C Box - Blue Heaven

William smiled broadly, his hair a comma over his forehead, his chin cocked slightly to the side. He looked happy-go-lucky and tragic at the same time. It was Annie who most affected him, and he found himself staring at her likeness, mesmerized by it. She was blond, open-faced, clear-eyed, and looked to be challenging the photographer. But there was something in her eyes and the set of her chin. He immediately liked her and felt an affinity he couldn’t explain. Had he met her before? He searched his memory and came up with nothing.

Maybe it wasn’t that he’d seen or met her before, but what she represented to him. Maybe her photo made him realize how much he had wanted grandchildren. The thought embarrassed him. It wasn’t something he thought about or pined over. In fact, this was the first time it had occurred to him with such force. He wished he could start over somehow, maybe do things differently this time, maybe do things right. So instead of an empty house and failing ranch, he would have kids around like these to spend his time with, impart some of his knowledge, tell them they could be… exceptional.

He stood back and shook his head at the thought but continued looking at the poster.

Phone numbers for the sheriff’s department were written underneath the photos.

As he walked outside, Jess glanced over his shoulder and could see the well-dressed man opening a briefcase and spreading the contents out over Jim Hearne’s desk.

MONICA TAYLOR was beside herself. Annie and William had been missing for over twenty hours. She hadn’t slept, eaten, showered, or changed clothes since Tom had walked out of her home the evening before. It had been a long night, made worse when smoke rolled out of the oven-she had forgotten about the lasagna-and set off the alarms. She stood on her front lawn, weeping uncontrollably, being comforted by a volunteer fireman, while the rest of the crew charged through her front door with extinguishers and hoses, tracking mud across the carpet and linoleum, to emerge a few minutes later with a black, smoking, unrecognizable pan of black goo. The neighbors who had been outside in their bathrobes or sweats went back inside their houses.

Before the lasagna burned, sheriff’s deputies had been there twice, once to hear her initial concerns and again near midnight to obtain photos of the children and descriptions of what they’d been wearing when she saw them last. The difference in their attitudes from the first visit, when one of the deputies had actually tried to pick her up, to the second, when even the flirting deputy averted his eyes and spoke somberly, brought home the growing seriousness of the disappearance.

The sheriff eventually tired of her hourly calls throughout the night, and sent over a doctor, who prescribed Valium. The Valium took the edge off her pain but didn’t make it go away. All she had to do was look at the school photos of Annie and William, the frames now clouded with a film of sticky smoke residue, to bring it all back.

She had developed a routine, of sorts, that consisted of walking through the house and out the back door into the yard, circling the house to the left, and reentering through the front door, all the while clutching the cordless phone as if to squeeze it into juice. As she passed the hallway she glanced at herself in the mirror, seeing someone who was almost unrecognizable. The woman who looked back had redrimmed eyes, sunken cheeks, matted, ratty hair. She seemed to be folding over on herself when she walked. Monica now knew what she would look like when she was old.

When the telephone rang, and it rang often, she would gasp, ask God that it please be one of her children, and punch the TALK button. It was never Annie or William, but the sheriff’s office, a concerned neighbor, the local newspaper, or a rural mail carrier named Fiona Pritzle, who told Monica that she, Fiona, was “the last person on earth to see those kids alive.” The phrase had nearly buckled Monica’s knees, and made her reach out for the wall to steady herself.

Over and over, Monica replayed the morning before, each time revising the situation so Tom left the house before breakfast or, better yet, that he’d never come at all. She hated herself for what happened, and she asked God, over and over, for a second chance to make it right. She thought God, like the sheriff, was likely getting tired of hearing from her lately, especially after all these years when He never even entered her mind. But there would be no more Tom, she vowed. No more Toms , period.

Monica had never been blessed with a road map. Her own parents had not provided one, certainly not for a situation like this. She always envied those who seemed to have a map, a plan, a destination, something inside that provided a framework. In times of confusion and despair, she had little to fall back on and no one to call on for advice or support. Certainly not her mother. And who knew where her father was?

It was tough raising two children alone. The men she met were either divorced themselves and loaded with baggage or quirks, married and looking for a fling or an easy out, or immature like Tom. None of them had the potential or desire to be a good father to her children, which was what she yearned for. Annie needed a man in her life, but William needed one even more. Sure, the men she met were interested in Monica. But not Monica and her children. She couldn’t really blame them, but she did. There had been too many years wasted hoping, too many years of listlessness and paralysis, treading water, hoping some man would throw a lifeline. Monica was well aware of the fact that she was not the only single mother in the world. Her own mother had the same experience, after her father-who called Monica his princess, his angel, his button-had left without saying good-bye. But that’s where the similarity ended, because Monica loved her children deeply.

But she’d been weak. The desire she’d had for Tom now seemed to have happened in another life. It had been so pointless, so shallow, so selfish. Sure, she’d wanted him in her bed. Once, there had been many. But she wasn’t an animal. She’d learned to control herself, not to give in to her basest instinct anymore. There’d been other men-better men-who’d wanted to stay over. The most recent was Oscar Swann. But she’d refused him, and them, explained that her children-their family-came first. Her children needed a father but not simply a male, and certainly not a series of them. Monica knew what that did to children because it had happened to her.

The phone rang in her hand, startling her like it did every time. As she raised it to her mouth, the receiver chirped and the phone went dead. She had forgotten to charge it.

She slammed the telephone into the charging cradle, trying to will it to ring again. It didn’t.

For the first time she could remember, her life was absolutely focused: She needed her children back.

SHE WAS at her kitchen table, staring again at the digital time display on the microwave, when Sheriff Ed Carey rapped on the screen door of the mudroom.

“May I come in, Miz Taylor?”

She looked up at him and nodded, not having the energy to speak.

As he entered, she searched his face for some kind of indication of why he was there. She swore that if he wouldn’t meet her eyes, if the news he brought was bad news, she would die right there, on the spot. But Carey’s face was blank, and maybe a little facetious, as if he were playacting at being concerned but wasn’t very good at it.

Sheriff Carey was tall and wore his uniform well, but there wasn’t much he could do to disguise the potbelly that stuck straight out from his trunk and strained the buttons on his short-sleeved khaki shirt. When he was inside, he removed his straw cowboy hat and adjusted his belt up, which slipped back down under his gut with his first step.