Marsh missed his brother, but he knew he was better suited to Abigail than Gary had been. Gary had always catered to Abigail’s whims, which meant the business floundered. Small businesses, and women, required steady direction and a firm hand on the tiller. No wonder the adult day care hadn’t been delivering much more than a basic living for his brother and his brother’s wife. Together Marsh and Abigail would fix that, though. It wasn’t Marsh’s first choice for a living, but it was a start.
All the clients seemed quiet enough, but Marsh knew they’d be asking for Abigail before too much longer.
He went to the window and pulled aside the curtain that shielded the clients from the nosy stares of passersby and blocked some of the summer heat. The placement of the window didn’t give him much of a view to the street, but Abigail wasn’t walking up the driveway.
Behind Marsh, someone was slapping wet clay at the art table. Over and over. The flat sound reminded Marsh of the noise of skin on skin, the noise of two bodies in bed. And just like that, his brain revealed the explanation, the reason why Abigail hadn’t come home yet.
She was meeting someone else.
His gut knotted. His fingers knotted in the fabric of the curtain, and he yanked it closed, sending the wooden rings rattling along the rod. Behind him the slapping continued. His fists wanted to knot, too.
She was probably sleeping with the man even now, leaving Marsh to deal with everything by himself, when she knew perfectly well state regulations required a minimum caregiver-to-patient ratio. She knew they were violating those very regulations, with only Marsh at hand to tend her clients. She knew it was nearly lunchtime when she left. She knew they’d be getting agitated, hungry and bored.
She’d told her clients she’d be right back.
Abigail had lied. Bald-faced lied.
Lied to him.
Marsh turned from the window, glaring at Joe, the middle-aged man with pimples, who was slapping the clay mindlessly while he rocked back and forth in his chair, his eyes roving back and forth at high speed. Any moment now Joe would start moaning, overstimulated by whatever was going wrong in his neurons.
Abigail had left Marsh to cope with her pack of misfits, while she was off doing God knew what, probably with the idiot clerk at the store, maybe in the back room, maybe behind the store, up against the concrete wall where she could be seen from any passing car—
Rosemary bounced up to Marsh. “Lunchtime!”
Marsh gritted his teeth. “That’s right. Almost lunchtime, as soon as Abigail comes back.”
“I’m having peanut butter and grape jelly!” Rosemary said. Joe moaned a little, but Marsh could tell Rosemary’s outburst had settled Joe in some way, opened a pressure valve. That was a good thing—Joe was damned strong, and without Abigail’s soft voice and hands to calm him down, it would be a problem if Joe acted out his disturbance and became physical. Joe’s eyes slowed their frantic flicking.
The old guy, Smith—Marsh never remembered his first name—who varied between utter stillness and manic activity, looked up. “Tuna fish. Tuna fish.”
“Peanut butter!” Rosemary said, her mouth tightening as if Smith’s preference would overrule her own.
Joe moaned again. His eyes started to flick.
Stephen joined the general ruckus, sending a hand across the checkerboard and scattering the game pieces. “Abby, Abby, where’s Abby, where’s lunch, where’s Abby to make our lunch and pour the milk, lunch and milk, lunch and milk?”
Damnation, how all of them repeated themselves. It made Marsh nuts. If only he didn’t have to put up with them—if only Abigail were here, as she should be. Next time he’d go and do the shopping, since she couldn’t manage to get it right. Couldn’t get herself home to feed the people she was responsible for.
“Shut up, Stephen!” Rosemary scrabbled after the checkers on the floor. “You messed me up. I was winning. You messed me up!”
Joe threw the pancake of clay at Rosemary, who shrieked in fury. Smith got out of his chair and started to walk in a circle in the center of the room, coming too close to Rosemary. Marsh was just in time to get between the two of them before Rosemary decided to slap.
“I know what, we’ll all have popcorn for lunch!” Marsh said, with false cheer. He cursed Abigail silently. She had a lesson coming when she did get home, after causing all this mess. “Let’s go in the kitchen and put a bag in the microwave. It’ll be special, real special.” Just like the special words he’d have for Abigail later that night, once everyone had gone home to their families.
“Special,” repeated Joe, getting to his feet.
