forty-seven

The moment Jude hangs up, he’s moving, his hand still lightly gripping mine. He takes me outside and starts walking into the yard, circling wide around the main patio and the partygoers.

I don’t ask where we’re going. I can’t even form the question. All I can think about is Cadence, coming home to see me. Cadence, never arriving home. Cadence, grabbed somewhere by a psycho who…who…

I can’t finish that thought.

As we’re circling the patio, I catch sight of Peter Bishop. He’s outside, talking to an older man, and he sees Jude and stops mid-conversation. Jude gives an everything’s fine wave as he keeps moving.

We reach the bike. Jude starts talking then, a stream of words, almost babble, as if he’s been running through his plans as we walk.

“He got the ticket from her after she got on the bus. It’s been stamped. That’s why I called your father. She almost certainly got off the bus. I don’t see how he could grab her on it. I don’t see how he’d even know she was on it, but I can’t worry about that. He did. So she got off in Reeve’s End. That means we need to get there and retrace her steps, figure out what happened.”

I’m not sure that’s possible. Especially not at midnight on a Sunday. I don’t think he believes it either—he’s just taking action for the sake of taking action, and that I do understand.

He texts Roscoe, asking if he can trace Cadence’s phone. Then he’s on the bike, and I’m waiting for him to start it so I can hop on the back. He cranks the ignition. Gives it gas. Cranks again. Nothing happens.

“No,” he says. “No, no, no. You piece of shit, do not do this now.”

He’s off the bike, and he’s checking it, and he’s talking again, that babble to fill the space and the silence. “I should be able to get it going. I usually can. I’m no mechanic, but I’ve learned a few things. Had to, with this thing. It—” He stops, and he’s holding something, and he lets out a string of curses.

I see what he’s holding. Two pieces of wire. I’m no mechanical expert either, but as someone who can’t afford to call a service person if the fridge goes on the fritz, I’ve learned a few basics too. The wire he’s holding hasn’t come loose or frayed and snapped. It’s been cut.

“Jude?” Mr. Bishop’s voice precedes him as he turns the corner. He gives a soft laugh. “That sounded like you, but I don’t think I’ve heard you say those particular words.”

He stops as he sees Jude’s expression. Before he can ask, Jude says, “My bike’s not working, and I need to get Winter back fast. Problem at home. Can I take one of the cars? I’ll return it tomorrow.”

“Of course. Take mine.” He leads us into the garage and over to a box, punches in a code, and removes the keys. “Take it for as long as you need. I mean that. It’s not like I don’t have backups.”

He motions at the garage, where I count four cars, and he gives me a wry smile and an eye roll, as if embarrassed by the excess.

I don’t hear the rest of Mr. Bishop and Jude’s conversation. I don’t notice anything about the car once I’m inside. I’m too numb to process until, once we’re on our way, I can’t help wishing Jude would drive faster. Then I glance at the speedometer and see he’s doing almost a hundred miles an hour.

“We don’t have proof this guy’s hurt anyone,” Jude finally says, his voice soft.

By hurt he means killed. He’s just not going to say the word.

“He’s taunting you,” he continues. “I don’t know why. But that gives him even more reason not to hurt Cadence. He’ll want to hold on to her. Use her against you.”

“For what?”

“I don’t—” He stops short.

“You thought of a reason. Tell me.”

“To lure you in.”

“Which means we could be running straight into that trap. But he’s had chances to take me, Jude. In the forest. Down the mine shaft. In that bunker. Three times when I was alone and vulnerable and he could have hauled me off and no one would ever know. I couldn’t have given him better opportunities if I tried.”

He runs a hand through his hair. “I’m missing something. Maybe it’s just the game. You’re a challenge, and he can’t resist prolonging the chase.”

“A challenge? The girl who repeatedly ends up in situations custom-made for kidnapping? More like he’s waiting for me to actually present a challenge. I’m making it too easy.”

He glances over, sees I’m giving a twist of a smile, and returns it. “Maybe we’re looking too hard for a reason. He’s a psychopath. Does he need an excuse to fixate on you? He just has.”

I still feel like we’re missing something critical, but I don’t know what. I settle back in the seat, watching the scenery pass. We’re roaring along the back roads, not another car in sight, and I look and I think of all the nights I’d sat in a backseat, my father driving, Cadence asleep beside me.

Come on, girls. We need to go.

But it’s the middle of the night, Daddy.

And that’s the best time to drive. When you can sleep.

I suspect now that wasn’t the reason at all. We’d been fleeing bills he couldn’t pay.

Everything we’d saved went to trying to save her.

When he said that this afternoon, I’d brushed it off. Yes, treating my mother’s cancer couldn’t have been cheap, but neither was bourbon, and that’s where the trouble came from.

Except it wasn’t like that in the beginning. The drinking came later, after those endless nights of running to some new town, that ever-disintegrating parade of new residences.

We fled our home—our real home—in the middle of the night too. We had a house then. Heavily mortgaged probably, right at the time of that housing market crash. We were fleeing debt he couldn’t repay. Debt so staggering all he could think was to leave the house, leave his job, leave the bills, grab us and run.

