Useless Bay(33)

This way.

I mean, if he didn’t want me to know about the abuse, then why tell me?

I was puzzling through the whole thing as Mom made up a bed for me on the sofa, which was where I’d be sleeping for the foreseeable future because I didn’t want to lie on raw brain matter, or the possibility of raw brain matter, no matter how much we all had scrubbed at it. “This’ll have to do until we can get you a new mattress,” she said as she fluffed the pillows on the sofa.

“It’s fine, Mom. Thanks.”

I pretended to settle in, and she turned off the lights.

I waited until the noises in her bathroom subsided, then let my thoughts churn another half hour so she would be through reading before I crept out of bed and stole into her home office. I flipped on her computer.

Here was my big question: Where was Henry’s mother in all this? I knew she’d been gone for so long it was ancient history. But why had she left? Something about Henry’s story, and her absence in it, made me think that she’d been outplayed somehow.

I brought up a search on the computer. I didn’t know Henry’s mom’s first name, but it wasn’t hard to find. I searched on “Rupert Shepherd First Wife,” and there it was: Ellen Dawes; and her place of birth, Cupertino, California; and her age, forty-five. I found out that she was currently working for a catering company out of Seattle. Nothing about whether she owned or trained any pets. That’s what I was interested in. Because that’s what it had sounded like to me—like someone in his life, either his mother or his nameless nanny, had trained him as if he were a bad, bad puppy.

I was about to head back to my sofa and try to sleep for real when I looked out the back window.

There, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Patience.

She was standing by the trailhead, completely dry in the rainstorm. Of course she wasn’t there when I looked at her straight on—it was only when I looked at the Douglas firs, swaying in the wind, that her outline became clear in my peripheral vision.

I thought about chasing after her, but the last time I did, someone got shot, so I thought I should be a little more prepared.

I eased myself into my brothers’ bunk room and tried to feel around for Lawford’s Taser without turning on the light.

Big mistake.

“Pix, what are you doing in my underwear drawer?”

The lights came on. Two pairs of eyes looked at me. Lawford and Frank were here, and they were awake. “Where are Dean and Sammy?” I asked.

“Still working the grid,” Lawford said. “Most of the other volunteers have bagged out because of the weather. Frank and I thought we’d try to grab some sleep before we go out again. It’s been a long day. So I repeat: What are you doing?”

“Looking for your Taser. I need to see Henry about something.”

They stared at me, unblinking as barn owls.

“Have you asked Mom if you can go?” Lawford said.

“No.”

They stared more, waves of disapproval rolling off them.

“Pix, you’ve had a rough day. You kinda died last night,” Frank said. “Can’t you just sit this one out?”

“And just where do you suggest I sit? In my bedroom? Oh wait. I almost got shot there, and I don’t want to sleep in what’s left of someone’s brains.”

Frank and Lawford studiously looked at the floor.

Neither of them called me a wuss, which surprised me. It had been a long day for all of us.

“You’re closer to this than the rest of us, Pix. You can’t blame us for being worried,” Lawford said.

“I know,” I said. “There’s just something nagging at me that I can’t let go of.”

Frank pulled back the curtains. “The storm is rising,” he said.

“The last time we had weather like this, the next morning all those boots washed ashore with the feet still in ’em,” I said. “Do you remember that, Frank?”

I was playing them, and they knew it. But you can’t have gone through all that training, all those endless rounds of junior lifesaving, senior lifesaving, open-water lifesaving, gory-car-wreck lifesaving, not to mention those endless nights of volunteer search-and-rescue, not to know that sitting on our asses while there was still a possibility that Grant was out there, alive and lost, or alive and trapped, was evil. As long as we were warm and dry, we were wicked, wicked people.

“We can’t let Grant wash up like the boots,” I said.

Frank sighed. “Is Mom asleep?”

“Pretty sure,” I said.

“Let’s go.”

Frank hopped down noiselessly from his bunk and started pulling on his pants.

“Listen,” Lawford said as he got dressed, “no matter what you say, you’re closer to this than the rest of us. You should be armed. You can have my second-best Taser.” He rummaged through his underwear drawer and pulled out a more cumbersome, pistol-shaped version of what he kept on his belt. “Do you remember this? It’s older. You don’t need to get quite so close. It sends out the two electrodes. It’s all in the spread. If you need to drop somebody, this’ll drop ’em. Do you hear me?”

I took it from him and shoved it into the pocket of my rain jacket. The pockets there were big enough.

Something was going to happen this night, I could taste it in the salty air that whistled through the trees and crept through the cracks in the windows and doors.