Chapter 15
Ray Williams didn't crack. For three days, they questioned him. For
three days, he couldn't come up with anything more plausible than the
statement that he'd somehow lost those five little girls.
A thorough search of his house yielded nothing but a fetish for nude
photos of little children--none of them showing the missing girls,
however. He did happen to wear a size twelve-and,a-half-wide shoe' the
same size as the footprint found in the woods the day Annie was taken.
Of course, many men wore that size shoe His record showed an arrest for
exposing himself to a young woman twelve years ago, then nothing.
His neighbors described him as a quiet man who kept to himself. They'd
never seen any children around his house, never seen him take any undue
interest in them.
He did like to fish, they thought, and he had a cabin somewhere in the
woods nearby. No one was sure where. He'd never taken anyone there,
but at times they saw him leave with his fishing gear.
He lived quietly, taking odd photography jobs here and there, drawing
on the small estate left to him by his mother, who'd died six years
before. No one knew of any other relatives he had. No property showed
up as being registered in his name or his late mother's.
The authorities were sure the cabin was the key to unlocking the
mystery of the missing girls, and they had no idea where it was.
Sara Parker, as a witness in court, would he jaw fully shaky. Simply
looking at a photo of the man had frightened her so badly that her
parents now said they'd never he able to let her go through a trial.
Drew couldn't have said that he blamed them, and Sara's parents were
counting on him and the Bureau to find the evidence they needed to
convict the man without Sara's testimony.
Ray Williams was being held on a kidnapping charge, but they'd never he
able to make it stick with what they' had. They had nothing but
circumstantial evidence that linked the man to the other girls'
disappearance. ~
And they were nowhere near finding out what he'd done with Annie
McKay.
Drew wished he'd strangled the man that first night, before the legal
system ever got a hold of him. If he had to listen, one more tame, to
the public defender assigned to the case talking about his client's
rights and his client's needs, he was going to put his fist through a
brick wall.
He was exhausted, more frustrated than he'd ever been in his life, and
he needed answers. He'd promised them to Carolyn and her mother. He
needed them for Billy, as well.
I-Ie had failed. It tore at him, night and day, unffi he couldn't eat
o~ sleep or do anything except think about it. In this, the most
impoRant case he'd ever' worked on, he had failed.
He still needed answers that he didn't think he was going to find. That
was why he went to Carolyn.
"I hate asking you to do this," he said when he called her from
Chicago. "But I don't see any other way."
"I'll do anything to help you find out where that man took the girls
and what he did with them," she s~id, sounding invincible in that
moment. But he knew she wasn't.
"It's going to hurt," he warned.
"So does not knowing."
"Okay. I want you to come to Chicago. We're having a press conference
tomorrow afternoon. We've managed to keep the lid on this arrest so
far, but it's not going to last. We're losing control of it even now,
and if the word's going to get out, we want to pick the time and the
place."
"What do you want me to do, Drew?"
"I want you to tell every TV-station reporter who will listen all about
Annie. It's going to be hard, I know. But you have to make it
personal for them. Let them see how badly this hurt you. Talk about
what it did to your family. Bawl your pretty eyes out--whatever it
takes. TV producers eat that sort of stuff up. I need you to catch
their attention and hold it. Make them remember you and what you said.
Make them remember Annie, and this monster we've got sitting in
jail."
"Why?" she asked.
"Because somebody knows something. Somebody heard something or saw
something. Someone has to be able to lead us to this man's hide nut
and we've got to find that person. The bigger the impression you can
make, the more people will remember.. I want it to haunt them,
Carolyn. I want people on the street talking about it the next day.
Can you do that for me? Can you do it for Annie?"
"Of course," she said. "I meant it. I'll do anything I can."
"Good." He told her where to meet him, then was ready to hang up. He
had a million things to do. And he thought maybe, if he just never
stopped moving, never stopped working, he'd forget how impossible this
whole situation seemed robe.
So far, that wasn't working as well as he'd hoped. Hearing her voic~
again wasn't hal ping Knowing he hadn't seen her in three days, that he
would see her this afternoon, wasn't helping, either.
"Drew?" she said. "It's going to work out. You'll see."
The cas~? Or them and Billy? He wasn't holding out-much hope about
either situation.
"I've missed you," she said. "" Have you thought about what I said?
"
"I have, but I've got to go," he said, like a coward. "We can talk
tomorrow, after you get here."
