The screaming started with the first glimpse of his shoe.
“Jason, Jason, any news of Sandy?”
“Will you be talking to the police today?”
“When can we expect a formal briefing?”
He ushered Ree out, keeping her close to his side as he closed the door behind them, locking it. His hands were shaking. He tried to keep his movements slow and measured. No rush, no guilty sprints. Grieving husband, taking his little girl to purchase badly needed milk and bread.
“Will you be assisting with the search efforts, Jason? How many volunteers have turned out to find Sandy?”
“Love your wings, honey! Are you an angel?”
That comment caught his attention, made him look up sharply. He was resigned to them shouting at him, but he didn’t want the pack of vultures going after Ree.
“Daddy?” his daughter whispered beside him, and he looked down to see the anxiety scribbled across her face.
“We’re going to the car, we’re driving to the grocery store,” he repeated levelly. “We’re okay, Ree. They’re the ones behaving badly, not us.”
She took his hand, keeping her body pressed tightly against his legs as they walked down the front steps, made their way across the lawn, headed toward the car parked on the driveway. He counted six vans today, up from four yesterday. From this distance, he couldn’t make out the station call letters. He’d have to check it out later, see if they’d broken onto the national stage.
“What happened to your face, Jason?”
“Did the police give you a black eye?”
“Have you been in a fight?”
He kept himself and Ree moving, slow and steady, across the yard, homing in on the Volvo. Then he had the keys out, the doors clicking open.
Police brutality, he thought idly, as more questions followed about his face and his ribs protested as he swung open the heavy car door.
Then Ree was inside, the back passenger door closed. And he was inside, the driver’s door closed. He started the engine, and immediately the reporters’ shrill questions disappeared.
“Good job,” he told Ree.
“I don’t like reporters,” she informed him.
“I know. Next time, I’m getting my own pair of fairy wings.”
He cracked at the grocery store. Couldn’t seem to find the parental fortitude to deny his traumatized daughter Oreos, Pop-Tarts, bags of bakery-fresh chocolate chip cookies. Ree figured out his weakness early on, and by the end of the trip they had a grocery cart half-filled with junk food. He thought he’d managed milk, bread, pasta, and fruit, but to tell the truth, his heart wasn’t in it.
He was killing time with his daughter, desperate to give them a slice of normalcy in a world that had tilted crazily. Sandy was gone. Max was back. The police would continue asking questions, he’d been an idiot to have ever used the family computer.…
Jason didn’t want this life. He wanted to turn the clock back sixty hours, maybe seventy hours, and say whatever it was he should’ve said, do whatever it was he should’ve done, so this never would have happened. Hell, he’d even take back the February vacation.
The woman manning the cash register smiled down at Ree’s glamorous getup. Then her gaze went to him and she did a double-take. He shrugged self-consciously, following the cashier’s line of sight to the newsstand, where he saw his own black-and-white picture staring out from the front page of the Boston Daily. “Mild-mannered reporter may have hidden dark side,” the banner headline declared.
They had used the photo from his official press pass, a closely cropped image that was barely one step above a mug shot. He looked flat, even vaguely menacing, staring out above the fold.
“Daddy, that’s you!” Ree declared loudly. She pranced over to the newspaper, staring at it more closely. Other shoppers had noticed now, were watching this cute little girl gaze upon a disturbing photo of a grown man. “Why are you in the paper?”
“That’s the paper I work for,” he said lightly, wishing they didn’t have so many groceries, wishing they could just bolt out of the store.
“What does it say?”
“It says I’m mild-mannered.”
The cashier lady went bug-eyed. He shot her a look, no longer caring if he appeared menacing or not. For God’s sake, this was his daughter.
“We should take it home,” Ree declared. “Mommy will want to see it.” She fished the newspaper out of the rack, tossed it onto the conveyor belt. He noted the byline read “Greg Barr,” his boss and the head news editor. He had no doubt now which quotes had been included in the story, basically anything Jason had said by phone yesterday.
He reached into his back pocket, working on his wallet before he grew so angry he could no longer function. Buy the food, get in the car. Buy the food, get in the car.
Drive to your house, where you can be harassed all over again.
He got out his credit card, handed it to the cashier. Her fingers were trembling so hard it took her three tries to take the plastic. Was she that afraid of him? Certain she was completing a transaction with a psycho killer who’d most likely strangled his wife, then dismembered her body and tossed it into the harbor?
He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it, but the sound would come out all wrong. Too chilling, too disaffected. His life had gone cockeyed, and he didn’t know how to get it back.
“Can I have Pop-Tarts in the car?” Ree was saying. “Can I, can I, can I?”
The woman finally had the card back to him, as well as his receipt. “Yes, yes, yes,” he murmured, signing the slip, pocketing his credit card, desperate to make his getaway.
“I love you, Daddy!” Ree sang out in triumph.
He hoped the whole damn store heard that.
| CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT |
By the time Jason and Ree made it home and he’d run the major news gauntlet half a dozen times to bring in the groceries, Jason was beat. He stuck in a movie for Ree, ignoring the guilty twinge that so much TV couldn’t be good for her, that he should be making more of an effort to engage his daughter during this challenging time, yada, yada, yada.
