J. F. Gonzalez
THEY
Prologue
June 17, 1974,
Fountain Valley, California
“ANDY WAKE UP.”
Her son slept calmly, brown curls lying on the pillow. His breathing was deep and even.
She reached down and shook him gently by the shoulders. “Andy! Wake up!”
“Wha…” He groaned. He didn’t even open his eyes. He went back to sleep almost immediately.
“Andy!” Maggie Swanson shook her son’s shoulders harder, more roughly, but not hard enough to hurt him. “Wake up!”
This brought him up. Andy opened his eyes, the deep rhythm of sleep broken. “What!” He sputtered. “What happened? What?”
“Get up and put some clothes on.” She was already pushing the covers off, ushering him out of bed. “Come on.”
“Why?” He yawned, sitting up. He looked at his mother, his eyes still heavy with sleep.
“Because we have to go,” she said. She moved to his dresser and opened the top drawer. She pulled out a pair of blue Levis and a striped polo shirt. She laid these items on the foot of the bed, went back to the same dresser and from another drawer brought out a clean pair of underwear and socks. She dropped these at the foot of the bed. “Get dressed. Come on! Let’s go!”
Andy yawned again. Maggie was so into the moment of flight that she almost breezed out of his room right then to begin the rounds of making sure she had everything necessary: papers, money, driver’s license. But Andy was obviously tired; his eyelids fluttered, and his head drooped forward as if it were weighted. He was drifting into sleep again.
“Andy,” Maggie muttered under her breath. She went to him and gently pulled him out of bed. He moaned, already falling back into a light sleep, and she ended up taking his PJ’s off. She dressed him as fast as she could. When she had him in his jeans and polo shirt, she took his PJ’s into her room where she had a small bag already packed. They were his favorites. They were his Dr. Denton’s.
She checked the bag to make sure she had everything: two changes of clothes for the both of them—she had packed his earlier in the day when he’d been out playing with Jimmy Smitts and Neil Lacher. She also had her make-up, her brushes and hair dryer. She’d looted through Andy’s comic book stash when he’d been out playing yesterday and looted a Superman and a Swamp Thing and stuck those in. Aside from those items and her wallet, which contained her driver’s license and credit cards, she didn’t have anything.
Except for the briefcase.
She rested her hand on it. She’d set it on her dresser top a few hours ago when she started packing. She looked down at it, her reflection in the mirror creating a double image. She opened the clasps and lifted the lid.
When she’d withdrawn her and Tom’s savings account, she asked the bank clerk to give her the fifty thousand dollars in twenties. They now lay in the briefcase in neat bundles.
She looked at them, their very presence seeming to bring her confidence back up. Fifty thousand dollars. It wasn’t a lot—surely not enough to keep her and Andy away from them for a very long time. But with what she had in mind, she was sure it would be more than enough to float them for a while. Maybe a year, possibly more if they settled in a place where the cost of living was cheap. Hopefully there would be a substantial amount left over for her to invest if her plan worked out right. Either way, this money was their only chance in making the escape go as smooth as possible.
She closed the briefcase and locked it. She put it on the bed next to the small duffel bag with their belongings and checked her purse. Everything was in order. She turned to the mirror and gave herself one last look before she set the wheels in motion. Her reflection stared back at her; thirty years old, chestnut brown hair that fell straight to her shoulders, small but ample breasts that hadn’t lost an inch of their firmness. Her figure was now hourglass shaped; no matter how loose fitting her jeans were, they hugged every inch of her hips. She’d gained some weight within the last year, but she was by no means overweight. She’d been skinny two years ago; very unhealthy. She’d been smoking far too much pot, dropping far too much acid, and doing God knew what else—sometimes coke, more often heroin, which she’d gotten hooked on. Thank God she’d been able to reel herself back into sanity. If it weren’t for that she wouldn’t have been able to see reality.
She wouldn’t have been able to see them for what they really were.
With everything in order, she slung her purse over her shoulder, picked up the duffel bag and briefcase, and headed out of the bedroom toward the garage. She had to maneuver down the hall and through the living room into the laundry room to get there, but she made it. She didn’t even turn on the garage light; she put the bag and the briefcase on the floor, fished for the keys, and opened the driver’s passenger side by feeling around for the familiar door. When she got the door open the dome light was enough to work by.
She stowed the duffel bag and briefcase on the front passenger seat. She put her purse on top of them, and then opened the back door. She went back through the house to Andy’s bedroom. He was conked out, his body lying sideways across the bed. She gently slid her right arm beneath his shoulders, her left beneath his legs behind the knees and lifted him up. He wasn’t as heavy as she thought he’d be. With continued sobriety comes strength, she thought, as she carried Andy out of the bedroom and into the garage. He stirred once, when she tried to gently slide him into the backseat. His eyes fluttered briefly. “Mommy, where are we going?” he mumbled sleepily.
“We’re just going on a little trip,” she whispered. She laid him down across the backseat, and then pulled the Afghan that Gladys Robles had knitted for her two years ago and covered him up with it. He was asleep again instantly.
How does he just fall asleep like that? She managed a slight smile at her sleeping son, and headed back into the house to make sure everything was okay. She ran through everything in her mind again like clockwork, ticking everything off; she had clothes, traveling essentials, car keys, and the money. The house was securely locked. Tom wasn’t due back from Chicago until Thursday night, one week from today. She couldn’t take the chance that she and Andy would be discovered missing when he returned home. Countless other possibilities could take place; Gladys and Henry could drop by for an unexpected visit; Meg Carr could call for another one of her monotonous gossip chats; one of Tom’s bosses could call. What was more likely to happen was that Tom would call tomorrow night, and by the following day would become alarmed when his calls were not answered. He would send somebody to the house. That’s when the manhunt would begin.
That gave her and Andy thirty-six hours to get as far away as possible.
She headed back into the garage and closed the door behind her. The dome light illuminated the way to the car, and she slid into the driver’s seat and closed the door. She sat behind the wheel for a moment, a nervous flutter beginning to rise in her belly. Come on, let’s get going! If you sit here any longer you really are going to lose your nerve and then you’ll never leave!
She inserted the key in the ignition and started the car. Then she pressed the button on the garage door opener that was clipped to the visor and winced as the mechanism groaned and stuttered. She looked out the rearview mirror at the dark silence of her neighborhood and slowly backed out of the garage. When the car was out she stopped briefly to check her surroundings; at three a.m., Puffin Avenue in Fountain Valley, California was deserted. A middle-class suburb chiseled between Huntington Beach and Garden Grove, it perched at the beginning of acres of orange groves and strawberry fields. The cul-de-sac she and Tom lived on lay on the outskirts of about a dozen similar cul-de-sacs. With the exception of the nearby San Diego freeway and the suburbs to the north, to the east was nothing but fields.