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Chapter 35

According to Myron’s app, the ride to the Lake Charmaine area with current traffic would take upwards of ninety minutes. Myron first called the Pike County Sheriff’s Office to inform them of the situation. They patched him directly to Sheriff Daniel Yiannikos.

“I’m in my squad car right now,” the sheriff said. “Where is the boy?”

“Go to the top of Old Oak Road near Lake Charmaine,” Myron said. “If you walk a quarter of a mile south, there’s a ravine.”

“I know it,” Sheriff Yiannikos said.

“His name is Patrick. He’s there.”

“A possible jumper? He wouldn’t be the first.”

“I don’t know. But he’s threatened suicide.”

“Okay, I’m eight minutes from the location. How old is Patrick?”

“Sixteen.”

Nancy had been trying to reach him since they started driving. No answer.

“What’s his full name?” Yiannikos asked.

“Patrick Moore.”

“Why does that name ring a bell?”

“He’s been in the news.”

“The rescued kid?”

“He’s under a great deal of stress,” Myron said.

“Okay, we’ll be careful.”

“Let him know his mother’s on the way.”

Myron hung up and called his old friend Jake Courter, another sheriff, this time of Bergen County, New Jersey. He explained the situation and asked for a police escort.

“On its way,” Jake said. “We’ll pick you up on Route 80. Just keep driving.”

Twenty minutes later, when Sheriff Yiannikos finally called back, Nancy Moore gripped Myron’s arm so tight he was sure it would leave marks.

“Hello?”

“Patrick is alive,” the sheriff said, “for now.”

Myron let himself breathe.

“But he’s standing at the top of the ravine with a gun pointed at his head.”

Nancy almost collapsed. “Oh my God.”

“It’s calm right now. He’s telling us to stay back. So we are.”

“Has he asked for anything?”

“He just wanted assurances his mother was on her way. We said she was. We asked if he wanted to speak to her. He said no, he just wants to see her. He said for us to stay back or he’d shoot himself, so that’s what we’re doing. How far out are you?”

As promised, the Bergen County squad cars joined them on Route 80 heading west. Myron pressed down on the accelerator. The police helped him past the heavy traffic.

“Half hour, maybe forty minutes.”

“Okay,” Sheriff Yiannikos said. “I’ll call you if anything changes.”

Myron hung up, made a quick call to Win, and then asked Nancy, “Why did Vada come back?”

“Why do you think?”

“She saw the news reports,” Myron said, “about Patrick coming home.”

“Yes.”

“She wants to come clean.”

“That’s what she says. We, uh, waylaid her. Nothing harmful. We just convinced her to come to the lake to discuss it. Then we took her car keys and asked her to give us a few days. To talk her out of it.”

“And if she didn’t agree?”

Nancy shrugged. “I like to think we would have found a way.”

“Hunter was waiting for her. When we went up there.”

“Yes. She arrived half an hour after you left.”

“Hunter won’t stop Win.”

“No, I don’t think he will,” Nancy said. “Can’t you please drive faster?”

“And Tamryn Rogers?”

“Patrick’s girlfriend at school. I thought that he could give her up when he got home. But you know teens. Your nephew was right, wasn’t he? Teens get lonely. They reach out. So yes, he snuck out. It would have been no big deal, except of course you followed him.”

They crossed the Dingmans Ferry Bridge. The app said they were eight minutes away.

“It’s over now,” Myron said.

“Yes, I guess it is. But I just need to save my son. That’s what this is all about. Then, well, we all move on, don’t we? The police will be able to bring up Rhys’s body from the ravine. They can bury him properly. I checked with an attorney before I started on this journey. Guess when the statute of limitations runs out on the crime of hiding a body?”

Myron gripped the wheel tighter.

“Ten years. And think about it. In the end, I hid a body and tampered with some evidence. I told a few lies to the police. Hunter is wracked with guilt. He’ll take the fall, but we will plead him out and he’ll serve very little, if any, time. So yes, Myron, if we can save my boy, it will all be over.”

“Cold,” Myron said.

“Have to be.”

“None of this had to be.”

“Rhys was dead. I couldn’t save him.”

“And you think you’ve saved Patrick? What do you think it did to a six-year-old boy, making him lie like that?”

“He was only six.”

“So you just stuffed it away. Your husband became a drunk. Your daughter had to deal with losing a brother. Vada, I don’t even know what a mess you made of her life. And Brooke and Chick and Clark. Do you have any idea what you did to all of them?”

“I don’t need to justify myself to you. A mother protects her child. That’s just how it is. So now I get my boy back. We get him help. It’s all going to be okay. I’ll take him back home. Once he’s home, he’ll be fine again.”

