Dead Silence Read online

  “Guys, I’ve done this a million times. Everything’s going to be—” Rob breaks off in a curse at a violent jolt, and his smile bares too many teeth when he concludes with a strangled-sounding, “—fine.”

  The pilot calls out unintelligibly.

  Barnes thinks of Sully—

  Gingersnap! Tell me! What’s her name?

  “Charisse,” he breathes aloud.

  “What’s that, Barnes?”

  Rob is looking at him, and so is Kurtis.

  “Nothing.” He turns away, leaning his head back, eyes closed, as the plane leans left, then right, then so hard left that his clenched fingers gouge the paper bag he’s holding. Vomit oozes over his hand, but it’ll wash away if the plane plunges into the ocean. Will it draw the sharks, like blood?

  If they crash, his daughter will never even know. She might read about it in the papers, because Rob is a celebrity. “Record Mogul, Companions, Perish in Plane Crash,” the headline will say, but his own child won’t recognize his name. Unless her mother—

  But if Delia had shared his identity with Charisse, wouldn’t she have come looking for him by now?

  No, because Delia sure as hell wouldn’t have made him out to be some kind of hero.

  And you weren’t, were you? Aren’t even now, are you?

  You could have looked for her again.

  Man up, man! Man up!

  If he makes it out of this alive, he’s going to find his daughter. No matter what. Find her, and—

  The wheels hit a sand-dusted runway that seems to rise from the sea. The plane blows past a ramshackle building decked in Cuban flags and screeches to a stop before a fringe of tropical foliage.

  “Bienvenido a Baracoa!” the pilot calls cheerfully, removing his headphones.

  Disembarking onto the sunbaked tarmac on shaky legs, Barnes tosses the bag of puke into a garbage can, suspecting—by the heap of garbage and the smell—that it isn’t the first.

  He tilts his face to the sky, watching a fat white gull soar. It disappears into blinding sun and he closes his eyes, gulping in sea air.

  Someone touches his arm. Expecting Rob, he opens his eyes to see Kurtis.

  “Charisse,” he says in a low voice. “That’s your daughter, huh, Uncle Stockton?”

  Barnes nods, wondering how much he knows. It’s a subject he’s rarely discussed even with Rob.

  “You know where she’s at?”

  “No, but I . . . no.”

  No, Barnes doesn’t know.

  And no, he isn’t going to try to find her. That was just a frantic whim in a terrifying moment, and both have passed.

  Rob strides over. “Let’s go. There’s a camión here.”

  “Is that food?” Kurtis asks.

  “No, transportation. Who’s ready to climb a mountain?”

  Not Barnes. “I feel like I just did.”

  Not Kurtis, either.

  Rob shrugs. “I’ll have the driver drop you both at the house on the way.”

  “You mean resort?”

  “I mean rental house, Kurtis. They call them casas particulares. No resorts around here.”

  Rob leads the way to the camión. The front part is an old bright blue truck cab with rust peeling through. The back is open air bus, painted the same verdant shade as the palm fronds kissing the yellow tarp stretched across the top. There are benches along the sides—a bonus, Rob explains as he settles in with one relaxed arm slung along the railing. “On some of these, you have to stand—kind of like the subway.”

  “This is nothing like the subway,” his son mutters under his breath, and plunks himself down as far away from Rob as he can get.

  Barnes, who’s had a front row seat to father and son’s seesaw relationship from Day One, positions himself between them, and the vehicle begins to jolt over roadway that’s even rougher than the airway. At least this time, they don’t have far to fall.

  He sees Rob eyeing the young man with frustration, sees Kurtis glowering at his father, and is glad the camión’s rattle is too loud for conversation.

  A faint sound reaches Jessie, drifting in a troubled haze of dream. She tumbles to consciousness and finds, not the water-stained ceiling above her bed, but an elegant, cobwebby nineteenth-century light fixture. Ah, yes, she’s in the living room.

  Billy had texted at midnight telling her to go to bed, but she’d settled here to read her book and wait for him and had eventually drifted off.

