“Another time, later, I was twelve. There was a kid standing in the front yard.”
“What happened?”
Sammie shivered and pulled her arms across her chest. “Nothing. He just stood there. It was horrible. I slept with the light on for a week.”
“Did anybody else see him—did anything happen?”
“We all saw him. It was the single creepiest thing that ever happened to me in my life.” She huffed impatiently. “I can’t say it the way it was. But it was awful. Awful, that’s all. It’s something you don’t forget. Anyway. That’s my story.”
“It’s not much. As stories go.”
She gave him a nasty look. “I just can’t tell you how it was.”
Floyd came into the room. “That was Cambrick MacAvoy,” he said.
Sammie blanched. “She knows my number?”
“She’s got the devil’s own Rolodex; she knows everybody’s number.”
“What’s a Rolodex, old man?”
Floyd said to Eric, “Theo Hall disappeared last night.”
Eric’s mind tilted sideways for a moment. Theo, Theo, he didn’t know anyone called Theo. “Lex Hall’s baby? Disappeared how?”
“Out of Jeanne Hall’s car, in the parking lot of Taco Mania on Austell Road. So Jeanne waits till morning, and she calls Cambrick, and Cambrick says you’ll have the baby back to her in an hour, or she’s calling an Amber Alert. You get shut of that man.”
“I’ll call Lex.”
“Already done. He’s not home. Where else would he go?”
Where else, in the whole of Greeneburg, would Lex Hall take Theo? “Harry Rakoczy’s house. I’ll go see if he’s there.”
Chapter Forty-seven
LACEY SLEPT IN HARRY’S HOUSE, in the reclining chair with her feet up. She called Dr. Vlk’s answering service at midnight, and Dr. Vlk called within five minutes to explain that these were Braxton Hicks contractions and she was not in labor; it was perfectly normal. “Should I take two aspirin and call you in the morning?” Lacey asked.
“No aspirin,” Dr. Vlk said briskly. “Do I hear a baby crying?”
Harry was settling Lex into his guest bedroom, and Lacey had volunteered to hold Theo, who hadn’t stopped crying for the last three hours.
“It’s Theo Hall.”
“Hall. Not one of mine. How old?”
“Eleven months. I’ve changed her diaper, I’ve given her food and water and formula and burped her and everything, and she won’t stop!”
“Hold the phone closer.” Dr. Vlk listened for fifteen seconds and said, “She’s teething. Give her a peeled carrot, and keep an eye on her so she doesn’t choke.”
It worked. Theo gnawed the carrot, and the hard, cold sweetness soothed her inflamed gums; she mumbled herself to sleep. Lacey laid her in the makeshift bed Harry had prepared—a nest of blankets on the floor, as if she were a stray puppy—and settled herself in the recliner with her feet up, letting the contractions roll through. Dr. Vlk was right about the carrot, and the contractions, too. They didn’t hurt so much when Lacey relaxed. After a while, they were almost pleasant, and the baby’s flutterings afterward seemed like laughter.
He wouldn’t be like poor Theo. He would have a bright nature and a happy heart, the kind of child who hugged his teacher for no reason, everybody’s favorite and friend to all, his temper a summer storm quickly past, a sturdy boy with a quick mind, her dear son. She drowsed, dreaming his life.
Bars of light flashed across Harry’s lawn as the lights in her own house turned themselves on and off, Drew’s summons to her. For months he had walked quietly in her life, with cookies and crayons and tantrums, a natural child; now that she knew him, he was showing her, This is what I could have done. Would you have known me then? And would she? Answering her thought, all the lights turned on at once and stayed bright. She had to go back. Where else could she go? She’d take her baby with her, carrying life into death. Her thoughts floated in Harry’s dark living room, sweet with orange oil and violin rosin. Good-bye, golden child. This beautiful life never lived. Ev Craddock would tell her there’d be another baby. She didn’t want another baby. She wanted this baby.
“Good-bye,” she whispered. Her nose was running; she wiped it on her wrist. At the sound of her voice, he moved upward, pushing hard into her ribs.
By morning she achieved a light, whirling state of mind near sleep. The tears kept sliding, and her cheeks were raw with salt. At some unreasonable hour, Lex came howling down the stairs in the clothes he had slept in, shouting, “Where’s my baby?”