The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard Read Free Book Online Page B

gathering shadow, who doesn’t call your nearest? The child’s father?
    “Let’s call now,” Jimmy told her gently.
    Beth thought, well, I’m not going to.
    “And your folks? They’re all still here, huh?”
    Not them, either, thought Beth. No chance.
    Pat would not have left a three-year-old to wander off alone. He would have made quick, fail-safe preparations—waved Ellen over, or waited to leave Vincent and Ben with Jill. He would have given the three minutes that safety demanded, not waded off blunderingly the way Beth did, trying to cut corners, shave time, consolidate motions. He would not do what Beth did when she set a hot glass dish on a corner of the counter at home and tried to make one phone call and then let the dish fall. He was full of foresight.
    All their parents knew that.
    Beth said no, she would not bother their parents now.
    “I guess that’s probably best, actually,” said Jimmy. “Because you could have a family situation here, where the grandparents wanted the child—I mean, Bethie, I’m probably not exercising the kind of judgment I usually do because I know you and Pat and the Cappadoras. But who knows? Actually, my supervisor said the first thing I talked to her that we have to get somebody over to their house and talk to them.”
    “To Rosie and Angelo Cappadora’s?”
    “Right. Pat’s folks. I know them, but we don’t need to broadcast that we’re coming.”
    “You mean you think that Rosie and Angelo could have Ben?”
    “Anything’s possible. A family feud—”
    “Oh, that’s so nuts, Jimmy. Rosie and Angelo worship Ben.”
    “That’s just what I mean.”
    “And there’s nothing with Pat and me or anything. They don’t even know I’m in Chicago. Neither does my dad.”
    “People do strange things, Bethie.”
    Cop wisdom. Full-moon talk. This was all happening too quickly. All these people were too concerned all of a sudden. Couldn’t Jimmy see how time-wasting and absurd it would be to send a police car to Rosie and Angelo’s manicured ranch house to ask them if they’d stolen their grandson whom they didn’t even know was in town? Didn’t Jimmy grasp that she didn’t want to see her dad or Pat’s parents? To have them see her? She had always seemed unusual to Angelo, unusual to her father, perhaps even to Rosie, who liked everyone. But now, with this, if the parents came, there would be no escaping.
    Jimmy led her to the telephone, wrote down Beth’s home number in Madison, and dialed it for her. But when the phone began to burr, she felt as if she would have diarrhea, right there, and handed the receiver to Jimmy. Ellen came back and took her to the bathroom, and because Beth’s legs would not bend, actually helped her sit down. Then Beth went into the bar and ordered another vodka and tonic; she didn’t even attempt to pay. She had no idea where her purse was, or her shoes. Or Jill. Nick Palladino had come down and brought Vincent a small football on a rubberized string. Vincent was batting it up and down. Wayne and Nick and a couple of the cheerleaders’ husbands stood around the bar. Beth watched their jaws work up and down.
    “…to help,” said Nick.
    “Huh?” asked Beth.
    “She’s torn up. She wants to go home,” said Nick. “But I’ll come back.”
    Trisha wants to go home to the children, Beth thought. To their two little girls, make sure they are safe, hold them and smell them. She said, “No, you don’t have to. Unless you want to go to the party.”
    “Oh, Beth, I don’t think they’ll have the party,” said Nick. “At least, not unless they find Ben, you know?”
    So grave. So grave so fast. Grave enough, this perhaps-not-temporary loss of her child, to cancel a year-planned event for two hundred couples? If it’s so grave as that, Beth thought, logically I should cry. She tried to let her eyes fill. But they would only lock, pasted open, staring at Nick’s suit buttons, which had little, silver whales on them.
    “I’d