The woman bounced Aidan to her hip. “Mikey’s two.”
I watched the woman smooth the boy’s hair away from his forehead and kiss his temple. Michael. The kid really did look like Aidan. And wasn’t Aidan’s middle name Michael? I remembered my hand writing it into my notes, the physical memory of the word leaving my pen. My nerves began to jangle and buzz. “Mine’s a handful. I bet yours is, too.” The woman said nothing. I stepped forward and tutted over Aidan’s forehead. “Poor guy. I’m—Leeanna.”
“Bonnie. How much do you pay?”
The job was a good ruse, but the details were killing me. “I’d want to, you know—make it worth your time.”
Bonnie liked this. “My time is pretty valuable.”
“You spend all your time chasing after your son, I’m sure.”