Drew was about to leave his office late the next night when the phone
rang one last time. It was nearly midnight, and he'd been here most of
the night. The press conference had gone well. All the major networks
in Chicago had carried portions of it live. All had rerun some of the
footage on the evening and nighttime newscasts. They'd gotten some
footage on the national newscasts, as well, plus additional coverage in
many of the major markets in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Ohio,
because of the connections to the other missing girls.
As he'd suspected they would, the cameras had eaten up the image of
Carolyn, a beautiful woman tearfully relating the long years she'd
spent trying to come to terms with the loss of her sister. She'd been
wonderful, but he knew how much it had cost her.
He felt' guilty about putting her through the media hype, but he was
desperate. He needed evidence that he didn't yet have.
They'd gotten lots of crank calls, lots of information that hadn't led
anywhere except to frustration. If nothing panned out from this,
they'd take their show on the road tomorrow, to the area where Sara
Parker had been found,
in southern Indiana. There had to be someone there who'd seen Ray
Williams heading for that fishing shack of his.
Drew looked up at the dock, then thought of Carolyn alone in her
apartment. Her place wasn't that far away, and he wanted to check on
her to-make sure she was okay.
And hell, who was he kidding? He'd take any excuse he could to see her
again.
He hadn't actually thought about it until she told him the other night,
but they were both going to be in the same city. He knew where she
lived, not that far from his own apartment, and it would he sheer
torture knowing she was close and forcing himself to stay away from
her.
He'd said he didn't know how they could be together, how things could
ever work out between them. And she'd said she didn't know how they
could he so close, could need each other so much, and s~ill stay away
from each other.
He was just beginning to see how hard that was going to be.
"Drew?" someone called from across-the room. "Yeah?" He turned in
the direction of the voice.
"Line three, asking for you by name. He doesn't even sound like a
crackpot."
Drew didn't get excited about~ it, after the night he'd spent on the
phone. He just picked up the receiver.
"Drew?" the voice on the other end asked. "I knew you'd st'fil he
there. This is Nick. Nick Garrett."
The psychiatrist who'd questioned Sara Parker. "How are you, Nick?"
"Confused. I saw you On TV tonight, and this is going to sound wild,
okay, but hear me out."
"Sure." Drew had met Nick a couple of times since moving to Chicago.
He respected him, and if he had a story to tell, Drew would listen,
even if it was almost midnight and Carolyn was waiting.
"I don't know why I didn't put this together when I talked to Sara, but
I didn't have any connection to the name Annie. Didn't even know her
last name. It was seeing Carolyn on TV tonight that made it all click
for me. Before that, I had no idea that one of the missing girls was
Carolyn's little sister."
"Go on," D~w said, totally baffled by what the man was trying to say.
From what he'd seen and heard, Dr. Nicholas Garrett was a very
methodical, logical man.
"You don't have anything to indicate that this little girl, Carolyn's
sister, is dead, do you?"
Drew tried not to sound sarcastic, but it was hard. "Other than the
fact that no one's seen her for the past ten years, no, we don't."
"Okay, hear me out. It's a long shot, but I couldn't go to bed for
thinking about it. I just had to tell you."
"Take all the time you need, Nick."
"First, you need to understand that this conversation never took place.
My license is on the line here. This is all caught up in that heavy
doctor-patient confidentiality stuff that would get my license pulled
in a minute-if it came out ." '
He had Drew's full attention now. This was serious stuff. "Sure you
want to tell me this?"
"I have to. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't." "Okay,
shoot."
"Right after I came to Chicago, six years ago, I worked at this runaway
[محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف]ter on the South Side called the Gate House. I did some group
sessions there with the kids, when we could get any of them to sit
still for one.
"This girl shows up, says she's seventeen or so, and she's different
from the rest of them, somehow. She's angry, but it's that fresh, raw
kind that you rarely see in a runaway. Usually, by the time they run,
they've been angry and abused or neglected for years. And they don't
care that much about anyone, especially not themselves.
"Anyway, this girl is eaten up with it. She's furious, and the wound's
still fresh. She hadn't learned to hide it yet, or to keep it all
locked inside her.
"She hadn't been on the streets long, and you could tell. She wasn't
doing drugs, hadn't found a pimp. We still had a shot with her. I
just couldn't write her off as one of those lost causes, like you can
with so many of the rest of them.
