Marcia Talley - Through the Darkness

“Okay, then. Everybody stay put until the fire trucks get here. If you need anything… Wally?”

From the shade of a sculptured lime tree, Wally, dressed in tight black jeans and an equally form-fitting black T-shirt under his Paradiso smock, stepped forward. “You rang?”

The crowd tittered uncomfortably.

“If you need anything, talk to Wally here,” Paul instructed, wisely ignoring Wally’s quip. He crooked a finger at Julio, then turned his back on the crowd. “Dante, Emily, come inside with me.” When neither showed any sign of movement, he added, “Now!”

While we waited in the elegant reception area for Paul to collect Julio, Dante tried to pull Emily close, but she shoved him away so hard that he stumbled.

“Em! I’m sorry. I was upset. I didn’t mean what I said out there!” Dante had to shout to be heard over the klaxon.

“You did, too!” she screamed back. “I told you we should wait until everything was ready before opening the spa, but you wouldn’t listen to anyone but your precious Mrs. Strother. Yes, Phyllis. No, Phyllis. Anything you say, Phyllis. Kiss my butt, Phyllis. You make me sick !”

“Em-”

“You knew I had too much on my plate, but it was always Emily come here, or Emily do this, or Emily do that.” She took a deep breath, winding up to launch another verbal assault at her husband.

I had to step in. “Stop it, both of you! Fighting with one another is not going to help us find Tim, and the sooner you pull yourselves together, the better.”

“Do you know how to shut that damn thing off?” Paul shouted as he walked, still barefoot, into the reception area, both hands clapped over his ears.

“No,” Dante said simply, a blush of embarrassment reddening his neck.

“Okay, then, I guess we’ll just have to live with the noise until the firemen get here. In the meantime, we’re going to search this place. Thoroughly. We’re going to look into every room, every closet, every cupboard, every toilet and shower stall, every nook and every cranny, anywhere a child could hide. Or be hidden,” he added, ominously.

“Julio, you take Hannah and Emily and search the women’s wing. Dante and I will do the men’s. We’ll meet back here when we’re done. Got it?”

Still separated by several car lengths, Emily and Dante nodded mutely.

Paul approached our daughter, cupped her chin in his hand and tipped her face until he could look directly into her sad eyes. “It’s going to be all right, Emily.”

From one of his pockets, Dante produced a tissue, and handed it to his wife like a flag of truce. She took it from his fingers without comment and snuffled into it.

“Okay,” Paul said, tightening the sash of his bathrobe. “Let’s go.”

The search was fruitless.

Back in the reception area, discouraged and exhausted, I sat on an upholstered bench next to my daughter and tried to comfort her.

“Emily…” I began, struggling to find the right words.

Emily leaned her head back against the wall. “It’s past his feeding time. He’ll be hungry, and scared.” She pressed her hands to her breasts, where a wet stain was rapidly spreading, darkening the bright pink of her shirt. “Oh, God, just thinking about Tim and my milk lets down. Who will feed my baby now, Mom? Who? Who?”

“Whoever stole Tim took a very big risk,” I said. “If there’s to be a ransom, he’ll want to keep Timmy alive, and will take good care of him.”

“But what if they took him for…?” Emily shuddered. “What if a sexual predator has Timmy? If he’s hurt, I’ll kill myself. Oh, God, please don’t let anyone hurt my little boy!”

Emily hugged her chest tightly and began rocking back and forth. “Oh, God, Mom, it aches. It aches so much. What am I going to do?”

“Here comes your father,” I said, standing. I raised a hopeful eyebrow, but Paul simply shook his head. Dante drooped behind him, and Julio looked ready to punch the lights out of the next person who looked at him cross-eyed.

“So, Tim’s really gone?” I asked.

Emily began to whimper. Her whole body shook. Dante, having come to his senses at last, rushed to his wife’s side and folded her into his arms, where she buried her head in his chest and wept uncontrollably.

“What do we do now?” I whispered.

Paul’s face had turned to stone. “We call 911.”

“Where are they? What’s keeping them?”

Paul squeezed my hand. “It’s been less than five minutes, Hannah. They’ll be here soon.”

Less than five minutes . It had seemed like hours since Paul punched 911 into his cell phone, then dragged me out onto the veranda of Paradiso by the arm, insisting that I get some fresh air.

“Emily needs me-” I began.

“Right now, I think she needs her husband more.”

Just moments before, while Paul changed back into his street clothes, I’d persuaded my daughter to lie down on the massage table in Garnelle’s studio, where Garnelle had placed a cool, aromatic compress on her forehead. We’d left Dante sitting on a chair next to the table, stroking Emily’s hand. Every time she struggled to sit up, he’d gently force her to stay put.

“I can’t believe this is happening, Paul. Emily knew I was working in the office! Puddle Ducks has a telephone. Why didn’t she call and ask me to watch Timmy for a few minutes?”

Paul wrapped his arms around me, drew me close and rested his chin on the top of my head. “Emily will probably never stop asking herself that question. But at this point, I can’t think of anything more counterproductive. She didn’t, so you couldn’t, so here we are.”

My cheek felt hot against the cool, clean-smelling fabric of his shirt, until I began to dampen it with a fresh waterfall of tears. I couldn’t help it. Images of Timmy kept flashing through my mind like a slide show: Timmy’s mischievous green eyes; the white stub of a tooth just breaking through the gum on his lower jaw; his gurgly laugh. “I’m crazy about that little boy!” I sobbed. “If anyone hurts Timmy, I’ll kill them. I swear to God I’ll rip them apart with my bare hands!”

Paul’s arms tightened around me. “And I’ll help you to it. But let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, Hannah. Let’s pray the police can find Tim and bring him safely home.”

I dabbed at my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt and stared out over the Chesapeake Bay, but the calm beauty of the sun-dappled water, the cloudless blue sky, and even the gulls reeling leisurely overhead failed to soothe me as they usually did.

Farther down the drive, I could see Norman Salterelli guarding the gates as I had asked him to, a formidable mountain of muscle and sinew barely contained by the black spandex workout clothes he wore. “Do you think they got past Norman?” I wondered aloud.

Paul grunted. “Nobody gets by Norman.”

In point of fact, nobody-not spa employees nor their clients-seemed anxious to challenge the body builder. Perhaps drawn by morbid curiosity, several dozen folks still lounged about the garden, milled around the patio or loitered on the beach, showing little inclination to go back inside and fetch their things. If anybody wondered why they couldn’t see flames or smell smoke, they didn’t mention it.

The parking lot remained full, too. I noticed several individuals hanging around their vehicles, as if waiting for the alarm to stop ringing and the all clear to sound so they could get on with their business.

A clean-cut military type, wearing his tools as proudly as a gun belt, paced next to a green and white van marked THOS. SOMERVILLE CO. François told me he’d been waiting for a repairman to fix a malfunctioning thermostat in the dishwasher, so I figured that had to be the guy. “H2O Tommy” waited, too, the five-gallon bottles of springwater he had been planning to deliver staying cool in his truck.