This Side of Salvation

CHAPTER 19

NOWS

till on my knees, I reach across John’s bed, where Mara has just tossed her phone.

Mom’s message is five simple words: They said you’d be here. “Do you know what this means?” Mara bounces on her toes. “(A) they’re alive. And (b) they didn’t leave us on purpose!”

“‘They said you’d be here.’” I show the phone to Bailey, who’s kneeling beside me now. Is my face as lust-flushed as hers? “But where is here?” I ask Mara.

“I have no idea.”

“What are you waiting for? Call her.” I toss the phone back across the bed, not yet daring to stand up and put my, um, excitement on display. Sweatpants have their downside.

Mara touches the screen, then puts the phone to her ear. While she paces, Bailey surreptitiously slips a hand under her own shirt and tugs her bra back into place. I focus on John’s poster of the 2008 World Series Phillies lineup and start mentally reciting the team members, left to right. It has the intended effect.

“Mom, it’s Mara. Please call me back. Or text me again, whatever. Are you okay? Where are you? Is Dad with you? Who is ‘they’? Just—just call me!” She hangs up. “Maybe she has bad cell coverage and can only text.” Mara thumbs in a new message. “Or her battery’s running too low to make a call.”

She sets the phone down carefully on the bed, as if her hand will block the signal. We stare at it for almost a minute without speaking.

Finally Bailey says, “So wherever they are, your parents must have thought you were meeting them there. Someone lied to them.”

“To get them to leave voluntarily,” Mara muses, “so it wouldn’t count as kidnapping. Legally, I mean.”

“Did you show the message to Kane?” Bailey asks her.

“No, he went home, said he’d be back tonight.” She lowers her voice, though I’m not sure why. “We locked up the gun in the desk drawer until we could figure out what to do about it.”

I keep my eyes on the phone, a thought rapping at the back of my brain.

“What Kane said makes sense,” Bailey says. “If your dad had planned to kill himself when the Rush didn’t happen, he could’ve easily done it right here with the gun.” She puts a hand on my shoulder. “Sorry for that image. But he clearly didn’t do it, so they must’ve had some other plan that didn’t involve taking their own lives.”

“Yeah.” I’m still searching my memory for the clue I know is there. Something to do with a phone’s lost connection or dead battery. Then it hits me. A blue man beside a blue blob.

“My phone!” I jump up and head for the door, pushing past my sister.

“I saw it downstairs. Maybe there’s a message for you, too!”

“It’s not that.” I grab the doorjamb to slow myself enough to turn. “I know where Mom and Dad are.”