Stolen in the Night (18 page)

T
he next morning, the sky was a clear blue-gray and the air was cold. When Tess woke
up, Erny was already gone from the room. The first thing Tess saw when she reached
the hallway outside the dining room was a neat pile of newspapers sitting on the sideboard,
topped by the
Stone Hill Record.
The headline read, “Nelson and Lazarus Abbott—Victim’s Sister Alleges: They Did It
Together.” Tess’s cheeks flamed as she realized that Chan Morris, no lightweight after
all, had taken advantage of her unguarded remarks. She scanned the story beneath the
headline, quoting the accusation she had made so irresponsibly to the publisher. Then
she set the newspaper back down, hesitating, considering the possibility of hiding
the entire pile of papers. She sighed and realized it was no use. She had said it
and now she had to live with the result. Tess found her mother sitting with Erny,
finishing breakfast. Dawn looked up at her wearily.

“Hello, darling,” Dawn said.

“Did you see the paper?” Tess asked.

Dawn nodded.

Tess poured herself a cup of coffee. “I should have kept my mouth shut.”

“There have been a lot of calls. I put them all off.”

“Reporters?”

“That. And one from that fellow on your documentary team. Wade something. Hoping it
wasn’t too late to come up here and start filming.”

“Maitland,” Erny piped up.

“Becca must have had her back turned. Well, the answer is stilll no. Not in a million
years,” said Tess firmly.

“That’s what I told him,” said Dawn.

“Thanks, Mom.” Neither one of them mentioned their disagreement over Ken Phalen. Tessa
sat down next to her son. “How you doing?”

Erny shrugged. “Good.”

Dawn got up with her empty plate to take it to the dishwasher in the kitchen and Erny
began to follow suit. Tess asked him to sit down a minute. Erny replaced the plate
on the table and reluctantly pulled his chair back out.

“What?” he asked.

She gazed at him a minute. In the wee hours of another sleepless night, Tess had thought
about her friend Becca’s urging her to do something fun with her son while they were
in New Hampshire. She thought about Erny wishing he could go fishing with his uncle,
even though Jake had abandoned him to fall out of a tree. And this morning, Tess did
want to make herself scarce and let justice take its course with Nelson Abbott. Despite
Ben Ramsey’s best efforts to thwart justice, it was just a matter of waiting now.
It was a perfect opportunity to concentrate on her son for a change. She felt as if
she had dragged Erny along like an extra suitcase on this trip for all the time she
had spent with him since they’d arrived here.

“Erny,” said Tess, “I know this trip has been no fun for you. I’ve been preoccupied
over this DNA business and you had that fall from the tree when you were supposed
to be having fun with Uncle Jake.”

Erny shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

Tess tapped on his forearm. “Yes. Yes, it does. I meant it when I said that I want
us to do something fun today. Just you and me.”

Erny frowned at her suspiciously. “What?”

“Well, what would you like to do? We could drive to North Conway and go to a movie.
They probably have all the latest releases.” Tess waved to her mother, who walked
back into the dining room carrying a basket of breads toward the breakfast buffet
table.

“What are you two plotting?” asked Dawn, stopping beside their table.

“We’re going to do something just for fun today,” said Tess.

“What about a canoe ride? Like we did with Uncle Jake that time!” Erny exclaimed.

Jake had taken them out on a short river canoe trip several summers ago. They had
run into several fast-moving sections of the river and nearly capsized twice. Once
their canoe had gotten wedged under a fallen tree branch and it had taken Jake twenty
minutes to free them. Erny had loved every minute of it.

“Oh, I don’t know, Erny,” Tess demurred. “I haven’t had that much experience with
canoes. I wouldn’t be comfortable taking us out there alone.”

“We could ask Uncle Jake to come with us,” Erny said.

Tess suddenly felt trapped by her own suggestion. She was not about to ask her brother
to take them, not after their argument at the hospital. “Honey, there was a big storm
the other day. That river will be much too fast.”

“You said we could do what I wanted today,” Erny protested.

“What about the lake?” Dawn suggested. “They have a canoe rental place down at Mayer’s
Landing. It’s a nice calm day. The lake will be very smooth. You could paddle over
to the beach and have a picnic.”

