Barbara did so; then Wil hung up. Samantha was staring at the calendar on his bulletin board, lost in thought.
“What’s wrong?” he asked gently.
“The concession stand,” Samantha said. “When Julie drew the pictures at my house, she drew the snack bar as it might have looked when I was a child. It was in nearly every picture, along with the yellow house. Why would she be so consistent?”
“Because she’s giving you a clue to where she is,” Wil said. “She may not even be aware of it, but that little girl wants us to find her as much as we do.”
Samantha looked up at him with hope in her expression.
“And we will find her,” she said. “Won’t we?”
Wil smiled, his teeth stark white in a tanned face. “You bet we will.”
40
IT WAS NEARLY an hour before Rachel and Eric arrived at the Oakville train station. The ticket house was a chunky little brick building with a gray roof, its windows hidden behind locked blue shutters. Eric tried the door and found it closed.
“This early?” he asked.
“The sign says the office closes at one P.M. today,” Rachel pointed out. She was despondent. “Eric, we’ve lost him again.”
Eric looked around at the parking lot, where a hundred cars waited for their commuters. Several pieces of newspaper blew across the blacktop, skittling along like birds that had been shot.
“Maybe not,” Eric said. “Come on.”
He thought the newspapers might have been bought right there at the station, and when they rounded the corner of the building he found his guess to be correct. There was a newsstand set up on the opposite side from the ticket window, rows of magazines, papers rimming racks of candy and cigarettes. A elderly man dressed in paint-spattered khaki trousers and a plaid flannel shirt stood trying to latch a wooden board on a hook over his head.
“Closing up?” Eric asked.
“No use staying open,” the man replied.
“Can I help you with that?”
The man glanced quickly at them, then shook his head.
“Been doing it for years,” he said, and he managed to lock the board to its hook. He pushed it into place, then locked his wares behind the board with padlocks placed at each corner.
“We just missed the ticket office being open,” Rachel said.
The man turned to her. There was a half-day’s growth of white razor stubble on his chin, and he rubbed at it.
“You don’t have to pay a penalty on the train,” he said, “if the ticket office’s closed.”
Eric put an arm around Rachel’s shoulder.
“We weren’t looking to buy tickets,” he said. “We’re trying to find someone. Our . . . our son.”
Rachel did a double-take that Eric pretended not to notice. Then she picked up on his story.
“He’s run away from home,” she said. “We’re so worried about him. We were wondering if you might have seen him.”
The man nodded. “Yup, I saw him. Hard to miss a child of color when everyone else on the platform is as white as me.”
Rachel reached toward him to grab his arm, but Eric gently pulled her back.
“Do you know where he went?”
“Can’t say exactly,” the man said. “But he did get on a train to Pearmont. Stops at Verkill, Copiague, Rockling, Westbrook, and Pearmont.”
He rattled them off as if he were a conductor himself.
“How do we get to Pearmont?” Eric asked.
“There’s a schedule posted—”
“We mean by car,” Rachel said.
The man turned and pointed toward the highway.
“Follow it along,” he said. “You’ll see signs. It’ll take you a while, though.”
“Let’s go, Eric,” Rachel said, not wanting to waste time.
Eric thanked the man, and they returned to the car. As he turned on the engine, Rachel rested her head back and closed her eyes. She began to think of Steven.
Lorraine picked up a rock and threw it at the brick wall.
“I’m tired,” she said. “I can’t do this anymore. Nobody’s answering us.”
Steven stood up. “We aren’t strong enough. Not without Marty, anyway. Come on, let’s go for a walk. There isn’t anything else to do until he calls us again.”
“I hate it when he disappears,” Lorraine said.
I’m back again.
Lorraine and Steven looked at each other. Steven answered.
Why did you go away again? Are they hurting you?
Sometimes it hurts. Not always. I think they’re curious about me. They do so many strange things to me. Steven, Lorraine, who were you calling?
This time when the children exchanged glances, there was guilt on their faces. How much had Marty heard?