When they were finished, Sergeant Huddle folded everything into a manila file, though he didn't rise right away. Instead he closed his eyes, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand.
"Excuse me," he said, trying to shake the drowsiness that had come over him.
"Tired?" she asked sympathetically.
"A little. I had an eventful evening."
Denise adjusted herself on the bed. "Well, I'm glad you came by. I wanted to thank you for what you did last night. You can't imagine how much it means to me."
Sergeant Huddle nodded as if he'd been in similar situations before.
"You're welcome. That's my job, though. Besides, I have a little girl of my own, and if it had been her, I would have wanted everyone within a fifty-mile radius to drop what they were doing to help find her. You couldn't have dragged me away last night."
From his tone, Denise didn't doubt him.
"So," she asked, "you have a little girl?"
"Yeah, I do. Her birthday was last Monday. Just turned five. It's a good age."
"They're all good ages, at least that's what I've learned. What's her name?"
"Campbell. Like the soup. It's Kim's--my wife's--maiden name."
"Is she your only child?"
"So far. But in a couple of months she won't be."
"Oh, congratulations. Boy or girl?"
"Don't know yet. We'll be surprised, just like we were with Campbell."
She nodded, closing her eyes for a moment. Sergeant Huddle bounced the folder against his leg, then rose to leave.
"Well, I should be going. You probably need some rest."
Though she suspected he was speaking more for himself, Denise sat up higher in the bed. "Well . . . um . . . before you go--can I ask you a couple of questions about last night? With all the commotion then and everything this morning, I really haven't learned what went on. At least, not from the horse's mouth."
"Sure. Ask away."
"How were you able to . . . I mean, it was so dark and with the storm . . ." She paused, trying to find the right words.
"You mean, how did we find him?" Sergeant Huddle offered.
She nodded.
He glanced at Kyle, who was still playing with an airplane in the corner.
"Well, I'd like to say it was all skill and training, but it wasn't. We got lucky. Damn lucky. He could have been out there for days--it's that dense in the swamp. For a while there, we had no idea which way he'd gone, but Taylor sort of figured that Kyle would follow the wind and keep the lightning behind him. Sure enough, he was right."
He nodded toward Kyle with a look like that of a father after his son hits the game-winning home run, then went on. "You've got one tough boy there, Miss Holton. His being okay had more to do with him than any of us. Most kids--hell, every kid I know--would have been terrified, but your little boy wasn't. It's pretty amazing."
Denise's brow furrowed as she thought about what he'd just told her.
"Wait--was that Taylor McAden?"
"Yeah, the guy who found you." He reached up and scratched his jaw. "Actually, he was the one who found both of you, if you want to get right down to it. He found Kyle in a duck blind, and Kyle wouldn't let go of him until we got him to the hospital. Clamped on to him like a crab claw."
"Taylor McAden found Kyle? But I thought you did."
Sergeant Huddle picked up his trooper hat off the end of the bed. "No, it wasn't me, but you can bet it wasn't because I wasn't trying. It's just that Taylor seemed to have a bead on him all night, don't ask me how."
Sergeant Huddle seemed lost in thought. From where she was lying, Denise could see the bags under his eyes. He looked drawn, as if he wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed.
"Well . . . thank you anyway. Without you, Kyle probably wouldn't be here."
"No problem. I love a happy ending, and I'm glad we had one."
After saying good-bye, Sergeant Huddle slipped out the door. As the door closed behind him, Denise looked upward, toward the ceiling, without really seeing it.
Taylor McAden? Judy McAden?
She couldn't believe the coincidence, but then again, everything that happened last night had fluke written all over it. The storm, the deer, the seat belt over her lap but not her shoulder (she'd never done that before and wouldn't do it again, that was for sure), Kyle wandering away while Denise was unconscious and unable to stop him . . . Everything.
Including the McAdens.
One here for support, the other one finding her car. One who knew her mother long ago and one who ended up locating Kyle.
Coincidence? Fate?
Something else?
Later that afternoon, with the help of a nurse and the local telephone directory, Denise wrote out individual thank-you notes to Carl and Judy, as well as a general note (addressed in care of the fire department) to everyone involved in the search.
Last, she wrote out her note to Taylor McAden, and as she did so, she couldn't help but wonder about him.