  She hadn’t slept well, not just because the couch cushions are too spongy for her middle-aged back and the crocheted afghan is too thin to stave off the damp chill. Throughout the night, she’d dreamed she was on the Titanic. Every so often, thunder had made its way into her nightmare to become another iceberg striking the ship like a missile. Shivering, she clung to the deck, draped in this same thin afghan, watching the lifeboats depart without her.

  At dawn, Espinoza’s crow jarred her fully awake. But through the restless hours since, the rooster’s troubling saga has looped through her brain as though his squawk had triggered a Play button.

  She keeps seeing Theodore on a warm May afternoon, cradling a tiny bird he said he’d found in the park. After fashioning a makeshift nest in a shoe box lined with a frayed hand towel, Jessie had called the veterinarian.

  “What is it this time, Mrs. H.? Lost puppy? Stray dog? Pregnant cat? Litter of kittens?”

  “None of the above.” She’d explained the situation to the vet, who’d sighed.

  “Happens a lot this time of year. People buy live chicks for their kids’ Easter baskets, then let them go when they get tired of them.”

  She could have told him that people have babies and do the same thing. Instead, stroking the creature’s bedraggled feathers with a tender fingertip, she’d asked the vet about animal shelters that might take a chicken.

  “Off the top of my head, I don’t know of any. Your best bet is probably a farm.”

  “Should I just, what? Drive him out into the country and knock on doors?”

  “You might want to call first.”

  “Call whom?”

  “Farmers,” he’d said simply.

  “Terrific. Thanks.”

  As she’d waited for Billy to come home with a better idea, Theodore had bonded with the chick. Which had turned out to be a rooster. Which they didn’t find out until a few months after they’d decided to keep him, and Theodore had built a little coop out back, bonding nicely with Billy in the process.

  Pets can be therapeutic for troubled kids. Theodore is afraid of dogs, doesn’t like cats, has no interest in aquarium fish, and is too squeamish for a hamster, turtle, or anything else she’d suggested over the years. A horse was out of the question. Fowl had never occurred to Jessie, but she’s since read several studies about children like Theodore who had bonded with roosters and chickens.

  Espinoza had been the perfect pet . . . at first.

  But chicks grow. Roosters crow. Neighbors complain.

  Espinoza is now ensnarled in long-brewing civic turmoil about a growing population of backyard chickens in Ithaca. Theodore had recently shown up at a livestock ordinance meeting and afterward had inadvertently given an impassioned statement to a local newspaper. The bullies are now having a field day—and this time, not just the ones at school. She’s read the newspaper’s digitalized comments section.

  “Jess?”

  She cries out, jerking upright.

  “Sorry! I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  It’s just Billy.

  “No, I thought I heard something, but . . .” She realizes he isn’t holding a child in his arms. Her heart plummets. “You didn’t get him.”

  It’s for the best, of course. If they’ve found the boy’s parents, then maybe his story had a happy ending without the role Jessie had been preparing to play. She’s so busy with work these days, and so is Billy, and he should be taking better care of himself, and Theodore doesn’t need the complication, and . . .

  “No, I got him.”

/>   He gestures, and Jessie sees a small boy in the shadows by his side. His hair is a damp tangle of blond. He’s sucking his thumb, one cheek pressed to his shoulder, hiding his face. A blanket slips off his frail frame to reveal grimy pajamas. He’s wearing thick white athletic socks—wet, muddy, and far too big for him.

  “His feet—”

  “I know,” Billy says quietly. “It’s pouring out and he doesn’t have any shoes. I didn’t want him to walk, but he wouldn’t let me carry him. One of the nurses found socks for him.”

  “He must be freezing, poor little thing.” She longs to sweep him into her arms but knows better. “Hi, sweetheart. I’m Jessie. What’s your name?”

  “We don’t know that yet.”

  She looks up at Billy. “He’s still not talking?”

  “No.”

  “And no one has reported—”

  “No.”

  They exchange a long, sad look. If no one is frantically looking for a child this age, then to whom—and where—does he belong?