"So, we got her into the [محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف]ter, staPaxt talking to her about going
home, but didn't get anywhere with that. She said her home was gone,
that she'd never really had one. I kept pushing her--couldn't we call
someone, anyone, just to let them know she was okay? Couldn't she go
to someone, anyone, she trusted? Wouldn't anyone make room for her in
their home?
"She tells me this bizarre story about the people who raised her all
these years; who died a few months back. She'd found out, after they
died, that she's not who she thought she was. She's not their
daughter. And now she has no idea who she is.
"She tells me: that she had some accident when she was eleven--at
least, the people who'd raised her told her she was eleven. And she
doesn't remember anything before that, except what these people told
her about her past. Except it wasn't her past at all.
"Anyway, I keep working on her. I tell her she has to try to find out
who she is. She says she doesn't care. I finally talk her into
letting me try some hypnosis, and I try to take her back to this time
when she was eleven.
"It was awful. The kid was teri'ified. She was screaming. I can
still hear her. You can't imagine what it was like to listen to that.
She wanted her mother and her father to come and save her from someone,
and when that didn't work, she started calling for someone else, some
older person, someone she obviously saw as a sort of protector. " The
name she was calling. it was Carolyn. "
Drew's pen slid out of his hand and clattered down onto the top of the
desk when he heard the name. He'd been taking notes while Nick talked.
It was an automatic action for him to jot down notes when he talked to
people, particularly over the phone.
He couldn't believe the clatter the dropped pen made, but it served
some purpose. It had brought him out of this tunnel vision he'd
developed, all his concentration focusing on the story being. told
through the phone, and made him realize where he was. He was in his
office. It was late, and he'd been on the phone all day.
He'd heard hundreds of stories by now, and none of them had made a damn
bit of difference. And then he'd heard this one. "Nick," he began.
"I know. It's crazy. I realize that. But I saw Carolyn telling this
awful story about her little sister on TV, and I couldn't stop thinking
about'A.J. That's what she calls herself--A.J. But it's not her real
name. She doesn't have any idea what her real name is."
"It's" -- Drew couldn't even talk. This had thrown him that badly. "I
never even thought about finding her,
Nick--at least not alive. "
"I know, man."
"What are the odds? Hell, it's been ten years."
"I had to tell you."
"Is that all you've got?" Drew asked, starting to remember his job
here.
"She's the right age. A,$. thought she was seventeen when she wound
up at the [محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف]ter, which would make her twenty-three or so now. How
old would Annie be?"
"Twenty-three." Drew had never been able to picture Annie at that
age.
"She's maybe five-three, and slight. Still looks like a kid. Has this
white-blond hair that I'd bet didn't come from a bottle, and dark blue
eyes."
"That's it?" Drew asked, eager for more now.
"What do you want? Her blood type? Her finger prints? Maybe
something you could~ lift some DNA from?"
"It would be nice." Drew decided to go for broke. Before he got too
excited about this, he needed a reason more. Because it had been so
long since he'd even allowed himself to hope like this. "Why did you
call me tonight, Nick?"
"You'll think I'm crazy."
"I already do. ~ell me why you called."
"I couldn't get A.J. out of my mind. Not ever. She pulled her life
together, I knew she would, because she was such a bright kid. Got a
scholarship, got a degree in counseling, and she works at one of the
runaway [محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف]ters in the city' now. I still see her every now and then,
and I can't forget how frightened she was that afternoon when I
hypnotized her. I can't forget the way she begged for these people to
come and get her.
"I was thinking about her the whole time I was watching the piece on
TV, and then at the end, when they went to Carolyn, I put the names
together. Right before the segment was over, they flashed the pictures
of those little girls, and Annie's picture ... it's A.J. ten years ago.
I can see it in her eyes, in her smile. It's my A.J."
Drew still wasn't letting himself get excited. It was too farfetched
to think that Annie had somehow gotten away from that monster, and that
all this time she'd been in
Chicago, with Carolyn and now with him. What were the odds? A million
to one? A billion?
"I've got a picture of A.J.," Nick told him. "If you've got a fax
machine, you can see it tonight."
It' was an offer Drew couldn't refuse.
He couldn't help but remember, as he sat at his desk in the
still-crowded, still-noisy office, that night not so long ago; when
he'd waited in the police department in that tiny Indiana town where
Sara Parker had turned up. He'd been waiting for another picture of
Annie to come over the fax machine.
