Part 25 (2/2)

Tess furtively wiped her tears away. She got up from the bed, sniffling, and walked to the door where her mother stood. ”Where were you?”

”Ken and I have been out driving around, looking for Erny. I've just come home to change into some rubber boots. We want to walk up the bridle path to the campground. At least as far as they'll let us go. Maybe I'll see something they missed. It's worth a try. I can't sit here and do nothing. Did you have any luck?”

Tess shook her head and followed her mother out of the bedroom.

”All right, let me see if I can find those boots,” said Dawn as she turned down the hall to head for the mudroom. ”Tess, go put a sweater on. You're shaking.”

Tess didn't feel like arguing. Obediently, she pulled on a warm sweater and then walked down the hall. She looked into the sitting room. Kenneth Phalen was sitting in the Windsor chair by the fireplace. He seemed to feel Tess's gaze and looked up.

”Tess. I'm so sorry about your boy,” said Ken. ”I thought I'd help your mother look for him. You have to help in the search at a time like this. Just to keep your sanity.”

”Yes,” said Tess.

”I know how it feels when your child is missing. I'll never forget that sense of helplessness when we couldn't find Lisa.” He shook his head. ”She ran away about a dozen times before...the final time.”

”Erny did not run away,” said Tess. ”That's what the police want us to believe, but it's not true. Somebody took him.”

”Oh, I know. I know. But the feeling is the same. Just the sheer terror that something awful is going to happen to them. I can't tell you how many nights I went out looking for Lisa, making bargains with G.o.d that if I found her and she was all right.... Well, when they get into drugs, it's a nightmare.”

Tess crossed her arms over her chest. ”Kids don't just...get into drugs, do they? I mean, aren't there warning signs that they're very troubled to begin with?”

There was a flicker of resentment in Ken's eyes. And then it subsided. ”How old is your son?”

”Ten,” said Tess.

Ken shook his head. ”Well, that's what you tell yourself now. You think that you'll make sure your kid has a happy life and then it won't ever happen to them.”

”Isn't there some truth to that?” said Tess.

Ken shrugged. ”If you're lucky,” he said.

Dawn came down the hall wearing her rubber ”Wellies.” ”Ken, are you ready?”

Ken rose immediately to his feet. ”Sure,” he said. He put on the gray parka that was hanging from a hook by the door. Then he pulled a walking stick from the umbrella stand. ”Might need this,” he said.

”Well,” said Tess stiffly, ”I appreciate your...helping out.”

He grasped her shoulder briefly. ”Courage,” he said.

Tess felt tears spring to her eyes and she avoided his gaze.

”Let's go out the front,” said Dawn. ”We'll walk around the inn.”

”Okay,” said Ken. He led the way out the front door.

”Tess, walk us out. Get a breath of air,” said Dawn.

Tess did as she was told, walking arm in arm with her mother out the front. Tess pulled her sweater tight around her and scanned the parking lot.

”I guess the vultures have scattered for the moment.”

”They'll be back,” said Dawn grimly. ”Ken has his cell phone with him. We'll check in with you soon.”

Tess nodded and breathed in the damp, gray air. ”Thanks.”

”Don't be afraid,” said Dawn.

Tess released her mother reluctantly. Dawn stepped off the front step and started down the path where Ken had led. He was using the walking stick to part the gra.s.ses as he went along. Dawn turned back to look at Tess. ”I won't be gone long.” Then she frowned. ”Now, what's that doing there?” Dawn asked as she spotted something out of place in the inn's carefully maintained front yard. She walked back across the gravel and picked up the pole that was propped against the latticework behind the bench.

Tess looked at the object Dawn was holding. ”Oh,” she said, ”that's the fis.h.i.+ng pole Erny made. Jake brought it over.”

Dawn's expression softened as she looked at the makes.h.i.+ft fis.h.i.+ng rod. ”Oh,” she said. ”That's wonderful. What a kid.”

”Oh, Mom,” Tess cried.

Dawn shook her head and handed the pole to Tess. ”Don't, Tess. Don't give up. You go put it in the mudroom. He'll be using it again before you know it,” she said firmly.

”I will,” said Tess.

”We'll be back soon,” Dawn promised and then she disappeared around the side of the house.

