My Name Is Venus Black(57)



So what the hell is he doing just sitting here in his truck? He needs to call Marco, who’s always been smarter than him. He’ll know exactly what to do—once he gets done with all his I-told-you-so’s. Tessa had been wrong about what M and M would think. But, of course, they eventually came to love Leo, too.

After talking to Marco from the phone booth outside the market, Tony calls Tessa. He makes up a story about how the truck won’t start and now he’s waiting for a mechanic friend to come take a look. “Tell Leo I’m sorry for missing dinner,” he says.

“Of course, Dad,” she says, “but Leo’s not going to be happy.”

Tony wants to laugh when she says that. Tessa has no idea how not happy Leo is going to be pretty soon. Because of course Tony plans to turn Leo over. But even Marco—after yelling and swearing about how Tony should have listened to him all those years ago—agreed they should get legal advice first and come up with a plan.

In the meantime, as dumb as it seems to both men, the best way to buy time might be to buy milk. So Maureen is already making a list of all the grocery stores and markets within the boundaries of their school district, since people who shop there are most likely to have had contact with Leo. But even if all three of them rotate stores, checkers, and different times of day, all they can hope to do is to improve their odds until…well, until Tony figures out how to break the news to Tessa and turn Leo over to the authorities.



Just last night, Tessa was talking to Tony about Leo. “Kids at school like to try to get him to look at them, and when he tries hard to make eye contact, they get excited. Or sometimes they like to toss him a ball because he can catch it without seeming to ever look at it. It’s really kind of weird, Dad,” she said. “But everyone loves Leo.”

Yeah, Tony thinks now. And everyone drinks milk, too.





That night, Tony lies in bed and doesn’t sleep a wink. Once he got past his initial shock and fear for himself and Tessa and Leo, he realized the most important question of all was who exactly is looking for Leo? Leo is like a son to him, and he’s not about to hand him over to strangers without knowing more. Where would he live? What kind of a home environment would it be?

The next day at noon, Tony sits in his small den and has some heated discussion with Marco. His brother looks like Tony feels—sweaty, panicked, and short of breath. He’s been buying milk all morning, so that could be part of it. But since Marco is normally the calm one, the guy who has it together, it scares Tony to see his brother—a clean-cut, tattoo-free professional—so rattled.

Marco explains that he has spoken with a lawyer friend. “I gotta warn you, buddy. This guy is a lawyer, but he doesn’t seem to know this part of the law very well.”

“Still, he’s a lawyer. So what did he say?”

“He said that if the police find the hypothetical missing child before his ‘friend’ voluntarily turns him over, it will definitely look worse, though he’s not sure it will change the outcome.”

“Define worse,” Tony says, feeling his heart beat a little faster.

“Either way, no matter how or when you hand Leo over, charges against you could range anywhere from kidnapping to simple interference with custody.”



“Okay,” says Tony, standing up from his chair to pace around. “But why wouldn’t it count in my favor if I was arrested while trying to find answers? Surely, they’d understand my need to know who’s claiming my son. How could any good parent just hand over their kid without knowing more?”

The plan he and Marco finally arrive at sounds crazy, but it seems like their best shot. Tony will cancel all his appointments for several days, beginning tomorrow—Friday. In the morning he’ll drive to Everett, Washington. Marco pointed out that surely, when Leo first went missing in 1980, there had to be a story in the local newspaper. Tony should start with that. From there, he should be able to get a name and scope out the situation.

He’d rather not go. He wishes he knew someone in Everett or that he had access to Everett newspapers from 1980.

After Marco leaves, his eyes fall on Tessa’s junior-year school photo. She framed it in a green ceramic frame for him. What will Tessa do if they have to give up Leo? What will she do if Tony goes to prison? He can’t imagine it.

As he ate his dinner last night, Tony had felt Tessa studying him. She has some kind of radar for sensing when he’s troubled about something. For the umpteenth time, he worries that he relies on her way too much. He wonders if he would try harder to find a wife instead of dating casually if Tessa didn’t take such great care of everything.

He’s also concerned that Tessa is so devoted to Leo and himself that it’s gotten in the way of her having other friendships and acting like a normal adolescent. Tony isn’t sure, but isn’t she supposed to be having sleepovers, and shouldn’t she be begging to date boys by now? Tony always insisted she had to wait until she was sixteen, but he’s secretly disappointed she hasn’t seemed to care.



If there’s one thing he’s sure of, it’s that Tessa has to go to college. She’s smart as a whip, like her mother, even if she’s way less outgoing and not quite as driven. Tessa doesn’t seem to mind an occasional B or even a C. Tony can’t decide if this is a good thing or if he should push her hard just in case she could get a scholarship, because he has no idea how he could afford college.

Heather Lloyd's Books