Harlan Coben - Hold Tight

Adam squeezed his eyes shut. “I should have answered it. I hit him. I called him names and said I never wanted to speak to him again. Then I left him alone and when he called for help…”

The room pretty much exploded then. There were tears, of course. Hugs. Apologies. Wounds were ripped open and closed. Hester worked it. She grabbed LeCrue and Duncan. They all saw what happened here. No one wanted to prosecute the Bayes. Adam would cooperate and help send Rosemary and Carson to prison.

But that was for another day.

Later that night, after Adam had gotten home and had his cell phone back, Betsy Hill came over.

“I want to hear,” she said to him.

And together they listened to Spencer’s very last message before ending his own life:

“This isn’t on you, Adam. Okay, man. Just try to understand. It’s not on anyone. It’s just too hard. It’s always been too hard…”

ONE week later, Susan Loriman knocked on the door of Joe Lewis- ton’s house.

“Who is it?”

“Mr. Lewiston? It’s Susan Loriman.”

“I’m pretty busy.”

“Please open up. It’s very important.”

There were a few seconds of silence before Joe Lewiston did as she asked. He was unshaven and in a gray T-shirt. His hair jutted up in different directions and there was still sleep in his eyes.

“Mrs. Loriman, this isn’t really a good time.”

“It’s not a good time for me either.”

“I’ve been dismissed from my teaching post.”

“I know. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“So if this is about your son’s donor drive…”

“It is.”

“You can’t possibly think I’m the one to lead this anymore.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I do.”

“Mrs. Loriman…”

“Has anyone close to you ever died?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mind telling me who?”

The question was an odd one. Lewiston sighed and looked into Susan Loriman’s eyes. Her son was dying and for some reason this question seemed very important to her. “There was my sister, Cassie. She was an angel. You never believed anything could happen to her.”

Susan knew all about it, of course. The news had been full of stories on Cassandra Lewiston’s widowed husband and the murders.

“Anyone else?”

“My brother Curtis.”

“Was he an angel too?”

“No. Just the opposite. I look like him. They say we’re the spitting image. But he was troubled his whole life.”

“How did he die?”

“Murdered. Probably in a robbery.”

“I have the donor nurse right here.” Susan looked behind her. A woman came out of the car and moved toward them. “She can take your blood right now.”

“I don’t see the point.”

“You really didn’t do anything that terrible, Mr. Lewiston. You even called the police when you realized what your former brother-in-law was doing. You need to start thinking about rebuilding. And this step, your willingness to help here, to try to save my child even when you have all of this going on in your real life, I think that will matter to people. Please, Mr. Lewiston. Won’t you try to help my son?”

He looked as though he was about to protest. Susan hoped that he wouldn’t. But she was ready if he did. She was ready to tell him that her son, Lucas, was ten years old. She was ready to remind him that his brother Curtis had died eleven years ago-or nine months before Lucas’s birth. She would tell Joe Lewiston that the best odds now of finding a good donor was via a genetic uncle. Susan hoped that it wouldn’t come to that. But she was willing to go that far now. She had to be.

“Please,” she said again.

The nurse kept approaching. Joe Lewiston looked at Susan’s face again and must have seen the desperation.

“Sure, okay,” he said. “Why don’t you come inside so we can do this?”

I T amazed Tia how quickly life went back to normal.

Hester had been good to her word. No second chances, professionally speaking. So Tia handed in her resignation and was currently looking for another job. Mike and Ilene Goldfarb were off the hook for any crimes involving their prescriptions. The medical board was doing a for-show investigation, but in the meantime, their practice continued on as before. There were rumors that they had found a good match for Lucas Loriman, but Mike didn’t want to talk about it and so she didn’t push.

During those first few emotional days, Tia figured that Adam would turn his life around and be the sweet, kind boy… well, that he never really was. But a boy doesn’t work like a light switch. Adam was better, no question about it. Right now he was outside in the driveway playing goalie while his father took shots on him. When Mike got one past him, he would yell, “Score!” and start singing the Rangers goal-scoring music. The sound was comforting and familiar, but in the old days, she would hear Adam too. Now, today, not a sound came from him. He played in silence, while there was something strange in Mike’s voice, a blend of joy and desperation.

Mike still wanted that kid back. But that kid was probably gone. Maybe that was okay.

Mo pulled into the driveway. He was taking them to the Rangers versus Devils game down in Newark. Anthony, who along with Mo had saved their lives, was going too. Mike had thought Anthony saved his life the first time, in that alley, but it had been Adam who’d delayed them long enough-and had the knife scar to prove it. It was a heady thing for a parent to realize-the son saving the father. Mike would get teary and want to say something, but Adam wouldn’t hear it. He was silent brave, that kid.

Like his father.

Tia looked out the window. Her two men-boys started toward the door to say good-bye. She waved at them and blew them a kiss. They waved back. She watched them get into Mo’s car. She kept her eyes on them until the car faded away at the turn down the road.

She called out. “Jill?”

“I’m upstairs, Mom!”

They had taken the spy software off Adam’s computer. You could argue it a dozen different ways. Maybe if Ron and Betsy had been watching Spencer more closely, they could have saved him. But maybe not. There is a certain fate to the universe and a certain randomness. Here Mike and Tia had been so worried about their son-and in the end, it was Jill who came closer to dying. It was Jill who suffered the trauma of having to shoot and kill another human being. Why?

Randomness. She happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

You can spy, but you can’t predict. Adam might have found a way out of this on his own. He could have made that tape and Mike wouldn’t have been assaulted and nearly killed. That crazy kid Carson wouldn’t have pulled a gun on them. Adam wouldn’t still be wondering if his parents truly trusted him.

Trust is like that. You can break it for a good reason. But it still remains broken.

So what had Tia the mother learned from all this? You do your best. That’s all. You go in with the best intentions. You let them know that they are loved, but life is too random to do much more. You can’t really control it. Mike had this friend, a former basketball star, who liked to quote Yiddish expressions. His favorite was “Man plans, God laughs.” Tia had never really gotten that. She thought that it gave you an excuse to not try your hardest because, hey, God is going to mess with you anyway. But that wasn’t it. It was more about understanding that you could give it your all, give yourself the best chances, but control is an illusion.

Or was it still more complex than even that?

One could argue just the opposite-snooping had saved them all. For one thing, snooping had helped them realize that Adam was in over his head.

But more than that, the fact that Jill and Yasmin snooped and knew about Guy Novak’s gun-without that, they would all be dead.