Drawn Into Darkness(40)
After they had snoozed the afternoon away, they went out for supper at a steak house. Ned encouraged Chad to have a beer, asked him about his job, talked baseball with him, and tried not to show quite how much Chad’s presence meant to him. He knew what he had to do, and he wasn’t looking forward to it.
He waited until they were back in the apartment and had found Chad the stuff he needed in order to spend the night on the sofa. He waited until they sat down again and were talking some more.
He started small. “Is Amy still working at that nursing home?”
“No.” Chad’s tone turned curt, and watching his face, Ned thought of shutters closing over a window. “No, she doesn’t have time for anything except trying to find our son.”
“That one time I met Amy, she seemed like a good woman,” Ned ventured.
“Good? She’s so damn good I can’t begin to keep up with her. She’s dedicated her life to finding our son, and I—” Chad turned his face away, and his voice rasped. “Sometimes I hate myself, but I have got the shits of the whole thing.”
“Nothing wrong with that. However you feel is how you feel.”
“That’s Zen, Dad,” said Chad sarcastically.
“Whatever. Are you and Amy getting along together at all?”
“No.”
“Sleeping together?”
“No.”
“Are you and she equally pissed at each other?”
“I—actually, no, I don’t think she’s really pissed, but she won’t cut me a break either.”
“When’s the last time you had some fun?”
“Fun?”
“Good time. Joy in life.”
“With Justin gone?”
“You want to move on, right? When’s the last time you had a vacation?”
“Vacation? What’s that?”
Ned ignored the sarcasm. “When’s the last time you went someplace?”
“Back before—back when we still had Justin, we took the kids to Disney World.”
Ned refrained from snorting like a horse. “That’s not what I mean. When’s the last time you and Amy went someplace together? Just the two of you?”
Chad actually turned his head to look at him, a bit wide-eyed. “I don’t recall ever doing that since the kids were born.”
“Well, it’s high time you did.”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“We’re broke. We can’t afford it.”
Ned said, “You can’t afford not to.”
“Dad, get real.”
“I am real. A trip to get you two started working things out would be a heck of a lot cheaper than a divorce.”
“I can’t just take off work.”
“Why not? You already did. You’re here, aren’t you?”
“Well, I can’t tear Amy away from her self-appointed job looking for Justin.”
“Have you asked her nicely?”
Chad rolled his eyes. “What does it matter? We can’t just leave the kids.”
“Sure you can. Their grandpa will take care of them.” Then, as Chad gawked at him without apparent comprehension, Ned added, “Me.”
TWELVE
For me the day became a haze of hurry hurry hurry, trapped on a narrow serpentine of road in a jungle of dusky trees and things, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral, that bit. With my innards cramped by hunger, my skin in a mess of itchy lumps and bloody scratches, and Stoat a dark and evil goat-demon looming ever larger in my mind, I walked as fast as I could. Justin lagged a bit behind me. Given his longer legs and more resilient youth, this made no sense except in terms of ambivalence. He wasn’t nearly as ready for his future, or as anxious to have one, as I was.
But there was nothing I could do about him except keep hustling and hoping for any kind of sanctuary or assistance. I had thought it would be simple to flag somebody down, but not a single vehicle had come our way since the dust-coated monstrosity of a pickup I had failed to alert. We had walked for several miles, yet I had not seen any human habitation, not even a trailer.
Sunlight slanted low through the moss and mistletoe of the treetops. If Stoat was not already on the hunt for us, he had come home from work by now and would be soon.
“Hey,” Justin said, breaking a long silence, “what do you think’s back here? I mean, besides mosquitoes?”
I lifted my despairing stare from the ground and looked. By “back here” he referred to a very overgrown track heading off the dirt road. No sandy ruts, just wildflowers. Okay, weeds.
“I have no idea, but we’re going to find out,” I said, immediately wading into the knee-high jungle. “Anything to get out of plain sight. Ow,” I added as I encountered a bull thistle. “Put your socks on.”