“I need to go out again,” Lisa told him.
Purdue got off the sofa and ran to her. “No! No, Lisa, don’t do that.”
“I have to.”
“If you go out, we’ll never see each other again. I know it. Something will happen. Don’t leave me alone!”
“I won’t let anyone hurt you, Purdue.”
“But I want to stay together. I want to stay with you. Let’s go away! Let’s go to Canada! Both of us. Take me there, take me away from here, and we’ll be safe. We can cross the street and hop on the train. Just like I did.”
Lisa shook her head. “Denis won’t let us leave. If we go, he’ll keep looking for us. Sooner or later, he’ll find us — he’ll find you — and I won’t let that happen. I need to stop him. I need to put an end to this. That’s the only way to protect you.”
The boy buried his face in her chest and hung on to her. She could tell that he was crying silently. She held him, stroking his hair, trying to comfort him. Then she felt his little body stiffen with resolve, and when he separated himself from her, he looked older than his ten years. He had that serious, quizzical face again, the face that seemed to understand the world better than she did.
“I told you that I would never be able to leave this place,” he said.
“Don’t talk like that. Nothing bad is going to happen to you. I won’t let it.”
“Something bad already did happen. I’m only here to run away from it.”
“I can’t change what happened to you before,” Lisa said, “but I can fix this. I just need to gather more evidence against Denis. He’s a powerful man, so I need something that will make people listen to me. Things I can take to Will at the FBI. I need to be able to prove what really happened.”
“So where are you going?”
“I’m going to find the place where you were hiding two nights ago. I want to see if they left anything behind. Anything that proves what they did to that man.”
“How are you going to find out where I was?”
“Well, actually, I’m pretty sure I already know. Denis owns a cabin by the river. Danny and I used to sneak in there all the time. I’m sure Fiona knew about it, too, and if she did, then so did Nick Loudon. I’m betting that’s where he went.”
Purdue nodded, but his voice was sad. “Okay.”
“I won’t be long. I promise.”
“Okay,” he said again.
“It’s almost dark. Are you scared of the dark?”
“No. I’m not scared.”
“Good. Remember the plan, okay? If you hear anything outside, you go back down to the crawl space in the basement. Stay there. Wait until I get back. I will come back for you. Nothing will keep me away. You got that?”
“Okay,” he said one more time, but his voice had the strange artifice of a robot, the way it had in the very beginning. He sounded detached now. He was separating himself from the fear of what was going on, digging a hole for himself.
Lisa hugged him tightly. “Thank you, Purdue.”
“For what?”
“For showing up at my house. You may not understand this, but I needed you every bit as much as you needed me. Sometimes things happen for a reason. I really believe that. It’s not an accident that we found each other.”
She turned for the back door, but the boy called after her.
“Lisa?”
“What is it?”
“If I’m not here when you get back, it’s okay. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. Really.”
“Purdue, do not leave this house. Understand? You stay right here.” She went back and knelt in front of him. “Are we clear about that? I don’t want you getting any foolish ideas in your head, like hopping on a train and leaving me behind. Got it? You don’t need to protect me. That’s not what this is about. Adults protect kids, not the other way around.”
“Not always.”
“Well, maybe not always, but this time, that’s the way it has to be. I’ll be back as soon as I can, and everything will be okay. The only thing you need to do is not go anywhere. If you disappear on me, I’m going to be very upset. We’re in this together, you and me.”
“You and me,” Purdue agreed.
Lisa kissed the top of his head. She framed the boy’s face in her memory, just in case he was right, just in case something happened to her and all her promises were made of sand. Then she grabbed Madeleine’s coat and headed for the backyard.
Keri McDonnell had read Thief River Falls.
Actually, she’d read it twice. First she’d read it for herself, and then her book club had read it, too. It was probably her favorite book ever. So when she’d found out that the house she and her husband were renting was the same house in which Lisa Power had actually written Thief River Falls, she thought it was the coolest thing ever.
She remembered an interview in which Lisa had talked about writing the book out in the backyard next to the kiddie pool and the jungle gym. Whenever she was sitting out back with her seven-year-old daughter, she thought about Lisa in this same place, typing words into her laptop. It made her feel as if there was a connection between them.
Keri knew that Lisa’s parents had died, and she knew that Lisa still owned the house next door, although it had remained empty for the past year. Sooner or later she assumed that Lisa would show up, if only to start getting the place ready for sale. She wanted to be there when she did, so she could talk to her. It wasn’t that Keri was a creepy fan, but Thief River Falls was a mother’s book, and Keri was a mother, too. She wanted the chance to tell Lisa how much it had meant to her.
The women in her book club thought she was crazy, but most of them had already met Lisa at the library. Keri worked evenings and weekends as an EMT, so she was rarely able to go to events.
Today, she’d kept a close eye on the house next door. She had a feeling, she just had a feeling, that someone was there. Once, when she glanced at the windows, she thought she’d seen the blinds moving. And outside, in the back, there were footprints in the snow. That didn’t mean anything, because kids were always sneaking around the neighborhood yards playing games, but Keri was paying extraspecial attention to the house anyway.
Her kitchen smelled of chocolate chip cookies. She’d been baking for two hours, because her daughter, Emma, had a party at school the next day. Emma had been helping with the baking process, but her help usually consisted of sneaking spoonfuls of cookie dough when Keri wasn’t looking. Now her daughter was in the family room, dancing with Elmo and running around on a sugar rush.
Keri checked her watch. One last batch of cookies was in the oven, but she needed to hurry. Her shift would be starting soon, and she still needed to shower. As she waited for the timer to ding, she grabbed one of the cookies off the cooling rack and munched it while gazing through the window at the neighboring house. She felt sad for empty houses. Houses were supposed to be lived in. They were supposed to have kids. She wished that Emma had a next-door neighbor she could play with.
Keri’s eyes narrowed as she watched the house.
Was that a shadow? Was that someone moving around inside? She leaned over the sink and took a closer look, but she decided that her eyes were playing tricks on her. It was getting dark, and the wind kept throwing sheets of snow across the glass that made it hard to see.
Ding.
The cookies were done. She took them from the oven and moved them to the cooling rack, and then she washed her hands and switched into high gear. She didn’t have much time. She flew into the family room, where her daughter was playing, took a few seconds to do a little dance with her and Elmo, and then said, “I have to take a shower, okay?”