Prodigal

Chapter 5

5

JJ led Adam to an old Bronco, color indistinguishable in the porch light she’d left on. The passenger seat was patched with a strip of duct tape, but it seemed to be holding, so Adam flopped down, suddenly exhausted. No, that wasn’t quite true. Part of him was still wired, too. It was just hard to tell where one part left off and the other picked up.

“Sorry, Janie—what?” He’d missed whatever she said. It must have been directed at the exhausted part.

“I said, how’d you find out about the girl so fast?”

Excellent question, but one he couldn’t answer, at least not in a way JJ could understand. Not yet and maybe not ever. “Does it matter?” he asked.

Adam shivered. JJ didn’t bother with the heat, either because the SUV hadn’t had time to warm up or because the heater didn’t work. His money was on the latter. Adam leaned his head against the window and felt the chill radiating through his cap. He stared into the dark, but couldn’t see anything except his breath fogging the glass. JJ switched on the headlights, and as she turned her vehicle in the driveway, the high beams spotlighted a familiar poplar tree. Mr. Tulley once caught him and Danny and JJ carving their initials in it with Danny’s pocketknife. He’d threatened to tan their hides if they ever so much as breathed on that tree again. Adam had never been so scared in his life. But that was a few months before Adam, and everyone else in Beecham County, learned what real fear was. Sometimes, he felt like he’d never forgotten it.

They reached the bottom of the driveway, and JJ turned left, drove about fifty yards, and turned left again at another nearly hidden driveway. This house sat closer to the road than JJ’s, and it was lit up like a Christmas tree, with most if not all of the interior and exterior lights turned on.

“You didn’t mention they were your neighbors,” Adam said.

JJ slowed, keeping her eyes locked on the short, steep drive ahead. It had a few gullies that took swerving around, but surely JJ knew them by heart.

“Their girl is best friends with my daughter,” she said.

“You have a daughter?” Adam asked, incredulous. He shouldn’t be, but he couldn’t help it.

Now JJ glanced at him, grinning. “Yes, I have a daughter. Evelyn. Evie for short. Almost twelve years old. She’s at a sleepover tonight.”

“Wow,” Adam said. JJ Tulley, a mom. Adam found himself grinning, too. He thought of all the times JJ had gotten him and Danny out of trouble, usually with her smart mouth, but with her fists if necessary. He wouldn’t exactly have thought of JJ as maternal, but she had been a Protector, just like her dad. “I’ll bet she’s an amazing kid. Do I know her dad?”

JJ’s grin disappeared as she pulled her Bronco off to the side of the driveway, mashing down some high grass. “She barely knows her dad.”

“So you’re not married?” Adam asked.

“Not anymore,” JJ said, with a that’s-the-end-of-the-conversation tone. Then she cut the engine and reached for her door, ready to bolt from the SUV, but Adam grabbed her arm.

“Wait,” he said. “Give me a minute.”

JJ turned to him, and Adam found himself lost in her face. He couldn’t make out details, but the light from the car’s interior and the house’s exterior gave him the broad strokes, a blurred version of the adult that his mind overlaid on his memories of the child. It wasn’t that JJ’s face had changed with age, so much as time had refined what was already there. Her cheeks were less full, brows sharper. She still had that deep divot beneath her nose and above her lip. Was there a word for that? Same shape to her eyes, same determined set to her mouth. But now there was another child that wore her face, nearly the same age that they had been when everything fell apart. Adam was shocked when he felt his own eyes start to tear, and quickly looked away.

“What’s the family’s name?” he asked.

“Nicholson—Dorothy and Otto. I doubt you know them. Dorothy was a couple of years behind us, and Otto’s from somewhere over toward Kentucky. Their daughter’s name—”

Adam heard JJ hesitate, stumbling over the verb tense.

“Their daughter’s name is Rachel. Just let me do the talking.”

“Okay,” Adam said, and they climbed out of the Bronco into a night that felt even colder than it had a few moments ago. Adam rubbed his arms and almost complained, but JJ was halfway to the front door already. And she was probably wearing less than he was.

The Nicholson house was a simple, two-story affair with white siding and black shutters. A gray-painted concrete slab served as an entryway, topped with an overhang supported by slim, white pillars and a strip of decorative, black-painted metal scrollwork on either side. There was a doorbell, but JJ didn’t bother, banging on the screen door instead.

A bearded man in jeans and a Washington Redskins sweatshirt opened the main door, pausing just a moment before unlatching the screen.

“Hey, JJ,” he said. His bulk filled the doorway, but he was the kind of fit that came from a lifetime of hard chores, not from going to the gym every morning.

“Any word?” JJ asked.

He shook his head and stepped aside. “Grant’s coming by again later tonight. Come on in. Dorothy will be glad to see you.”