Drew'd had no idea then that he'd be sitting here, now, waiting for a
picture of a young woman someone thought was a grown-up Annie.
Just as it had been that night, his hand was 'shaking when he took the
photo from a fellow agent a few moments later.
Just as he had then, he turned his chair around and put his back to the
room, then took a minute to try to prepare himself to flip over the
sheet of paper and look at the image it contained.
He'd had the presence of mind to get the case files, to pull out his
own old pictures of Annie and spread them out on the desk behind him.
Not that he'd ever forget how she looked. Not that her image would
ever be erased from his mind.
But he didn't trust himself to make the comparison, because he wanted
too badly to believe it could he her.
Four years on the job with the Bureau, four years of the cynicism and
occasional horror that had jaded his senses, yet he still wanted to
hope.
Maybe Carolyn was right. Mayhe there was always room to hope. Maybe
it was always the last thing to die, and his had one last gasp of life
left in it.
He couldn't imagine how Annie could have escaped dying.
He flipped over the flimsy sheet of fax paper in his hands and closed
his eyes. Annie's image, smiling, laughing, looking like an angel with
the sun shining on her hair, was in his mind's eye.
He finally found the courage to look down at the paper in front of
him.
"Carolyn?"
She was sleeping. At least she was trying to, and someone wouldn't let
her. She was exhausted, both physically and emotionally, after driving
to Chicago earlier for the press conference, and she'd taken a
painkiller for her head that had a little something in it to help her
sleep, as well. "Carolyn?"
"What?" she asked, blinking hard against the brightness of the light
in the room, which had been dark only moments before. "Drew?"
"Who else would he here this time of night?" he said, holding up the
key she'd given him when she hoped he'd come over tonight, no matter
how late it was when he finished his work.
And 'now he was here, in her apartment, but she must be dreaming. It
was the only thing that could explain the almost teasing quality in his
voice. She hadn't heard that in forever. And he had nothing to smile
about, and no reason to tease her.
"Well? I'm waiting."
Same voice, same man, She must still be draining. "Why are you
srixiling like that?"
That seemed the easiest thing to do, just to ask him and to watch it
fade away, maybe watch him fade, as well. "I'm happy for a change."
"Oh."
"Are you awake yet?"
"Obviously not."
"Take something to help you sleep?"
She nodded. That explained it, of course. She was drugged~ But then.
she hadn't thought the stuff was that strong.
"You have to wake Up for this. It's important, and you'll want to
remember it."
She buried her face in her hands to block out the offending light,
rubbed her eyes, then sat up all. the way. She was on the couch.
She'd fallen asleep, and now Drew was here.
Finally, she remembered what he'd been~ doing to-night--trying to
follow up leads on the kidnapping. She'd wanted to be there, but this
afternoon's activities, all those lights for the cameras, all those
questions, all those mereades. She hadn't been able to take any more
after that. "You found something?" she asked suddenly. "You woke
up." He was still smiling.
Why would findihg something have made him happy? How could he tease
her this way?
It was as if the old Drew were back, With her~
To see him that way again, now. ,. she was baffled.
Carolyn glanced over at the clock on the mantel. It was nearly two in
the morning. Why was he here at this hour?
"You found the cabin where he took the girls?" she asked. But that
wouldn't have made him happy.
"Better than that." He moved her a bit, half lifting her, to make room
for himself on the end of the couch, then settled her in b~ide him.
"Are you ready to hear what I have to tell you?"
"No. You're scaring me, Drew
"Don't be scared. Not anymore, Hold out your hands and close your
eyes."
She trusted him, so she did as he asked. He dropped something into her
hands. Asheet of paper? No, it was too thick.
"Open up," he said, his tone coaxing.
There were tears in her eyes, and she didn't know why. She was close
enough to Drew to feel the nervous energy radiating from him, and she
couldn't imagine what could have caused it. This thing in her hands?
"What do you see, Carolyn?"
She looked down.
It was a picture of a girl with white-blond hair and b eyes, a picture
of a smile nearly as familiar as her own.
"Is it?" -- She searched her mind for some explanation, then latched
on to the only reasonable one she col find. "Is this one of those
computerized age-progressi photos?"
She knew about them. Hope House had the technolc to produce~ them but
why would Drew need one of those? " " What is it? " she asked.
He smiled. The man had such a beautiful smile, she'd missed it all
these years. She had missed so w much about him.
