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“Yes,” Francesca whispered.
“I've got to ask you something.” There was another long pause, and Francesca braced herself for what she knew had to be coming. “Francie, I've got to ask you why Dallie would do this. Something funny happened when he saw Teddy. What's going on?”
“I—I don't know.”
“Francie...”
“I don't know, Holly Grace!” she exclaimed. “I don't know.” Her voice softened. “You understand him better than anyone. Is there any possibility Dallie would hurt Teddy?”
“Of course not.” And then she hesitated. “Not physically anyway. I can't say what he might do to him psychologically, since you won't tell me what this is all about.”
“I'm going to hang up now and try to get a plane to New York tonight.” Francesca tried to sound brisk and efficient, but her voice was quivering. “Would you call everybody you can think of who might know where Dallie is? But be careful what you say. And whatever you do, don't let the newspapers find out. Please, Holly Grace, I don't want Teddy turned into a sideshow freak. I'll be there as soon as I can.”
“Francie, you've got to tell me what's going on.”
“Holly Grace, I love you... I really do.” And then she hung up.
As Francesca flew across the Atlantic that night, she stared vacantly into the impenetrable blackness outside the window. Fear and guilt ate away at her. This was all her fault. If she had been home, she could have prevented it from happening. What kind of mother was she to let other people raise her child? All the devils of working-mother guilt buried their pitchforks in her flesh.
What if something terrible happened? She tried to tell herself that no matter what Dallie might have discovered, he would never hurt Teddy—at least the Dallie she'd known ten years ago wouldn't have. But then she remembered the programs she'd done on ex-spouses kidnapping their own children and vanishing with them for years at a time. Surely someone with as public a career as Dallie's couldn't do that—could he? Once again, she attempted to unravel the puzzle of how Dallie had discovered that Teddy was his son—that was the only explanation she could find for the abduction—but the answer eluded her.
Where was Teddy right now? Was he frightened? What had Dallie told him? She had heard enough stories from Holly Grace to know that when Dallie was angry, he was unpredictable—even dangerous. But no matter how much he might have changed over the years, she couldn't believe he would hurt a little boy.
> What he might do to her, however, was another matter.
Chapter
25
Teddy stared at Dallie's back as the two of them stood in line at the counter of a McDonald's off I-81. He wished he had a red and black plaid flannel shirt like that, along with a wide leather belt and jeans with a torn pocket. His mother threw out his jeans as soon as they got the tiniest little hole in the knee, just when they were starting to feel soft and comfortable. Teddy stared down at his leather play sneakers and then ahead at Dallie's scuffed brown cowboy boots. He decided to put cowboy boots on his Christmas list.
As Dallie picked up the tray and walked toward a table at the back of the restaurant, Teddy trotted along behind him, his small legs taking two quick skips, trying to keep up. At first when they'd been heading out of Manhattan into New Jersey, Teddy had tried asking Dallie a few questions about whether he had a cowboy hat or rode a horse, but Dallie hadn't said much. Teddy had finally fallen silent, even though he had a million things he wanted to know.
For as long as Teddy could remember, Holly Grace had told him stories about Dallie Beaudine and Skeet Cooper— how they'd met up on the road when Dallie was only fifteen after Dallie had escaped from the evil clutches of Jaycee Beaudine, and how they'd traveled the interstates hustling the rich boys at the country clubs. She'd told him about bar fights and playing a round of golf left-handed and miraculous eighteenth-hole victories snatched from the jaws of defeat. In his mind, Holly Grace's stories had gotten mixed up with his Spiderman comic books and Star Wars and the legends he read in school about the wild West. Ever since they'd moved to New York, Teddy had begged his mom to let him meet Dallie when he came to visit Holly Grace, but she always had one excuse or another. And now that it had finally happened, Teddy knew this should be just about the most exciting day of his life.
Except that he wanted to go home now because it wasn't turning out anything like he'd imagined.
Teddy unwrapped the hamburger and lifted the top off the bun. It had ketchup on it. He wrapped it back up. Suddenly Dallie turned in his seat and looked right across the table into Teddy's face. He stared at him, just stared without saying a word. Teddy began to feel nervous, like he'd done something wrong. In his imagination, Dallie would have done things like reach over and slap him ten, the way Gerry Jaffe did. Dallie would say, “Hey, pardner, you look like the kind of man me and Skeet might like to have on the road with us when things get tough.” In his imagination, Dallie would have liked him a whole lot more.
Teddy reached for his Coke and then pretended to study a sign over on the side of the room about eating breakfast at McDonald's. It seemed funny to him that Dallie was taking him so far away to meet his mother—he hadn't even known that Dallie and his mom knew each other. But if Holly Grace had told Dallie it was all right, he guessed it was. Still, he wished his mom was with them right now.
Dallie spoke so abruptly that Teddy jumped. “Do you always wear those glasses?”
“Not always.” Teddy slipped them off, carefully folded in the stems, and put them on the table. The sign about eating breakfast at McDonald's blurred. “My mom says it's important what's inside a person, not what's outside—like if they wear glasses or not.”
Dallie made some kind of noise that didn't sound very nice, and then nodded his head toward the hamburger. “Why aren't you eating?”
Teddy pushed at the package with the end of his finger. “I said I wanted a plain hamburger,” he muttered. “It's got ketchup.”
Dallie's face got a funny, tight look. “So what? A little bit of ketchup never hurt anybody.”
“I'm allergic,” Teddy replied.
Dallie snorted, and Teddy realized that he didn't like people who didn't like ketchup or people who had allergies. He thought about eating the hamburger anyway, just to show Dallie he could do it, but his stomach was already feeling funny, and ketchup made him think about blood and guts and eating eyeballs. Besides, he would end up with an itchy rash all over his body.
Teddy tried to think of something to say that would make Dallie like him. He wasn't used to having to think about making grown-ups like him. With kids his own age, sometimes they thought he was a jerk or he thought they were jerks, but not with grown-ups. He chewed on his bottom lip for a minute, and then he said, “I've got an I.Q. of one hundred sixty-eight. I go to gifted class.”
Dallie snorted again, and Teddy knew he'd made another mistake. It had sounded like he was bragging, but he'd just thought Dallie might be interested.
