Page 90 of The Castaways
The kids were not in the restaurant. Delilah hurried back to the front desk. Lonnie was still there, looking as morose as ever.
“Did they come past?” Delilah asked.
Lonnie shook his droopy head.
Delilah walked through the automatic sliding door. She stood beneath the portico and surveyed the parking lot. Beyond this hotel was highway. Would they have walked? There was just no way.
“Drew!” she screamed. “Barney!”
Somewhere in the parking lot, a car alarm sounded. Had she set it off?
She raced through the parking lot. Lamaze breathing—but there wasn’t time! She had to find them! Delilah was not religious; she did not pray. This was a flaw, she saw now, a hole, a void. Tess and Andrea were Catholic, and Greg and the Chief, however reluctantly, had gone along with that strict and structured faith. Addison was Episcopalian, Phoebe had been Episcopalian but since 9/11 had developed her own religion, a cross between Buddhism and drug-induced hallucinogenic voodoo mysticism. Jeffrey was Presbyterian, a staunch farmer, pitchfork-wielding,American GothicProtestant. He took the boys to the Congregational church on Sundays at 10:30 twice a month; he donated to the offertory basket, belted out the doxology, spent a month of weekends doing odd jobs around the antiquated, drafty interior. Delilah had been raised an unwieldy combination of Lutheran and Greek Orthodox but had dropped both. She went to church with Jeffrey on Christmas Eve because she liked the carols. But the rest of the time she was spiritually adrift.
Delilah circled the hotel, inspecting it from the outside. There were nooks and crannies, places to hide—service entrances, housekeeping headquarters, a separate, canopied entrance for the families who took their kids to the Holiday Inn for breakfast on the weekends as a treat.
“Barney!” she screamed. “Drew! Andrew DRAKE!”
“Mom!” someone shouted.
And then she saw them. She almost choked on her relief. It was a palpable thing, a thick chemical vapor that filled her up and made her wheeze as she tried to cry out. The relief nearly stopped her heart.
Behind the hotel, in what might have been called the back courtyard, was a playground. The skeleton of a swing set, two scabby seesaws, and the rusted disk of a merry-go-round on which spun Chloe, Finn, and Barney. Drew was pushing.
“Jesus!” she said. She was crying now. “I was so scared. I thought I’d lost you.”
They did not speak. They observed Delilah as if she were an alien just stepped off a flying saucer, as if she were some unidentifiable wildlife emerging from the bush.
“I was so worried!” she said. “Thank God you’re safe!” Thank God, thank God. She realized that this angst, this panic, this frantic hair-raising fuckingworrywas, of course, what Jeffrey, Andrea, the Chief, Phoebe, and Addison would be feeling once they realized Delilah was gone with the kids. Delilah couldn’t stand to think of anyone else feeling this way. Somewhere inside her guilty and broken self, there was a beating heart.
Delilah waited until the merry-go-round slowed, then she sat down between Finn and Barney. She gathered Drew and Chloe into her lap, and although they were way too old for this, they allowed her to hold them anyway.
“Are we going home now?” Barney asked.
She kissed the top of his head.
“Yep,” she said, like the unflappable mom she was. “We’re going home now.”
THECHIEF
He was tired in the morning and suffering from something of a hangover. He’d considered taking a sick day from work, which he did once a year, but a call had come to the house from Dickson, asking the Chief to get down there as soon as possible.
The Chief did not like the sound of Dickson’s voice. “Why?” he said.
“April Peck is here to see you,” Dickson said.
“Oh, Jesus,” the Chief said. He was glad Andrea was still asleep. He hung up the phone. Kacy was buttering an English muffin at the counter. “What time are the twins due home?”
“Um,” she said. “I’m not sure.” She sounded funny. Or maybe that was because of the ringing in the Chief’s ears. He and Phoebe had danced awfully close to the band’s brass section.
“Okay, I have to go in to work. Please don’t wake your mother. Will you be around when the twins get home?”
“Um,” Kacy said. “I guess?”
April Peck, the Chief thought. Sweet Jesus. “I have to go,” he said.
He was unwashed, unshaven, in his street clothes, and he had to make do with the truly atrocious coffee that Molly made for the station. These were all bad omens. And somehow he had to make room in his mind for Phoebe’s confession of the night before. Greg had not drugged Tess. Phoebe had given her a black market pill. Addison and Tess had been having an affair. So now he knew where the opiates in Tess’s blood had come from, and the phone calls to and from Addison could be explained, but was the picture any clearer?
Dickson was standing at the threshold of the Chief’s office.