Myron made the turn onto Old Oak Road. There were four police cars parked at the end of the drive. Sheriff Yiannikos introduced himself. “We’ve kept back. He wants his mother.”

“That’s me,” Nancy said. She started sprinting toward the woods. Myron followed. “No,” she said to him. “Stay back.”

She trekked into the woods. Myron turned to Sheriff Yiannikos. “I can’t go into it, but we can’t leave her alone. I need to follow her.”

“I’ll go with,” he said.

Myron nodded. They hurried in, following her trail up a hill. A bird cawed in the distance. They kept moving. Nancy glanced behind her, still running, but she didn’t stop or yell back. She wanted to reach Patrick as soon as possible.

A mother protects her child.

At the top of the hill, Nancy stopped short. Her hands flew up to her face, as though in shock. Myron hurried his step. He veered to the right. Sheriff Yiannikos stayed with him. When they reached the clearing, they could see the same thing Nancy was seeing.

Patrick had the gun pointed at his own head. He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t hysterical.

He was smiling.

Nancy took a tentative step toward him. “Patrick?”

Patrick’s voice was loud and clear in the stillness of the woods. “Don’t come closer.”

“I’m here now,” Nancy said. “I’m here to take you home.”

“I am home,” he said.

“I don’t understand.”

“Did you really think I stayed in the car?”

“What, honey? I don’t know-”

“You drove me up. You told me to stay in the car and close my eyes.” Patrick smiled again, the gun right up against his temple. “Did you think I listened?”

“I saw it… I was there… they just… just dumped his body into this ravine. Like it was nothing. Like Rhys was nothing…”

“I killed him,” Patrick said, and now a single tear slipped down his cheek. “And you dumped him here. You made me live with that.”

“It’s okay,” Nancy said, her voice cracking. “It’s all going to be okay…”

“I see it every day. You think it ever left me? You think I ever forgave myself? Or you?”

“Please, Patrick.”

“You killed me too, Mom. You threw me down the ravine too. And now we need to pay the price.”

“We will, honey.” Nancy glanced around desperately, looking for any sort of life preserver. “Look, Patrick, the police are here. They know everything. It’s going to be okay. Please, honey, put the gun down. I’m here to take you home.”

Patrick shook his head. His voice, when he spoke again, was pure ice.

“That’s not why you’re here, Mother.”

Nancy dropped to her knees. “Please, Patrick, just put the gun down. Let’s go home. Please.”

“My God,” Sheriff Yiannikos said under his breath, “he’s going to do it.”

Myron could see that too. He debated making a move, sprinting toward the boy, but there was no way he could get there in time.

“Home for me is here,” Patrick said. “This is where I belong.”

He cocked back the hammer on the gun.

Nancy shouted, “No!”

“I didn’t call you here to save me,” Patrick said. His finger started to shake as it started to pull on the trigger. “I called you here to watch me end-”

And then another voice-a female voice-yelled, “Stop!”

For a second everything froze. Myron looked to his left. Brooke Baldwin stood on the other side of the clearing with Win.

Brooke started toward the boy. “It’s over, Patrick.”

Patrick kept the gun against his head. “Mrs. Baldwin…”

“I said, it’s over.”

“Stay back,” Patrick said.

Brooke shook her head. “You were only six years old, Patrick. A little boy. It was an accident. I don’t blame you. Do you hear me, Patrick?” She took another step toward him. “It’s over.”

“I want to die,” he cried. “I want to be with Rhys.”

“No,” Brooke said. “There’s been enough death and destruction. Please, Patrick. Please don’t add to my pain.” She reached out her hand. “Look at me.”

Patrick did. Brooke waited until she was sure that he was looking her in the eye.

“I forgive you,” she said. “You were just a little boy. It’s not your fault. Rhys, my son, your friend… He wouldn’t want this, Patrick. If it was the other way around, if Rhys had shot you, would you forgive him?”

The gun shook in Patrick’s hand.

“Would you?”

Patrick nodded.

“Please, Patrick. Give me the gun.”

The wind seemed to stop. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. Even the trees seemed to be holding their breath. Brooke quickly closed the gap between them. Patrick hesitated, and for a second, Myron thought that he was still going to pull the trigger.

When Brooke reached out and took hold of the gun, Patrick fell into her arms. He let out a guttural cry and started sobbing. Brooke closed her eyes and held him.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Brooke looked out over the ravine, the place where her son had lain for the last ten years. She gripped the boy tighter, and finally, Brooke broke down and cried with him. They stood there, the two of them-the mother of a dead boy holding firm to the boy who had killed him.

Nancy Moore approached carefully. Brooke looked at her over Patrick’s shoulder. Their eyes met. Nancy mouthed the words, “Thank you,” and Brooke nodded at her. But she didn’t let go of Patrick. She didn’t let go until the boy finished crying.