I heard him brush against the papers on Cal’s desk, and then I was gone again, dragged down and down, back into a dream in which Dwight and Cal and I were walking through a summer garden full of flowering bushes. . . .
C H A P T E R
20
When next I woke, the sun had not yet risen.
Looking up through the bare limbs outside Cal’s window, I knew it soon would, though, because I could see faint stars in a cloudless sky. I glanced at my watch—6:05—then pushed back the covers, visited the bathroom, and splashed cold water on my face. And yes, there were faint circles under my eyes. Not enough to scare the horses, though.
Downstairs, Dwight was still stretched out on the couch, but he opened his eyes and smiled when I came into the room.
“I was just about to come looking you,” he said.
“Like you didn’t know where I was,” I said, sliding in beside him to feel his scratchy face against mine as we kissed. “Were you able to get back to sleep okay?”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“After you checked up on me sometime this morning.”
He shook his head. “I haven’t been upstairs since we got back last night.”
“Sure you did. I heard you . . . didn’t I?”
We looked at each other in dawning comprehension and I suddenly remembered my dream.
“Gardenias! She was here again!”
It took only a moment at the front door to confirm that someone else had indeed been here.
“Unlocked,” said Dwight, “and I know I locked it when we came in.”
“What was she after?” I wondered aloud as we headed upstairs.
I wasn’t familiar enough with the house to spot what, if anything, was missing. Jonna’s room looked the same as I’d left it and so did the bathroom. The sliding mirror doors of the medicine cabinet were completely closed.
“I distinctly heard the papers on Cal’s desk move,” I told him, “and I smelled her perfume, so she must have come into the room. But why? What was worth the risk?”
Dwight looked around the room and shrugged. He started to turn away, then stopped in his tracks, his attention riveted on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. “Carson!”
“Carson?”
“Cal’s old teddy bear. I noticed it yesterday morning, and now it’s gone. You didn’t move it, did you?”
I shook my head. “It was there last night before we went to Paul’s.”
“Cal used to sleep with it when he was little. He’s too old for it now, but Jonna told me that he still wants it when he’s sick or unhappy about things.”
“It has to be the same woman who took Cal!” I said, feeling an unwarranted rush of optimism. “She knows it will comfort him. Wherever he is, he has to be okay or why would she come for it?”
“Because he’s sick?” asked Dwight. “Because he’s hurt?”
He went back down for his phone to call Paul, and it startled us both by ringing in his hand before he could dial.
“Bryant here,” he said. “Oh, hey, Mama . . . No, still no word . . .”
As he listened, a smile softened his grim face. “That’s great! How’s Kate? . . . And how’s Rob holding up?”
By which I knew that his brother’s baby boy had been born.
With his hand over the mouthpiece, he said, “Seven pounds, two ounces,” then gave me the phone so that Miss Emily could tell me all the details while he used my phone to call Paul and leave a message for Agents Lewes and Clark about our nocturnal visitor.
Despite our overriding concern for Cal, it was impossible not to feel happy for the safe arrival of Robert Wallace Bryant Junior, and I gladly listened as Miss Emily described the long night, how the labor pains completely stopped at one point as if the baby had lost interest in getting himself born, but then, as the doctor was about to send Kate home, around three this morning, he’d changed his mind and popped out at four.
“I waited as long as I could to call you,” she apologized.
“It’s okay,” I assured her. “We were awake. Do they know what they’re going to call him?”
