Linwood Barclay: No Safe House

“You’re just imagin—”

He stopped. He’d heard something, too.

“Shit,” he said, looking toward the kitchen.

Grace moved toward the front door. On the wall, just next to it, the security keypad, a small green light glowing.

Green? Doesn’t that mean—?

“No!” Stuart hissed. “Open that and the alarm’ll go off!”

“But the light is—”

“The noise sounded like it was in here,” he said quietly, moving on the balls of his feet toward the kitchen.

“No!” she whispered after him. “Let’s go.” She was thinking, even if they went out the front door, and the alarm was set to go off, and it did, they could still get to his car before the police or the security company showed up.

“It’s probably nothing. I’m not runnin’ out of here for no good reason. We’re gonna find those keys.”

He held his phone at arm’s length, casting light on the floor head of him.

“ Please ,” Grace said.

“Stay close to me,” he said, inching forward, reaching out an encouraging hand to her.

“I’m scared.”

He grinned. “You’re the one with the gun, Grace. What’s there to be worried about?”

One phone message and a text. No response to either.

I struggled to remember the name of the girl Grace said she was going to the movies with. Sarah? Sandra? I was pretty sure it was Sandra Miller. Sandra’s mother was going to be dropping Grace home on the way back from the theater. But I had no number for Sandra, or her mother, and how many Millers would there be listed in Milford? I didn’t even have to look. These days, now that every kid on the planet had a cell phone, we were letting down our guard when it came to getting info on how to reach their friends.

Cynthia would’ve known. She’d have been able to tell me who Sandra Miller was, where she lived, her favorite pop star, how long she and Grace had been friends. She’d have probably talked to Sandra’s mother at some point, too, and had the woman in her phone’s contact list. Whenever Grace met someone new, Cynthia would manage to get all their particulars in case she might need them later.

Maybe, if I’d been through what Cynthia had, this kind of thoroughness would be second nature to me, too.

I liked to think I kept a close eye on Grace, but there was no doubt I didn’t watch her the way her mother did. I cut her some slack. If she was ten minutes past curfew, I didn’t launch into the Spanish Inquisition. I kept the waterboarding to a minimum. I wanted to be able to trust her. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I wanted to trust that she had some common sense. But no teenager is trustworthy. I wasn’t at that age, and Cynthia was the first to admit she wasn’t, either.

So much about being a parent is holding your breath and hoping everything will be okay.

So yeah, I gave Grace more freedom. I made deals with her. I told her I’d cut her more slack if she’d promise me that even while her mother was living elsewhere, that when we were all together as a family, she’d dial it down. Not everything had to be an argument.

Grace said okay.

But now she’d burned me.

I could sit here and wait for her to show up, or I could strike out looking for her. Trouble was, I had no idea where to begin. And the odds were, the moment I left, she’d show up here. I wanted a word with her the moment she came through that door.

I was standing in the kitchen when the phone rang. I had the receiver to my ear before the end of the first ring. But before I said a word, I saw from the caller ID that it was not Grace.

“Hi,” I said.

“You must have been sitting on the phone,” Cynthia said.

“Just in the kitchen, sneaking a cookie,” I said. “What were you doing?”

“Nothing. Just... I felt bad about the beer.”

“The what?”

“When you came by. I didn’t offer you a beer.”

“I didn’t even notice.”

“When you left, I realized what I’d done. Sat there and had one right in front of you. It was rude.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.

She hesitated. “It was deliberate.”

“Oh.”

“I needed that time, just for me. I thought if I offered you a beer, you’d have — I feel sick about this.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“The thing is, the moment you left, I burst into tears and hated myself for not getting you one. Because I realized then I didn’t want you to go. Jesus, Terry, I’m a mess. I really am.”

“Have you seen Naomi this week?”

“Yeah. I look at her sometimes and think she must be so fucking tired of me. Listening to me still whining after all these years.”

“I doubt that.”

“It’s just, I can’t shake this post-trauma. That’s what’s making me hell to live with for Grace.” A pause. “Is she back from the movies yet?”

“No,” I said honestly.

Even though she wasn’t here, in this house, Cynthia often needed to know that Grace was safely home before she could get to sleep at her place.

“When was she supposed to be back?”

“Cyn,” I said.

“I know, I know. All I was thinking was, since she works tomorrow, I hate her to be out too late, to go to work tired. You can get hurt in a kitchen if you’re not paying attention.”

Grace had a summer job at the Milford Yacht Club, waiting tables in the dining room.

“Don’t worry. She’s only a few minutes late. I texted her a couple of minutes ago. Everything’s fine.”

Not quite a lie.

“Okay,” Cynthia said.

“What’d you do tonight?”

“I had to go over and see Barney. I forgot this was the day I was supposed to pay the rent, and he likes cash, so I went to an ATM a couple of hours ago and drove over to his place to pay him.”

“He offer you any marital advice?”

Cynthia laughed, but not hard. “He says to me, ‘I’ve been alone my whole life, never had anyone. You don’t know how lucky you are to have somebody, so don’t throw that away.’ That’s what he said.”

And she went silent.

“Cyn?”

Nothing.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine,” she said.

“You’re not throwing anything away. I know that.”

Unless I was wrong. Had I misread things? I’d believed Cynthia when she’d said she needed some space because of how she’d been dealing with Grace. Did her concerns extend beyond that issue? Was she having second thoughts about me?

Which led me to think about what Nathaniel had said. About another friend dropping by to visit her. I was about to ask who it was when the line beeped. It’s was Grace’s cell.

“Hang on a second. That’s our girl on the other line.”

“Sure.”

I hit the button.

“Grace?” I said, an edge already in my voice. “You know what time it is?” I wasn’t yelling, however. It was as if I somehow thought Cynthia could hear me on the other line.

“Dad? Dad? You have to come.”

She was talking rapidly, her voice shaking.

I could tell, instantly, that something was not right, so I switched from Angry Dad to Concerned Dad.

“Honey, you okay? I thought what’s-her-face’s mom was bringing you home?”

“You have to come. You have to come right now .”

“Where are you? What’s going on?”

“Something’s happened, Dad. Something’s happened.”

She told me I could find her in a small store attached to a gas station at the corner of Gulf Street and New Haven Avenue. I tried to get her to tell me what was going on, but all she’d say was that I should hurry.

And one last thing.

“Don’t tell Mom.”