You Will Never Know Read online

  Her head was on his chest and one of his hands was gently stroking her hair. “My shiny white teeth?”

  She laughed and kissed his chest. “No, silly. It was when you asked to help me with that damn keg, back at the softball game. You didn’t charge in and take control. You didn’t pull the hose away and try to give me a lesson in how I was doing it wrong. You asked.”

  His gentle stroking of her hair continued. “I’d like to keep that up, if you don’t mind. Asking you before I do things.”

  She snuggled into his warmth and softness and scent. “Don’t mind at all.”

  And Ted had paused, and then said, his voice lower, “I know it’s early, but someday I just might ask you if I could take care of you and your girl, for a long time to come.”

  Then Jessica had just closed her eyes, and thinking of the disappointment her first marriage had been, she heard a little voice inside that said, Yes, he just might be the one. He just might.

  Might be the one who could help her with her dreams for Emma.

  That long-ago moment of peace, satisfaction, and anticipation was now as foreign to Jessica’s thoughts as being the first woman to walk on the moon. She knew Ted’s emotions, his many strengths and few weaknesses, and she also knew it was impossible for him to tell her a joke without laughing halfway through it.

  Now his face was a mixture of surprise, concern, and anger, and there was no humor there.

  Whatever drowsiness had been entwined around her mind and muscles was gone. Jessica stood right up, the catalog falling off her lap. “They’re not upstairs?”

  “No, I checked both their bedrooms and the bathroom, and they’re not there.”

  Jessica got up and went through the dining room to the door leading to the cellar. She flicked on the light, went down the olden wooden stairs, past the small window set into the foundation, and down to the dirt floor. Nothing there except the washing machine and dryer and wooden pallets holding boxes of junk, his and hers.

  “Emma! Are you down here? Emma!”

  No answer.

  She ran back upstairs, and Ted said, “Did they say anything about going out?”

  “Christ, no,” Jessica said, her neck and chest constricting. “Emma went to bed a couple of hours ago, and Craig . . . he was already in his bedroom. They didn’t say anything about going out. And—”

  She stopped it right there. For the past three years Emma and Craig had been polite with each other, mostly, but they had kept their lives and their friends separate as stepsiblings. Jessica could imagine either one of them sneaking out of the house on their own, but together? Impossible. Their relationship was not a Brady Bunch redux.

  Ted started talking, and Jessica brushed past him and ran upstairs to the second floor, calling out, “Emma! Are you hiding?”

  At the top of the stairs she ducked into the bathroom and made sure the tub was empty. As she was leaving, she heard Ted opening and closing the downstairs closet door.

  What was he doing?

  She came out of the bathroom, saw Ted trotting upstairs, and she went to the right, flung open Emma’s bedroom door.

  “Emma!”

  The room was in its typical cluttered state, with an unmade bed and open closet, some clothes on the floor, piles of running shoes. Posters of running greats Gwen Torrence, Sydney Michelle McLaughlin, and the historic Flo-Jo. A handmade poster with dates and grids made by Emma last spring, showing the classes she planned to take over the next two years, her large handwriting stating Emma’s Road to Victory!!! On a bureau was a cluster of running trophies, ribbons and medals dangling from some of them, and even in this moment of darkness Jessica felt that thrill of knowing that her girl was special, was talented, had a whole future ahead of her.

  But where was she?

  Jessica even ducked into the small closet, past the gym bags, small hand weights, more running shoes. Nothing.

  Ted was standing in Emma’s doorway. “Well?” he asked, his face ashen.

  “Ted . . . I don’t know, I just don’t know!”

  She brushed by Ted, went into Craig’s room. Ted was right behind her. Nothing in the room had changed since she had been in here earlier. It still looked like a typical teenage boy’s room—more clothes, more clutter, even smellier.

  A typical teenage boy who was gone.

  With his attractive younger teenage stepsister.

  A teenage boy who a little while ago had been looking at a video on his computer.

  “Ted . . .”