He pulled her closer, held her tighter. "It's just a picture, Carolyn.
A plain old picture, taken about six mom ago."
"Then it's... I don't understand."
"WhO's in the picture, sweetheart? Tell me who y
"Annie."
Carolyn was certain. She'd have known that face a~ where, except. this
girl wasn't thirteen. And Annie h never gotten past thirteen. Unless.
Drew pulled Carolyn over onto his lap and held "She's right here." He
started to laugh. "She's in C cago. She has been for years."
Carolyn wasn't sure what had happened next. At le she couldn't have
put any order to it. She'd laughed. She cried. She'd been in Drew's
arms. They'd been exhausl and excited, and they'd needed each other.
One kiss had led to another, and another. She could stop crying, but
at the same time she was smiling. There been so many tunes when she
didn't think she'd sin again.
"I love you, Drew," she told him again and again as he kissed her
mouth, then went after the spot at the base of her neck that had always
made her a little crazy when he so much as touched it.
She held him as tightly as she could, determined that she'd never let
him go again, that she wouldn't let anything come between them now.
Let him try to leave her. Let him try to forget her. He'd have to
forget this, as well. Let him try to tell her this was
impossible--she'd dare him to do that right now, dare him to do it
afterward, too.
His arms came around her, the muscles straining to hold her closer.
Their bodies strained toward each other, with much too much between
them.
She tugged at his already loosened tie, then started working on the
buttons of his shirt. His jacket fell to the floor. She pulled the
ends of his shirt from his pants, then found warm flesh beneath it. She
pressed her face against his chest,-nuzzled her nose against the fine,
curling hairs sprinkled across it and drew in the scent of him.
He had ~his hands on her hips, pulling her against~ his body. The
hardness there left her with no doubts as to how much he wanted her
now, when anything in the world seemed pos~sible for the two of them.
"I can't stop,"
" he said, working furiously on the buttons on her blouse.
"I didn't hear anyone ask you to stop," she said as her shirt finally
came undone and he threw it to the floor, as well.
It wasn't long before all their clothing was lying in a heap in the
middle of her living room. She stood in the middle of the room, her
body lit by the lamp and what was left of the fire. She stood
trembling in front of him while he looked at her, as if memorizing her
with his eyes, then with his hands, as he touched her face, her
shoulders, her breasts, her hips.
He didn't need to store up memories of her, she wanted to tell him.
Because he was going to have her, forever. She was going to find a way
to make that happen.
"You are so beautiful," Drew said. '"Even more beautiful than I
remembered, if that's possible."
Then he picked. her up in his arms and carried her to bed.
They went to tell her mother early the next morning, because "Carolyn
couldn't wait for her' to hear the good news. It was also a good
excuse for not having to hang around in her own heal, listening to the
man she loved tell her what a mistake they'd just made, and that
finding Annie hadn'fsolved the problems between them,
Instead of slugging Drew right then. and there, instead of getting
angry at him for his lack of faith--even now, after an absolute miracle
had happened and he'd found Annie for her--Carolyn made him get in the
car ~/nd ~drive.
Let him say he was sorry for making love to her, if he absolutely had
to do so. He could say it, but she was rift going to believe it. He
couldn't make her believe it was true, no matter how hard he tried.
It was only a matter of time, she told herself, before she'd finally
convince himlotherwise. Her little sister was alive and well and
living in Chicago. It was an absolute miracle. How could he tell her
everything was hopeless after that?
The. lights were on at the house when they arrived, shortly after
dawn, and they didn't have a lot of t/uric to waste. Billy got up at
seven to catch the school bus, and they wanted to be able to tell her
mother privately, because they weren't sure what her reaction might
be.
Grace McKay surprised them by being amazingly calm about the whole
thing. She cried a little over the picture and held it against her
heart.
Draw trie~i not to look at Carolyn during this. He was still a bit
dazed that this whole situation had gown so far out of his control and
that he didn't s~m capable of keeping his hands off her anymore.
Everything was happ~run so fast, he was having trouble keeping up with
all the changes. He was, however, able to think clearly enough to warn
Grace McKay about some simple, basic facts that serried to have gotten
lost in this celebration they were having.
They hadn't proved anything yet, he told her. All they had was a
pictur~ and a long-buried memory of a little girl calling out for her
older sister.
