Alex Read online

  Coughing, Kelton climbed to his feet. Behind him, Ian saw Silvia. The side of her face was covered with blood, pouring from her nose and the wound on her forehead. Run, he tried to say, but his tongue betrayed him. It had no strength left. Please run.

  Kelton cast about for his gun, but settled for a broken tree branch at least two feet long and almost as thick as his arm. He rasped a taunt, his bloody face mouthing the words behind a veil of silence, and crashed the stick into Ian's wounded ribs.

  Ian knew he was screaming, but he couldn't hear it. He tried to roll away, and the rock in his back jammed into his spine. Kelton hit him again, and then again. Brilliant flowers of pain detonated in his ribs.

  Kelton cried something over his shoulder to Silvia, grinning. "Remember what I said about anyone who tries to help you?" his lips said. "About what would happen if you tried to run?"

  Ian reached behind him, trying to dislodge the rock so he could roll away, but it wasn't a rock. It was Kelton's gun.

  "Get over here!" Kelton demanded of her. "You gonna watch this! Open your fucking eyes, you gonna watch this!"

  Ian brought the gun up, and shot him in the stomach.

  The kickback made Ian's .22 feel like a barking puppy. An explosion of blood burst from Kelton's back. He took a step backward, trying to keep his balance as the front of his shirt slowly darkened, then crumpled into the snow.

  Ian crawled over to him.

  Kelton's mouth was moving; he looked bewildered, plaintive.

  Ian grabbed the stick, braced it against Kelton's neck, and pushed.

  He felt the blood from the man's stomach gushing against his own belly; felt his feeble kicks as Kelton tried again to fight loose. But as weak as Ian was, Kelton was weaker.

  Kelton scrabbled at the stick, at Ian's face, at Ian's hands. His legs kicked impotently, silently, into the snow. His face turned red, then purple.

  When he stopped moving, Ian grabbed the gun and blew his skull open.

  140

  Silvia was huddled against a tree, her eyes clenched shut, her face a pale mask.

  Silvia, Ian managed. He felt light-headed. He wondered how much blood he'd lost. He wondered if he'd die. The thought didn't frighten him. Maybe he'd see Alex, and if he did, he'd tell him, Don't worry. I saved her.

  Her eyes were still closed. She put her face in her hands.

  Sweetheart, he tried to say, but it came out as a choked croak, and he coughed. The gun fell out of his hands and he sank to his knees in the snow. Suddenly, he realized how cold he was. Every muscle shook.

  He tried to clear his throat. Sweetheart, he said. It's okay. He's gone. The police -

  Someone might have heard the gunshots and the screaming; they might be on their way. But he pulled his phone from his pocket, bending every bit of his will toward holding on to it, not fumbling it into the snow. He punched in the numbers as if wrestling a bear. 9. 1. 1.

  On the other end of the line, someone mumbled an incomprehensible greeting.

  Yes, he said. I found her. We're at fifteen... The sun was setting. The trees' shadows loomed suddenly, darkening everything. He was so cold.

  Fifteen forty-one. West Hill. Please hurry. We're in the trees.

  The voice murmured something in response; it wanted to know more. But the phone had fallen from Ian's hands, spinning slowly away into the snow. He watched it go, wondering how it had happened.

  Then he laid down, and didn't wonder anything.

  141

  Voices, and shouting. Exclamations. Brilliant, strobing lights. He was lifted, carried.

  From the other end of a very long tunnel, someone said, "Can you hear me?" and he answered, "Yes."

  Sirens. Jostling. He remembered something important, and opened his eyes. There was a woman crouched next to him, bouncing with the bumps in the road. She was wearing green, peering at some kind of electronic device mounted against the vehicle wall. He asked her his question, but she didn't hear. She was talking, muttering something to someone he couldn't see.

  He groped for her arm; when he took hold of it, she snapped her eyes to his, and he repeated himself.

  She hesitated. He was afraid she wouldn't answer, for fear of upsetting him. Then something flickered inside her eyes and she said, "Yes, Mr. Colmes. She's going to be okay."

