“What was he wearing?” Piper broke off before adding, “When you last saw him.” But it didn’t matter.
Kiersten burst into tears, choking out the words between sobs. “A red ... Minnesota Twins ... T-shirt. Blue Adidas running shorts ... and ... white Nike tennis shoes.”
Piper relayed the information to the dispatcher and gave the same information to the person who answered the phone at the truck stop.
Relief flooded her body as she broke into a wide smile.
Thank God.
“They found him. He’s sitting behind the counter with the cashier. They’ve been trying to reach you, but he didn’t know your cell phone number.” She handed the phone to Kiersten. “You can talk to him.”
Kiersten took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Piper watched as her neighbor pulled her frayed nerves back together and injected her voice with a note of cheerful calm.
“Hi, honey. Are you okay?”
She couldn’t hear the answer on the other end of the line, but whatever he said brought a smile to Kiersten’s ravaged face.
“You can eat as many powdered donuts as you want,” Kiersten said, wiping away the silent tears streaming down her cheeks. “And I’m just going to stay right here on the phone with you while you eat them, okay?”
A moment later the 911 dispatcher came back on the line. The highway patrol had arrived at the truck stop. Piper gave her phone to Kiersten, and Kiersten spoke with the officer.
After a short conversation, she hung up Piper’s phone. Then she spoke to her son again on her own phone.
“The officers will drive you home now, okay? I’ll be waiting right here. See you soon, okay?”
The moment she disconnected the call, Kiersten burst into a fresh round of sobs and threw her arms around Piper. Her oldest son leaped from the porch with a whoop of joy and went to tell his brothers.
Piper repressed a groan as Kiersten clung to her. Just her luck. Ahugger.
She endured Kiersten’s damp embrace for a full minute before attempting, gently, to disentangle herself.
Then she looked up to find her across-the-street neighbor, Rosamund, approaching.
She didn’t know Rosamund well ... they’d had a few pleasant conversations by the mailbox since Rosamund moved in a couple of years ago. They’d even made vague plans to carpool home from school, which never materialized because of conflicting after-school activities.
The tight feeling in her chest loosened as Rosamund approached. Because Piper could make phone calls and find lost children, but the hugging and the tears and thecrying... well, this whole situation was way beyond her emotional pay grade. She needed some help here. And maybe Rosamund could provide it.
Chapter Sixteen
Kiersten
Kiersten wiped the tears from her cheeks as a neighbor she’d never seen before strode toward them on long legs, her caftan flowing in colorful waves as she moved. Tall, with red hair and scarlet lipstick, she looked sort of ... dramatic.
If this woman were a state, she wouldnotbe Minnesota.
Her house across the street looked dramatic too. Instead of a tidy front yard like Piper’s, or an attempt at a tidy front yard, like hers, this neighbor had a sort of wildflower meadow sprouting on her lawn.
Wind chimes hung from her front porch, and she had little signs tacked up on the wall beside the front door, including one that saidIn this house, we believe the Force is with us, always.
Kiersten rummaged through her exhausted brain, trying to remember what Henry and Myrtle had told her about this lady who lived across the street.
She wrote geology textbooks or something? And she had a daughter in middle school.
A thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl trailed after the woman, clad in some kind of cape, her short hair dyed blue. Behind her large round glasses, the girl’s eyes were rimmed with red.
Had this child been forgotten at a truck stop too?
“Is everything okay?” the woman asked, casting an anxious glance at Kiersten.
