She hadn’t dared even to glance at the phones as she’d hurried Katie inside, but now she felt it might be like safe to risk a peek. As Katie unwrapped a strawberry taffy stick and began to chew, Poppy stepped toward the front of the store; from within a cluster of people lined up to buy lottery tickets, she stared south along the boardwalk.
Bright sunlight from a robin’s-egg sky glittered off the darker blue of the ocean. White sand, strewn with seaweed, stretched to the boardwalk where two people hung by the bank of four phones—one was a woman by a middle phone, the other a tall, dark-haired man standing by the last phone on the left. The Katie phone. And he looked a little like Katie.
No… he looked a lot like Katie.
And then it hit Poppy.
I’m gonna lose her.
Suddenly her throat was tight. She turned to look at Katie, happily chomping away as she began unwrapping another stick. She looked up at Poppy and waved, smiling around the huge wad of taffy bulging the side of her cheek.
Poppy felt her eyes fill with tears. Only like five days since she first laid eyes on that kid and yet right now she didn’t know how she was going to live without her. I can’t let her go. And yet she knew she had to. A little girl belonged with her Daddy. But still…
She rushed over and lifted Katie in her arms, hugging her tight against her.
“I love you, Katie.” Katie’s arms went around her neck.
“I love you too, Poppy. Can you come home and live with me?”
“Oh, I’d love that, honey bunch, but I can’t right away. I’ve got a few places I gotta go.”
“How about when you come back?”
“Sure. If it’s all right with your daddy.”
“I’ll ask him, ‘kay?”
“ ‘Kay.” The plan was to call the phone where Katie’s dad was waiting and tell him he could find her in the taffy shop to his left. She’d rented a cell phone earlier—on one of Snake’s cards—just for that one call.
She’d made it pretty clear to Katie’s dad that no one else was supposed to be involved in this. But she couldn’t like count on that.
She had to assume that a whole lot of people were out there waiting for this to go down. And she figured everybody would be expecting her to act like a typical kidnapper, like in the movies where they called people and told them to race to another phone to get the next call, and then to another phone for still another call.
But what if she told Katie’s daddy on the very first call where he could find her? Who’d be expecting that?
All right, maybe it was an Appleton scheme, but it was the best she could come up with. And Appleton or not, it felt right. She’d leave Katie here, chomping on taffy, and wander out of the store, off the boardwalk, down to the street, get into the truck, and call Daddy on her cell phone as she was like driving away. She didn’t feature leaving Katie alone, but it would only be a few minutes before Daddy got there, with maybe like a zillion feds and cops swarming into the store behind him.
She’d dump the cell phone somewhere, and keep driving… and cry all the way home.
All the way home…
Where had that come from? She didn’t have a home. Not anymore. And nobody in Sooy’s Boot much wanted to see her again.
Home. Sooy’s Boot wasn’t all that far from here. Was that why she’d chosen Atlantic City? So she could run home afterward?
She shook off the questions. She’d worry about them later. Right now she had to get Katie back where she belonged.
Sweet Jesus, how am I going to do this? How am I doing to let you go?
As Poppy closed her eyes and fought back the tears, she felt Katie stiffen and whisper, “Mommy.”
“I wish I was, honey bunch, but you’ve got—”
“No. That’s my mommy.”
Poppy froze. What the hell was Katie’s mother doing here? In this store? Despite the hair and boy clothes, had she recognized Katie and followed them in? Poppy couldn’t see how anyone could spot Katie unless they were right on top of her, but maybe mothers had like an instinct for their own child.
All right, she told herself, stay calm.
Still holding Katie against her pounding heart, she made a half turn, slow and casual like.
The store was filled with.women. None of them seemed to be staring at her or Katie.
“Don’t point,” Poppy whispered. “Just tell me who it is.”
“By the door,” Katie said softly in her ear. “With the big hat.”