One of the inn’s guests, a man wearing a jacket with elbow patches who was standing
at the buffet, turned and looked at their table. “Excuse me,” he said to Dawn. “I’m
sorry to interrupt, but do you have any more granola?”

“Sure do. Just a minute,” said Dawn. She walked over to the buffet table, set down
the basket of muffins, and picked up the empty granola container.

Tess watched her mother, realizing that her suggestion was the best solution, but
knowing that she was stalling all the same. She, who had once looked forward all year
to the family camping trip, now avoided that lake beach and the surrounding woods.
The very thought of going there made her feel exposed and vulnerable. That fear was
a legacy from Phoebe’s death and she had accepted that she would never be free of
it. It was like a handicap that she had learned to live with. “You’ll turn him into
a sissy,” Jake had said. Well, she wasn’t about to take her parenting cues from Jake.
Still, she knew that it was unfair to infect her son with her fears. “Okay,” she said
at last. “How about that? We could go out on the lake. Just you and me this time.”

“Cool. Can we take our lunch?”

“Sure,” said Tess, relieved to see his enthusiasm return.

“Awesome,” he said.

“Go get your stuff,” said Tess. Erny bolted from the chair and raced out of the dining
room. Tess watched him go, trying to calm the apprehension in her own heart. You can
do this, she said. For Erny, you can do it.

Tess followed the sign for Mayer’s Landing, which led her down a bumpy dirt road to
the lake. However, when they finally reached the lakeside clearing, they found the
place deserted. A stack of canoes piled on a metal frame was covered with a tarp and
the shack where one signed up for rentals had a closed sign over the boarded window.

“Oh no,” said Erny.

“I guess the season is over,” said Tess. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“We can’t go?” Erny said.

Tess looked helplessly around the clearing. Part of her was secretly glad that the
place was closed. For her, the woods would be, forevermore, a place where a maniac
could easily hide. She already felt uncomfortable being here among the dark, forbidding
pines. You tried, she thought. You did your best. But the disappointment in Erny’s
eyes chastened her, told her she had to try harder. “Hang on a minute,” she said.

Set back in the trees was a small house that looked inhabited. There was smoke drifting
up from the chimney and an old pickup parked next to it. Tess walked up on the rickety
porch and knocked on the door.

A stooped old man in a flannel shirt opened the door, frowning. “Yeah,” he said.

“Are these your canoes?” Tess asked.

“We’re closed,” he said.

“I know. And I’m sorry to bother you. But my son and I are visiting my mother who
lives here and we were just hoping…” Tess noted the flicker in his eye when she mentioned
that her mother was a local. In a tourist town, that always carried a little bit of
weight.

“I don’t get too many customers this time of year,” he explained gruffly.

“I know. I should have thought of that. I just…is there any chance that you could
rent us one for just a couple of hours?” Tess asked.

The man hesitated, frowning. He looked back ruefully at the flickering TV in his living
room. Then he snorted, but he put on a battered fishing hat and stepped out onto the
porch. Hampered by a slight limp, he climbed down the steps and trudged over to the
tarp-covered frame that was stacked with canoes. He lifted the tarp and began to ease
one of the boats off of its berth.

“Yeah!” Erny cried, leaping around the clearing.

“Do you need help with that?” Tess asked.

“Nope,” said the man. “Wait down there.”

“Good work, Ma,” Erny whispered as they walked down to the water’s edge.

“Thanks,” said Tess. She looked across the lake at the sheltered beach of the campground
and the mountain looming behind it. It didn’t look too far away and the surface of
the lake was indeed calm. But Tess was filled with apprehension.

The old man set the canoe down and went back for paddles and life jackets, at Tess’s
request.

“Is it all right to row over to that little beach?” Tess asked when he returned.

“Yeah,” said the man. “It’s safe enough. Just avoid the rocks on this side.”

Tess gazed anxiously at the boulders along the water’s edge, from which once, long
ago, she had seen her brother swing out on a vine, like Tarzan, yodeling his invincibility
for the sake of the female onlookers.

“You two know how to paddle this thing, right?”

“Yeah, we know,” Erny assured the old man.

Tess was not so sanguine. “You use the J stroke, right?” She remembered the term from
their trip with Jake.