They had food to eat. The cat was back. He hadn’t been arrested yet.
It was the most he could manage at the moment.
Jason was unloading the eggs when the phone rang. He picked it up absently, without checking caller ID.
“What happened to your face, son?” Maxwell Black’s Southern drawl stretched out the sentence and sent Jason back to a place he didn’t want to go.
“Think you’re the boss, boy? I own you, boy. Lock, stock, and barrel. You belong to me.”
“I fell down the stairs,” Jason replied lightly, forcing the images back into a small box in the corner of his mind. He pictured himself shutting the lid, inserting the key in the lock, turning it just so.
Max laughed. It was a low, warm chuckle, the kind he probably used when making jokes from the bench, or holding court at neighborhood cocktail parties. Maybe he’d even used it the first time a schoolteacher had hesitantly approached him about Sandy. You know, sir, I’ve been worried about how … accident prone … your daughter Sandy seems to be. And Max had laughed that charming little laugh. Oh, no need to worry about my little girl. Don’t even bother your pretty self. My girl is just fine.
Jason disliked Sandra’s father all over again.
“Well, son, we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot yesterday afternoon,” Max drawled.
Jason didn’t answer. The silence dragged on. After another moment, Max moved to fill the gap, adding lightly, “So I called to make amends.”
“No need,” Jason assured him. “Returning to Georgia is good enough for me.”
“Now, Jason, seems to me if anyone should be bearing a grudge, I would have the right. You swept my only daughter off her feet, spirited her away to the God-awful North, then didn’t even invite me to the wedding, let alone the birth of my grandbaby. That’s no way to treat family, son.”
“You’re right. If I were you
, I’d never speak to us again.”
That warm molasses chuckle again. “Fortunately for you, son,” Max continued expansively, “I have determined to take the high ground. This is my only daughter and grandchild we’re talking about here. It would be foolish to let the past stand in the way of our future.”
“I’ll tell you what: When Sandra returns, I’ll give her the message.”
“When?” Max’s voice sharpened. “Don’t you mean if?”
“I mean when,” Jason said firmly.
“Your wife run off with another man, son?”
“That seems to be a popular theory.”
“You couldn’t keep her happy? I’m not pointing fingers, mind you. I raised the girl, single-handedly, after her dear mama passed away. I know how demanding she can be.”
“Sandra is a wonderful wife and devoted mother.”
“I have to say, I was surprised to hear that my daughter had become a teacher. But I was talking to that nice principal just this morning. What is his name … Phil, Phil Stewart? He raved about how wonderful Sandy is with her pupils. When all is said and done, it sounds as if you’ve done right by my daughter. I appreciate that, son, I truly do.”
“I am not your son.”
“All right, Jason Jones.”
Jason caught the edge again, the implied threat. He fisted his hand at his side, refusing to say another word.
“You don’t like me much, do you, Jason?”
Again Jason didn’t answer. The judge, however, seemed to be talking mostly to himself. “What I can’t understand is, why? We’ve never really spoken. You wanted my daughter, you got her. You wanted to get out of Georgia, you took my daughter and left. Seems to me, I have plenty of reason to be sore with you. Why, a father’s list of grievances against the boy who runs away with his only daughter … But what have I ever done to you, son? What have I ever done to you?”
“You failed your daughter,” Jason heard himself say. “She needed you, and you failed her.”
“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about your wife! I’m talking about your crazed, boozed-up wife who beat Sandy each and every day while you did nothing to stop it. What kind of father abandons his child like that? What kind of father lets her be tortured on a daily basis and does nothing to stop it?”
There was a pause. “My wife beat Sandy? That’s what Sandy told you?”
Jason didn’t answer right away. The silence stretched out. This time, he broke first: “Yes.”
“Now, see here.” The judge sounded offended. “Sandy’s mom was hardly a perfect parent. It’s true she probably drank more than she should. I worked so many hours back in those days, leaving Missy alone with Sandra much too often. I’m sure that tried Missy’s nerves, made her maybe more short-tempered than a mother should be. But beating … tormenting … I think that’s a trifle melodramatic. I do.”
“Your wife never harmed Sandy?”
“Spare the rod, spoil the child. I saw her whack Sandy’s behind a time or two, but no more than any exasperated parent.”
“Missy never drank to excess?”
“Well, it’s true she had a weakness for gin. Maybe a couple of nights a week … But Missy wasn’t a violent drunk. If she had a few too many, then she carried herself off to bed. She wouldn’t have hurt a fly, let alone our daughter.”
“What about chasing you around the house with knives?”
“Excuse me?” The judge sounded shocked.
“She hurt Sandy. Slammed her fingers into doorframes, forced her to drink bleach, fed her household objects just so she could take Sandy to the hospital. Your wife was a very, very sick woman.”
The silence lasted longer this time. When the judge finally spoke, he sounded genuinely flummoxed. “This is what Sandy told you? This is what Sandra said about her own mother? Well then, no wonder you have been so curt with me. I take it back, I do. I can see your position entirely. Of all the crazy … Well. Well.” The judge didn’t seem to know what else to say.