  The words forming inside her felt heavy and deadly, and she tried to choose them carefully, but seconds were going by and she couldn’t wait.

  She couldn’t wait.

  “What were you going to say?”

  “Ted, I just don’t know.”

  He stepped closer, and she could smell the scent of fear and something else on him, some sickly-sweet odor. “Please, Jessica, what are you thinking?”

  What was she thinking? Any other time she wouldn’t dare mention it, but no, not tonight, not with her girl gone.

  “Damn it, earlier I came into Craig’s room and there was something on his computer. A video. There was an erect cock near a woman’s face. A young woman who had blond hair. Like Emma. I’m sorry if that upsets you, Ted, but it’s the truth. We need to think about that.”

  His eyes narrowed, and his face flushed even more. He turned and started down the stairs, yelling back up at her, “Christ, Jessica!”

  She followed him down, both of their feet slamming hard against the old wood. “I couldn’t help it, Ted, how could I? Emma’s an attractive girl, and Craig, he’s—”

  At the bottom of the stairs, Ted whirled and said up to her, “What? A rapist? A kidnapper? A perv? For Christ’s sake, he’s just a kid!”

  Jessica felt the blush of shame for having mentioned it, but how could she avoid it? Ted was protective of his son, that made absolute sense, but Jessica was exactly the same about Emma. And a long-buried memory came back, of Mom in the bathroom, trying to put some sort of makeup on a bruised cheek, saying with a tired voice, “You want to go through life, child, sometimes you have to sacrifice, keep smiling, and keep your mouth shut for your own good.”

  But this was Emma.

  She said, “Ted, I’m sorry, I’m just scared. That’s all. I’m sorry.”

  He looked so angry that he couldn’t talk, but Jessica wasn’t going to stand there and apologize again. She walked by him and went to the front door, tugged and tugged at it until it squeaked itself free. She stepped onto the granite steps, looked up and down the empty sidewalk, past the other homes on the street, most of which were now unlit so late at night. Ted’s leased BMW and her old Sentra were parked side by side in the driveway.

  “Emma! Are you out here? Emma!”

  Nothing, nothing at all.

  Ted was behind her, breathing hard. “Please, get back in the house. Please.”

  “Emma!”

  She allowed him to gently pull her back into the house. The cranky door took two tries before it was successfully closed and Ted said, “Look, I’ll go out, see what I can find out and—”

  “What do you mean, find out?”

  “Jessica, I grew up here, okay? I know the hangouts. The places where kids go. I’ll head out for a drive, all right?”

  “And what do you think I should do?” she asked, her voice rising. “Just sit here and hope for the best?”

  He went to the chair where he had dumped his short leather coat. “Christ, no. Get on the phone. Call Emma’s friends, call her track coach. Maybe there’s some sort of secret party going on tonight, something like that.”

  “A party? On a school night? With Craig going, too?”

  “Jessica, please, just do it!”

  Then he slammed his way out of the house, going to his BMW, and Jessica went to the kitchen, retrieved her iPhone from the charger, started scrolling through her contacts.

  She stopped as something heavy seemed to strike the back of her neck.
>
  She had been lightly dozing when Ted had come home, and the sound of him pushing against the old door had woken her. So why hadn’t the noise of Emma and Craig leaving done the same?

  Her first call was to Emma’s cell phone, which went straight to voicemail. The second went to Craig’s, with the same result.

  She hesitated and then called Emma again and said, “Emma, it’s Mom . . . It’s past eleven thirty—where are you? You . . . you know if there’s something wrong you can come to me. Honest. Please. Call back soon.”

  Then she called Craig’s number again, and in her growing anger and despair almost left a message as well—You tell me what you did to my daughter—but she held back and went on to make other calls.

  CHAPTER THREE

  After making three more phone calls, Jessica was through, her chest tight, mouth dry, hands shaking.