“And a movie. I get to pick!” Rosemary chanted. She stepped on the pancake of clay and ground it into the short-loop carpet. Marsh closed his eyes for a second, not nearly long enough to count to ten, but enough to allow him to ignore the newest mess. Then he got hold of Smith by his elbow and brought him along to the kitchen. The only way to stop Smith from walking in circles for the rest of the day was to completely change the scenery and give him a new focus. No way was Marsh going to let Rosemary pick the movie, though. He was damned sick of
Finding Nemo,
her latest favorite.
The afternoon wore on, full of countless exhausting and infuriating outbursts from the entire group. Marsh’s patience thinned with each passing minute that Abigail didn’t arrive. Rosemary and Stephen both had meltdowns ending in tears and thrown objects, events that wouldn’t have happened had Abigail been present instead of shirking her responsibilities, wherever the hell she’d gone.
Marsh couldn’t shake the idea that she was with another man. Where would she have met someone else? The produce aisle at the grocery store? It wasn’t like Abigail went very many places without Marsh. He could hardly think. He tried to keep himself from going to the window every few minutes, because the clients were starting to notice his own agitation. He popped more bags of popcorn and got out crackers and cheese, and settled the group for a long afternoon of movie watching. It was easier than doing art projects or baking cookies in the kitchen, though both activities were favorites with the group.
Finally, at four in the afternoon, just ninety minutes before family members were due to retrieve their grown-up children, Marsh dug out the telephone book and wetted his finger to flip through the yellow pages. God help Abigail if she was still at that store.
Marsh dialed, keeping an eye on the group, who were quiet at the moment, engrossed in the umpteenth repeat of
Finding Nemo.
Stupid film.
When someone answered on the third ring, Marsh had to swallow down a growl of anger. “I’m looking for someone who was headed to your store a little while ago. I...uh, forgot to tell her to get a gallon of milk. She’s about five feet six, and she has a long light brown ponytail. Wearing jeans and a blue cotton shirt. Is she there?”
“Store’s empty, just me here right now.”
“Has she been there?”
“Not since I came on shift.”
“Well, when was that?” Marsh couldn’t believe the idiocy of the clerk.
“Coupla hours ago. Look, is there a problem?”
“No. There’s no problem. Is anyone else there, your supervisor maybe, someone who was there before you?”
“No, man. Wish I could help you, but like I said, haven’t seen her.”
“Thanks.”
Liar. You’re probably the man she’s run off to meet. She’s probably there now, listening to you answer my questions, laughing at me.
Marsh clicked off and put the handset away, in the cupboard, where it was out of Rosemary’s view. That woman had a real thing for anything with buttons on it, telephones, remotes, controls for electric blankets, stereos.
“Where’s Abby?” Smith asked.
Marsh clenched his fists behind his back. “She’s... She had to go to the doctor.” Yes, that was it. Get the story squared away with the clients, then set the expectations with their families: no day care tomorrow, Abigail was ill, it was probably contagious, she’d been at the doctor all day. Really sorry for the inconvenience and no notice. Knew they’d understand. Really, really sorry.
Beside Smith, Joe started to rock and hit his hand on his thigh. “Don’t like the doctor. Don’t like the doctor.”
“She’ll be fine,” Marsh assured him, putting a big hand on Joe’s shoulder. “It’s just a virus. In a day or so everything will be back to normal.”
“Don’t like the doctor,” Joe repeated, but his voice was quieter as long as Marsh was touching him. Abigail was going to need the doctor when Marsh got through with her, that much was certain. He’d make sure her legs were too sore to carry her off to the store, hell, go anywhere.
“She’ll get some medicine and be fine.”
Smith turned his head and looked up at Marsh. “I don’t like it when Abby isn’t here.”
“I don’t like you,” Rosemary chimed in. “I think you’re mean.”
“Now, now,” Marsh muttered. “That’s not very nice, Rosie. I think we’ll have to tell your families you can’t come here tomorrow, since Abigail won’t be feeling very well. We don’t want you to catch her virus, do we?”
“Mean,” said Rosemary, and Smith nodded, then kept nodding. Well, Smith could nod his head right off his neck, for all Marsh cared. He wouldn’t stop the perseveration this time.
