Marcia Talley - Through the Darkness

“You tired, Grandma?”

Without lifting my head, I studied Chloe sideways. “A little bit, pumpkin. C’mon, let’s go get your brother.”

Officially, Jake attended school from eight-fifteen to noon, but until Puddle Ducks opened for good, he’d been taking part in Afternoon Enrichment, followed by Extended Care, which allowed Emily the flexibility to leave him there until six if necessary.

I checked in at the office to let someone know I had arrived, then went to track down Jake. We found him in a classroom with four other children, working seriously on a drawing with a fat brown crayon.

“What’s that?” I asked, studying the amorphous brown blob taking shape on his paper.

Jake exchanged the brown crayon for a black one and drew a small black circle within the brown blob. “It’s Coco.”

I squinted at the masterpiece. “Right,” I said, more to myself than to Jake, who was now adding the dog’s lolling, red tongue to his drawing. “I’d forgotten about Coco.”

The teacher helped Jake slide the drawing into his book bag, and located his sweater. “See you tomorrow, Jake.”

I managed an anemic grin. “Come on, guys and gals. We’re going to pick up Coco, and your pjs, and we’ll all have a slumber party at Grandma’s house. Anybody up for pizza?”

“Pizza! Yay!” shouted Chloe.

“Pizza!” echoed Jake.

Skipping down the hall with the children, thinking about pizza, did nothing to lighten my spirits. In three years, Timmy would be old enough to attend St. Anne’s Day School.

Would I ever get to skip down the hall with Timmy?

Chloe tugged on my sleeve. “No pepperoni, Grandma.”

I blinked back tears.

Would Timmy’s kidnapper give him the chance to grow up and hate pepperoni, too?

I smiled down at Chloe, my heart nearly breaking. “No pepperoni, I promise.”

I was so proud of myself. I stayed cheerful andgrandma-lovey all evening. I didn’t even cry when we watched Finding Nemo for the umpteenth time. By the time we went to bed, I still hadn’t needed to tell the children about Timmy.

Tuesday morning I staggered out of bed, let Coco out to do her business in the yard, stumbled through breakfast, and supervised the children’s face washing and tooth brushing while gulping down copious amounts of strong black coffee. I usually spiked my coffee with half and half, but I didn’t want to dilute the caffeine that I was counting on to jump-start me out of a semicoma so I could drive the kids to school without running the car off the road. Paul would have helped, of course, but earlier, after hugs all around, he’d hurried off to the Academy to make arrangements for someone to take his classes. He promised to meet me back at Spa Paradiso as soon as he could get away.

At St. Anne’s Day School, after Chloe and I escorted Jake to his classroom, we stopped by the office, where I intended to explain about Timmy. As it turned out, no explanation was necessary. The school secretary, normally a relentlessly cheerful sort, wore such a long face that I could tell she already knew.

“Is there any news this morning?” she asked.

Struggling for control of my emotions, I shook my head.

“Chloe? Do you want to sit down for a minute?” I directed my granddaughter to one of two chairs arranged at right angles to an end table in a nearby corner. “Do you have a library book in your backpack?”

Chloe nodded, her ponytails bobbing. I was never any good at French braids, a failing that had marked me as a Bad Mother when Emily was going through the Terrible Twelves.

“Why don’t you get out your book and read it while I go to that little room on the other side of the desk and talk to the principal. Okay?”

I left Chloe pawing through her backpack. When I returned five minutes later, though, she wasn’t reading a book. She was out of her chair, kneeling on the floor in front of the end table where a copy of the Baltimore Sun lay open. Timmy’s picture was on the front page.

“That’s Timmy, Grandmother!” Chloe said, looking up from the paper with excitement dancing in her eyes.

“I know.”

“Is Timmy famous?”

I sat down in the chair next to her, my heart pounding. “Yes he is, Chloe.”

Any doubts I had about whether Chloe had actually read the article vanished when she asked, “Grandma, what does ‘abducted’ mean?”

“Abducted means stolen.”

Chloe’s pale eyebrows disappeared into her bangs. “Somebody stole Timmy?”

“I’m afraid so, Chloe. But, your mommy and daddy, and your granddaddy and I, are trying very hard to find Timmy and bring him back home.”

“My mommy says that stealing is very bad.”

“Your mommy’s right. That’s why the police are helping us find the person who took your little brother away.”

Chloe hung her head, then studied me sideways through her eyelashes. “I stole a candy bar once at the grocery store. Daddy made me take it back and say sorry.”

“And the police are going to make the person who took Timmy bring him back and say sorry, too.”

Chloe’s worried frown vanished. “I’m gonna tell about Timmy at Show and Tell!”

I tugged lightly on the end of one of her ponytails. “Maybe we can keep it a secret for just a little while, Chloe. When Timmy comes home, then you can tell. Okay?”

“Is Timmy coming home today?” she asked as I helped her shoulder her backpack.

“I don’t know, pumpkin, but I hope so.”

“Is he coming home tomorrow?”

Conversations with Chloe had a way of spiraling out of control. She was perfectly capable of trotting out every day of the week between now and the Fourth of July, so I quickly changed the subject to a trip we’d taken to Disney World the previous year, and we chattered about Pirates of the Caribbean and Thunder Mountain as we walked hand in hand down the sidewalk to the parking lot.

At Hillsmere Elementary five minutes later, Chloe’s teacher was waiting for us in the school office. Again, no explanations were necessary. While Mrs. Rogers escorted Chloe to her classroom, the school principal urged me to allow my granddaughter to chat with the school psychologist, a plan I vaguely agreed to, thinking I should have asked Emily about it first.

By the time I got to St. Catherine’s on the corner of Ridgley and Monterey, the caffeine had kicked in. I felt wired, every nerve in my body bristling with electricity. I hadn’t been so juiced since Oberlin, when I pulled two all-nighters in a row writing a term paper on Stendahl. If I had run into Timmy’s kidnapper at that moment, all the police would ever find of him would be bones and occasional pieces of skin.

I parked near the parish hall, cut the motor, and looked around. I was the only car in the lot.

I fiddled with the radio. I organized the glove compartment. I cleaned old Exxon receipts out of the console. Finally, I went looking for Eva, thinking that perhaps Roger had dropped her off on his way to work at the marina in Eastport.

Pastor Eva’s office was in the parish hall, through a door and to the left, just off a Plantation-style breeze-way that joined the parish hall to the church proper. I jiggled the doorknob, but the parish hall was locked. A note taped to the window told me Eva’d been called to Anne Arundel Medical Center to pray with a patient about to undergo emergency surgery and I should wait for her in the garden.

Taking my time, I wandered back along the breeze-way and stepped into the garden, the soles of my boat shoes scrunching comfortably on the graveled path. This is a real garden , I thought. It was filled with lilac, sweet william, mint, and such an abundance of flowers that it invited butterflies and hummingbirds that wouldn’t have been caught dead flitting about one of Ruth’s sterile, sculptured creations. Later in the summer zinnias and milkweed would be in full bloom at St. Catherine’s, and after that, sunflowers. In the fall, asters, phlox, purple cornflower, and goldenrod would turn the garden into a riot of Technicolor, a sight so beautiful that even parish asthma sufferers had not dared to complain.