closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them to find Jacob standing a few feet away.
“I’m never gonna fly your saucer,” Jacob said.
Owen gave no indication that he had the slightest idea what Jacob was talking about. Instead he only smiled quietly.
Anne sat stiffly in the living room while Sam and Eric frolicked around her, punching at each other and tumbling to the floor. She didn’t bother to stop them. Her mind was on something much larger than her children’s play. Owen was gone. He had been gone for days. This had happened before, but this time the absence had gone without a call either from Owen himself or Marty or Howard or anyone who might know where her husband was or what he was doing.
She reached for the phone, then drew back. You’re an Army wife, she told herself, and an Army brat, and you should hold firm and keep silent, and never, never, ask questions.
Sam and Eric scurried into the room, then back out of it, but Anne paid no attention. There were questions she had to ask now, she realized, things she had to know.
She picked up the phone and made the call.
“Marty, Anne Crawford,” she said. “There’s been a terrible accident. Sam fell off the roof. He broke his neck… I have to get in touch with Owen. I know he’s not in Washington. Where is he, Marty?”
She could sense Marty’s hesitation. It lasted three seconds, then he spoke.
“ Lubbock,” he said. “ Lubbock, Texas.”
They came over a rise, and it lay before them, a bare patch of earth, almost perfectly round, with nothing touched at the rim of the circle, not so much as a singed blade of grass.
“I found this two days after he left,” Sally told Owen. “Nothing’s grown here since.” She shook her head. “My heart’s sort of like the ground here.” She looked at him tenderly. “You need to know that if you stay.”
Owen lifted his gaze from the bare ground and settled it on Sally. “I come from a long line of farmers. We can grow corn in a field where grass won’t grow.” He smiled and drew her into his arms. “I’m not going anywhere, Sally,” he told her. “You’re the sun and the moon to me.”
They kissed, and Owen felt her surrender to him briefly, then return to herself, her features clearly troubled.
“Jacob,” she said.
“He doesn’t like me, does he?” Owen asked.
“No.”
Owen kissed her again, then said, “Maybe I should take him fishing on the lake. Just the two of us. We could get to know each other.”
“I don’t think he’ll want to do that,” Sally said.
“Maybe I can persuade him,” Owen said.
When they returned to the house a few minutes later, Sally decided to take down the Christmas lights. Jacob held the ladder as she unstrung the last of the lights.
“Hold tight to the ladder, son,” Owen said softly, suddenly behind him.
Jacob looked at him silently.
“Accidents come out of nowhere,” Owen added significantly. “There’s always a tragedy around the corner.”
“Mr. Crawford and I were talking about the two of you getting to know each other,” Sally said as she came down the ladder, her hands filled with a string of lights. “He’s offered to take you fishing.”
Jacob looked at Owen warily.
“There’s nothing like a day on a lake for getting acquainted,” Owen said. “And I’m sure your mother will be fine here without us.” He smiled, but he knew his threat had hit home.
They left later that same afternoon. The sun was bright as they made their way toward the lake.
Owen peered out at the open road while Jacob sat beside him, silent, but full of dark apprehension, like a kid waiting in an open field as the twisting cloud draws near.
Sally flipped a piece of breaded steak into a pan of hot oil, the sizzle so loud she barely heard the knock at the front door.
She wiped her hands on her apron and walked to the door. A woman stood before her, well dressed, but curiously desolate. “I’m Anne Crawford,” the woman said. “I’m looking for Owen.”
“Owen?” Sally asked.
“Owen Crawford,” Anne said coolly. “He’s in Army Intelligence. I’m his wife.”
“Wife?” Sally asked, her fear spiking now.
“Yes,” Anne replied stiffly. “Where is he?”
Sally felt all her hope turn to dread. “With my son,” she whispered.
On the way to the lake, Owen decided to end all pretense with this kid. He knew everything anyway, so what was the point.
He turned to him sharply. “It’ll go easier for your mom if you help me out.”
Jacob stared straight ahead, his hands in his lap. “Are you going to dissect me when it’s over?”
So he really does know everything, Owen thought, knows specifically his use. “That depends on how much you tell us without being cut open.”
Jacob’s face remained expressionless. “It doesn’t end with me,” he said. His eyes remained fixed on the road ahead. “I’m not the only one.”
Kate lay awake in her bed, thinking of Jesse. She could feel him around her, all but hear his breathing in his adjoining bedroom. She knew he wasn’t there, and yet his presence hung in the air around her, palpable as his slender arms.
She pulled herself from the bed and walked down the corridor to her son’s room. His things lay in piles, just as he’d left them the day his father took him. But where had he been taken? What had Russell done? She imagined the most dreadful possibilities, and with each one, sank deeper into her loss, a misery that was almost suffocating.
She sat down on Jesse’s bed, half-expecting to feel the rustle of his body as he snuggled closer. She looked at his closet, his desk, the bookshelf, and finally at the book she’d read to him when he was younger,
She smiled at the cover, Artemis standing at the doorway of his tree house.
Something broke the silence, a faint scratching at the window. She rose, walked to the window and looked out into the night. She could feel something calling to her, beckoning her out of the house and into the yard. She headed down the stairs and out into the ebony air of the backyard. The great tree at the end of it appeared to motion for her, urging her forward.
She stepped around the dark trunk and he looked up, his eyes widening in wild relief.
Jesse!
Bill unlocked the door and entered the cell.
“They told me Jesse was home,” Russell said as he got to his feet. “Is he all right?”