“Or you can take a stroke and just pry your paddle against the hull.”

“Come on, let’s go,” Erny cried impatiently, picking up their plastic bag of lunch
and jumping into the back of the boat.

“You go on up in the bow. Let your mother sit in the stern, sonny.”

Erny did as he was told.

“All right then,” the old man said to Tess. “Get in. I’ll hand you the paddles.”

Erny settled himself on the bow seat. The man tried to hand him a small paddle, but
Erny insisted he could manage the big one. The man shrugged and handed him the larger
paddle. Tess did not want to discourage him, even though the paddle looked like a
bit much for him to handle. Tess took the other paddle and sat in the stern. Despite
Erny’s protestations, Tess insisted that they both put on their life jackets. The
old man handed them each a stained, frayed orange vest, which looked as if it would
sink immediately on contact with water.

“What’s in the bag?” the old man asked.

“Our lunch,” said Erny proudly.

“It’s gonna get all wet.”

Too late, Tess realized he was right. Dawn had tried to talk her into taking a cooler,
but she had been in a hurry and wanted to travel light.

“We don’t care,” Erny assured the man. “Let’s go, Mom.”

Tess gripped her paddle firmly as the man gave the canoe a push and the boat glided
out onto the surface of the lake. The perimeter of the lake was lined with evergreens
and gray-barked trees with branches almost completely denuded of leaves. The mountains
loomed up on the other side of the lake, outlined against the sky by ragged pines.
The lake was silvery gray and quiet but for the sound of bird calls and the occasional
splash of a fish leaping and then falling back into the water. Erny looked all around
him with an expression of innocent delight on his face and for one moment Tess was
very happy that she had not been deterred from this by her fears. She let them glide
for a little bit, until they were away from the shore and then she dipped her paddle
into the placid water.

Even though she stroked and lifted her paddle as best she could in the prescribed
J motion, the canoe began to veer a little bit. “Erny,” she said. “You’d better help
me paddle.”

“Oh yeah,” the boy said, turning around and rocking the canoe beneath them. He reached
for his paddle, which was under the seat behind him. He pulled it loose, stuck it
in the water, and promptly lost his grip. The paddle sailed out into the lake. “Ma,
oh no. Look.” He started to lean over the side to try to reach it.

“Erny, sit down,” Tess cried. “You’re going to capsize the boat.”

“My paddle!” he yelled.

“Just sit still. I’ll try to catch up with it.” Tess’s heart was pounding. This was
exactly the sort of mishap she had feared would occur. Every time she lifted the paddle
from the water and moved it across her body, their lunch was splashed with water.
The boat responded to her frantic paddling with jerky, uneven movements. Erny gazed
anxiously at his escaping paddle, which seemed to be setting out on its own journey.
“Come on, Ma,” he insisted. “We have to catch it.”

“I know,” she said, her forearms already aching. “I’m trying to.”

“Come on, you’ve almost got it,” he cried.

Tess managed, with one final push, to get them close to the paddle. Using her own
paddle as a hook, she extended it out and managed to snag the wide end and guide it
toward the canoe. As the paddle came near, Erny leaned out again.

“Erny, don’t…”

But before she could tell him to stop, he managed to grab the handle and jerk it toward
him, over the side of the canoe. The dripping paddle teetered and then fell into the
boat.

“All right,” Ernie crowed.

Tess lifted her paddle back into the boat and exhaled. She let them slowly drift for
a moment. The beach, which had seemed so close, now looked to be a daunting distance
away. And there were the rocks to think of. What if they were hiding below the surface
and she accidentally rammed the boat into them?

“I don’t know, Erny,” she said. “I’m not sure we should go all the way over to the
beach.”

“It’s not far,” Erny said.

“It is when you don’t know what you’re doing,” said Tess.

“But you promised we could…”

Tess felt as if all her shaky confidence had slipped away with the paddle. “Stop,
Erny, please. I know what I said, but—”

“Ma, look,” Erny cried, wide-eyed and pointing to the shore. Tess peered at the trees
and was about to ask him what she was supposed to be looking for, when suddenly she
saw and understood. Standing still at the edge of the water, gazing out at them, was
a large, shaggy moose with mild eyes and rounded antlers.