Poppy saw her now: Big dark glasses, wide floppy straw sun hat, the kind you could buy anywhere along the boardwalk, worn over a silk scarf wrapped around her head. Either she was allergic to the sun or thought she was like in disguise.
And she didn’t even know they were here, right behind her. She was too busy staring out the door, watching the man who had to be Katie’s father.
That was it. Dear old Dad must have told Mom that they were getting their daughter back today and the poor woman just couldn’t stay away.
That lump in her throat again: She absolutely had to give Katie back to her folks. It was the only right thing to do.
And suddenly Poppy realized she’d been presented with a totally golden opportunity to do just that.
“Look, honey bunch,” she whispered, “I’m gonna put you down and let you go to your mother. You—”
“No!” Katie’s arms tightened around her neck. “I don’t want to!”
“You gotta, honey bunch,” Poppy said, deeply moved that Katie wanted to stay with her. “You gotta go back. Your mom will take you back to your dad.”
Katie straightened and looked around. “Daddy? Is my daddy here?” Poppy wondered at the change in Katie at the mention of her father. This was definitely Daddy’s little girl.
Like I was… once.
“Not right here. But he’s close by. You go with your mom and soon you’ll be with your dad too. Okay?
“ ‘Kay.” Poppy put her down and straightened her Jets shirt.
She bit her lip to keep from crying. I gotta get out of here before I start blubbering.
“You be a good girl, now,” she told Katie, crouching before her and smoothing her Chopped hair. “And you have a good life. And maybe you think of me once in a while, okay?”
“ ‘Kay.”
Poppy gathered her in her arms again and held her tight, never wanting to let her go, but knowing if she didn’t get out of here right now she’d explode.
“I love you, little girl.”
“I love you too. Poppy.” She forced herself to release Katie.
“Why are you crying?”
“Because I’m going to miss you.” She wiped her eyes on her flannel sleeve. “But here’s what you do. Wait a second or two while I go outside, then go up to your mother and say, ‘Hi, Mom.’ Can you do that?”
Katie nodded, her blue eyes flicking back and forth between her mother and Poppy. “But where will you be?”
“I’ll be outside.” Not a lie. She would be outside—far outside, and getting farther every second. “Got that? Wait till I’m outside; then go up to her.”
“Kay.” Poppy straightened and took one last look into that little face.
She touched her cheek, then somewhere found the strength to turn and hurry past Katie’s mother—still fixated on the phones outside—and stumble into the afternoon sunlight.
Feeling as if she’d torn out her heart and left it behind, among the souvenirs, she made a sharp right and kept her head down as she forced one foot in front of the other away from the boardwalk.
She made it down the ramp to street level, was vaguely aware of the mass of Rally’s on her right and a vacant lot to her left, but then the building pressure in her chest wouldn’t let her go any farther. She stumbled into the shadow of an empty loading dock, sagged against a wall, and began to sob.
9
“Hi, Mom.” Mamie started and turned. This little boy, this ragamuffin with orange hair was tugging on her skirt and looking up at her. She brus
hed his hand off.
“Get away,” she said. “I’m not your—” Those eyes… those blue, blue eyes…
She looked closer.
“Oh… my… God!” It was Katie! Feeling faint, she dropped to one knee and grasped both her shoulders.
“What has he done to you? Your hair! Your clothes!”
“Poppy—”
“Is that what he has you calling him now? Poppy? What else does he have you doing?” She wrapped Katie in her arms, but the child didn’t return the embrace. She remained stiff, wooden. Almost as if she were afraid. John’s work—no question about it. Here was proof positive of how he’d been filling the child’s head with terrible lies about her mother.
Suddenly Mamie was furious. John was such an expert at twisting the truth. And now he was twisting Katie—in body as well as soul. Look at her! How could he do this to his own daughter? What sort of perversion was this? Coloring her hair and dressing her like a boy? She sensed sickness here.Deep sickness. Sickness the courts should know about, should see with their own eyes…
A wonderful idea leaped full blown into her mind.