  “Are you hungry, sweetheart?”

  The boy doesn’t respond, just stands with his head bowed.

  “They pumped him full of fluids at the hospital,” Billy tells her. “He might not be hungry, but he’s probably exhausted. I know I am. Good thing I’m off work today.”

  “Get some sleep. I made up beds in both Chip’s and Petty’s rooms with clean sheets for him. He can choose where he wants to be.”

  “What about Theodore?”

  “He left for school about . . .” She looks at the antique mantel clock. “An hour ago. He got himself out the door, same as always. I heard him go, but I don’t think he realized I was here on the couch.”

  “He wouldn’t have liked that, or . . . Does he know about—”

  “Yes. I told him last night.”

  “And?”

  “He’ll come around.” She shrugs and turns away from her husband’s misgiving.

  Theodore isn’t the kind of kid who “comes around.” He needs stability.

  But right now, this little boy needs a lot more than that.

  “Let’s go upstairs.” She stretches, presses her palm into a kink above her hip, and starts for the archway to the foyer, hobbling a little.

  “Are you okay, Jess?”

  “I’m fine, just getting old and creaky. Are you guys coming?”

  “We are.” Billy follows, coaxing the child along. “We have a cozy room all set for you, Little Boy Blue.”

  “Little Boy Blue?”

  “That’s what I’ve been calling him. You’ll know why when you see his eyes. And he likes nursery rhymes. Remember that Mother Goose book I used to read to the kids when they were little? Do we still have it?”

  “Somewhere. Probably in Theodore’s room.”

  “Good. I’ll read it to you, okay?” Billy tells the boy around a deep yawn. “Not now, though. Let’s go get some sleep. Sound good?”

  Still the child stands staring at the floor with his right thumb in his mouth, not moving.

  Billy gives him a slight pat and he flinches, skinny shoulders hunching beneath the blanket, bracing himself.

  Jessie has seen it before, knows what it means.

  Somebody hurt you.

  She goes to him, crouching at his side without touching him. “Hey, it’s going to be all right.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling him. It’s been a rough night.”

  “Rough day yesterday, too, I bet. And God knows what else, and for how long.” She looks down at the wet, oversized, filthy socks. “But you’ll feel better after you sleep in a real bed. You can choose one of our older kids’ bedrooms. And I bought lots of food for breakfast. Do you like Lucky Charms?”

  No response.

  After a moment, she dares to reach for his left hand. To her shock, he doesn’t just allow her to grasp it, he grips her fingers like a lifeline. When he looks up at last, with enormous cobalt eyes swimming in tears, it’s all she can do not to burst out crying herself.

  She manages only a soft, “You’re safe now, Little Boy Blue,” and leads him to the steps, with Billy right behind them. Unlike the back stairway, the grand and formal one in the foyer had been built to impress visitors, but it dwarfs and intimidates this one. He gawks at the carved mahogany newel post, the polished banister with ornate spindles, the antique wall sconces that light the wide, windowed landing, the vintage bronze wallpaper, and the crystal chandelier overhead.

  He shrinks back in the doorway of Petty’s room. Perhaps he’s startled by the butterfly mobile slowly stirring despite the closed windows, or the antique dolls Diane had given Petty on every birthday of her life, though Jessie has never been in favor of gender-specific toys and had scolded her.

  “Mom, you shouldn’t do that. It’s like you’re hoping she’ll grow up to be a girlie girl.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a girlie girl.”

  “Or with being a tomboy, like I was.”

  Her daughter had turned out to be both, hence the childhood nickname Petunia, shortened over time. Like her grandmother’s favorite flower, Petty possessed a hardy resilience that belied the pretty pastel ruffles on the surface.

  Seeing Little Boy Blue gape at the doll collection, Jessie can imagine that a child might be spooked by the glassy-eyed stares and fixed smiles. But then he seems to fixate on the vintage iron bed, with her daughter’s lacy lavender robe draped over one of the posts.

