Jake glanced at Ella. She was on her feet, one foot first, another pink boot to follow it, moving stiff as a puppet. ‘I haven’t seen Sam, Ollie,’ she said.
‘He came here. I saw him. I could see him all the way from down at the club rooms—he was crouched down across there.’ Ollie pointed to the shadowed edge of the bleachers. ‘And now he’s not there. But he didn’t come back yet.’
‘Jake,’ Ella said, stretching her hand to grab his wrist. ‘If Sam was here … then he heard …’
‘Ollie, go tell your mum that we can’t find Sam, and we need to find him, okay? Come on, Ella.’ He changed the angle of his arm so that instead of grabbing his wrist, he had her hand. ‘We’ll find him. Let’s go.’
CHAPTER
30
‘Where would he go, do you think? If he was upset and running?’ Jake asked as they ran for his car.
‘I think he’d just go home. At least, I hope he would.’
‘We’ll find him,’ Jake said again, and they climbed into his four-wheel-drive and reversed out of the parking space.
How strange that the lights and music danced all around them, and people laughed and flirted and drank, yet Ella’s heart was all iced up, iced over.
They rolled from the bowling club, picking up speed, but not so fast they’d miss a small boy hunched behind a tree or in the front garden of one of the brick homes.
Streetlights lit the way. Jake’s spotlights swept a wide arc across the roads.
Ella peered into every nook and cranny, and couldn’t see Sam.
Out onto the T-junction with the highway.
‘Left or right?’ Jake asked, paused in the intersection.
Left went through town and the lights. Right led towards Mount Barker, all of it dark and cold and lonely and please, Sammy, don’t go there.
‘Left,’ she said.
Jake steered into town.
They couldn’t see a small boy anywhere on the street. Not out the front of the Post Office, or sitting on the front steps of Begg & Robertson or the bakery. He wasn’t in front of the secondhand shop, chicken shop, or the general store.
He wasn’t at Honeychurch Timber and Hardware.
‘He’ll be okay, Ella. We’ll find him,’ Jake said for the third time, and Ella realised she had a death grip on the seat and forced herself to relax.
‘Chalk Hill Bridge Road or your place?’ Jake said when they reached the end of the shops and ran out of other options.
‘I think he’d go home … but, I don’t know, Jake. Something tells me maybe the bridge road.’
‘You don’t think he’d hide out at Nanna’s house?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Her voice trailed away. She didn’t know. Oh, Sammy. Where are you?
Jake drove left into Chalk Hill Bridge Road.
They followed the streetlights all the way to Irma’s house. Lights shone over the narrow bridge where the water had begun to flow after soaking autumn rains.
Jake parked the car on Irma’s verge and left the headlights shining. ‘I’m taking a quick look under the bridge.’
‘He wouldn’t go under there, surely,’ Ella said, heart in her throat.
‘Doesn’t hurt to look. I ran away once and hid under the bridge where I thought no one would ever find me. Then I went to Nanna’s place when I got hungry.’
Ella ran towards Cutters’ Creek while Jake grabbed a torch from the Landcruiser’s rear. Diana Ross sang I’m Coming Out, clear as day in the thin night air, the sound carrying all the way from the bowling club.
Ella hummed to it, too scared to do anything else.
As she got nearer the bridge, the sound of running water obliterated Diana. Ella stopped humming when she couldn’t hear the music, and seconds later she heard a murmur that stopped her pulse.
A sob.
‘Sam?’
It was so dark under all the willow trees. She couldn’t see a thing.
‘Sam?’ Ella shouted into the murky black beneath the bridge. ‘Jake, I heard something. I think he’s here.’
Then Jake was there, shining the torch, and the light picked out the crown of Sam’s blond head, grubby face staring up at them, tears streaming cleaner cracks through the mess.
Ella went to get him, pink high heels and all, and she nearly slipped herself—would have gone all the way into the water; Jake’s hand just about pulled her arm out of its socket as he hauled her back.
‘Wait here. I’ll get him.’
Jake in his boots, sure-footed as a mountain goat, picked his way down the dewy grass towards her boy. Thank God it hadn’t rained tonight.
‘Are you hurt, mate?’ Jake called.
‘I hurt my arm,’ Sam cried, his voice very small.
‘How bad, Sammy?’ Ella called.
Jake was almost there. It took forever. Why didn’t he go faster? Why didn’t Sam get up? What was going on?
All Ella could hear was Jake’s voice, a deep rumble, as he spoke to Sam. Then she could see the pair of them: dark head and light; big and so very small.
Jake shepherded Sam in front of him up the steepest part, then picked him up like a sheep over his shoulder and carried her boy to her.
* * *
Jake had a coat in the car and they put that around Sam’s freezing shoulders and sat him on the back seat with the interior light on and Jake’s torch travelling slowly up and down Sam’s left arm.
Ella had started to ask, and discarded, so many questions. Sam wouldn’t look at her and she felt useless.
What was the point of asking questions she knew the answer to? Like, ‘Why did you run away, Sam?’ or ‘What were you thinking, Sam? Worrying me like that!’
He’d run because he’d heard her tell Jake about his real dad. He’d run because she’d been too selfish to tell Sam about Marshall. She should have done it years ago.
Jake talked for both of them. Big, solid Jake who examined Sam’s arm; it was swollen and bruised just above the wrist—even Ella could