“Katie,” she said. “I’m going to take you home.”
Suddenly Katie seemed to relax. “Goodie! I want to see Daddy!”
Poppy… Daddy… the poor child didn’t know what to call her father.
Mamie glanced out at the boardwalk. John was still by the phones. The negligent bastard! Leaving poor Katie alone in here while he waits for a call. But from whom? Some bimbo? Or worse—someone who liked little girls dressed up to look like boys?
Her stomach turned. It was a sick, sick world out there, and little girls like Katie needed to be protected from exploiters—especially if their father was doing the exploiting.
John was staring out at the ocean. Now seemed like the best time to move. Mamie lifted Katie and carried her from the store, keeping Katie’s face and her own averted from John.
A matter of fifteen seconds and they were down on the street and out of sight of the boardwalk.
Mamie breathed a sigh of relief and set Katie back on the ground. She took a firm grip on her hand and led her toward Bally’s parking garage.
“Where are we going?” Katie said.
“To get the car.”
“And then we’re gonna see Daddy?”
“No. Then we’re going to the airport. We’re flying back home.” I’ve got a lawyer and a judge who’ll be very interested in seeing you just as you are. And then they’ll change their exalted opinion of Dr. John Vanduyne.
Katie pulled her hand free. “No! I want to see Daddy!”
“You will. I promise you.” When he has to appear in court.
“I want to see him now!” Mamie grabbed Katie’s upper arm and yanked her to ward the garage’s glass-enclosed elevator area.
“No arguing now. Come along.”
“No!” Mamie felt her anger rising. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed people standing nearby on the sidewalk. She didn’t want a scene here. As she pulled Katie inside the glass enclosure, she raised her voice, yet kept it cloyingly sweet for the benefit of anyone within earshot.
“Come on, baby,” she said. “You can press the button when we get into the elevator. It’s three. You know three, don’t you?” An elevator stood open and Mamie gave Katie the bum’s rush through the doors.
“No!” Katie cried. “I don’t want to be with you! I want to be with Daddy!”
That did it. Before she knew what she was doing, Mamie jabbed the“3” button herself, then gave Katie a well-deserved slap across her whiny little face. The sound echoing harshly in the tiny elevator cab as the doors slid closed.
“That’s just about enough,” she said. She glanced down at Katie who was holding her face with her free hand and sobbing softly. “One thing you’re going to learn and learn well is to do as you’re told and keep a civil tongue in your head.”
The car stopped on the third level, the door slid open; and Mamie stepped out, pulling the still-sobbing Katie after her. Another glass enclosure. She stepped through the doors into the parking area and looked around. Now where had she left her car?
Suddenly a noise to her left as the exit door slammed open; a slim young woman in jeans and a plaid shirt was moving toward her, breathing hard as if she’d been running.
She had short, jet-black hair, and red-rimmed eyes.
She looked as if she’d been crying. Those eyes blazed as they found Katie. She never stopped moving as she spoke through clenched teeth, bared in a snarl.
“You bitch!” And then Mamie’s face exploded with pain as the woman smashed a fist into her nose.
Mommy dearest staggered back as blood began pouring from her nose. She let go of Katie and raised her hands to her face. She began to scream and so Poppy hit her again, right in the bread basket.
She grunted, doubled over and lurched away, like she was going to run. Poppy started after her, fists raised, itching to hit her again.
Poppy had been crouched in the loading bay, bawling, feeling sorry for herself, when she spotted the mother dragging Katie down the street toward Bally’s garage.
Immediately she’d sensed something wasn’t right. Why hadn’t Katie been reunited with her daddy?
Poppy had followed them into the garage and seen her slap Katie just as the elevator doors shut.
What followed was mostly a blur running up the steps with murder in her heart, pacing the elevator, getting to level three and seeing Katie with tears on her face and a big red slap mark across her cheek.