Chapter 10
Three days after the accident and successful search for Kyle Holton, Taylor McAden walked beneath the marlstone archway that served as an entrance and made his way to the headstone in Cypress Park Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in Edenton. He knew exactly where he was going, and he cut across the lawn, weaving around memorials. Some were so ancient that two centuries of rain had smoothed away nearly all the writing on the stones, and he could remember times he'd stopped to try to decipher them. It was, he soon realized, impossible.
Today, though, Taylor paid them little attention as he moved steadily beneath a cloudy sky, stopping only when he reached the shade of a giant willow tree. Here, on the west side of the cemetery, the marker he'd come to see stood twelve inches high. It was an otherwise nondescript granite block, inscribed simply on the upper face.
Grass had grown tall around the sides but was otherwise well tended. Directly in front of it, in a small tube set into the ground, was a bouquet of dried carnations. He didn't have to count them to know how many there were, nor did he wonder who had left them.
His mother had left eleven of them, one for every year of their marriage. She left them every May, on their anniversary, as she had for the past twenty-seven years. In all that time she'd never told Taylor about leaving them, and Taylor had never mentioned that he already knew. He was content to let her have her secret, if by doing so he could keep his own.
Unlike his mother, Taylor didn't visit the grave on his parents' anniversary. That was her day, the day they'd pledged their love in front of family and friends. Instead Taylor visited in June, on the day his father died. That was the day he'd never forget.
As usual, he was dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved workshirt. He'd come directly from a project he'd been working on, slipping away during the lunch break, and parts of his shirt were neatly tacked to his chest and back. No one had asked where he was going, and he hadn't bothered to explain. It was no one's business but his own.
Taylor bent and started to pull the longer blades of grass along the sides, twisting them around his hand to get a better grip and snapping them off to make them level with the surrounding lawn. He took his time, giving his mind a chance to clear, leveling all four sides. When finished, he ran his finger over the polished granite. The words were simple:
Mason Thomas McAden
Loving father and husband
1936-1972
Year by year, visit by visit, Taylor had grown older; he was now the same age his father was when he'd passed away. He'd changed from a frightened young boy to the man he was today. His memory of his father, however, had ended abruptly on that last dreadful day. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't picture what his father would look like if he were still alive. In Taylor's mind, his father would always be thirty-six. Never younger, never
older--selective memory made that clear. And so, of course, did the photo.
Taylor closed his eyes, waiting for the image to come. He didn't need to carry the photo with him to know exactly how it looked.
It still sat on the fireplace mantel in the living room. He'd seen it every day for the past twenty-seven years.
The photo had been taken a week before the accident, on a warm June morning right outside their home. In the picture his father was stepping off the back porch, fishing pole in hand, on his way to the Chowan River. Though he wasn't visible, Taylor remembered that he had been trailing behind his father, still in the house collecting his lures, scrambling to find everything he needed. His mother had been hiding behind the truck, and when she had called his father's name, Mason had turned and she'd unexpectedly snapped the picture. The film had been sent away to be developed, and because of that, it hadn't been destroyed with the other photos. Judy didn't pick it up until after the funeral and had cried while looking at it, then slipped it into her purse. To others it wasn't anything special--his father walking in midstride, hair uncombed, a stain on the buttoned shirt he was wearing--but to Taylor it had captured the very essence of his father. It was there, that irrepressible spirit that defined the man he was, and that was the reason it had affected his mother so. It was in his expression, the gleam of his eye, the jaunty yet keenly alert pose.
A month after his father had died, Taylor had sneaked it out of her purse and fallen asleep while holding it. His mother had come in, found the photo pressed into his small hands, his fingers curled tightly around it. The photo itself was smudged with tears. The following day she'd taken the negative in to have a copy made, and Taylor glued four Popsicle sticks to a discarded piece of glass and mounted the photo. In all these years he'd never considered changing the frame.
Thirty-six.
His father seemed so young in the picture. His face was lean and youthful, his eyes and forehead showing only the faintest outlines of wrinkles that would never have the chance to deepen. Why, then, did his father seem so much older than Taylor felt right now? His father had seemed so . . . wise, so sure of himself, so brave. In the eyes of his nine-year-old son, he was a man of mythic proportion, a man who understood life and could explain nearly everything. Was it because he'd lived more deeply? Had his life been defined by broader, more exceptional experiences? Or was his impression simply the product of a young boy's feelings for his father, including the last moment they'd been together?