This Side of Salvation

CHAPTER 25

NOW

Once we’re in the car outside Mr. Ralph’s house, Bailey calls my mother’s office from the backseat.

“Hello, I’d like to speak to Jennifer Cooper. Ah. May I ask, did she take a position at another location?” Her voice is low, throaty, and grown-up, like one of those call-in sex lines (or so I imagine). It makes me want to crawl into the backseat with her. “No, I’m afraid I’m only looking for Mrs. Cooper. She came highly recommended as an agent. I was hoping to sell my boat. I mean, my house. My boathouse. It’s at Penn’s Landing.” Bailey covers her eyes to keep from seeing us laugh.

“She’s born for undercover work,” Mara whispers to me from the driver’s seat.

“Shh.”

“I’ll keep your agency in mind, thanks.” Bailey hangs up. “They said your mom took an indefinite leave of absence. Her last day was Friday.”

“Leave of absence.” Mara thumbs her lip. “Why didn’t she permanently quit?”

“That’s good, right?” Bailey asks us. “She might be planning to come back.”

“It could be weeks or months or years.” I copy the address from my arm into the car’s GPS. “That’s why we have to get them.”

We find the Decker house—mansion, really—in one of the oldest, poshest neighborhoods in Delaware County. The oak trees’ ancient boughs stretch across narrow streets to meet one another, they looking like they’re gossiping about us.

We do a slow-but-not-suspiciously-slow drive by the Deckers’ house. The curving driveway is empty, but the cars could be in the garage. A blue flag with a gold cross and white dove flaps gently above their front porch, which is about all we can see from across the street, thanks to a tall hedgerow.Mara parks next to a Neighborhood Watch sign.

“We won’t last an hour in this place before someone calls the cops,” I tell her.

“Relax, David. We’re in a Lexus.”

“A Lexus that’s probably two weeks from getting repossessed.”

“You can’t tell that from the outside.”

“I could call and ask for Mrs. Decker,” Bailey says.

“Good idea. Plus I want to hear your grown-up voice again.” I give Bailey what I hope is an adoring not cheesy smile.

She pulls out her phone. “You have a thing for older women, don’t you?”

Mara snorts. “Yeah, ask Sophia Visser.”

I glare at her. “Hey, that was low. And why do you assume just because she’s hot that I’m attracted to her? Are you attracted to George Clooney?”

“No, he’s old.”

“So is Sophia.” I roll up my sleeve to show Bailey the Deckers’ phone number.

As she thumbs it in, she says, “I had a dream about George Clooney once. We were at a protest together and he asked for my email address.”

“Did you give it to him?”

“He said it was for social justice, so yeah. Then we rode those mechanical ponies outside of Kmart, the ones you put quarters in?”

Nothing like my dream of Sophia Visser. Girls are weird.

Bailey clears her throat and puts the phone to her ear. While she waits for someone to answer, she runs her thumbnail over the tattered logo on her punk-rock Hello Kitty T-shirt, picking off another chip of ink from the cat’s paw.

Then she hits the speaker button and turns the phone to us.

“Praise the Lord! You have reached the voice mail of the Decker family. Please leave a detailed message, including the time and date you called. Walk in peace.”

Bailey ends the connection. “I’m calling back right now. If someone’s home and sees the same number twice in one minute, maybe they’ll think it’s important.” She hits a button and listens. “Oh. Hello, may I please speak to—” She scowls and hangs up. “So much for ‘walk in peace.’”

“Who answered?” Mara asks.

“Ezra. He said, ‘Go away,’ and hung up. I’m so glad that prick wasn’t in our Math Cave section this year.”

Mara disengages the locks. “Let’s go knock on the door.”

I put my hand out. “What if his parents are there? What are we going to say? ‘Hey, our mom and dad have ditched us. Call the police’? No, we wait until we know he’s alone.”

“That could take hours!”

Mara stomps the brake pedal in frustration. “What if we have to pee?”

I flourish my empty bottle of Gatorade. “That’s what this is for.” I’m denounced by a chorus of girl boos.

Bailey unzips her book bag. “We could do math homework to pass the time.”

“I’m too tense.” Mara takes a sip of her Slurpee and watches the Deckers’ front door. I pull out a fresh bag of sunflower seeds. Mara shakes her head when she sees them. “You’re not chewing those in here. This isn’t a dugout.”

“I’m hungry.” Not to mention nervous.

“It’s loud and messy.”

“I’ll spit the shells into my bottle.”

“The same one you plan to pee in?”

I drop the bag of seeds into my backpack. “We should’ve planned this better. We should’ve brought Girl Scout cookies and pretended we were selling them door-to-door.”

“Bailey and I are too old to be Girl Scouts,” Mara says, “and you’re too not-a-girl.”

“We could sell Bibles. We have lots of extras at home.”

Bailey whimpers. “I could go for some Thin Mints right now. I wouldn’t even care they’re only ninety-nine percent vegan.”

The longing in her voice makes me turn to look at her. She’s scanning the opposite side of the street and the visible part of the Deckers’ yard. Her total commitment to this mission, along the way her eyes get a tinge of blue in natural light, makes me love her so sharp and hard I can barely stand it.

I really need to chew something. Mara will tolerate bubble gum, at least.

My job is to watch for trouble on this side of the street, forward through the windshield and backward in the side-view mirror, where objects are closer than they appear.

To stay alert, I keep a running total in my head of how much all the dogs walked on this street probably weigh. The houses here are big, and so are their four-legged inhabitants, so I’m up to nearly a ton when Bailey breaks the silence again.

“David, how come you wear a silver cross when everyone else in your family wears a gold one?”

“I’m allergic to gold.”

“You’re not allergic to gold,” Mara says, “you’re allergic to the nickel in gold jewelry. You just like how tragic a gold allergy sounds.”

I slip my finger under the chain and watch a little girl down the street pet a white poodle. “This is titanium, actually, not silver.”

Bailey makes a huh noise. “I read somewhere that titanium was supposed to stabilize the electric currents in your body. Sounds like New Age crap to me.”

“There are some pro athletes who swear by titanium, but I put it in the category of wearing lucky socks or not shaving during the playoffs. If it helps you mentally, great, but you have to own your success and failure. Luck is useless.” I tuck the cross and its chain beneath my shirt again. “I wear titanium because it won’t break or give me a rash.”

“And it looks cool.”

“Except he hardly ever wears it outside his shirt,” Mara says, “did you notice that?”

“That’s because he doesn’t wear it for other people.”

I don’t reply or react, but on the inside, I kick myself for ever doubting Bailey’s understanding.

In my side-view mirror, I see a tall, young guy walking a chocolate Lab. Its pace is slow and its face is nearly white, but it wags its tail steadily and glances up at its owner every few steps with a yellow-toothed, lolling-tongued smile. With a sudden pang, I miss Lucy, my speedy little long-toss partner, my only bright spot in the abyss of the Abandoning.

“You’re chewing too loud,” Mara says.

I chew harder, smacking the gum against the roof of my mouth, then start blowing a bubble. It swells in a glorious pink balloon, blocking my forward vision, until—

“Hey.”

There’s a head at my window. I suck the bubble back into my mouth too fast, almost choking.

It’s the guy with the chocolate Lab. I’d been so busy watching the dog I hadn’t more than glanced at his face. But now that it’s inches from mine, I see who it is.

Our target. Ezra Decker.