  “Come on,” Billy says. “Let’s show you Chip’s room. It’s better for a boy.”

  “Billy! Boys don’t have to be masculine. You know that I don’t believe in—”

  “I know, I know. I’m just saying, it might be more familiar for him, and we want him to be comfortable.”

  Yet he seems equally hesitant when they lead him into the room down the hall, with its pale blue walls, plaid quilt, and sports posters.

  “Maybe we should just put him in bed and see if he falls asleep,” Billy says in a low voice. “He has to be exhausted. I know I am.”

  But when he starts to reach for him, the boy jolts and backs away, into the hall.

  “Aw, sweetie, it’s okay,” Jessie says, and turns to Billy. “You go to bed. I’ll take care of him. We’ll be fine.”

  “Okay. Holler if you need me.”

  He retreats into their own room at the top of the stairs and closes the door.

  After a moment, Little Boy Blue looks up at Jessie. Then he starts walking.

  Following him, thinking he’s gone after Billy, she finds that he’s returned to Petty’s room.

  “So you are choosing. Do you want to sleep in here, sweetheart?”

  No reply, but he doesn’t protest when Jessie takes his hand and walks him to the bed.

  He gazes at the lavender robe as if concerned that the room’s occupant might not want him here.

  “It’s all right. That belongs to my daughter, Petty. She’s far away, and she’d be glad to have you sleep in her bed.”

  Thinking of the many times her huge-hearted daughter had taken a foster child under her wing, Jessie wishes Petty were here now to help break the ice. Or Chip, with his easygoing charm and perpetual willingness to play with the kids who have come through this house.

  Now there’s only Theodore, wrapped up in his own world and resenting the intrusion.

  Jessie feels Little Boy Blue stiffen as she hoists him up onto the bed, but when she guides him under the soft white comforter, his little body sinking into the mattress and pillow, he seems to relax.

  She tucks the covers around him and resists the urge to kiss his pale forehead. “I’ll be right downstairs if you need anything at all, okay? You just . . . come get me.”

  She’d been about to tell him to call for her.

  As a therapist, she’s familiar with selective mutism, but she needs to refresh her memory and figure out how to untangle the knot of trauma and terror that have a choke hold on his voice.

  Back downstairs, she makes a pot of coffee and
then sits at her desk in the living room to see what the internet has to say.

  Oh, right—the Wi-Fi. She sighs and finds her cell phone. After a hunt through a stack of bills that need to be paid, she also finds the number for the repair service, and goes through a frustrating round of “If you are calling about . . . press one for . . .”

  All representatives are busy—imagine that—and she’s placed on hold long enough for the coffee to brew, and to finish her first cup while tidying the house. She pours a second cup and then goes to the basement, folding a load of laundry and starting another.

  At last, a real live person comes on the line.

  “A lot of customers are out in the area, ma’am. We’ll try to get a technician there today if someone will be home, but I can’t promise you anything.”

  “I’ll be home. All day.”

  Home, waiting . . .

  Waiting for the repairman, waiting for the boy to wake up, waiting for word on his identity, waiting for the caseworker who’s supposedly coming to check in on him—though she certainly knows how that goes. Child welfare agencies are perpetually understaffed, caseworkers spread too thin and operating under constant duress, between the demands of the job and the inability to make ends meet on the salary.

  She’d launched her career as one of them, toughing it out for a few years until Chip had come along, with Petty only eighteen months behind. Full-time child care for two would have cost more than she was earning, so she’d become a full-time mom until the kids were in preschool. That’s when she’d changed career paths to become a part-time therapist. It was around that same time that they’d begun fostering children in addition to shelter animals.

  With her house and schedule and heart crammed full, those years had been Jessie’s happiest—years when she didn’t have the time or energy or even the motivation to look back on the past or worry about what might happen down the road. There’s something to be said for living in the moment.

  Lately, though, the moments are so darned . . . complicated.

  The house needs work, money is short with two tuitions, she misses her older kids, Theodore is a challenge, Billy’s health worries her, and yet . . .