Harlan Coben - Hold Tight

No wonder people found comfort in black-and-white answers like abstinence but come on, that doesn’t work and you don’t want to send the message that sex is somehow wrong or evil or even ta- boo-and yet, you don’t want them doing it. You want to tell them it is something good and healthy-but shouldn’t be done. So how exactly is a parent supposed to work that balance? Weirdly enough, we all want our children to have our outlook too, as if somehow ours, despite our parents’ screwups, is best and healthiest. But why? Were we raised exactly right or did we somehow find this balance on our own? Will they?

“Hey, Mom.”

Jill had come to the door. She gave her mother a puzzled look, surprised, Tia guessed, to see her in Adam’s room. There was a hush now. It lasted a second, no more, but Tia felt a cold gust across her chest.

“Hey, sweetheart.”

Jill was holding Tia’s BlackBerry. “Can I play BrickBreaker?”

She loved to play the games on her mom’s BlackBerry. Normally this was the time when Tia would gently scold for not asking before taking her phone. Like most kids, Jill did it all the time. She would use the BlackBerry or borrow Tia’s iPod or use the bedroom computer because hers wasn’t as powerful or leave the portable phone in her room and then Tia couldn’t find it.

Now, however, did not seem the time for the standard responsibility lecture.

“Sure. But if anything buzzes, please give it to me right away.”

“Okay.” Jill took in the whole room. “What are you doing in here?”

“I’m looking around.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. A clue to where your brother is, maybe.”

“He’ll be okay, right?”

“Of course, please don’t worry.” Then remembering that life does not stop and craving some form of normalcy, Tia asked, “Do you have any homework?”

“It’s done.”

“Good. Everything else okay?”

Jill shrugged.

“Anything you want to talk about?”

“No, I’m fine. I’m just worried about Adam.”

“I know, sweetheart. How are things at school?”

Another shrug. Dumb question. Tia had asked both her children that question several thousand times over the years and never, not once, had she gotten an answer beyond a shrug or “fine” or “okay” or “school is school.”

Tia left her son’s room then. There was nothing to find here. The printout from the E-SpyRight report was waiting for her. She closed her door and checked the pages. Adam’s friends Clark and Olivia had e-mailed him this morning, though the messages were rather cryptic. Both wanted to know where he was and mentioned that his parents had been calling around looking for him.

There was no e-mail from DJ Huff.

Hmm. DJ and Adam conversed a lot. Suddenly no e-mail-as if maybe he knew that Adam wouldn’t be around to reply.

There was a gentle knock on her door. “Mom?”

“You can open it.”

Jill turned the knob. “I forgot to tell you. Dr. Forte’s office called. I have a dentist appointment for Tuesday.”

“Right, thanks.”

“Why do I have to go to Dr. Forte’s anyway? I just had a cleaning.”

The mundane. Again Tia welcomed it. “You may need braces soon.”

“Already?”

“Yes. Adam was your…” She stopped.

“My what?”

She turned back to the E-SpyRight report on her bed, the current one, but it wouldn’t help. She needed the one with the original e-mail, the one about the party at the Huffs’ house.

“Mom? What’s going on?”

Tia and Mike had been good about getting rid of old reports via the shredder, but she had saved that e-mail to show Mike. Where was it? She looked next to her bed. Piles of paper. She started going through them.

“Can I help with something?” Jill asked.

“No, it’s fine, sweetheart.”

Not there. She stood up. No matter.

Tia quickly jumped back online. The E-SpyRight site was bookmarked in her favorites area. She signed on and clicked the archives button. She found the right date and asked for the old report.

No need to print it out. When it came up on the screen, Tia scanned down until she reached the Huff-party e-mail. She didn’t bother with the message itself-about the Huffs being away, about the party and getting high-but now that she thought about it, what had happened to that? Mike had gone by and not only had there been no party, but Daniel Huff was home.

Had the Huffs changed plans?

But that wasn’t the point right now. Tia moved the cursor over to check out what most would think would be the least relevant.

The time and date columns.

The E-SpyRight told you not only the time and date the e-mail was sent, but the time and date Adam opened it.

“Mom, what’s going on?”

“Just give me a second, sweetie.”

Tia picked up the phone and called Dr. Forte’s phone. It was Saturday, but she knew that with all the after-school kid activities, the area dentists often had weekend hours. She checked her watch and listened to the third ring, then the fourth. Her heart sank on the fifth ring before salvation:

“Dr. Forte’s office.”

“Hi, good morning, this is Tia Baye, Adam and Jill’s mom?”

“Yes, Mrs. Baye, what can I do for you?”

Tia tried to place the name of Forte’s receptionist. She had been there for years, knew everyone, ran the place really. She was the gatekeeper. It came to her. “Is this Caroline?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Hi, Caroline. Listen, this may sound like an odd request, but I desperately need a favor from you.”

“Well, I’ll try. We’re pretty jammed up next week.”

“No, it’s not that. Adam had an after-school appointment on the eighteenth at three forty-five P.M.”

No reply.

“I need to know if he was there.”

“You mean if he was a no-show?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, no, I would have called you. Adam was definitely here.”

“Do you know if he was on time?”

“I can give you the exact time, if that would help. It’s on the sign-in sheet.”

“Yes, that would be great.”

More delay. Tia heard the sound of fingers tapping on a computer. Papers were being shuffled.

“Adam got here early, Mrs. Baye-he signed in at three twenty P.M.”

That would make sense, Tia thought. He normally walked directly from school.

“And we saw him on time-at exactly three forty-five P.M. Is that what you needed to know?”

The phone nearly dropped from Tia’s hand. Something was so very wrong. Tia checked the screen again-the time and date columns.

The Huff-party e-mail had been sent at 3:32 P.M. It had been read at 3:37 P.M.

Adam hadn’t been home then.

This made no sense unless…

“Thank you, Caroline.” She quickly called Brett, her computer expert. He answered his phone: “Yo.”

Tia decided to put him on the defensive. “Thanks for selling me out to Hester.”

“Tia? Oh, look, I’m sorry about that.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

“No, seriously, Hester knows everything around here. Do you realize that she monitors every computer in the place? Sometimes she just reads the personal e-mails for fun. She figures if you’re on her property-”

“I wasn’t on her property.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

Time to move on. “According to the E-SpyRight report, my son read an e-mail at three thirty-seven P.M.”

“So?”

“So he wasn’t home at that time. Could he have read it elsewhere?”

“You’re getting this from E-SpyRight?”

“Yes.”

“Then the answer is no. The E-SpyRight is just monitoring his computer activities on that computer only. So if he signed in and read the e-mail elsewhere, it wouldn’t be in the report.”

“So how could this be?”