Page 2 of Chasing Dreams
Shaine poured batter onto the hot waffle iron and closed the lid, turning to stick the syrup pitcher in the microwave. She always got a kick out of the fact that the Victorian Inn’s customers spent the night in the authentic 1800s restored mansion with its claw-foot tubs and pull-chain toilets, sipped tea in the oak-floored lace-curtained dining room and then received electrically grilled, perked, toasted and microwaved breakfasts.
“If you’ll do the beds and bathrooms again this morning, I’ll do the laundry and clean up the kitchen,” Maya Pruitt said from behind her.
“Sure. Your legs still bothering you?”
Maya, over eight months pregnant with her first baby, shuffled over with her swollen feet stuffed into a pair of fuzzy bedroom slippers. “Isn’t this disgusting? Craig must feel like he’s getting into bed with a circus elephant every night.”
“How long?” Shaine asked. “Three or four weeks left? That time’s going to fly by, and you’ll be so happy to have the baby, you’ll forget all about this. I remember...”
“What?”
“Oh, I was just going to say I remember when Maggie was pregnant with Jack. She was miserable, too.”
Beside her, Maya was silent.
From the portable television atop the double-wide steel refrigerator came the morning news. “Four-year-old, Jimmy Deets has been missing from his Arlington home since yesterday afternoon,” the female reporter said. “Concerned neighbors, along with the county sheriff’s department, have combed the area surrounding the Deetses’ farmhouse. One neighbor recalled seeing a car parked on the highway around supper time, but he said nothing seemed amiss at the time.”
Shaine’s hands trembled. Her heart beat so fast, its severity frightened her. Her gaze shot to the screen.
A fair-haired young woman appeared, her eyes red-rimmed, her hair gathered in a hasty ponytail. She wiped her hands on a white apron tied at her waist. “If anyone has any information at all about Jimmy, please call the police,” she begged.
The child’s color photograph filled the small television screen, his dimpled face smiling.
Shaine dropped a plastic spatula on the tiled floor. She pressed her hand to her quaking chest.
“Shaine, what’s wrong?” Maya asked.
She’d dreamed of Jimmy Deets last night.
She stared at the television long after the child’s image was gone, replaced with a car dealership commercial. That had been the woman with the apron she’d dreamed of several weeks ago.
A scorched smell permeated the kitchen.
“Shaine,” Maya said. “The waffles are burning. Hon?”
Ignoring everything but her consuming panic rising inside, Shaine shot out the kitchen door and stood on the wooden porch, her breath coming out in shallow pants.
She’d seen that child last night. She’d dreamed of him. But she didn’t want to believe the picture she had in her mind. She couldn’t accept it.
She ran back in and grabbed her purse.
“Are you all right?” Maya asked. She’d tossed the blackened waffles in the waste bin and stood ineffectively waving a dish towel at the thick smoke.
“I have to go.” Shaine turned away.
“But—”
“I’ll be back to do the upstairs.” She ignored Maya’s pleading words and ran for her car. She started her Honda CR-V and shot away from the inn. Like the arrow of a compass seeking north, she drove.
She didn’t think about where to turn or how far to drive. She simply steered the car toward the area that compelled her, instinctively knowing something would clue her where to turn. Twenty minutes outside the city, she pulled off the highway and followed a two-lane blacktop road until she spotted a water tower in the distance.
This was it.
She parked on the side, got out and ran across an expanse of gravel until she came to a low barbed-wire fence. The wire was loose enough to hold down with one foot while she climbed over. The ground beneath her shoes was uneven, and she stumbled several times. Neither words nor feelings could explain what compelled her forward. Some indefinable source drove her like the moon drove the tide. Crisp fall air lifted the hair at her temples, and she pulled her jacket around her more snugly.
At first she’d thought the child in her dream was Jack, but then she’d known that it wasn’t. This boy had dark hair. He was older, maybe three or four. She turned her face to the right like a magnet seeking steel.
And he was here.
