Brett Battles - Every Precious Thing

“Oh, that’s horrible,” Harp said.

“I’m sorry for your client, Callie, but people leave marriages all the time,” Logan said.

Harp shot him a look. “Logan, where’s your compassion?”

“I have compassion, Dad. But if this woman left, she must have had her reasons.”

“I’m not finished,” Callie said. “They went to San Diego because they were celebrating.”

“Wedding anniversary?” Harp asked.

Callie shook her head. “At the time, their first anniversary was still a month away. Sara came into the marriage with a daughter. Emily is two now. What Sara and Alan were celebrating was that his adoption of Emily had been finalized the week before.”

“She didn’t take the girl with her, did she?” Logan said.

“No, she didn’t.”

Logan shrugged. “I’m still not sure what I can-”

“Naturally, Alan was distraught,” Callie said, cutting him off. “He couldn’t understand why she’d left. By his account and others I’ve interviewed, they had a great marriage. He came to me because he wanted to find her, not to bring her back if she didn’t want to come back, but to find out why she left. I was thinking it was going to be mostly a divorce case. We have other lawyers in the firm who handle those, but since Alan was one of my personal business clients, I agreed to help track Sara down. I did the obvious thing-hired a detective to look into it.”

“So what did the detective find out?” Harp asked.

“Nothing.”

Logan nodded, expecting as much. “She probably stayed in Mexico. That would make it hard for her to be found.”

“No, you misunderstand me. He didn’t find anything . Sara Lindley doesn’t exist.”

A thick silence descended on the table.

After several seconds, Logan said, “Maybe your detective didn’t know what he was doing.”

“I don’t waste my money,” Callie said, her tone serious. “I’ve used Joe Fulkerson dozens of times. He definitely knows what he’s doing. Alan’s wife has no history.”

Harp leaned forward. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe it was a scam,” Logan said. “Did she take any of his money, or something valuable?”

“No,” Callie said. “The only things missing were a few of her possessions and pictures.”

Logan’s brow furrowed. “Pictures?”

“That’s the last thing. When Alan got home, every picture in their house that Sara was in was gone. Even the digital shots on their computer had been permanently erased from the hard drive.”

“ What ?”

“That’s not all. Out of all Alan’s friends and family, only his sister had a picture with Sara in it, and she was just in the background. Apparently, Sara was good at avoiding camera lenses.”

“But that’s…that’s crazy,” Harp said.

Callie simply shrugged.

“Have you gone to the authorities?” Harp asked.

“That’s…not an option,” she said.

Harp looked confused. “Why not?”

But Logan knew the answer. “Emily.”

Callie nodded. “Exactly.”

Harp was still lost. “Emily?”

“Sara’s been using a false identity,” Logan explained. “Which means the marriage, I’m pretty sure, is invalid.”

“It is,” Callie said.

“And if the marriage is invalid, then the adoption…”

Harp stared at Logan for a moment before it hit him. “Oh…oh, no.”

“If I were to get the authorities involved,” Callie said, “they’d have no choice but to take Emily away. I have a good friend in the FBI, but I don’t even dare ask her for advice. She’d ask me questions I couldn’t answer.” She looked at Logan again. “If this were a simple matter of a wife ditching her marriage, my dad would have never brought you up. But after what we’ve learned, both Alan and I are concerned that Sara is in trouble. If she is, Alan wants to help her, but he can’t if he can’t find her. That’s what I’m hoping you can do. Find her, see if she’s in trouble, then let me know.”

Logan looked down at his food. He still had four pieces of spicy tuna left, but he was no longer hungry. “I’m not sure what more I can do that you haven’t already done.”

“Maybe there is nothing,” she admitted. “But you’ll come at it with fresh eyes, and given what I heard happened in Thailand, from an angle that is less…rigid than mine.”

He glanced at his father, and could see that Harp was fully behind the idea. Helping Callie-and, through her, the memory of Len-was all the motivation his father needed. And if his father felt that way, could Logan really say no?

“I guess…I could at least talk to Alan. We can see where it goes from there.”

Callie reached out and put her hand over Logan’s. “Thank you.”

Callie called Alan and set up a meeting for the next afternoon. The problem was, Alan lived in Riverside, about an hour’s drive east of Los Angeles, and at least seven hours from San Francisco. Logan and Harp decided that since Cambria was halfway between the two, the best thing would be to drive home for the night, check in at the shop in the morning, then finish the trip to Alan’s.

“I can be there if you need me,” Callie offered.

Logan shook his head. “We should be okay.”

“You’re sure?”

“Unless you think it would be better.”

“Alan’s a good guy, just a little wound up about things.”

“I’d be surprised if he weren’t.”

“If you need me, just call my cell,” she said. “I’ll be at Dad’s house. We’re going to go through some of his things, but it won’t be a problem if you’d like to talk.”

Harp put his arm around her back. “We’ll call only if necessary.”

She paused, then smiled. “I can’t thank you both enough. Alan’s always been a good client, but honestly, he’s not the reason I want to do this. It’s Emily. Someday, when she’s older, she’ll want to know what happened. I’d like Alan to be able to tell her.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Logan said.

Driving south, Logan listened absently to a ball game on the radio, the announcers’ voices helping him focus on something other than how the hell he was going to help Alan Lindley. At some point, he heard paper rustling, and looked over to see Harp reading the copy of Lost Horizon .

“You want me to turn the radio down?” he asked.

There was a delay of several seconds before his father glanced up. “What?”

Logan pointed at the volume control. “Is this too loud for you?”

Harp shifted his gaze to the dash as if he’d just noticed the radio was on. “No, it’s fine,” he said, returning to his book.

Logan lowered the volume anyway, but if his father noticed, Harp made no comment.

“That’s not going to make you sick, is it?” Logan asked a few minutes later.

Another delay before another “What?”

“Reading in the car. It’s not going to make you sick?”

“No.” Harp’s tone made it clear he thought that was a stupid idea.

Another few minutes passed. “Dad. What was the envelope Len left?”

Harp kept his eyes on the book. “Just something your uncle and I talked about once.”

Logan could tell it was a lot more than nothing, but he had no idea what it could be. The envelope had said MANILA. As far as Logan knew, Harp had never been to the Philippines, and if it was the name of someone his father knew, it wasn’t anyone Logan had ever met.

But he didn’t push. His father had had a heavy couple of days. Len’s passing was tough enough, but the book seemed to have affected him even more.

When Harp was ready, if he ever was, he’d tell Logan what was so important about the envelope.