AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What happened?” Richard asked.
“She just didn’t come home one day,” Matthew admitted. “Most of the times she took nothing with her, so we knew it was just because she wasn’t the sort to be kept caged up.”
“What?”Richard gasped.
Matthew nodded. “There had been two of them. Mother was an addict and she used to lock them in dog crates while she went out.” Matthew tightened his hands on the steering wheel. “Then she might forget or just be too stoned to let them out when she got home. The boy was a diabetic and was dead by the time the school reported them missing. Francine simply decided nothing we could offer was worth the risk of being caged again.” He turned again. “I check the logs and incidents, every so often. She’s been a miss-per for years.” He was silent for a few minutes while he navigated the parked cars leading to their house. “In my head I hope she made it. That’s she’s living in some commune in Africa, or Europe or hell, the middle of Kentucky even.”
Richard’s chest was so tight he struggled to inhale. Sawyer desperately wanted kids. Would this be them in twenty years? Wondering what had happened to the ones that never came home?
“We got a postcard about seven years ago.”
Richard stared at Matthew. “From Francine you mean?”
He smiled. “It wasn’t signed. I even had to pay the excess postage. It was mailed in Giza.”
“But you think it was from her?”
Matthew chuckled. “It had a picture of the pyramids on it.”
Richard frowned. “How—”
“Because the night before she left, I woke and heard the TV on downstairs. I went to investigate, and sure enough Francine was sitting there. She’d helped herself to juice and was crunching an apple. I asked her what she thought she was doing.”
Talon waited, but Matthew shook his head. “She told me she was learning about the pharaohs because Egypt was number one on her list of places to visit. Like that was a reasonable thing at two in the morning when you’re eleven.”
“What did you do?”
Matthew shrugged but pulled up outside his house. “Helped myself to coffee and watched it with her. She took off from school the next day. She’d left all her clothes but taken all the apples, some other bits and pieces, and we never saw her again.”
Richard gazed at him, not moving despite Matthew getting out. “I can’t do that.”
Matthew grinned. “Yeah, you can, because for every Francine there’ll be a Kai.”
“Who isn’t here,” Richard muttered and got out.
Matthew gestured to the backyard. “I’ll put the coffee on.”
Richard walked around the back the same he had with Sawyer and Adam all those weeks ago. He heard the sniffles before he made out the little boy perched on the wall. Without saying a word, Richard sat down next to him and looked over the yard. It was nice. The pool that was currently covered and padlocked took up most of it. There was a nice, paved area with a barbecue. A swing set and a dozen different-sized bicycles all leaned against each other under some sort of cover that might have been temporary ten years ago but had never been replaced. He compared that to the wilderness they’d just left and decided suddenly he wanted something next to the beach. Not too far away because the kids, when they eventually came along, would need to visit other family, and there was the availability of babysitters to take into consideration.
But he wanted to wake up and have his coffee overlooking the sea.
And it wasn’t like he couldn’t afford it. All his brothers and his sister had been left something by their other grandparents, and his share had been sitting in the same account his pay had gone into every month for nearly twenty years. The bike had been the single most expensive purchase of his life.
He made up his mind to get the realtor’s number from Finn tomorrow.
“When are the cops coming?” Kai asked eventually.
Richard accepted the mug of coffee from Matthew, who had just appeared. Matthew also put a steaming mug of what smelled like hot chocolate down next to Kai and settled into one of the chairs.
“So, when you saycops,” Richard said after taking a sip. “What you gotta realize now that you’re one of us, is you’re going to have to be a little more specific.”
Kai gulped. Richard knew if it was light enough to make out his features he might be crying.
“I nearly killed Finn,” he whispered.
Richard nodded sagely, ignoring the quiet snort from Matthew. “From what I understand it’s a regular occurrence.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
