And by just seconds.
He could feel his heart racing, and it wasn’t just from the cocktail of the Binghams’ alcohol and prescription drugs.
His adrenaline had surged when he’d heard his sons’ voices.
Both of them. Right outside.
But it took him too long to realize that the sounds weren’t in his head.
The two traitors were standing in his driveway.
Yes, he thought of it as his property already.
He could have emerged from the house and taken them both down before they knew what hit them. His aim was good enough.
But he’d pulled off his fake leg earlier in the night, and now he hopped around the room, scrambling for his gun, his anger building as his pulse quickened.
By the time he got downstairs and outside, they were gone.
He’d seen the older boy take off down the street. It was after three in the morning, and no one awake at that hour could be doing anything to be proud of.
The kid had his head down and was walking like he was filled with shame. As he should be.
Clarence turned back to the house. The warm bed was waiting upstairs. The Bells would be there in the morning. And so would he.
31
Destiny stared at Robb Ellis’s bare back.
He had a collection of moles that were scattered like flecks of dark brown paint on his olive skin.
She didn’t like moles. But what she really didn’t like was body hair. And Robb Ellis had a patch of brown strands—fur, really, was what it looked like—at the base of his spine.
Because of the heat of summer, the nubby polyester blanket and the gray-white sheet barely touched his body.
Destiny found herself staring at the triangle-shaped hair and wondering if he’d had a tail removed. Because it looked like the perfect spot for one to have been placed.
Destiny shut her eyes and tried to forget about the kid’s possible additional appendage. There was nothing really wrong with Robb Ellis, but now that he had morphed into a primate, she needed to get away from him.
Especially since he was now snoring. Or moaning in his sleep. Or something fairly creepy.
And so she slowly, carefully, slid her toned legs out of bed. The room was so small that she could pull a dress over her head and slide into her orange slipper-shoes without taking a single step.
Her hand went for the doorknob, when she had another thought.
Robb’s SUV was out front. She could take the car and drive to get coffee and maybe Sausage McMuffins or some kind of sugary donut. He wouldn’t mind. He was asleep.
If she got back quickly, he wouldn’t even know—right?
Destiny hopped into the Ellismobile, as Robb called his gas-guzzling SUV, and moved the seat all the way forward. But she still had trouble reaching the gas pedal. So she grabbed the Kleenex box, which Robb kept under the seat, because real guys don’t blow their noses or something.
She did a fine job of smashing the cardboard down onto the tissues as she perched on top of the rectangle and pulled out into traffic.
It was a beautiful summer morning. Warm sun. Slight breeze.
All good.
Destiny pushed a finger on Robb’s iPod, which was wired into his surround-sound-fancy stereo system, and music blared from all the speakers. Awesome.
Destiny considered one of her greatest strengths to be her ability to come up with a new plan without deliberation or indecision of any kind.
Now, as she drove down Oak Street, she switched her destination and her motivation.
Forget the coffee and the sausage sandwich. Never mind the gooey Cinnabon.
Destiny wanted to start the day by seeing where her former rival lived. Because that’s how she now saw pretty Emily Bell.
The night before, when Robb Ellis had shown up at the motel beer-soaked and clingy, Destiny got him to tell her again about Sam and Emily. But this time she wanted all the details. Not just the part where Robb was a hero.
So she’d heard the whole story of a kid who had a criminal father and no mother. She listened intently to how they had met when Emily sang at church and how her family had taken in the boys. And while her heart went out to Sam, his story made her want to know Emily.
The girl whose family had come to the rescue of the two boys was now impossibly intriguing.
Sam was just another bad-luck kid. Like her.
But Emily was something a whole lot more interesting. She was some kind of savior.
Destiny’s new infatuation was sealed when Robb admitted that he’d been hung up on Emily himself at one point, but of course that had passed.
And when Destiny pressed, he’d told her exactly where Emily Bell lived. He’d rattled off the address on Agate Street and even described the house with the large front porch and the herringbone-brick driveway.
It was 242 Agate. She remembered because twenty-four was her favorite number.
Now Destiny punched in the address on the navigation system, stepped on the gas, and headed across town with the warm sun on her bare left arm and a boy band singing a song about the hand of fate.
Once Destiny was on the right street, she didn’t even need the GPS to tell her where to go. The Bell house was exactly what she’d pictured when she’d dreamed about a real home.
It was good-size, with a sense of history. It had traditional style and elegant proportion. There were blooming flowerbeds in the front, and the large trees on either side of the property provided a natural frame when the house was viewed from the curb.
But it wasn’t flashy architecture or a dramatic piece of land that made it all so appealing. It was the sense that the whole place was so cared for.
Closer inspection brought Destiny’s eye to the long driveway, which led to a carriage-house-style garage in the back, where she could see a basketball hoop and a raised vegetable garden in a series of redwood boxes.
