Jeremy Finley - The Darkest Time of Night

I hurried over. “Chris, where’s Tom?”

“It’s my fault, Lynn. I shouldn’t have let them camp out tonight. Especially with rain still in the forecast. Will was so upset, he cried himself to sleep. I should have brought them all inside, if only to calm William down.”

“Chris, I don’t want to hear you say that again. No one is to blame. We will find him. Where is Tom?”

“I’m here,” Tom said, walking up with Detective Strombino.

“Stella called. Her station knows something is happening. She says she won’t return their call. But they’ll figure it out. They may already have cameras outside.”

Tom whipped out his phone, turning his back to us.

I looked to the detective. “Has he told you yet?”

Strombino paused, and Tom looked back at me. He whispered a few more words and jammed the phone into his pocket. “Lynn, this isn’t the time.”

“Tom, these detectives need to know everything.”

“Lynn, I will handle this.”

Before I lowered my chin, I saw Strombino look at us, obviously uncomfortable in the simmering air.

“I’m not sure what the two of you are talking about, but I advise you to go public. The first twenty-four hours a child goes missing are crucial, and yours has already been gone for roughly two. I don’t want to rattle off the statistics of how many children are actually found after that twenty-four-hour window closes—it ain’t pretty. The longer this goes on, the more concerned I’m becoming about what your other grandson said. Lights don’t take children—people holding flashlights or driving cars with headlights take children.”

No , Detective. My throat was suddenly so tight I couldn’t have spoken if I wanted to. Not always.

“I just ordered my staff to reach out to the TV stations, the papers and the radio stations, and to get it on social media. We need the most recent photo of William possible. But no news conference yet. Only that our grandson is lost in the woods,” Tom said.

I almost didn’t hear my husband; I was so alarmed by what Strombino had said about the lights.

It can’t be. After all this time… it cannot be.

“Find a recent picture and send it out with the alert,” Strombino suggested.

“We have the family picture on my dresser, but William was only a baby,” Tom said. He then snapped his fingers. “Get the magazine cover. It has a huge picture of William.”

“The boy was on the cover of a magazine?” Strombino asked, and then cleared his throat. “Get that photo out now.”

The seven-year-old grandson of U.S. Senator Thomas Roseworth is missing and a massive search is underway in the woods directly behind the Tennessee lawmaker’s home.

The metro police department confirmed the identity of the boy as William Thomas Chance, the youngest grandson of Roseworth.

Police said Chance was last seen Friday night entering the woods.

William Chance is the son of Roseworth’s oldest daughter, Anne, who lives on the other side of the wooded area behind the Senator’s home in Nashville.

The neighborhood is known for the estates of other prominent politicians, including Al Gore.

Chance was recently appeared on the cover of Southern Living , for an article profiling the home and garden shop of Roseworth’s wife, Lynn.

Senator Roseworth is in Nashville to help in the search.

“The lights took him.”

I awoke to Brian’s words, the last memory of a disturbing dream. I lay in a pool of morning sunlight, already hot from the August sun.

I slid out of bed, almost stumbling in my haste. I’d come up to check on Brian and found him tossing, so I sat down to pat his back as I had when he was a toddler with the croup. I’d lain down for only a moment.

How could I have done that, knowing William was out there somewhere? And if it was because of the magazine, it was all my fault.

I’d known, even then, the cover had been a terrible idea. A freelance writer for Southern Living had showed up early one morning in early spring, gushing about the store, my garden, and the house. I declined an interview and repeated over and over again that there was nothing special about any of it. Roxy, who managed the shop with me and had not had her coffee yet, wordlessly led the writer outside, took me by the hand out the front door, promptly went back inside herself, locked the doors to the building, told me through the glass to enjoy the early May heat wave, and to come back in the air conditioning when the interview was done.

After conferring with Tom, I consented. I had to admit, the end result had been a beautiful spread on the Peddler and the garden.

The writer thought the garden might make the cover, but none of us expected the photograph that was ultimately chosen. William had been corralled along with his brothers to the front lawn while the photographs were taken, but he had begged his mother for sweet tea after a while, and Anne had snuck him into the house. As they exited, the photographer cried out for silence (mainly directed towards Roxy), and snuck up on the little red-haired boy wearing only overalls carrying a glass of sugar-drenched tea, wandering through the garden. The end photograph was William looking back towards the camera, surrounded by calla lilies.

I should have been thrilled by all of it. But I could barely look at the magazine; horrified by the customers who asked me to sign it, inquiring if Tom knew how famous his wife was now.

With a quick glance at Brian to confirm he was still sleeping, I bolted across the bedroom and hurried down the stairs while hugging the rail like a car driving too fast on a curve.

The stairs led to a hallway off the kitchen, and the first person I saw was Tom, leaning on the counter and intently checking his phone.

“Was it all orchestrated?” I said, startled at the volume of my own voice.

I then saw the police officers crowded around maps on the kitchen table, with Kate in the center. By the refrigerator, two men in suits stopped their conversation with Detective Strombino.

Kate moved around the table quickly. Tom put away his phone. “Lynn—”

I waited till he was near enough for him to hear my whisper. “Your operatives, did they send that writer to the shop? Was that all part of some campaign?”

“What?”

“It’s true, isn’t it? The magazine cover. The profile of our family. It wasn’t by chance that writer came. And now William is gone. How could you let me sleep?”

“It’s only been an hour, Lynnie. Honestly, I didn’t even know you were up there until about thirty minutes ago, when I couldn’t find you—”

“I don’t need to sleep. I need to know if that’s how William ended up on that cover.”

“What you need to do is calm down and not make a scene.” He stepped in close.

“I have never made a scene in all my life.”

Kate rubbed my arm. “Mom—”

“Where is Anne? I need to see her.” I felt delirious from the swell of anger and exhaustion.

“Stella made her lie down in the back room. She’s asleep, finally, and so is Stella, beside her. I think Stella strongly suggested she take a Xanax,” Kate said.

“Then who’s out searching?”

“Seems like half the police department,” Kate looked out the window. “We came in to look at some of the geological maps in better light. We’re all about to go out again. Roxy is here.”

I walked past them and the police officers, heading out the screen door. I knew neither Tom nor Kate would follow.

I instantly heard Roxy’s voice as I moved across the dewy grass that would soon become bone dry in the oppressive heat.