Page 116

The Search

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"What are you talking about, Thatcher?* Bunny

Eaton cried. We can't call the Coast Guard here now! I have a party going on. Do you realize who is here?" He had pulled his mother and father into the study to tell them what was happening.

"He's out there somewhere, maybe injured." Thatcher said calmly.

Asher shook his head and stared at the floor,

"Of course he's not," Bunny insisted. "It's just like him to disappear like this. You know he's not mentally well. We'll be the laughingstock of the town if we react. You just don't interrupt a path, for something like that. It will remind all these people who the landlords are and what an embarrassment they are."

"A man's life could be in danger, Bunny," I said, fighting to control myself. 'Grace is sick with wori7,"

"Well, what of it? She's probably sick with worry every day, having a son like that. Asher, will you say something!" she screamed at Thatcher's father.

He looked up at Thatcher. "Gone all day, you say?"

"From sunrise, according to Grace."

"Oh, I'm sure that's some idiotic exaggeration. She probably doesn't know what time of day it is." Bunny muttered.

"That's not true," I snapped back at her.

She looked up at me, her eyes blazing with fury. "Can you tell me what has happened here that you are such a cheerleader for those two loonies?"

Thatcher and I exchanged a look that she plucked like a butterfly out of the air.

"What is it? Well?" she demanded of him. "What's going on, Thatcher?"

He glanced at me again and then turned to her. "It's nothing but concern for someone's life. Mother."

She folded her arms across her chest and fumed.

"I think Thatcher will have to make the call. Bunny," Asher said.

"Let Grace Montgomery make the call herself. At least we can blame that on her when the boats and the spotlights and the alarms and bedlam begin." she said.

"I don't understand how you can be so cruel. Bunny," I couldn't help but say. This is a mother who is concerned for her son, whose child might be in some terrible danger."

"Oh, you just met the woman. You don't know them the way we know them," she replied.

"Yes, I do." I was so sick of the pretending.

"How? How could you possibly know anything significant about them?"

"I do."

She started to grimace at me disdainfully, as if to say, "You don't know what you're talking about," when I blurted it out.

"I'll tell you how, Grace Montgomery just happens to be my real mother."

If a bomb had gone off in the room, it wouldn't have had a greater effect on her. Her eves seemed to explode in her head. Her face flushed. Her hands fluttered up toward her throat like birds with injured wings, and she stepped backward as though she had just been struck in the face. She gasped and turned to Asher, who was looking at me with almost as much surprise.

"Grace Montgomery is your mother?" he asked, to confirm what his ears had heard.

"Yes. It's the real reason I came to Palm Beach, I just learned about it recently. and I wanted to meet her and get to know her."