Prodigal

Chapter 20

20

Adam knew Iris would be home. She had to be. He’d been waiting twenty years to have this conversation, and after doing—in JJ’s words—a “thorough job” of driving his car into the ditch, he figured he was due some better luck.

Iris met him on her way out the door. “I was just going to pick up some bread at the market—what happened to you?”

“Long story,” he said, moving awkwardly around her and through the door. “We need to talk.”

“Okay.” Iris followed him back into her house. “Have you seen a doctor?”

“JJ took a look at me. I’ll be fine, just some bruises.”

“Have you eaten anything?”

“Yes.”

“I could make you some eggs—”

“Iris, please. It’s about Rachel Nicholson, the girl that was kidnapped.” Adam sat at the kitchen table but didn’t remove his jacket. Putting it on had hurt too much to take it off until he knew he’d be inside long enough to bother.

“Is that why someone beat you? Because of the girl?” Iris asked, dropping her purse on the kitchen counter.

“No one—” Adam stopped, unable to outright lie to his grandmother about how he’d been injured. That gave him time to process the rest of what she’d said. “Why would someone beat me because of Rachel Nicholson?”

“You know why,” Iris said, sitting across from him.

“No, I don’t. If I did, I wouldn’t ask.”

Iris pushed her long hair back from her face. “When a child disappears, people get scared. And when they get scared, they get stupid. Is there any news about the girl?”

“No,” Adam said, and stalled out for a moment. He could not imagine how to start this conversation, and perhaps worse, he could not imagine any good way for it to end.

“Sweetie,” she said, reaching for his hand, “I know this has to be hard for you, after what happened to Danny.”

“What did happen to Danny?” he asked.

Iris released his hand and grew still. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“There are gaps in my memory, pieces of things that you told me to forget—”

“Why would I do that?”

“—And I think it’s time we remembered them,” Adam said, his voice growing stronger along with his resolve.

He hardly recognized Iris’s closed expression. This was not his grandmother; it was the woman the rest of the world had to contend with, the woman who’d buried her husband, then her youngest son, then put her eldest son and his wife to rest and raised their child, only to send him away when he wanted nothing more than to be with her. But, of course, her blood ran in Adam’s veins, too.

“Tell me about my dreams,” he said.

Adam saw a moment of confusion on Iris’s face, and then… relief? Good God, what else is she hiding from me?

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, calm stoicism back in place.

“I knew when Danny was abducted.”

“Of course you did. You were there.”

Adam struggled to articulate the inexplicable. “No, I knew about something else, something that happened to him later. But I can’t remember.” He stretched his arms toward Iris, ignoring the pain as he placed his palms on the table. “I also knew when Sarah Edmunds was abducted.”

“So did half the state.” The words were challenging, but her tone was that of an adult patronizing a child who says his plastic baseball bat is a pirate spyglass.

“And yesterday, I knew when Rachel Nicholson was abducted.”

Iris’s expression didn’t change, but her face blanched as pale as her white hair. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I saw him take Rachel, just like I saw him take Sarah. That’s why I came back.”

“Saw whom?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Adam admitted. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

Iris sighed, and Adam watched the doting grandmother mask cover her face. It made the back of his neck tingle.

“Adam, sweetie, you always were a fanciful child.”

“I know what I saw!”

Iris blinked at his raised voice, then narrowed her eyes. “No, you don’t, and that’s precisely the issue.”

A tearing pain racked Adam’s chest when he reached up to rub his face. He was already so tired, and standing up to Iris sapped his energy even more. It’s probably why he did it so rarely. “You don’t understand. What I saw about Sarah years ago, I think it can help us find Rachel now.”

“How? The two things are totally unrelated,” Iris said. Her confidence was unnerving.

“What did I tell you about Danny, when I had the nightmare?”

Iris got up from her chair, deliberately pushed it back under the table and moved to retrieve her purse from the counter.

“Tell me what you know!” Adam yelled, slamming a hand on the table.

Iris wheeled and placed her own hands on the table, facing Adam. “Oh, are we sharing things now? Then maybe you want to start with why you left Morgantown in such a hurry. Or any of the other places and things you ran away from. Would you rather share numbers? How about six. That’s how many times you showed up on my doorstep over the past eighteen years. Forty-eight. That’s the longest period—in hours—you ever stayed.”

“Iris, please don’t do this.” Adam lurched to his feet.

“Or you could start by telling me who beat the crap out of you this morning. In my own town. If it’s not about the girl, how did you manage—”

Adam’s voice boomed over Iris’s, “Please, just answer the goddamned question!”

They stared at each other in the silence that fell over the house. Until a powerful knock echoed through the front door.

Iris pushed off the table with her hands and said, “Who can that be,” with no more emotional inflection than a phone service recording.

Adam hadn’t heard a vehicle approach, but he suspected Iris had. He let his eyes slip shut and tried not to think about the words Iris had said in anger, to match up the events in his life with the times he’d run to her. He rubbed his hand against his face and felt the stubble crackle. JJ was right; he was starting to look and feel like a hobo. At least he’d have a chance to take a shower and shave if Iris made her excuses and slipped away.

“Luther!” came Iris’s surprised voice from the door. “What brings you here this morning? I’d offer you coffee, but I’m afraid I’m on my way out.”