But Mrs. McKay was as certain as Carolyn had b~n~ The girl in the
pictur~ that she refused to let go of was her Annie.
The older woman looked at him with absolute awe, as if he were some
sort of angel come down from heaven to grant her most sacred prayer.
Drew would never for~t ~the feeling of having her look at him this way,
of having redemed himself in this woman's eyes. She didn't care who
his father was anymore, or what gutter his drnnl~n old man had landed
in.
She'd misjudged Drew all those years ago, and though she might never
come right out and say so, for her.
That, together with the early-morning hours he'd~ with Carolyn, had him
fe ding like a million dollars. It as if a weight he'd carried all
these years lifted off his shoulders.
He felt amazingly free, felt something that serobled happiness on this
cold October morning
Illinois.
"You brought my baby home to me," Mrs.
still hugging the picture to her chest. "I just can't it.
' '
Sally Tiler Hayes She took one of his hands in hers and squeezed it
tight. The gesture surprised him. And he thought she was asking for.
forgiveness in a way. He hoped he had it in him to forgive her.
"When can we see her?" Mrs. McKay asked, turning to Carolyn. "She's
in Chicago? We could go today. I can't... I can't wait to see her."
"Wait a minute," Drew said. "We have to give this some time. This
source of ours ... he's told us things he had no right to tell us. We
can't just barge into this woman's life, and tell her she's Annie McKay
and her whole family's waiting to see her again."
"We can't see her?" Mrs. McKay looked crushed. "It's a delicate
situation, and we have to be cautious," Drew said. "Also, we've got to
think about this woman's emotional state. From what she told our
source a few years back, she has no memory of her childhood beyond nine
or ten years ago. Springing a whole family on her without any warning
or any preparation would likely be very difficult for her."
"You expect me to stay away from her?" the older woman asked.
"For the moment, at least."
Carolyn came to stand beside him. "What's Nick going to do, Drew?"
"He's going to try to talk to her today, to tell her that he thinks he
knows who she is; Then he's going to try to talk her into meeting with
the two of you. And we'll want to do a DNA test, to check her blood
against your mother's, to be sure of who she is."
"So we can go this afternoon," Mrs. McKay said.
"No, not until we hear from someone in Chicago that this woman's agreed
to all this," Drew said.
"But she's my little girl. She's my Annie. How can you expect me to
stay away from my own child? To be two and a half hours away from her,
finally, after all these years, and not see her?"
Drew backed up a step. He had a million things he could ~ have said
right then. Uppermost in his mind was his son, and the fact that he
was in the identical position when it came to Billy. He hadn't
recognized the irony in that until just now.
That particularly generous mood he'd been in all morning was' gone in
an instant. Still, knowing that this wasn't the time or the place to
get into the subject with Grace McKay, he held his tongue.
And that was when Billy walked into the room. Still rubbing the sleep
from his eyes, still in his pajamas, he came padding into the room in
his bare feet. "Is it time to go to school yet?"
Drew couldn't hold back any longer. He wasn't so much angry as
frustrated as hell. He turned to Grace McKay, his back to Billy, and,
in a voice only she could hear, said, "Yeah, that's what I'm telling
you. Your kid is right there, and you can't just go and see her. You
can't reach out and touch her, hold her. You might not be able to tell
her for a while that you're her mother. And I don't know how long it
will be before any of that changes."
"Drew." Carolyn tried to stop him, but it was too late. "I've got to
get back to Chicago," he said. "You all stay put. I'll call you as
soon as I know something for sure. I can't promise anything, but I'm
going to try to at least get to see the woman today, even if I can't
talk to her or tell her what's going on."
He turned and said goodbye to Billy, who had just realized he was there
and still remembered Drew's promise to show him his gun.
"Maybe this weekend," he said, daring Carolyn's mother to say anything
different.
It made him absolutely ache inside, but he didn't touch the boy at all,
didn't even ruffle his hair, which stuck up every which' way on his
head.
And he didn't have it in him to say anything to Carolyn. She'd thought
all their problems were going to magically dissolve, now that they'd
found the woman who might be Annie. But they weren't just going to
disappear, and he had to find a way to live with that.
Still, the irony was almost too much for him. He'd found Annie.
It was an absolute miracle.
Yet in an instant, back there in that room, he'd seen that it wasn't
enough. He still needed another miracle to make things right between
him and Carolyn and Billy.
16-09-07, 03:33 PM
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