“Shut up and watch the movie. All of you. Or I’ll turn it off, and you can just sit in your chairs until it’s time to go. You don’t want that, do you?”
Joe began to rock again. Idiots, all of them. Why Abigail thought they were worth bothering with, Marsh would never understand. When all of their faces were turned back to the neurotic fish-father searching for his lost fish-son on the television, Marsh walked into the next room to get his temper under control and plan what he needed to say to the families to keep them away tomorrow. He couldn’t legally operate without a second certified attendant, but more important, he didn’t want to.
He’d see to it that Abigail learned this lesson. Learned it well. Learned it pronto. She’d never leave him in the lurch like this again.
And she’d never get another chance to sneak off with someone while Marsh wasn’t looking.
Ever.
* * *
While he took the bag of groceries back to the truck, Cade assessed what he knew about the woman seated at the picnic table.
Thirty-one years old, based on her driver’s license. She was too thin in that nervous way of women who were perpetually on their guard, either out of fear that if they gained weight their lovers would abandon them, or anxiety for other reasons. He was betting on the latter. His cop instincts were telling him something much bigger than a shallow boyfriend was at work here. You didn’t steal a truck because you were anxious about gaining a little weight from too many chocolates or not enough exercise. It was possible her thinness was from drugs, but her teeth weren’t those of a meth-freak, rotting and ground down. Until he knew for certain, he’d be cautious and expect the worst.
Her face and hands were tanned, but at the gaping shirt neck where a button was missing, he could see pale flesh beneath. Above her wrists the flesh was pale, as well. So she got out in the sun but not in short sleeves. Her straight hair was light brown, edging past her shoulders but scraped back in a plain ponytail, with blonder streaks threading through it. He’d have bet money the streaks were from the sun and not a bottle.
Her shirt and jeans were worn. Maybe she’d been doing chores when she decided to take his truck on a joyride, or maybe she couldn’t afford new things.
The groceries looked like lunch for someone. Herself? Did women buy chili for themselves? Potato chips, sure, as an indulgence or, as a few of his girlfriends had taught him, greasy burnt offerings for the PMS monster. But why shop at a convenience store, where prices were guaranteed to be high? Simple: because she didn’t have a car, and the store was closest to where she lived. She’d driven before, though—you couldn’t just steal a manual transmission vehicle without knowing how to drive a stick. She’d never have made it out of the parking lot, much less to a campground in the middle of nowhere an hour from town.
Her husband was dead. That lined up with the bare left hand, and perhaps the worn clothing, but not that nagging hum in the back of his head that told him this woman was terrified of more than just his anger at her theft of his property.
This woman was running away from something. When she looked up at him as he loomed over her, he saw the flicker of alarm in her gray eyes. Her straight, level light brown eyebrows were drawn together over her nose in a worried expression. She feared him, feared his reaction to her crime. As well she should—but Cade knew this woman was no hardened criminal, just a woman on the run. Now, to get her to give up her secrets, because he was sure there was a doozy lurking just beneath the surface, like a catfish in a murky lake.
“Why stop here?” Cade questioned, leaning too close. Intimidation often worked to jolt confessions out of honest people. Habitual liars were a different matter. They’d learned to sidle along the truth for maximum believability, but he didn’t think this woman was a liar. A little judicious pressure would get him what he sought. “Middle of nowhere. How does a chick like you drive my beater truck to a campground? How’d you even know this place was here, much less drive straight to it?”
“I’ve...I’ve been here before. Fishing. Years ago.”
“You’re on a fishing trip, are you? Saw my truck, thought it would be just the thing for a little jaunt? Who are you meeting here? When do they arrive?”
“No, I— That’s not how it is. I’m not meeting—” She flushed darkly and stopped. “You’re trying to make me talk. Just call the police and be done with it. You have all the proof you need. My fingerprints are all over the cab of your truck. I won’t even try to deny it.”
“That’s right, I’m trying to make you talk. I don’t think it’s unreasonable of me to want to understand this, do you? If the police get involved, I may never learn the whole story.”
She narrowed her eyes at him speculatively, her soft mouth tightening. “Are you...are you saying that if I tell you everything, you might not...might not call the police?”