Tess nodded and clutched the pole to her chest with both hands. She waved at her mother, though Dawn was already out of sight. Then Tess sank down on the bench, planting the fis.h.i.+ng rod on the stone step in front of her and gazed at it. She could picture her son making it. Busily hunting up the elements he needed for the job. The long tomato plant stake. The twine, which had probably been used to secure the vine to the stake. Where did he find this stuff? she thought, smiling through her tears. Jake's house? Neither Jake nor Julie was much of a gardener. Then she remembered Jake saying that they were out at the Whitman farm. He probably found this stuff in one of their many fields that Nelson Abbott had tended so dutifully over the years. Luckily Nelson would never know that Erny had lifted this pole and twine from his garden to fas.h.i.+on a fis.h.i.+ng rod.

Tess clutched the childish contraption to her, to her heart. He was hoping to catch a big fish and instead...

Tess pulled the twine through her fingers until she came to the small, rectangular metal lure that he had clumsily secured to the end of the twine through an eye at one end of the rectangle. She took the piece of metal in her fingers and turned it over. Then her heart leaped to her throat.

Erny's lure was a silver medallion, worn and scratched by time and dirt. Engraved on it was one word: ”Believe.” Tess felt confused and...suddenly frightened, as if she had stepped out of an open door and found herself on a high ledge. Mine? she thought, examining the medal. It had to be. The blood was pounding in her ears as Tess fumbled inside the top of her turtleneck and pulled out her own chain. Her medallion was still there, as it always was. Her hands shook as she put the two medallions together and saw that they were the same, although the one attached to the twine was scratched and battered. She turned the fis.h.i.+ng lure/medallion over again and peered at it more closely. Etched faintly into the back, barely visible, were three numbers. Tess's heart was thudding and there seemed to be a rus.h.i.+ng sound in the air around her. The three numbers formed a date. It took her a moment to comprehend it. Her brain felt woolly and it was difficult to make those numbers correspond to a day, a month, a year. To the date they represented. To Phoebe's date of birth.

CHAPTER 28.

”Phoebe?” she whispered, squeezing the battered medallion as if it were an amulet and she could summon her long-lost sister by breathing her name over it. ”Phoebe...”

For one moment, she felt suspended in time. Felt as if, somehow, because she was holding this long-missing talisman, she might turn around and everything would be different. Her blonde-haired sister, still thirteen, in sweatpants and braces, would be hovering behind her, close enough to touch. Smiling at her...Phoebe's face, so long lost, now nearly forgotten, was suddenly vivid in Tess's mind's eye. Tess tried to hold on to it, to keep it with her somehow, but the edges began to blur and the image faded. Tess's heart sank and she felt as if a magic spell had been broken.

She looked down at the twine laced through her fingers. She had to free the medallion from the knot Erny had made to fasten it to his fis.h.i.+ng line. There was no sensation in her fingers. They were white and numb. Somehow she managed to rapidly sort through the childish system of knots until she worked the end free and the twine fell away, coiled like a slinky, and she was able to pull the medallion loose. She pressed it, for a moment, to her lips. Phoebe. Your necklace. You were wearing it that last day....

The unpleasant tang of metal against her tongue jolted her back to the reality of the present. Her thoughts of Phoebe were replaced by thoughts of her son, who had recovered Phoebe's necklace. Found it, obviously, in the place where he found the tomato stake and the twine. Found it in the place where Phoebe's killer had hidden her, so long ago. At the Whitman farm. Where Nelson Abbott, his son, Lazarus, and his nephew had all worked.

Tess stood up on unsteady legs and ran toward the corner of the house where Ken and her mother had recently disappeared. She looked down the path, but there was no sign of them. ”Mother!” she cried out. Tess felt almost dizzy with longing to show this relic of Phoebe's life and death to Dawn. Oh my G.o.d. Mom. Wait until you see what I have found. What Erny found...

But her shouts dispersed in the air. Dawn and Ken were nowhere in sight nor within shouting distance, apparently. Tess tried to gather her thoughts. Maybe she could call Dawn on her cell phone. But as soon as she thought of it, she knew it was futile. Dawn was from another generation. She never took her cell phone along on a walk. Dawn said that Ken had his, but Tess didn't know his number.

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