Destiny was right in the middle of absorbing the details of the six different wire funnels covered with tomato plants when she saw a man appear from the back of the house next door.
She was far away but could see that he was tall and thin. He walked stiff-legged, like his hips didn’t move right. Or something wasn’t moving right, because he limped.
Destiny took one look at him, and with her trained eye she could tell even from a distance that he was trouble.
And so she pulled the Kleenex box out from under her and slid down. She could now still see, but to anyone outside the car, it would be difficult to discern that a person was in the front seat.
Destiny watched as the tall figure slid through the bushes that separated his house from where Emily lived.
The man had something in his right hand, but it was hidden.
Destiny watched as he emerged from the bushes and moved across the brick driveway to the shrubs next to the Bells’ house.
Even though he was mostly concealed, she could tell that he was peering in through the side window.
Destiny was riveted. She was spying on someone spying.
How cool was that?
But why was he snooping around Emily’s house? He was the neighbor.
Well, what if he wasn’t the neighbor? Maybe he was a burglar, and maybe she was witnessing a crime. And maybe, if she paid attention, she’d be involved in catching the guy.
And what if that led to some kind of reward?
Destiny moved closer to the car window, and her eyes never left the house.
Emily stayed in her room until she heard both of her parents’ cars leave for work.
The boys were still asleep, and she knew they’d stay that way for hours.
She felt more tired than when she’d climbed into bed eight hours before, but she forced herself to get up.
The gnawing feeling from what she’d seen in the car in front of the Starlight Motel chewed away at the lining of her stomach. At the same time, it clouded her mind.
She was anxious and yet in a daze. She couldn’t remember ever feeling that emo
tional combination.
Emily picked up her cell phone, which she’d forgotten to recharge, and stared at the icon that showed a red battery, not a green one, and displayed the words Low Battery.
Then the whole thing shut down.
Black screen.
Done.
It was almost a relief to be cut off from the world.
Once dressed, she went downstairs to the kitchen. Emily had no appetite but forced herself to drink a glass of orange juice.
She was struck by the fact that she usually found it so sweet, but now it was bitter.
There was a note on the counter that said:
Emily–Tell Sam we’ll be doing BBQ tonight and he should be here at 6.
She crumpled the piece of paper into a ball and threw it in the trash.
Emily thought about calling Nora and asking if she could come over, but she didn’t feel like spilling her heart out, even to her best friend.
She stared out the window at the rosebushes and finally realized that she hadn’t blinked in so long that her eyes felt sticky-dry.
The clock on the wall said that even if she left right now, she’d be late for work at the gift shop. She couldn’t stand the place. Destiny was right about that.
And so, with her mind in a fog, Emily grabbed her dead cell phone and her charger, tossed them in her purse, and walked out the back door.
And straight into Clarence Border.
The thin man had disappeared from Destiny’s view.
What was he doing?
And then she saw him again.
He appeared, but now Emily was at his side. He had his hand on her arm.
Tight.
But something was now very, very wrong. Destiny was certain of it.
Emily’s face said terror.
The man was talking as they walked, not slow but not fast.
Destiny watched as they moved down the driveway and onto the sidewalk and then made their way to a parked silver car. The man opened the passenger door, and Emily got inside the vehicle.
And it was then, for just a flash of a second, that Destiny could see what was in the man’s right hand.
It was a gun.
It was pressed into Emily’s side.
Destiny waited until the silver car pulled away from the curb, and then she sat up in the driver’s seat, turned over the ignition, and swung around in a sweeping U-turn.
She was going after them.
32
The book Sam had read called Starting Over: Life After Years of Abuse said that guilt causes confusion.
And confusion leads to irrationality.
And irrationality means that you can see things and hear things that aren’t really happening.
Like when you see your father (who is locked up in prison in another state) standing on a porch in the middle of the night.
And seeing things that aren’t real is why it can be hard to breathe and why you feel like running as fast as your legs can carry you straight into a brick wall.
Or maybe into the ocean.
Over an edge.
Out of this town.
But you don’t.
Instead, you realize that you have a big problem.
You ask for help.
Sam sat in front of the church in the dark of night. He couldn’t go in. It was locked, but that didn’t matter.
He spoke to the universe. He needed his world to be right again.
Sam felt his heart now beating somewhere inside his neck.
He wiped his face, wet with sweat, and got to his feet.
By the time he got home, the sun was coming up, and he was exhausted and grateful for that.
Riddle couldn’t get back to sleep for a long time after seeing the light in the window coming from the house next door.
He lay in the dark and listened to Jared’s heavy breathing as he thought about the band of thieves who were robbing the Binghams.
In his mind he saw them taking the fancy spice set that was in the silver rack in the kitchen. He had admired those containers.
He imaged them scooping up the helpless tropical fish from the aquarium and putting them in clear plastic bags tied at the top in leaky knots.