JJ squeezed through, trying not to let the heat out, and Adam followed suit, closing the door behind him. Otto led them through a mudroom and kitchen into a living room where a woman sat on a flower-patterned sofa. She leaned forward so her long, brown hair curtained her face, and stared down at the cordless telephone clutched in her hands. The two men stood awkwardly while JJ negotiated around the coffee table to sit on the cushion next to her.

“Dorothy,” JJ said softly, reaching out to take her closest hand. “How are you holding up?”

Dorothy lifted her head and nodded, as if that were an answer to the question, but didn’t speak. Her face was tear-streaked, and her eyes and lips were deep pink and puffy. She looked barely out of high school herself—too young to have a daughter in middle school—but Adam suspected Dorothy was one of those people who appeared even more vulnerable in times of trouble. Sitting next to JJ, the woman was a thin-limbed, spring-blooming dogwood sheltering alongside a solid, straight-trunked red oak. Something about Dorothy—the high, even cheekbones, the deep brown eyes and skin that was just a shade or two darker than most people in Beecham County—looked vaguely familiar.

“You used to love Smarties,” Adam said, the words out before he knew they were there.

Dorothy looked up at him, surprise snapping her out of her lethargic confusion for a moment. “Do I know you?”

“I remember how Mrs. Mitchell from the corner store would pull a roll of Smarties from a dish behind the counter to give to the kids before we left with a loaf of bread or whatever. But you couldn’t wait until you got home. You’d sit outside on the sidewalk and peel back the wrapper,” Adam said, demonstrating with his hands, “and you’d examine each little individual candy pellet before you ate it, like you were trying to figure out what flavor it was.”

Dorothy’s head tilted and her eyes lost their focus. Her husband, Otto, went so rigid next to him that Adam could feel the man’s stillness as if it were movement.

“Did they actually have different flavors, or were they all just sour?” Adam asked.

A ghost of a smile appeared on Dorothy’s lips. “That’s what I was trying to figure out, but I don’t think I ever did.” She paused, staring at him. “You’re Adam, aren’t you? You were JJ’s best friend.”

Dorothy’s head swung to JJ for confirmation.

“Best instigator,” JJ said. “He was always getting me into trouble.”

JJ quickly glanced at Adam, but he knew not to challenge her. “I haven’t thought about Mrs. Mitchell in years,” JJ continued. “She moved to North Carolina to be near her grandkids when Mr. Mitchell died and the 7-11 people bought her store. I wonder what ever happened to her.”

Adam bumped his elbow on the entertainment center behind him. The top shelf held photographs, the bottom one video games and DVDs and other miscellaneous, stackable entertainments. Adam picked up a photo from the top shelf.

“Is this Rachel?” he asked.

Dorothy nodded without speaking, her eyes filling with tears again.

The girl looking sideways at the camera seemed a little small for her age, a little unsure, but healthy. Maybe she just hadn’t hit her growth spurt yet. She had her mother’s dark hair and full lips, but her father’s pale complexion and vivid blue eyes that stared out at the world.

“She’s beautiful. She has your eyes,” Adam said, meeting Otto’s intense stare. Adam was suddenly seized by nausea and a sense of falling. He swallowed, afraid to blink, and in a moment the vertigo was gone. The last time he’d slept was this afternoon before his shift, but when was the last time he’d eaten?

Adam turned to carefully place the picture back on the crowded shelf. His eyes were drawn to a photo of a nicely dressed Dorothy and Otto (wedding?), and a picture of a boy in a baseball uniform, with a smaller candid of him and Rachel tucked into the frame. The boy looked a couple of years older than her.

“How’s Jacob doing?” JJ asked.

Dorothy mashed her lips together until she could speak. “He’s been in his room all evening. I think he feels guilty. Like if he’d been here, she wouldn’t have wandered off.”

Wandered off. So that’s what she was telling herself. Adam thought that was probably a good thing, for now, although a quick glance at Otto’s grim face indicated the girl’s father harbored no such illusions.

Dorothy looked at Adam again, then back at JJ before shaking her head. “Adam Rutledge,” she confirmed to herself, obviously pleased her brain was still functional enough to bring his full name to mind. “You were always hanging around outside Mrs. Mitchell’s, waiting for JJ.”

“Never helped me carry anything home,” JJ groused.

Like you’d have let me, Adam thought, but he just smiled.

“You’d lean up against the ice box,” Dorothy said, “like the world was too heavy to stand up straight anymore. You and that fidgety boy, the one who couldn’t stop flipping the little metal door open, until Mr. Mitchell would finally come out and yell at him for melting the ice.”

Crap. Adam should have listened to JJ and kept his mouth shut. JJ glared at him, and he saw the same thought running through her mind.

“Dorothy, we’re gonna go now, but you know I’m right next door if you need anything,” JJ said, standing quickly. But it was too late.

Dorothy’s brow furrowed. “That boy… that other boy…” Then her mouth dropped and her eyes opened wide in comprehension.

“Danny,” Dorothy said.

And she started to scream.