There were other ways. Declaring bankruptcy, for one. But did he realize that at the time? He said our mother managed the finances. She was the college-bound one. He’d been a high school dropout. Maybe the only solution he knew was to run and start over and hope things would get better.

I squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t want to make excuses for him. No excuses justify the bruises.

I won’t make that mistake with you. The minute you graduate, you’re going to run as far as you can and you’re never going to look back.

Not an excuse. A rationalization. A stupid, idiotic—

I take a deep breath and glance over at the other side of the seat, half expecting to see Cadence dozing there. It’s Jude, of course, his gaze on the road, focused on doing what I asked, what I need—getting me home.

“I have to tell you about Cadence,” I say. “I’ve barely mentioned her and then I get the ring and I freak, and you don’t ask what happened. You just listen. You just accept.”

“I pieced enough together, and it wasn’t the time to ask more. I knew you have a sister. I knew she wasn’t around and I figured she left, and I knew there was something about a boyfriend.”

“She took off over a year ago. We didn’t question why she never made contact. I know that sounds weird.”

“I’ve met your dad. I think I know why.”

“He wasn’t like that with Cady. He wasn’t a good father, by any stretch. Drank too much. Neglected us. Sometimes lost his temper and smacked us. The physical stuff, though, was mostly after she left. I think he blamed me…” I swallow, remembering what he said about trying to scare me off, so that he wouldn’t make the same mistake he made with Cadence.

“My sister had a boyfriend. Colton. She got into college. He didn’t want her going. I told her that if he really loved her, he’d either go with her or wait.”

Jude gives an abrupt nod, as if this barely requires agreement at all, it’s so obvious. Others tell me I did the right thing, but in their eyes I see doubt, the sense I’d interfered, that maybe a girl should be expected to wait, but not a boy, never a boy. Jude only gives that well, obviously nod and when I see that, I don’t regret the kiss. I don’t regret anything.

I continue, “She told him she was going. That night we slept in my shack. I thought she wanted to spend time with me, but I think she was hiding from him. That she was scared of what he’d do.”

Jude makes this noise. It’s not quite a growl. More of a grunt. But his eyes narrow. After Colton’s death, I told Deputy Slate that I thought Cadence was afraid of Colton, and he’d told me to shut my mouth, not go talking against the dead. He never even asked Cadence about it. I didn’t either. By then, she already wasn’t speaking to me, and I think if I’d raised the subject, she’d have denied it.

Cadence bore the weight of Colton’s death, the albatross around her shoulders, for all the town to see. She could put none of that weight onto a dead boy. A little, though, might be shifted to the person who started it all, the sister who’d given her that bad advice.

“We woke up in the night,” I continue. “I heard something. She was afraid it was him. I went to confront him. He…He’d hanged himself in the tree outside my shack.”

Jude glances over so sharply the car veers onto the shoulder, and he has to steer it back.

“Yes, that’s why…,” I begin. “Colton told enough people about the college thing that they blamed Cadence for breaking up with him and me for telling her to. She left town and didn’t look back.”

A moment’s silence. Then, “You know that’s bullshit,” he says quietly. “He didn’t kill himself over her. He wanted her to blame herself. Wanted both of you to. Hanging himself outside your shack said he was a thoughtless bastard who wanted to hurt someone he claimed to love. To hurt her in the worst possible way, because he couldn’t come back and tell her it was okay. Couldn’t ever absolve her. That’s a shitty, shitty thing to do. And, yeah, I shouldn’t blame the dead. The guy obviously had other issues. I get that. They don’t absolve him.”

I say nothing.

“You did nothing wrong, Winter,” he says. “I know you must be sick of hearing that, but you made a rational argument. The smart argument. If he hadn’t killed himself, and she’d gone to college, in the end, whether they stayed together or not, she’d have been thanking you.”

I say nothing and he shifts, the leather squeaking. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I? Poking my nose in. I don’t mean—”

“No, it’s okay.” I glance over. “Really. You aren’t saying anything I don’t try to tell myself. It’s a lot better hearing it from someone else.”

He reaches for my hand, fingers entwining with mine until a curve comes, and even then he doesn’t let go, but the car does a little jiggle, and I release his hand and manage a smile as I say, “At this speed, better keep both hands on the wheel.”

He nods, and I loosen my seat belt enough to lean over and brush my lips against his cheek and say, “Thank you, Jude.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Thank you for being you. That’s enough.”

His cheeks flush in the moonlight. I pull back and tap the dashboard. “I’d turn on the radio but I have no idea how to operate this thing.”

He taps one dial and then jiggles another. When an NPR announcer’s voice comes on, he spins the dial, saying, “Tell me when to stop.”

“Keep going.”

He tries, and then says, “Reception’s crap out here. I’ll see what he has on CDs.”

He hits more buttons and the sound of eighties pop music fills the car.

“Uh, no…,” Jude says as I sputter a laugh. He changes CDs and the next is classical piano, a piece even more beautiful than the one Jude played earlier, and I say, “This. Please.”

Jude’s finger stays on the dial. He’s gone very still.

