Page 23 of Traces Of You

She rushed over to do it before her heart exploded in her chest a third time with Clay scaring her.

6

LOSING HIS COOL

“That’s quite a story,” Callum Ridgeway said at five. His father was sitting in the living room while Ford told his parents and sister what was going on.

“Do you believe her?” Gale asked.

“Of course he does,” his mother said. “What kind of question is that? You can’t make this up.”

“I believe her,” he said. “I did some searching after I left. Nothing that can tie back. There is nothing anywhere about her disappearance.”

“Then maybe she is lying,” his father said.

“No. She’s not. I can tell.”

“There is no way,” his mother said. “That girl is scared. She’s trying really hard not to show it. She has more courage than she did when she was twelve. Even Clay didn’t scare her.”

“Oh, Clay scared her,” Ford said.

He talked to his brother a few hours ago to get an update on Reenie. It wasn’t until an hour ago he got the text from Reenie so he had her number.

Without Oliver’s last name, there wasn’t much he could do, but what he looked into couldn’t be traced back here.

“What did my oldest do?” his mother asked.

“Clay being Clay scares everyone,” Gale said, grinning. “You know that.”

“I’ll have to give that boy a piece of my mind when he gets here,” his mother said.

Speak of the devil when the backdoor opened. “What did I miss?”

“Just Mom ready to light into you for scaring Reenie.”

“I didn’t scare her,” Clay said. “She’s jumpy. Am I supposed to walk around on tiptoe and quietly lay wood on the floor?”

“Of course she’s jumpy,” his mother said. “Anyone would be after what she’s been through. Not just recently but her entire life. I knew there was something going on when she was a child. I’d asked around about her mother back then.”

“You never told me that,” Ford said. His mother knew how he felt about Reenie. Everyone did it seemed. “What did you find out?”

“You can’t expect your mother to remember that long ago,” his father said.

“I remember,” his mother said. “I’m fifty-six, not eighty-six.”

He laughed. His mother looked more like early forties. She was a strong, confident woman who knew what was going on around her.

She didn’t dress up in fancy clothes, wear a lot of makeup, or spend a ton of time doing her hair.

It was always long and in a ponytail or braid since she was in a kitchen every morning.

“What do you remember?” he asked.

“I don’t remember her mother’s name.” His father snorted and his mother sent him a squinted glare. “But she liked to drink. She worked at the hospital in Glens Falls.”

“Doing what?” Ford asked. “I hope to hell she wasn’t a nurse or some other medical professional.”

“No. She got the rooms ready or brought the food to patients. Things like that,” his mother said. “She drank a lot and had different guys all the time. There were complaints about her behavior with patients.”