Something snapped in Poppy then, and Jesus it had felt so good flattening that bitch’s nose. She wanted to keep on pounding her, let her know how it felt.
And now the bitch was trying to run. Still bent over, she staggered away. But she didn’t get far. She ran the top of her head dead on into a concrete support. Poppy heard a meaty smack and then the bitch was crumbling to the floor like an empty burlap sack.
She stood over her, waiting for her to get up, but she didn’t move. And as suddenly as it had come, the red rage was gone.
Poppy turned and hurried back to Katie. She swept her up in her arms and carried her toward the stairs.
“C’mon honey bunch. We’re getting out of here.”
She’d parked the truck across the street in a church parking lot. The place was plastered with no parking signs but she’d left a note on the dashboard about engine trouble and how she’d gone to get a mechanic—Please, please, PLEASE don’t tow me! Risky, yeah, but she hadn’t wanted to get trapped in one of these multilevel garages if she had to make a fast exit. Like now.
Poppy belted Katie into the passenger seat and pulled out onto Pacific.
Not sure yet where she was going, she gunned past the medical center and headed up to Atlantic.
A sign said no right on red there but she made one anyway, just to keep moving.
As she braked for a stoplight at Kentucky, she turned to Katie who was still sobbing softly.
“You mad at me for hitting your mother?” Katie sniffed.
“No. I’m glad. She hurt me,” she said, holding her reddened cheek. “She always hurts me.”
“Yeah? Well she ain’t never hurting you again.”
“That’s what my daddy said, but she did.”
Your daddy’s not too good at keeping promises, is he, Poppy thought. If he was, this never would have happened.
But in a way she was kind of glad things had gone wrong. It was like a sign.
Poppy didn’t believe much in signs and all that religious mumbo jumbo, but Jesus, if something was supposed to be a signal that Katie was better off with her than with her own folks, that little scene back there in the garage was it. A totally major-league sign.
And that’s fine with me, she thought, glancing over at Katie. I’ll keep you for the rest of my life. I’ll raise you just like I’d‘ve raised Glory. You’ll never have a lonely moment, and you’ll never ever have to worry about getting hurt.
Jesu
s, what was it with people? Kids were supposed to be precious. They were helpless. They depended on big folks for like everything—food, clothes, a roof over their heads. And safety. Big folks were here to protect little folks until they could protect themselves. That was what it was all about. So what kind of a world did a kid see when she had to be afraid of the very people who were supposed to like protect her.
She leaned over and ever so gently kissed Katie’s cheek.
“There. Does that make it feel better?” Katie stopped sobbing, but the tears looked ready to run again at any second.
“You still don’t look too happy. What say we get a Happy Meal the first McDonald’s we see? How’s that sound?” She nodded and—finally—a smile.
“And I think you could use a big hug too, Katie. How about it?” Another nod. Poppy snapped Katie’s seat belt open and gathered her into her arms.
“You’ll never get hurt again, Katie. I promise you that. From now on you’re gonna have a safe and happy home. Just like mine.” The truth of that struck her like a blow. She’d had a very happy home growing up. Things had been iffy in the money department sometimes, but she’d always felt safe and wanted. And with her dad having all those brothers, there’d like always been lots of family around.
And they were still there, still living in Sooy’s Boot. Maybe they’d take her back. Maybe if she showed up with Katie and said This is my little girl… this is your brother Mark’s granddaughter—maybe they’d let bygones be bygones and welcome her back.
Yeah. Go back to the Pines. Nobody’d think to look for her there. And even if they did come looking, they’d never find her.
“Katie,” she said. “How’d you like to see where I grew up? You want to meet all my uncles and aunts? I know they’d love to meet you. You wanna do that? We can—”
The car behind them honked. Poppy glanced up and saw the light was green. Quickly she belted Katie back in and started moving.
“Yeah,” Poppy said, getting more psyched by the minute. “Let’s do that.” Let’s go home.