  The world drifted away, and the pain went with it.

  142

  Eventually he felt the play of light across his eyelids, and opened his eyes to an empty hospital room. The shades were open, letting in a shimmer of bleary sunlight; on the far wall, a silent TV flickered with The Price Is Right. He stared at this for awhile, assessing the dull throb in his left side and right leg.

  The door opened, and a nurse came in: a small, plump woman in her late forties. "Ian?" she said, smiling gently.

  "Yeah," he croaked, and her smile broadened.

  "I brought you some water here," she said, and as he downed it, she busied herself checking his monitor and his wounds, answering some of the questions he didn't yet realize he had.

  Her name was Shelly, and he was at St. Francis Regional Medical Center. His wounds would be painful, but probably not serious (he was very lucky!) and the doctor would be in later to take a look at them and answer any questions he might have. In the meantime, if he needed anything he could just push the call button.

  "Thank you," he said. His voice sounded distant, and he wondered if he was on some kind of pain medication. "Is Silvia okay?"

  "Yes," Shelly answered. "She's over in Pediatric."

  "Don't let anyone hurt her," he said.

  Shelly gave him a long look. "I won't," she said.

  When she left, the room fell silent again. He turned the volume up on the TV, watched an extremely overweight white man try to guess the price of a bottle of shampoo. He thought he should be worried about what might come next - he was jobless, he had killed a man, he had been shot twice - but he wasn't.

  For once, he just wasn't.

  143

  He got a lot of visitors at the hospital.

  The cops wanted to know how he'd found Silvia. He said he'd heard her screaming in the house, while driving past. They didn't buy this - it was plain in their eyes - but he stuck to it anyway.

  They asked him other questions, too. Did he know Tim Kelton had been involved in Alex's kidnapping? No, Ian answered, not until I saw Alex's backpack in his dungeon. What was he doing in the Shakopee area? Driving by the lake where Alex was found. I do it once a month or so.

  They asked him: You really expect us to believe you found Silvia Kalen by chance? He didn't know what to say to this, so he started nodding off, and the nurse asked the police to leave.

  Any one of the people he had questioned about "Kelly" could've ruined him - any of them could've called and reported his weird behavior earlier that day. But despite the media circus, despite his picture all over the news, none of them did.

  Jarrid Kalen was composed when he entered. He was a hard man, wiry, but shorter in person than Ian had expected. He gave Ian a strong handshake and said, "I can't thank you enough." Then he proceeded to try.

  He tripled the reward to 300,000 ("An extra hundred for each gun shot wound," he explained), promised Ian he would have his medical bills handled, and swore to defend him in court.

  "You'll have the best legal representation possible. There is no way you're going to jail," he said. "Silvia says she screamed all the time. You were in his house because you heard her, and she's safe because of you.

  "You brought her back from the dead," he said, and then his composure cracked a little, and Ian caught a glimpse of the wreck that had been festering beneath for months.

  He nearly told Jarrid about Alex, then, but held his tongue. Instead he said, "Take care of her," and Jarrid swore he would.

  Derek came, and Ian's mother. Billi, from work, visited too. But none of the visits - not the ones from the cops, not the one from Jarrid Kalen - mattered as much as Alina's.

  144

  S
he paused at the door when she entered, swallowed by her bulky winter coat, her head straddled by a pair of snowy earmuffs. They looked at each other for a long time. He read the pensiveness in her eyes and thought, She's not sure she wants to be here.

  "I didn't know if you'd come," he said. He could've said Hello, or How are you, but the moment felt too fraught with consequence to risk empty pleasantries. They both knew who they were and where they stood.

  "I didn't know either."

  Why did you? he wanted to ask, but this felt too confrontational, so instead he said, "I'm glad you did."

  She gave him a tight smile that didn't touch her eyes, and crossed to the chair at his bedside. When she sat, she carefully pulled the gloves from her hands, peering into her lap. "Are you okay?"

