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Chapter Nine
Ian was afraid to sit down beside Bella, even with the dog between them. His blood still pumped. Sexual hunger was a living, breathing beast that rode him hard. Reliving his past was like peeling away a layer of skin. He felt raw and wretched. Still, if hearing the details of his painful adolescence helped Bella know and trust him, the catharsis might be worth it.
“Once the teacher calmed down, things became worse,” he said. “We all took our seats, but I was summoned to the front of the room and forced to sit on a stool facing my classmates. You can’t imagine what it was like to see their faces. Males at that age have a pack mentality. They can be led astray in the direction of evil, or inspired for good. On that particular day, the dark side won.”
“You don’t have to tell me the rest,” Bellawhispered. “Really, you don’t.”
He shrugged. While it was true that he was now extremely successful and respected for his work and his contributions, nothing would ever erase the memory of that long ago day or the weeks that followed. Surviving the psychological torment had required a special kind of courage. Though he had contemplated running away from home, the downside of having an advanced IQ was being able to calculate the odds of such a venture succeeding. In the end, he’d had no choice but to stay.
“Ian?”
Disappearing into the past so deeply made it a shock to hear her voice. “Sorry.” Pulling himself together, he sat down on the top step and rested his elbows on his knees, scrubbing his hands over his face. “He made me explain the equation on the board in minute detail… as if I were the teacher. It was pure agony. My throat closed up. I stuttered so badly no one could understand what I was saying. The entire roomful of boys burst into laughter that went on and on and on…”
Bella uttered a curse that surprised him. “That was child abuse, Ian. The man should have been shot. I can’t even imagine…”
“For the remainder of the term, he forced me to sit on the stool at the front. Every day when he put equations on the board, he made a big pretense of having me ‘check’ them. The unfortunate thing was, I continued to find errors. I didn’t know what else to do but to correct them, which made him more and more determined to teach me a lesson.”
“We’d call that bullying now. No one would stand for it.”
Ian shook his head at her naiveté. “There is good and bad in all of us, you know. It’s shockingly easy to turn a crowd into a mob. Boys I considered my friends turned away from me, because I had become a pariah. They couldn’t afford to be seen with me, for fear they would end up on the wrong side of an imaginary line.”
“How did you bear it?”
He shrugged. “The ostracism helped me in one way…made me more determined to score the highest marks… to learn far beyond what was required of me”
“I am so sorry.”
“I don’t need anyone’s pity,” he said sharply. “As an adult, I paid for speech therapy that eliminated almost every vestige of my disability. The stutter only resurfaces in very stressful situations.”
She gasped audibly. “That’s why you’re so determined to elude the reporters,” she said. “You don’t want to stutter on camera.”
“In a nutshell, yes. It’s bad enough they can splash my photograph over every media outlet, social and otherwise. I cringe at the headlines that could be written. Eligible Bachelor number two c-c-an n-n-ot t-t-talk to women.”
Before Bella could respond to his dark humor, the sound of a vehicle climbing the hill broke the silence. Finley’s was the only house here at the top. He owned several acres that served as a buffer for his privacy. Nevertheless, the car continued upward.
As it came into view, Bella got to her feet clumsily and used her crutch to hobble down the steps. When the car door opened, a woman jumped out and flung herself at Bella, nearly knocking her down. The surprise visitor cried out in an anguished voice. “It’s wee Jackie, Bella. He’s disappeared. I dinna know what to do.” Ian recognized Hilda, Bella’s friend who had dropped by earlier that day.
They got her inside, and Ian fetched a cup of tea. Bella held the red-haired woman’s hands and chafed them. “Tell us what happened.”
Hilda’s hands shook so badly the cup clattered in the saucer, but she drank the tea anyway. “My mother-in-law brought the boys back just before dinner. They’d had a lovely day. The boys were knackered, but they gobbled down their meal, so that put a bit of life back into them. Jackie Sr. and I were dabblin’ about in the kitchen. The boys were in front of the telly for a half hour show. I went to check on them and Jackie was gone.”
Ian inserted himself into the conversation. “I assume you’ve called the police.”
Hilda nodded. “They’re organizing volunteer search parties to comb the town. My big Jack is with them. Me mother-in-law has the wee one. I thought Bella might wander this hill with me. Ye know how the child likes to climb. But I forgot about your foot.”
Ian touched her shoulder briefly. “Of course we’ll help. Bella will need to stay here, but I can cover a large area on my own.”
Hilda sobbed quietly now, her eyes closed, her head lolling against the back of the sofa. Ian suspected she was in shock.
Bella stood and motioned for Ian to follow her to the far corner of the room. “I’m not staying here,” she hissed, her eyes flashing blue sparks at him. “I know the area far better than you do.”
He tamped down his temper. In an emergency situation, calm had to prevail. “How old is the child?”
“Four. Almost five. He’s been a handful from the time he was born according to the stories I’ve heard. Climbed out of his crib before he was a year old. Learned how to unlatch the doors at two. Slipped away from his mum on market day last year and ended up on a fisherman’s boat that was anchored in the harbor. He could be anywhere.”
Ian frowned. “Is kidnapping a possibility?”
“Not likely. Besides, most of the town knows Jackie. If anyone noticed him wandering around, they would have called Hilda.”
