For several seconds, nobody spoke. The ceiling fan turned above us with a faint mechanical click, moving warm air through a kitchen that no longer felt remotely familiar.
“Somebody is watching the house,” I repeated.
David gave the smallest nod.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked at Richard.
He did not appear surprised.
Neither did Chloe.
That told me more than David’s answer.
“You all know about this.”
“Know about what?” David asked.
“The SUV. Liam disappearing. The house being transferred into your name. Whatever happened to Chloe’s wrist.”
Chloe pulled her son closer.
David’s attention shifted toward her sleeve.
For one instant, something dark moved through his expression.
Then it disappeared.
“Her wrist has nothing to do with this.”
“Interesting. I didn’t ask you.”
“Sarah.”
“No. You don’t get to say my name like I’m embarrassing you at dinner. Where is our son?”
David rubbed the back of his neck. It was an old habit, one I remembered from arguments during our marriage. He did it when deciding which version of the truth would cause him the least trouble.
“I believe Liam left because he thought staying here was dangerous.”
“You believe?”
“Yes.”
“You’re his father.”
“That doesn’t mean he tells me everything.”
“He apparently tells you more than he tells me.”
David looked away.
That was enough.
I reached for the handle of my suitcase.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To find him.”
“You don’t know where he is.”
“I know where he works.”
The reaction lasted less than a second.
His eyes narrowed.
Then his face reset.
I saw it anyway.
“You know where he works,” I said.
“Of course I know.”
“Then you know where he’s staying.”
“No.”
“You hesitated.”
“I’m trying to keep you from making this worse.”
I laughed softly. “You stole my house and somehow I’m the dangerous variable?”
“I did not steal anything.”
“The county says you own it.”
“That isn’t the same statement.”
“Only you could say something like that with a straight face.”
Richard stepped toward us. “Sarah, listen to him for once.”
I turned.
“For once?”
Richard’s expression changed, but I kept going.
“I listened to David for twelve years. I listened when he said I was imagining our financial problems. I listened when he said I was overreacting to women who somehow kept texting him after midnight. I listened when he said our divorce would be easier if I stopped asking questions. I listened long enough.”
David flinched.
Good.
There were moments when restraint was wisdom. There were other moments when restraint merely made dishonest people comfortable.
I picked up the bakery box.
“Why are you taking that?” Chloe asked.
I looked down at it.
I had almost forgotten I was carrying cookies.
“Because I brought them for Liam.”
The answer sounded ridiculous in the circumstances, but leaving them behind felt worse.
I walked toward the front door.
David followed.
“Sarah.”
I kept moving.
“Sarah, if you go looking for him openly, you may lead somebody straight to him.”
That stopped me.
I turned. “You just told me you don’t know who is watching.”
“I don’t.”
“Then how do you know they care about Liam?”
He said nothing.
There it was again.
Not ignorance.
Selection.
David knew pieces of this story and had decided I was entitled only to the ones he chose.
I opened the door.
Heat pressed against me. The afternoon sun flashed off the windshield of the gray SUV.
“Whose vehicle is that?”
Nobody answered.
I walked down the steps.
The SUV sat at the curb rather than in the driveway as I had first assumed, angled beneath a live oak. Its engine appeared to be off. I could not see through the windshield.
I took out my phone and photographed the license plate.
Behind me, David said, “Don’t.”
I looked over my shoulder. “Why?”
“You’re drawing attention.”
“To the people who are supposedly already watching us?”
He had no answer.
I photographed it again.
Then I got into my rental and drove away.
I watched the rearview mirror for the first ten minutes.
The SUV did not follow.
That should have reassured me.
It didn’t.
Liam worked evenings at a seafood restaurant several miles from campus. He had taken the job because, according to him, tuition taught economics theoretically while rent taught it efficiently.
The restaurant was quiet when I arrived. Dinner service had not begun. Chairs were still upside down on several tables, and the air smelled of citrus cleaner and frying oil.
A young hostess looked up from a stack of menus.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Liam Mitchell.”
Her expression changed.
It was slight, but after the afternoon I had just experienced, I noticed every hesitation.
“Is he working tonight?”
“Who are you?”
“His mother.”
Her face softened.
That frightened me more.
“Give me a second.”
She disappeared through the swinging kitchen doors.
A man in his forties emerged shortly afterward, drying his hands on a towel.
“You’re Liam’s mom?”
“Yes. Sarah.”
“I’m Ben. I manage evenings.”
“Is Liam here?”
“Not yet.”
“Has he been coming to work?”
Ben studied me.
“He’s been taking every shift he can.”
The answer loosened something in my chest.
Liam was alive.
Working.
Functioning.
“When did you last see him?”
“Last night.”
“Did he seem all right?”
Ben’s hesitation returned.
“He seemed tired.”
“What kind of tired?”
“The kind where a nineteen-year-old—”
“Eighteen.”
“Sorry. The kind where an eighteen-year-old volunteers for closing shifts nobody wants.”
I glanced toward the kitchen doors. “Do you know where he’s staying?”
Ben looked toward the hostess.
She suddenly became very interested in organizing menus.