Riddle shut his eyes and saw the bandits stuff ropes of jewelry into backpacks.
He could see them making off with the six-slice toaster that he so admired on the countertop next to the sink.
And then finally, just before the sun came up, he drifted off to sleep.
He had tried to stop it all.
But like so many times before, no one would listen to him.
It was after ten o’clock when Riddle opened his eyes to see the other bunk bed empty.
He pulled on clothes and went downstairs to find Jared eating a bowl of soggy cereal as he watched an old movie that he’d seen countless times about a bunch of kids playing soccer in a small town in Texas.
Jared looked up from the TV and said, “I thought you were gonna make pancakes. I waited for a while.”
Riddle picked up the cat that was rubbing against his legs.
“I hope we don’t get blamed, because I think robbers got into the neighbors’ house last night.”
Jared kept chewing. “How come you think that?”
Riddle was only looking at the cat. He was staring into her yellow eyes, which looked like liquid marbles.
“I know that I’m sort of blind, but I see things.”
And Jared had to agree.
Jared called Beto, because there was no way he was going next door with just Riddle, even if he didn’t really believe him.
Beto arrived right away, but he had to eat a bowl of cereal before he went over to check things out.
So it was almost eleven when they stood behind the house and discovered that the key was missing from under the brick.
They circled the yard in a three-headed cluster, peeking into windows for clues.
It wasn’t until Beto tried the knob on the back door that they realized it was open.
Jared suddenly got very nervous. “Okay, let’s go home and call my mom and dad. We could be messing up clues.”
But Beto looked energized. “We locked this door. I remember. We locked it last night, and we put away the key!”
Riddle nodded. “We locked it. And now it’s open, because someone got in.”
Jared reached out and grabbed the back of Beto’s T-shirt. “Don’t go in. I mean it.”
But Riddle was already in the kitchen, and Beto was right behind him.
Bitzie Evans cursed Emily Bell.
The shopkeeper wasn’t happy that Emily didn’t show up that morning to open the store. She didn’t find out until she stopped by the Orange Tree after her weekly foot massage.
Bitzie held a new shipment of battery-powered candles in her arms and buzzed the back door of the store with the point of her elbow. And when Emily didn’t answer, Bitzie angrily returned to her car, dug out her shop key from the snarl of crap in the compartment in between the two seats, and then set off the building alarm as she entered.
The place was still locked up from the night before.
She next checked her cell phone and the store phone, only to find she had no messages from the new salesgirl.
Bitzie punched in Emily’s phone number, and when a message came on Bitzie felt her jaw tighten. She waited until the beep to say:
“Emily, this is Bitzie Evans from the Orange Tree. I just got here, and the store was locked up with the alarm still on. No excuse is good enough for not calling. I’m letting you go. That’s just the way it is. No excuse will work with me.”
Bitzie put the phone handset down hard into the cradle and turned on one of the battery-powered candles.
But the flameless flicker didn’t make her feel any better.
Sam woke up, and the sun was high in the sky.
The first thing he did was reach for his phone and call Emily.
He was both relieved and upset that it went straight to voice mail. When he spoke in
to the phone, his voice cracked:
“Hey, Em. It’s me. I had a rough night and needed to think some stuff through. So call me—okay? I’m going to class—but call me anyway. I love you. That’s really what I want to say. I’ll explain the other part when I see you.”
Sam pressed End and felt better. He’d started the process. He would explain what had happened with Destiny, and Emily would understand. He would make her understand.
Because she was the kind of person who understood everything.
Nothing had happened that would change anything between them.
Nothing.
33
You aren’t lost until someone is trying to find you. And no one was looking for Emily Bell.
Beto and Riddle went inside the Binghams’ house and discovered dirty dishes, empty alcohol bottles, and the upstairs drawers ransacked.
Jared, having a complete meltdown, waited outside.
The three boys then ran home, half out of their minds, and called Jared’s parents, who called the police.
What followed was a police investigation.
The officers assumed that it would be difficult to determine what had been taken, but then Riddle sat down and started to draw precise pictures of everything that had been downstairs.
Beto and Jared looked over his shoulder as the pencil began to outline the kitchen. “You’re like some kind of computer. How can you do that?” Beto was shocked. Riddle only continued to work on his detailed depiction of each room.
Suddenly it didn’t matter as much that the Binghams couldn’t be reached.
Debbie and Tim Bell both left work and came right home after receiving Jared’s call. Debbie was worried that Riddle would be traumatized, but he appeared to be handling it better than anyone. He at least had a job to do. Everyone else could only huddle together and speculate.
It took an hour for the forensics expert to come and dust for fingerprints. But mostly what the guy thought he was getting were prints from the three boys.
It was assumed that Emily was at work at the Orange Tree, and Debbie, not wanting to add to the chaos, didn’t alert her to any problem. And Sam had summer-school class, so they would both hear about the break-in at the end of the day.