Linwood Barclay: Never Look Away

“Do we need it?” I asked. It was a long trek back to where we’d parked.

“It’s got the peanut butter sandwiches, and the sunscreen.” Jan was always careful to goop Ethan up so he didn’t get a burn. “I’ll run back. You go ahead, I’ll catch up to you.”

She handed me two slips of paper-one adult ticket and one child-and kept one for herself.

She said, “I think there’s an ice-cream place, about a hundred yards in, on the left. We’ll meet there?”

Jan was always one to do her research, and must have memorized the online map of Five Mountains in preparation.

“That sounds good,” I said. Jan turned and started back for the car at a slow trot.

“Where’s Mom going?” Ethan asked.

“Forgot the backpack,” I said.

“The sandwiches?” he said.

“Yeah.”

He nodded, relieved. We didn’t want to be going anywhere without provisions, especially of the sandwich variety.

I handed in my ticket and his, bypassing the line to purchase them, and entered the park. We were greeted with several junk food kiosks and about a dozen stands hawking Five Mountains hats and T-shirts and bumper stickers and brochures. Ethan asked for a hat and I said no.

The two closest roller coasters, which had looked big from the parking lot, were positively Everest-like now. I stopped pushing the stroller and knelt down next to Ethan and pointed. He looked up, watched a string of cars slowly climb the first hill, then plummet at high speed, the passengers screaming and waving their hands in the air.

He stared, eyes wide with wonder and fear. He reached for my hand and squeezed. “I don’t like that,” he said. “I want to go home.”

“I told you, sport, don’t worry. The rides we’re going on are on the other side of the park.”

The place was packed. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people moving around us. Parents with little kids, big kids. Grandparents, some dragging their grandkids around, some being dragged by them.

“I think that must be the ice-cream place,” I said, spotting the stand just up ahead.

I got behind the stroller and started pushing. “Think it’s too early for ice cream?” I asked.

Ethan didn’t respond.

“Sport? You saying no to an ice cream?”

When he still didn’t say anything, I stopped to take a look at him. His head was back and to the side, his eyes closed.

The little guy had fallen asleep.

“I don’t believe it,” I said under my breath. Not even at the first merry-go-round and the kid was already comatose.

“Everything okay?”

I turned. Jan had returned, a bead of sweat trickling down her neck. The backpack was slung over her shoulder.

“He’s nodded off,” I said.

“You’re kidding me,” she said.

“I think he passed out from fear after getting a close look at that,” I said, pointing to the coaster.

“I think I’ve got something in my shoe,” Jan said. She navigated the stroller over to a concrete ledge surrounding a garden. She perched herself on the edge, nudging Ethan and the stroller to her left.

“Feel like splitting a cone?” she asked. “I’m parched.”

I guessed what she was thinking. We could share a treat now, while Ethan dozed. He’d get plenty of junk before the day was out, but this would be something just for us.

“Dipped in chocolate?” I asked.

“Surprise me,” she said, putting her left foot up on her knee. “Need money?”

“I got it,” I said, patting my back pocket. I turned and strolled over to the ice-cream stand. It was the soft white stuff that comes out of a machine. Not my favorite in the world-I like the real thing-but the young girl who took my order did manage a skillful twirl at the top. I asked her to dip it in the vat of chocolate, which clung like skin to the ice cream as she presented it to me.

I took a tiny bite out of it, cracking the chocolate, and instantly regretted it. I should have let Jan have the first bite. But I’d make up for it through the week. On Monday, come home with flowers. Later in the week, book a sitter, take Jan out to dinner. This thing Jan was going through-maybe it was my fault. I hadn’t been attentive enough. Hadn’t made the extra effort. If that was what it was going to take to bring Jan around, I was up to it. I could put this marriage back on the rails.

I didn’t expect to see Jan coming straight for me when I turned. Even with the sunglasses over her eyes, I could still tell she was upset. There was a tear running down one cheek, and her mouth was set in a terrible grimace.

Why the hell wasn’t she pushing the stroller? I looked beyond her, to where I thought she’d been sitting.

She came up to me quickly, clapped her hands on the sides of my shoulders.

“I only looked away for a second,” she said.

“What?”

“My shoe,” she said, her voice shaking, uneven. “I was getting-the stone-I was getting the stone out of my shoe, and then I looked-I looked around and-”

“Jan, what are you talking about?”

“Someone’s taken him,” she said, almost in a whisper, her voice nearly gone. “I turned and he-”

I was already moving past her, running over to where I’d last seen them together.

The stroller was gone.

I stepped up onto the ledge Jan had been sitting on, scanned the crowds.

It’s just a mix-up. This isn’t what it looks like. He’ll be back in a second. Someone grabbed the wrong stroller .

“Ethan!” I shouted. People walking past glanced at me, kept on going. “Ethan!” I shouted again.

Jan was standing below me, looking up. “Do you see him?”

“What happened?” I asked quickly. “What the hell happened?”

“I told you. I looked away for a second and-”

“How could you do that? How could you take your eyes off him?” Jan tried to speak but no words came out. I was about to ask a third time how she could have allowed this to happen, but realized I was wasting time.

I thought, instantly, of that urban legend, the one that got called into the newsroom once or twice a year.

“I heard from a friend of a friend,” the calls usually began, “that this family from Promise Falls, they went down to Florida, and they were at one of the big theme parks in Orlando, and their little boy, or maybe it was a little girl, got snatched away from his parents, and these people took him into the bathroom and cut his hair and made him look different and smuggled him out of the park but it never got in the papers because the park owners don’t want any bad publicity.”

There was never, ever anything to it.

But now…

“Go back to the main gate,” I told Jan, trying to keep my voice even. “If someone tries to take him out, they’ll have to go through there. There should be somebody from park security there. Tell them.” The ice-cream cone was still in my hand. I tossed it.

“What about you?” she asked.

“I’ll scout out that way,” I said, pointing beyond the ice-cream stand. There were some restrooms up there. Maybe someone had taken Ethan into the men’s room.

Jan was already running. She looked back over her shoulder, did the cell phone gesture to her ear, telling me to call her if I found out anything. I nodded and started running the other way.

I kept scanning the crowds as I ran to the men’s room entrance. As I entered, breathless, the voices of children and adults and hot-air hand dryers echoed off the tiles. There was a man holding up a boy, smaller than Ethan, at one of the urinals. An elderly man was washing his hands at the long bank of sinks. A boy about sixteen was waving his hands under the dryer.

I ran past all of them to the stalls. There were six of them, all doors open except for the fourth. I slapped on the door, thinking it might open.