“If Liam asked you not to tell me, I understand,” I said. “But I flew here today expecting to find him in the house I bought for him. Instead, my ex-husband’s sister is living there with her children, the county record says my ex owns the property, and Liam’s phone goes straight to voicemail.”
Ben stopped drying his hands.
“What?”
“I’m not asking you to violate his trust. I’m asking you to help me make sure my son is safe.”
He watched me for several seconds.
Then he said, “Wait here.”
He returned to the kitchen.
I stood beside the host station, listening to silverware being sorted somewhere out of sight.
The bakery box was still in my hands.
I put it on a nearby table.
Ben returned carrying a folded piece of paper.
“Liam left this with me about two weeks ago.”
“For whom?”
“You.”
My fingers went cold.
“He knew I was coming?”
“No. He said if a woman named Sarah Mitchell ever showed up here asking questions, I should give her this.”
That was worse.
Liam had not predicted my visit.
He had prepared for it.
I unfolded the paper.
There was no letter.
No explanation.
Only an address.
Beneath it, three words had been written in Liam’s hurried block printing.
COME ALONE. PLEASE.
I read them twice.
“Did he say anything else?”
Ben shook his head. “Only that I shouldn’t give it to his father.”
My eyes lifted.
“He specifically said David?”
“Yes.”
“Did David come here?”
Ben’s mouth tightened.
“Once.”
“When?”
“Maybe three weeks ago.”
“What did he want?”
“Liam.”
“Was Liam here?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“They argued outside.”
“About what?”
“I couldn’t hear everything.”
“What could you hear?”
Ben hesitated.
“Your son told him he wasn’t going back to the house.”
My pulse quickened.
“And David?”
“He said something like, ‘You don’t understand what you’re involved in.’”
That sounded exactly like David.
Always the holder of superior information.
Always the person deciding what everyone else was allowed to understand.
“Did David threaten him?”
“Not directly.”
“What does that mean?”
“He didn’t yell. Didn’t touch him. But Liam came back inside looking like he’d just escaped something.”
I folded the paper carefully.
“Thank you.”
“Mrs. Mitchell.”
I stopped.
Ben lowered his voice.
“Liam’s a good kid.”
“I know.”
“He’s also been scared.”
I nodded because if I tried to answer, I might cry in front of a stranger.
Outside, I sat in the rental car and entered the address into navigation.
Forty-three minutes.
Inland.
I called Liam.
Voicemail.
I texted him.
I’m coming. Tell me if I shouldn’t.
I waited.
Nothing.
The sensible thing would have been to call the police.
I knew that.
But I also knew my son had gone to considerable effort to leave me instructions that said COME ALONE.
If he believed the police were safe, he could have gone to them himself.
That thought disturbed me enough to keep driving.
The tourist neighborhoods disappeared behind me. Restaurants and waterfront hotels gave way to auto shops, laundromats, low apartment buildings, and streets where afternoon heat shimmered above cracked pavement.
I checked my mirrors repeatedly.
No gray SUV.
At least none I recognized.
The address led to a three-story brick apartment building with rust around the gutters and an exterior staircase that looked older than Liam.
I parked across the street.
This was where my son had apparently chosen to live while someone else occupied the house I had bought him.
Anger pushed me toward the building.
Fear slowed me before I reached the stairs.
Apartment 3C had no name beside the buzzer.
I climbed to the third floor and knocked.
Nothing.
I knocked again.
“Liam?”
Silence.
I pressed my ear close to the door.
A lock moved.
Then another.
The door opened perhaps three inches.
One brown eye appeared through the gap.
Then the door opened wider.
“Mom?”
Everything I had prepared to say vanished.
Liam had lost weight.
Dark circles lay beneath his eyes. His hair had grown longer than he usually tolerated, and he wore a faded college sweatshirt I remembered buying him during his senior year of high school.
But what frightened me most was not how he looked.
It was the way he looked behind me before letting me inside.
“Did anyone follow you?”
I reached for him. “Liam—”
“Mom. Did anybody follow you?”
“I don’t think so.”
His face tightened.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Your father said almost the same thing.”
Liam went still.
“You saw Dad?”
“Yes.”
“At the house?”
“Yes.”
He pulled me inside and locked the door.
Then he slid a chair beneath the handle.
I stared at it.
The apartment contained almost nothing. A mattress lay directly on the floor. A folding table stood near the window. There were two mismatched chairs, a mini refrigerator, several grocery bags, and a stack of textbooks.
No television.
No photographs.
No sign that an eighteen-year-old planned to stay.
I turned toward my son.
“What happened?”
He looked at the bakery box still tucked beneath my arm.
For one strange second, his face became the face I knew.
“You brought cookies?”
My throat tightened.
“Yes.”
He almost smiled.
Then he looked toward the blinds.
The smile disappeared.
“Mom,” he said quietly, “you shouldn’t have come here.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: My Son Had Been Living Behind Two Locks, and the Notebook Under His Mattress Explained Why He No Longer Trusted His Father
I Expected an Empty Driveway and My Son’s Smile, but the House I Bought Him Already Belonged to Someone Else
Part 2 of 46