“Wait,” I say. “Is that you playing?”

“It’s a piece I wrote for a competition. I didn’t know he’d recorded me playing it….” He trails off. “You really want to listen to this?”

I smile at him. “Yes, please.”

I lean back and listen to the music, focusing on that to stop the screaming in my head that tells me Cadence needs me and we have so far to go. Jude glances over and says, “When did you know you wanted to be a doctor?”

The non sequitur startles me. But I realize that’s intentional. I’m sick with worry, and he can’t fix that so he’s trying for a distraction.

“When my mother was in the hospital, I kept asking what cancer was and getting the usual answers people give a seven-year-old. I wanted more. I wanted to really understand, and the nurses kept putting me off, and my father and my sister told me to stop bugging the staff. So this young doctor took me aside and explained. She showed me books and used the proper terminology and said that if I wanted to know anything else, I should ask for her. I figured she was just saying that, like grown-ups do, but afterward, whenever something new came up, she’d ask if I wanted an explanation, and I always did, and she always gave it. Mom found out and started asking to hear it with me, and I’d crawl up on her bed, and it’d be just the two of us and that doctor, and I don’t think Mom really cared about the explanations—she just wanted that time with me, something the two of us could share. That doctor didn’t save my mom. No one could. But the doctor gave me—gave us—something. I decided that’s what I wanted to do when I grew up, and it never changed.” I glance his way. “And you? What do you want to do with your life, Jude Bishop?”

“I have no idea. Never have. Which sucks, because everyone asks—all the time. In my case, they all presume…Well, with my piano…”

“You don’t want that. You do seem to enjoy…I mean, I thought maybe it was one of those things that parents push on you, and it doesn’t matter how good you are at it, if you’re not interested. But you seem to like it.”

“I love it. I really do. No one ever needed to push the piano on me. But a career in it?” He shudders. “I hate performing.”

“So I shouldn’t ask you again.”

“What? No. Not at all. That’s playing for someone. Performing is a totally different thing.” He eases back in the seat. “Lennon used to come up to the turret room when I practiced. He’d hang there—doing homework, playing a game. Dad would do the same when he was home, working in there while I practiced. I liked that. No pressure. No obligation. They were there because they wanted to hear the music, not because they shelled out two hundred bucks to support the arts and are trying not to check their watches or their cell phones, because the music’s very nice, but after ten minutes of it, really, they have better things to do.”

“It’d be a whole lot more comfortable curled up in one of those window seats listening to you play. But I don’t think your mother would appreciate a steady stream of traffic through her house for private performances.”

He chuckles at that. “True. Maybe I’ll become one of those old-time bar players, just there to provide ambience and take the occasional request.”

“As long as it’s not ‘Hey Jude’?”

I get a genuine smile for that. “Only for you. But, yes, I shouldn’t have given up the piano. Thank you for that.”

“For making you play?”

“For giving me a reason to.”

We settle into an easy silence. When it starts to chafe again, I say, “Do you mind if I look through that envelope from Lennon’s room? Maybe it has something we can use.”

He nods. I take it from the backseat, pull out my notebook, and set to work.

We knew Lennon was researching his biological parents. It isn’t until I evaluate the whole collection that I notice more.

“He’s focusing on your father.” I wave a collection of small-town news articles, dating back to their dad’s—Matthew Lowe’s—high school days, when he’d been quarterback on a state-championship football team. “Which might seem a matter of circumstance—he’s the one who got the ink, but Lennon only collected his yearbook photos. And in the articles about their deaths, he’s highlighted your father’s background.”

Jude makes a noise to tell me he’s listening but doesn’t interrupt.

I pick up my notebook. “The man in the conservatory kept talking about your father. I thought he meant Peter Bishop. I tried to confirm that, and he seemed to agree. But I wonder if he was being snide. Of course that’s who I mean. Who else? There must be a reason Lennon was looking into Matt Lowe. Something set him on that trail. Something that happened after you left home. Maybe when he met someone who knew Matt.” I pause. “If it’s the guy from the conservatory, the age is about right. It’d explain why Lennon wouldn’t tell anyone—it’d be easy for the guy to convince him to keep their meetings quiet, so he doesn’t upset your adopted parents.”

Jude keeps driving as I continue working it through aloud.

“What if Lennon’s problems are hereditary?” I say. “What if it came from your biological father? Maybe this guy knew Matt Lowe, shared these interests, and hoped you inherited that?” I shake my head. “But what would that even mean?”

I lapse into silence. After another mile, I say, “You said you and Lennon don’t hunt, right?”

“Our mother wouldn’t allow it. Our dad used to, but she wouldn’t even let him talk about it in the house.”

“Well, someone taught Lennon. He cleaned a rabbit for me and did a decent job of it. I still don’t know what that means. How it would tie into your biological father or the guy in the conservatory or Cadence or Edie or anything.”

This time, when Jude doesn’t reply, I prod him with, “I’m grasping at straws, aren’t I?”

“There’s…something, but— Let me work it through. We’re almost at the spot and we need to focus on that. I’ll think about this.”