  "The doctors say I was lucky. There should be no permanent damage. The worst thing was the blood loss. They just want to keep an eye on me for a couple days, otherwise I'd be home already. Or in jail, one or the other."

  She looked up. "So you really killed him?"

  "Yes." He held her eyes as he said it. Words clamored at his tongue - I had to. He was hurting a little girl. He had hurt our son. - but he kept them back. After a moment, she nodded.

  "Good. Are they going to send you to jail for that?"

  He let out a breath. "I don't know. Jarrid Kalen says there's no way he'll let that happen."

  "You've talked to him?"

  "He came to visit."

  "How is Silvia?"

  "They say she's all right. I'm sure she's a wreck, but at least she's home." At least she's alive.

  "I heard they were together for awhile. Silvia and Alex. They said on the news that they were both at Eston's house for a week or two." Her tongue handled the word Eston like it was a jagged wood splinter. "They were moving them to this other guy's house - Kelton? - when Alex got loose somehow."

  "Yeah. I heard that, too. I think..." He hesitated, wanting to tell her but not wanting to scare her off. "I think Alex really cared about Silvia, even though he didn't know her long. I think he'd be glad to know she's safe."

  Alina nodded, tightly, and looked at the wall. Ian reached for her hand, and she took it.

  Through the window behind her, he saw snow falling.

  Silence settled over them, but it wasn't one of those pits that he was always stumbling into. It was tense and heavy, but it was also expectant. And for those few minutes, he was too happy to be holding her hand to care.

  "I got your letter," she finally said.

  His heart jumped. He'd known this was coming, but didn't know what to say, so he waited. When she didn't say anything more, he asked, "What did you think?"

  "Did you really go through Alex's boxes?"

  "I went through enough to know that I'm okay with getting rid of them. I think we need to get rid of them."

  She nodded. She still wasn't looking at him. "It was hard to read."

  "Why?"

  "Because it sounded very familiar, Ian. Because we've done all this before."

  "We haven't done this. It may feel the same to you, but it's not. I'm different. I'm looking at things differently."

  She did turn to him then. "How can I know that?"

  "You can't, really, not without being around me. But if you give me a chance - just one more chance - you'll see."

  She gave a pained sigh and turned away again, but not before he saw her eyes glimmering. "I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't be here talking to you about this while you're..."

  "No, it's okay."

  "You're in the hospital, for god's sake."

  "It's okay. I don't care about that. I just want us to be okay again."

  "You make that sound so easy."

  "I know it won't be, not after how much I hurt you. I'm sorry, Alina. You were strong for me, and I wasn't strong for you. I want to be there for you, if it's not too late. I know I really hurt you. It won't happen any more."

  "But you still think it was my fault, Ian. You still think I -"

  "I don't," he urged her. "I swear, I don't. I was mad, I was scared, I wasn't thinking straight, but I'm thinking straight now. I was grieving and I said some really stupid things, and you put up with them for far too long. There are only two people to be blamed for what happened, and now they're both dead."

  Silence again. She wasn't looking at him. But she still had his hand.

  "If this isn't going to work, we have to decide that now. We can't wait until the baby is born. If we divorce, I'll agree to equal custody. You're a good father, Ian, and she should know her father."

  A warm wind boiled in his chest: joy, humility, awe. She.

  "But I can't pretend with her. And I can't stay with you just for this child. I need you, Ian. I can't pretend everything's okay when it's not."

  "You won't have to." He realized he was smiling. "You won't have to, I promise. I don't want that either. Did you say 'she'?"

  Alina looked down at him again, naked vulnerability scrawled across her face. She looked as if she thought he wasn't listening. But when she saw his face, she gave a small smile of her own. "Yeah. It's a girl."

  "That is wonderful."

  "Yeah." She squeezed his hand. "I want to name her after my mother."

  "Teres?" He tasted the name, found it beautiful. "Perfect."

  Her face pinched; she looked away again. "I want to believe you, Ian. I really do. But people just don't change this fast."

  "Maybe I'm not changing," he said. "Maybe I'm changing back."

  145

  They went back to the house together.