Jason found himself shifting from foot to foot, no longer feeling so certain about things. The first trickle of unease crept up his spine.
“Am I allowed to speak in my defense?” the judge asked.
“I suppose.”
“One, I swear to you, son, this is the first I have heard of such dreadful acts. It is possible, I suppose, that things transpired between Sandy and my poor wife that I never knew of. To be truthful, however, I don’t believe that to be the case. I love my daughter, Jason. I always have. But I’m also one of the few men out there that can say I truly, completely head-over-heels loved my wife. Saw Missy the first time when I was nineteen years old, and knew at that moment I’d marry her, make her my own. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful—though she was. And not because she was kind and well mannered—though she was. But she was Missy, and I loved her for that alone.
“Maybe you think I’m going on. This has nothing to do with anything. But by the time Sandy was twelve, I fear it had everything to do with everything. See, Sandy grew jealous. Of my deference to Missy, or maybe the flowers I brought home for no good reason, or the pretty baubles I liked to bestow on my lovely bride. Girls get to a certain age, and they start, consciously or unconsciously, competing with their mamas. I think Sandy thought she couldn’t win. It started to make her angry, hostile to her own mother.
“Except then her mama died, before Sandy and her had a chance to work things out. Sandy took it hard. My sweet little girl … She changed overnight. Developed a wild streak, started to run around. She wanted to do what she wanted to do and wouldn’t take no for an answer. She had an abortion, Jason. You know that? Ree wasn’t her first pregnancy, maybe not even her second. Bet she never told you that, did she? I’m not even supposed to know, except the clinic recognized her name and called me. I gave my permission. What else could I do? She was still just a child herself—she was far too young and unstable to be a mother. I prayed, Jason, I prayed for my girl like you wouldn’t believe, right up until the moment you took her out of my life.”
The judge sighed. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I had always hoped Sandy would grow out of her recklessness. And talking to that principal this morning, I thought maybe she’d finally grown up, shown some maturity. But now, to hear what you are saying … I think my daughter may have some serious issues, Jason. First she ran away from me. Now maybe it’s time to recognize that she’s run away from you, too.”
Jason opened his mouth to object, but the words wouldn’t come out. Uncertainty took root in his gut. What did he really know of Sandy or her family? He’d always accepted what she said at face value. What reason would she have to lie to him?
Then again, what reason did he have to lie to her? About four million and one.
“Perhaps it’s time to meet,” Maxwell was saying now. “We can sit down, man to man, sort this all out. I have no ill will toward you, son. I just want what’s best for my daughter and grandbaby.”
“How did Missy die?” Jason asked abruptly.
“Excuse me?”
“Your wife. How did she die?”
“Heart attack,” the judge replied promptly. “Dropped dead. Terrible tragedy in a woman so young. We were shattered.”
Jason held the phone tighter. “Where did she die?”
“Ummm, at home. Why do you ask?”
“Was it in the garage? Behind the wheel of her car?”
“Why yes, now that you mention it. I suppose Sandy told you that, too.”
“But it was a heart attack? You’re certain it was a heart attack?”
“Absolutely. Terrible, terrible time. I don’t think my little Sandy ever quite got over it.”
“I read the autopsy report,” Jason persisted. “My memory is that Mrs. Black was found with a cherry red face. That’s a clear indicator of carbon monoxide poisoning.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line; it went on for thirty seconds, perhap
s even a minute. Jason felt his stomach settle, his shoulders square. Sandy had been right—her father was a very, very good liar.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Jones,” Max said at last. He didn’t sound so congenial anymore. More like pissed off. A wealthy, powerful man who wasn’t getting his way.
“Really? Because I’d think in this day and age of computerized records, you’d understand that all information is eventually accessible, especially for a guy who knows where to look.”
“Cuts both ways, Jason. You dig around looking at me, I dig around looking at you.”
“Knock yourself out. When’d you arrive in town?”
“What day did you first meet my daughter?” Max countered evenly.
“Rent a car, or use a car service?”
“Gonna volunteer a DNA sample for the paternity test, or wait for family court to order it?”
“Doesn’t matter. This is Massachusetts, where gay marriages are legal and in loco parentis matters more than biology for determining who should have custody of a child.”
“You think just because you know a little Latin, you understand the law better than I do, boy?”
“I think I recently wrote an article about a grandfather who tried to gain custody of his grandson because he disapproved of the child’s lesbian parents. The court ruled that the child should stay with the only parents he had ever known, even if they were not his biological mothers.”
“Interesting. Well, here’s another bit of Latin for you. Maybe you heard of this phrase, too, working on your little story and all: ex parte.”
Jason froze in the middle of the kitchen, his gaze going belatedly out the window. He saw the uniformed officer approaching his walkway, heading for his front door.
“Means ‘in an emergency,’ ” Max continued smoothly, low chuckle back in his throat. “As in, a grandfather can seek an ex parte motion in front of family court, and the court could grant an ex parte order regarding visitation, without you even being aware that such a hearing is going on. After all, you are the prime suspect in a missing person investigation. Surely staying with the prime suspect in her mother’s disappearance is not in the best interest of the child?”