  The first call went to Emma’s track coach, John Webber, who also coached two other sport teams at school and who openly lived with his partner, Pete Beaumont. That arrangement had eased a potential problem in Jessica’s mind—and that of other mothers—of the creepy coach getting too interested in his female charges.

  After Coach Webber, Jessica called the parents of two of Emma’s friends, the McAllisters and the Romers, whose daughters were also on the track team. In each case she awakened adults who were grumpy and cautious when they answered the phone but snapped to full consciousness when Jessica explained the situation.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but Emma’s gone out and I don’t know where she is,” Jessica had said to all three. “She didn’t leave a note, she isn’t answering her cell phone . . . I just wondered if you might have any idea if there’s some sort of party or get-together going on tonight with her friends or the track team.”

  And that had led to being on hold for a while as John Webber checked with other parents whose daughters were on the track team, then later as Barry McAllister interrogated his daughter, Melissa, and even later, when Doris Romer talked to her daughter, Kate.

  They could offer nothing, with all three telling her that they would call her if they found anything out and each of them having a tone in their voice of How in hell do you lose your teenage daughter with no driver’s license on a school night?

  Jessica paced back and forth in the old house, floorboards creaking, making sure every light in the house was on. She then took a flashlight and went out to their small backyard, which was bordered at the rear by a tall wooden fence and on either side by shrubbery.

  It was starting to rain, and back in the house she called Ted, and damn it to hell, his cell phone went to voicemail.

  Enough.

  She left the door unlocked and took her car, a wheezing old Nissan Sentra, and drove to the high school, looking at the empty sidewalks in town, slowing down when she saw a couple walking along the side of the road and then speeding up when she saw that neither person was Craig or Emma.

  Craig.

  She clenched her steering wheel so hard her fingers hurt, replaying the memory of just a few hours ago, seeing the video. She imagined the gangly boy sitting in the chair in his smelly bedroom, jacking off, and then, as his lust built and built, he realized there was a real-life hottie just a few yards away . . .

  So what did he do? Peek in on her? Assault her? And if he did that, why hadn’t Jessica heard anything?

  And damn it, why had she backed down when she had seen that porn on his computer? Why hadn’t she said something to Craig? Maybe if she had done that, he would have been shaken up, she would have thrown him off, kept him from doing whatever might have happened.

  Not much of a stern stepmother, now, are we? came a nagging interior voice.

  The car seemed to shudder around her. Just a few minutes, that’s all it had taken for this family to start crumbling, for her to think the worst of her stepson, for her husband to get angry at her.

  The windshield wipers were flicking back and forth, back and forth, making everything out there look smeared and smudged, and she drove into the school’s parking lot and then carefully maneuvered onto the playing fields near the empty viewing stands. She flicked the car’s headlights on high and stepped out, realizing that she hadn’t brought a coat.

  “Emma!”

  Jessica started crying. What was the point of coming here, to the place where Emma was setting records and becoming the envy of track coaches around the state? For years Jessica had enjoyed running with Emma, until that unfortunate event two years back, something she hated to remember, but Jessica never, ever missed a track meet, while Ted could never be bothered to see his accomplished stepdaughter.

  “Emma!”

  The rain came down more heavily. The fields were sodden.

  She got back in her car and drove home.

  Ted was waiting for her in the empty house and said, “Where the hell have you been?”

  She went to the kitchen, tore off a length of paper towel, wiped her face, hair, and hands. “Looking, just like you were. Did you find anything?”

  “Christ, of course not,” he said. “Why didn’t you call me to tell me you were going out?”

  She crumpled up the wet paper towel and in a flash of anger that surprised her tossed it at him. “I did, damn it! And it went right to voicemail.”

  “Oh,” Ted said, suddenly remorseful. “Shit, I forgot. I set it to mute when I was at Harry’s Place with Ben.”

  Jessica tore off another piece of towel, blew her nose, and started walking to the telephone hanging on the wall by the cabinets. Ted had insisted they keep a landline in case potential clients found his home phone number from old real estate listings. Refrigerator magnets held up Emma’s photocopied track schedules. The sight of those plain sheets of paper nearly made her burst into tears.