Despite her assertion, Iris allowed the deputy to pass through the door. He stopped on the doormat, glancing down at his own boots.

Adam straightened too quickly, then listed to one side to ease the pain. He tried to disguise his grimace as a small smile as he walked over to join them. Not that he’d fool Luther.

“I’m afraid I don’t have time for coffee anyway, Ms. Rutledge,” Luther said.

“Is there any news on the girl?” Iris asked.

“No, ma’am, but we’re doing our best. I was just checking in with some of the searches out this way. I stopped, since I was passing by, because I thought I might catch Adam,” Luther said, hat literally in hand.

“What’s up, Luther?” Adam acted nonchalant, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear Luther’s answer. Was Otto pressing charges? Was Luther here to arrest him? Either way, he’d prefer to not air the sordid details of the morning in front of Iris. Not just yet.

“I wanted to check with you about your car. What exactly happened to put you in the ditch out there by JJ’s?” Luther’s voice held a mixture of concern and mild interest, probably his default lawman mode of address. Adam couldn’t read him, and he wasn’t sure how to deal with this incarnation of the man who’d graduated high school about the time Adam started grade school, the much older brother of the boy who’d become the class bully.

Adam tilted his head in his best embarrassed, aw-shucks grin. “Nothing sinister, Luther. I can’t even blame a deer. I just wasn’t used to driving on the back roads and hit a patch of wet leaves on the turn.”

Luther nodded in agreement. “Happens to the best of us. I’m heading in that direction, if you need a ride back out there. Obviously we’re pretty swamped, but if all you need is a quick nudge to get her out, I think I could manage it.”

“Thanks, Luther, but Iris and I—”

“That sounds like an excellent idea, Luther,” Iris said. Her voice was tight, and Adam felt certain he’d get an earful from her about the accident. “I don’t think I’d be much help pushing a car out of a ditch.” She grabbed her purse and smiled at Luther as she brushed past him and out the door.

“We’ll talk later,” Adam called out to her.

Iris waved without looking back.

Luther shook his head. “Force of nature,” he said.

“That’s one way of putting it.” Adam caught a glimpse of Luther outside of lawman mode when the man grinned back at him. “Let me just lock up.”

Adam followed Luther out to the same vehicle Grant had used to take him to JJ’s earlier that morning. It was easier to get in the front seat than it had been to get in the back a couple of hours ago, but only marginally so. And it’d probably be harder by tomorrow.

Luther laughed, and Adam heard just a hint of the bully his brother had been as he echoed Adam’s own thoughts. “Boy, you’re gonna be feeling it tomorrow.”

Adam hitched his breath in a kind of stair step, double inhale, trying for maximum oxygen intake with minimum pain. “I don’t suppose we could have a pact, that you’ll drive better than I apparently do, and I’ll pretend to wear the seat belt.”

Luther’s answering chuckle was softer. “Sorry. I’m afraid that’d be setting a bad precedent. We’re not even really supposed to have passengers in the front seat.”

“Having smelled your back seat, I appreciate the special dispensation,” Adam said.

Luther raised an eyebrow in acknowledgment. “You gonna go picking fights, you could find an easier target than Otto Nicholson. Man’s the size of a bear.”

Adam turned to watch the trees pass by. In daylight, he couldn’t seem to get over how darn many trees there were. Not many leaves left, though. Too bad. Iris had said an early cold snap, followed by a freak windstorm, were to blame. “I wasn’t trying to pick a fight.”

“Really?” Luther said, skeptical. “Don’t get me wrong. Sheriff’s Department’s got too much else on our plate right now to give a s**t about it, and I’m not trying to yank your chain, either. I’m just saying, Otto Nicholson could put a world of hurt on a man.” Luther couldn’t resist looking at Adam with a grin. “Especially a man like you. Where’d you learn to fight?”

Adam smiled, despite himself. There wasn’t any advantage in annoying Luther, and he had a point. “Obviously, I didn’t.”

The two men laughed—Luther more than Adam—dissipating some of the tension in the stuffy vehicle. Adam still wore his jacket, and Luther had set the heat high enough to warm a lizard in the Arctic.

Adam kept waiting for Luther to say something about what he’d shared at JJ’s—not whether Luther agreed that Otto was guilty of something, but whether he thought Adam was some kind of freak. As the miles rolled by in silence, Adam began to relax. Luther drove pretty conservatively, his law enforcement training prevailing over his Beck family heritage. Adam seemed to remember one of Luther’s cousins coming to an early end in a souped-up Chevelle, drag racing on the straight stretch by the Howard Farm, with gruesome results. He wondered if Luther had been a deputy then, and if he’d been called to the scene. That might be enough to encourage a man to drive the speed limit.

And cue the arrival at the scene of my latest accident. Maybe I should give up automobiles entirely.

“I guess you never really had a chance to practice driving the roads around here,” Luther said.

“Yeah, I was long gone by the time I was old enough to get my license,” Adam agreed.

Luther pulled off to the side of the road a bit past Adam’s hatchback before turning his hazards on. “Your car locked?”

“No, I never bother.”

Luther opened the driver’s door. Adam unlatched his seat belt and started to follow.

“No,” Luther said. “You just stay put. I’ll get you all sorted out.”

If he hadn’t been Leslie’s brother, and a deputy, it probably wouldn’t have sounded so ominous.