  The first day, Alina changed the bulb in Alex's room. Ian called Derek and asked if he could help bring the boxes out to the car for a trip to Goodwill. Derek agreed, and as he and Alina worked, Ian helped by holding the door, which was all he could manage while still recovering. By sunset, Alex's room was empty except for a glowering stuffed elephant.

  That night they laid in bed and talked. By midnight they were fighting. By two they were crying. Their discussion roamed from the bedroom to the dining room to the living room, but finally, they fell asleep together on the couch.

  146

  The marker read:

  ALEX ISAIAH COLMES

  2005 - 2010

  WE LOVE YOU

  As Ian knelt by his son's gravestone, the brittle grass crunched beneath his knees. He took off his gloves and rested one hand on the stone. A frigid shock stole into his fingers, but he didn't flinch from it. The sensation was welcome. He owed it to Alex.

  "I brought you something," Ian said. "I was gonna keep it for your sister, but I don't think she'll need it anymore." He set Mr. Tuskers on the grass, where the animal surveyed the surrounding cemetery with protective menace. "I thought you'd like him here. I would've brought Mowsalot, too, but I lost him. I'm sorry about that."

  He clasped his hands in his lap. An observer might have thought he was praying.

  "Mowsalot kept me just as safe as Tuskers, did you know that? He might seem like just a snugglepot, but he doesn't screw around. He keeps your back. He did a good job.

  "It's okay now, though. I'm pretty sure the bad man is gone. Tuskers hasn't gone cold on me ever since mommy brought him back to the house."

  He smiled, a little bit. "And she is back. I don't know if she told you that." Alina had asked for a few minutes alone at the grave as well, before returning to the car where she was waiting now. "I won't say everything is perfect. But we're both trying, and she's staying at the house. What happened wasn't her fault. She was just worried about your sister. And she was right to be worried. I just..." He gripped the stone again, breathed a shuddering plume of steam into the winter air. "I just missed you so bad, Alex. I always will. I won't forget you, you know that? Neither will your mom. And if there's any way I can see you again, one day - if you are someplace that I can come - I will. You'll be playing, or whatever, and look up, and suddenly..." His jaw clenched, fighting for the words. "Suddenly, you'll see your daddy."

  He let himsel
f dwell on this idea. There was a time when he would've given everything to make it come true, to hold his son again at that moment. For the first time in months, though, he felt torn. If finding Alex again meant losing Alina...

  "Maybe one day," he said. "Maybe. I told you, no one knows for sure, right? But your mom needs me right now, and I need her - and your sister will be here soon." He smiled again, just a hair, at the taste of the word. Sister. "'Teres Alexandra.' Don't you think it's pretty?"

  He closed his eyes, gripped the marker with both hands, and kissed it. The sensation of cold, coarse stone lingered on his lips as he pulled away. "I love you, Alex," he whispered. "I always will."

  Then he rose slowly to his feet, and returned to his wife.

  147

  When she was pregnant with Alex, Alina had done most of the work to prepare the baby's room by herself. For Teres, Ian made sure they worked together. They went with a pony theme - something girly, but not overwhelmingly so - with a lot of yellows and greens. The task wasn't strenuous, but for Ian's healing leg and ribs, it was challenging.

  As they worked, they talked about what she would be like. Would she have inexplicable blue eyes, like her brother did? Would she be as picky about her formula, or share any allergies? Most concerning of all, Alina asked: What if she didn't like ponies?

  If she didn't like ponies, Ian assured her grimly as he rested his throbbing leg, she would be shit out of luck.

  They finished the final touches just before the sun fell behind the trees. As they stood back to take it in, Alina grabbed his hand. "She likes it," she said, and it was true: within her belly, Ian could feel his daughter's joyful kicks. He smiled broadly at his wife, and she kissed him. For a single, glorious instant, all was well.

  Then they turned out the light, and that brilliant hope slowly faded as night came on. They went to bed early, exhausted, and Ian lay awake as his wife drifted off, his thoughts spinning with memories of those first nights with Alex, of the ways he had changed their lives.