  Ted asked, “Who are you calling?”

  Jessica picked up the receiver. “Who do you think? The police.”

  Ted shook his head, took the receiver from her hand, put it back into place. “Jessica, no.”

  Jessica stared at her husband in disbelief. What was going on with him? Didn’t Ted see how serious this was?

  “What are you talking about?” she said, trying to keep her tone civil. “Our kids are missing. You didn’t find anything, I didn’t find anything. It’s way past midnight. They won’t answer their cell phones.”

  Or can’t, a dark part of her suggested, and she shoved that thought away. She took a breath. “I called Emma’s track coach and the parents of her two best friends, Melissa and Kate. Nothing. We’ve got to call the police.”

  Ted maneuvered himself so he was between the telephone and Jessica. “Just hold on, all right? Just hold on. It’s only been a couple of hours. We don’t know what’s happened yet. Let’s just wait a while.”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know, but I know calling now doesn’t make sense.”

  “Ted, I’m sorry, I can’t wait,” she said, going over to the kitchen counter. “You wait if you want to. I’ll use my cell phone if I have to.”

  And Ted, her love, her husband, the man she wanted to stay with as long they both lived, moved quickly past her, grabbed her purse, and said, “No.”

  She stood still, staring at this strange man in front of her. He looked ridiculous, holding her purse against his chest. His eyes seemed wide, full of concern, full of . . .

  Fear?

  Fear of what?

  Jessica took a calming breath. “Theodore Alan Donovan, you either tell me what the hell is going on right now or I’m walking out of this house and I’m going to find a telephone and call the police. You can let your son hitchhike to Boston or Providence or stay missing, I really don’t care, but I’m going to find my Emma.”

  He said, “It won’t make a difference, not now. They don’t investigate unless someone’s been missing for more than twenty-four hours.”

  “That’s bullshit,” she said. “That’s for an adult. Not for two teenagers.” Jessica started out of the kitchen. “I’m going out.
Don’t try to stop me.”

  “Wait!”

  She turned. He slowly put her purse back on the kitchen counter. It almost fell off and he stretched a hand to push it back. It looked sad and almost comical.

  “Jessica, with that development in Concord being canceled, I’m in a rough place. Very rough place. The worst since I got my real estate license.”

  She crossed her arms, trying to squeeze and protect herself, trying to keep Ted from seeing how her hands were shaking, how much she was scared, and how much he was scaring her.

  Ted said, “I’m like that guy in the circus, the . . . the wire walker. That’s right. The wire walker. Like that guy in the documentary about the World Trade Center’s towers. I’m halfway across, there’s no net. I’ve dropped the balancing pole and the wire’s starting to fray . . . Jessica, we call the Warner police, the word will get out about our kids being missing. Rightly or wrongly, people will think they’ve run away from home. And if they both ran away from home, then it must have been because we were bad parents. Jessica, I’m in a pit right now. If people around here think I’m a bad parent, you think they’re going to come to me to sell their property? Do you? Something like this will destroy me.”

  Jessica stared at Ted. She had never seen his face so red, so frightened. It was now so quiet in the kitchen that she could hear the rain hammering the roof of the old house.

  She said, “I don’t care, Ted. I really don’t. If we find the kids and you lose your job and we have to live in a trailer somewhere in Lowell or Lawrence, so what. Getting them back is what counts. Nothing else.”

  Jessica started to turn and Ted said, “Please, you’ve got to wait!”

  She lost it. She couldn’t help herself. “My Emma is gone and you want me to wait?”

  He stepped forward, fists clenched. “Hey, my boy’s gone, too! All you care about is your precious Emma, Emma, Emma. You’re so self-centered that—”

  “That’s not true!” She stood her ground, feeling like she was defending Emma, even with her not here, and she steeled herself for that sudden smack, that sudden blow that had struck her so many times when she had been married to Bobby.