They were awkward, the phone calls that morning; Kara had tried to keep herself busy as she listened to Craig make each one. She was restless. She had searched online for information about a Zechariah Fleming, to no avail. There were plenty of men by that name out there in the world, but none matching the description of her Zach—not her Zach, but the boy whose existence had been thrust upon her. All of the others were too old or too far away, usually with photographs that were clearly not of him.
She had looked at the school's web site. The boy's face had appeared in one photograph there, barely recognizable in a crowd of students singing in last year's Christmas program. Had anyone in his family cared enough to come to his performance? She had not spent much time looking at that photograph.
No other searches had turned up information about the boy, so at last she had given up and made lunch. Poor Craig had made several calls during that time, each one as uncomfortable as the last, trying to find a relative who knew how to track down his cousin Elliott or could confirm that Elliott had a son. He had continued making calls all through lunch and into the afternoon. Now, as Kara was repotting her third miniature rose—with the boy's appearance, she had not had an opportunity to get back to them last night—he spoke with his father.
"No, Dad, I don't think it's a joke. He really believes what he's telling us. And so do I, frankly, except the part about us being his parents." A pause. "No, I wouldn't put it past them either, not after the pranks you used to play on each other growing up. But why would they involve me?"
This was Craig's third call to his father today. With his father's help, he had gathered phone numbers for nearly all fifteen of his cousins. Eight on his father's side, seven on his mother's—he now lacked numbers for only the two children of his father's sister.
"Go ahead," Craig told his dad. He took down another sequence of digits. "What about Elliott? Did Uncle Pete give you his number?... Seriously?... How long ago?..."
Craig shot a hopeful look at Kara. That was a switch; he had been growing increasingly discouraged as the day wore on. "Why?..." A longer pause this time. "That's what we were thinking, too, Dad. Everybody always said Elliott and I looked like brothers."
Kara pulled her hands out of the potting soil before her and listened. "I'll still call Eloise," he was saying, "just to make sure. And maybe—… Right, if anybody knows what he's up to, she will." He looked over at Kara again, genuine hope in his eyes. "Sure, Dad, I'll let you know. Bye."
He hung up the phone. "Kara, it's got to be Elliott. It makes sense."
"Okay. Where is he?"
Craig grimaced. "He's in Asia."
"Asia?"
"Or was, the last time anyone heard from him. That was two years ago—somewhere in southeast Asia. Uncle Pete thinks he's either hiding from the law or studying to become some kind of monk."
"From what I remember of him, he could be doing either, or both," Kara remarked.
"Uncle Pete told Dad that Elliott did have a kid several years ago, but kept it quiet. I'm going to call Eloise and see if she knows anything." He dialed the last number he had jotted down.
"Will she be home?" Kara asked.
"Should be," he answered, "if she's been taking her medication."
His eyes shifted as someone picked up on the other end. "Eloise? This is your cousin, Craig… Yes, we're still married… You didn't, huh? Well, she hasn't sent me away just yet."
Kara gave an exasperated sigh. After all these years, Eloise still insisted that their marriage wouldn't last. That was just how she was.
"Listen," Craig continued, "a boy showed up at our house last night. He looks like he's related to us—looks just like our side of the family. And he says he is family, but we've never met him before. Doesn't your brother have a kid?"
Kara prayed the answer would be yes. She wanted the boy to have a family, and she wanted to be…off the hook. She didn't like having some other woman's son in her care without the mother's knowledge.
Craig placed a hand over the receiver. "Kara," he whispered, "she says Elliott does have a child—a son!" He spoke into the phone again. "How old, Eloise?..." He listened again, then nodded confidently. "Nine-ish is close enough!" he said. "This boy just turned ten."
"So he's Elliott's?" Kara asked.
Craig hesitated, listening to Eloise again, narrowing his eyes. "What?" he whispered again, surprise in his voice. "Now she thinks Zach is hers!"
"Put it on speakerphone," Kara suggested.
Craig did, and a woman's voice came through, breaking as she spoke, as if holding back sobs. "And when he ran away, I was so crushed, I didn't—I didn't know what to do… I called the police, but they wouldn't help… We couldn't find him anywhere… Please, please help me, Craig, send him home…"
This doesn't sound right, Kara thought as she stood listening by the fireplace, next to Craig. A doubtful look began to appear on his face, too. Eloise isn't trustworthy. Besides…
Kara caught Craig's eye, and he muted the phone as Eloise rambled on. "Craig, how old is Eloise?"
"I don't know, twenty-five maybe? Twenty-six?"
"We knew her when she was in high school. She wasn't pregnant!"
Craig let out a long breath and nodded. At a pause in the rambling, he unmuted the phone and spoke into it. "Eloise, your son—is his name…Herbert?"
"Oh, it's really him!" she exclaimed. "My dear Herbert! I can't believe you found him! Thank you, Craig, thank you!"
Craig's eyes shifted right and left in frustration. "Eloise, have you taken your medicine today?"
"My what?"
"Your medication? You're making things up again. Go tell Brett you need your medication, all right? And say hello to him for us." She began to ramble on again, but Craig shut off the phone. He and Kara stared at each other for a long moment.
"So, what do we do now?" she asked.
"Well, Elliott has to be Zach's father," Craig answered. "That's a start."
"Who's the mother?"
"No idea."
Kara fidgeted a little. She was still feeling restless, like she should be doing more but was tied up, helpless to grasp answers they needed that lay just beyond her reach.
Craig replaced the phone in his pocket. "Whoever she is, she has to be out there somewhere. Maybe we can track her down."
"It'll take time. What do we do with the boy until then?"
Craig grunted. He seemed reluctant to answer.
"Yeah, not my favorite idea, either. But he's family. We can't just leave him homeless." She sighed. "And I don't like the idea of having the police pick him up and send him to a foster home. Better to keep him here for a few days."
Craig ran a hand through his hair. A moment later he turned and checked the clock hanging in the kitchen. "What time does school let out?"
"I don't know. Three-ish? What time do the neighbor kids walk home?" She turned to gaze out the big picture window with its panorama of the back yard. "We need to pick him up, don't we?"
Craig had that calculating expression again; the wheels were turning in his mind. "We'll need to keep him another night, maybe for the weekend."
She nodded. She had arrived at the same conclusion.
"We'll figure something out by Monday," he assured her.
"Okay," she agreed.
"We'll just…keep an eye on him until we can find his mother or contact Elliott, and then we'll hand him over."
Kara held back a flash of anger—barely. "How could she let him go like this, whoever she is?"
"We don't know that she did," Craig said. "Maybe Elliott had him living with some other relatives, or maybe friends. And when they didn't hear back from Elliott, or the money ran out, they sent him away…"
"To us?" Kara thought aloud. "Why to us?"
Craig merely shook his head in reply.
"And how did they give him that name…?" Kara huffed in frustration and glanced at the clock again. "Wh
at do we have, twenty minutes? Here, help me finish these roses." Striding into the dining room, she took Craig's arm and led him to the table. She was frustrated, edgy. She needed to do something with her hands.
*****