“Gone from the picture, near as I can tell,” said Marston. “Not looking for you. At the very least, he wasn’t bugging Roebuck for updates.”
Kell wished he could tell himself he was surprised that his dad had given up on him, that he didn’t seem to care that Kell had been missing and now was found. But as for his mom—
“Did you talk to her?”
“No.” A firm, quick shake of his head. “Roebuck wanted me to give him your number so he could pass it on to her. But I said—” Another hard swallow, and a shaky breath. “It was your choice to call her or not call her. Your choice, and no one else’s.”
Not quite sure why Marston was so upset, Kell reached for and pulled out the cellphone from his back pocket, now understanding why Marston had given it to him.
“But why are we up here?” Kell asked, waving his cellphone at the expansive view like a baton.
“Cell reception’s one hundred percent up here,” said Marston, still very clearly, still not looking at Kell. “No chance of the call being dropped, so you can do what you need to do. Or not. The choice is yours.”
With that, he walked back to the truck, passing it to go stand in the growing shadow of the roofline of the rebuilt cabin. He had his arms crossed over his chest and looked as though he would have wanted to bring his cowboy hat so he could duck beneath the rim of that and not show anybody what he was thinking.
Which left Kell standing on the slight hillock, in the bright sunshine, overlooking the green slope of trees going down into the valley and the glittery blue of the river leading into Half Moon Lake. If he allowed himself to forget that there was a cabin, a truck, and a stone-faced unsmiling man behind him, he could pretend he was all alone, the way it had felt since that awful day he’d been honest with his parents.
Except he wasn’t alone. Marston was there, like he always had been and always would be. Waiting. Wanting what was best for Kell, so, with a decisive shove, he put his cellphone in his back pocket and marched over to stand in front of Marston, so he couldn’t possibly pretend Kell wasn’t right there.
“What?” asked Marston, his lips barely moving.
“I’m going to call her,” said Kell, forging ahead as if it didn’t look like Marston couldn’t give a fuck what Kell was going to do because he knew differently.
Marstondidcare, and it just might be that he thought Kell would go back to his mom to live with her, leaving Marston far behind. Which, of course, was the last thing he wanted to do. He didn’t know what would happen with his mom, but he knew he didn’t want to leave Marston’s side, not for any reason. He just needed to make sure Marston knew that.
“Will you stand next to me while I call her?” he asked. “Will you stay with me?”
Kell saw the melting in Marston’s eyes, the way the gold-blue color darkened, as if with resolve, Marston determined to do whatever Kell wanted from him. Even if it hurt—which made sense. Marston was afraid Kell would leave him. Was just about sure of it, in fact, and was steeling himself for it.
“Hey,” said Kell as he tugged on Marston’s sleeve. “Let’s go stand over there. Together.”
Marston’s whole body was tight like newly strung barbed wire, but he went with Kell and together they stood on the little hillock as Kell pulled out his cellphone and looked at Marston’s cellphone, at the list of contacts where, so very oddly, Kell could see the name of his mom and her new, never-before-seen phone number.
He dialed it, doing his best to keep his fingers from shaking but failing miserably.
The phone rang, a crystal clear signal, and then there was a click that echoed in Kell’s ears. And a voice.
“Hello?” asked a voice, so very familiar and yet new at the same time. “This is Janet Dodson.”
“Mom?”
He was young again, maybe ten years old. Calling from a sleepover, one of his first. He wasn’t homesick, but two of the boys, bigger, held back a grade the year before and who shouldn’t have been there, were smoking.
The basement den smelled awful as the smoke trailed around it, unable to get out of the closed basement windows or the door to the upstairs. They were laughing and flicking ashes around and he was afraid they would light their sleeping bags on fire—he’d wanted to go home so he’d gone upstairs and, with a shaking voice, called his mom, asking her to come get him.
Don’t say it’s because of the cigarettes, Mom, he’d pleaded.Say it’s for something else.
Which she had. When she’d shown up at the front door, knocking loudly at eleven o’clock at night, she’d explained that they were all leaving for Kell’s Aunt Miriam’s in the morning and she’d forgotten. How foolish she was, terribly sorry, but Kell needs to get his things and come along.
She’d not even yelled at him when they got home or woken up his dad. Just told Kell to take a shower to get the smoke smell off him and made him some hot milk with vanilla in it to help him fall asleep.
And in the morning it was as if none of it had happened. Nobody at school teased him for his mom showing up like that, and while nobody had lit themselves on fire, he was leery about sleepovers from that point forward.
“Mom, it’s Kell.”
“Kell?” Her voice, so familiar to him, shook. “Are you okay? I just got the call from Mr. Roebuck. He said you’d been in prison but that you were out now. On parole on a ranch? Or it was a valley—”
“Mom.”
