“I did.” He smiled. “I wanted to buy her an engagement ring but I thought it was a bit early for that.”
“A tad,” Kate said. “You got her the necklace?”
“Yes. I used all my savings from years of grandparent gifts and went to the local jewelry store. Mr. Hall was selling necklaces with initials on them.” Jack chuckled. “I had a hard time deciding if I should give her my initials or hers. Mr. Hall persuaded me that my young lady would probably prefer her own name around her neck.”
“Did you have guests at the party?” Kate asked.
“Absolutely not! When it came to Cheryl, I was totally selfish. Just us. That’s all I wanted. I bought a little cake from the bakery but didn’t put a name on it. The women there were curious, so I said it was for my father.”
Jack closed his eyes for a moment. “Cheryl and I sat right here, on these steps, and had our own little party. She loved the necklace and said she’d wear it forever. I made a video of her cutting the cake. She acted like it was a newscast.” He held up his hand like headlines. “‘Cheryl Morris’s sixteenth birthday rocks the world. World peace is declared.’ She was very funny.”
Jack’s voice had a catch in it. “What happened was all my fault. I think the bakery told Roy that I’d bought a cake. Whatever happened, he came looking for me. I was so excited about her birthday that I’d left my bike at the front of the house. Roy saw it.”
He hesitated. “Cheryl and I were eating cake and laughing when Roy showed up. He was a real a-hole. He’d had just enough beers to put him in the stage of ridiculing us. A few more and he would have been using his fists.”
“He made fun of you,” Sara said. It wasn’t a question.
“He humiliated us. Said we were fooling around with each other. He...” Jack let out a breath. “At the time, I didn’t know what he meant, but I remember his words. He said that it looked like Cheryl was going to be just like her mother. He looked her up and down and said he’d sure like to be her first customer. Then he looked at me and said that maybe it was too late to be number one.”
“Yeow,” Kate said. “Nasty!”
“Roy was,” Sara said. “He never missed an opportunity to hurt someone.”
“Cheryl ran into the house and slammed the door. Roy...” Jack took a moment to calm himself. “When he left, Roy backed his truck over my bike. He said he had enough problems without me knocking up the town slut’s daughter. He said I was never to see her again.”
Kate swallowed. “And all this when you were eleven years old.”
“What happened after that?” Sara asked.
“I called my mom and she came and got me. I said I never wanted to see Roy again. When Cheryl didn’t show up at school, I thought it was because of me. The next Saturday, I walked to her house.”
“But she wasn’t here,” Sara said.
“The storyteller knows.” Jack affectionately kissed the top of her head. “Cheryl and her mother were gone. The house was locked but I could see that the inside was a mess and it was empty. I walked all the way to the sheriff’s office and told old Captain Edison that my friend had been kidnapped.”
“He was a nice man,” Sara said.
“He was,” Jack agreed. “The deputies were laughing at me, but Captain Edison treated me with respect. He let me ride in the front seat of his patrol car and we came here, to this house. I don’t remember how he did it, but he got the door open and we went inside. The house had been ransacked. Clothes, personal items, kitchen things—they were all gone.”
“What about Henry’s camera?” Sara asked.
“Gone. Captain Edison told me that sometimes there were things in adult’s lives that made them need to leave a place quickly. He figured that’s what happened here. And he said that Roy had...” Jack stopped talking.
“What did he do?” Sara asked.
“The captain was kind but I didn’t understand it all then. He said that Roy had told him Cheryl was trying to do unlawful things to his underage son. He said Roy yelled that the Lachlan sheriff’s department was so busy spying onhimthat they ignored abuse that was going on right under their noses.”
“That poor girl,” Kate said.
“That sounds like something Roy would do,” Sara said. “He always said that everyone was worse than he was—but they weren’t. Did he spread gossip about young Cheryl?”
Jack took a deep breath. “Probably so, but no one said anything to me. I think gossip was why Captain Edison thought it made sense that they’d left town in a hurry.”
“What happened after that?” Kate asked.
“Nothing—except that my life changed. I told Dad—Henry—that I’d lost the camera. To pay for it, I started working for him at his construction company. That’s when I found out that I loved building things. It was because of Cheryl that I found my life’s work. Renewing these old houses has been good for me, and Dad taught me everything. He—” Jack gave himself a few moments to quiet himself. “After Roy died, I found the video camera in the back of a closet in his house.”
Both Kate and Sara gasped.
