Father Ronald McCallum sat nervously in his rental car. He’d parked where he could see the children filing out of school and heading for the rows of waiting buses. At intervals, teachers helped herd the kids in what seemed to be a well-honed procedure.
He no longer felt like a spy or a secret agent. He felt like a pedophile. He grimaced but continued his vigil.
He was soon rewarded. Matthew Younger drifted out of the school with a group of children. He strained forward, wanting to take note of which bus the boy boarded. Matthew boarded the second bus from the end. He waited nervously until the buses began to pull away from the curb, then started the car and put it in gear, his eyes glued to the back of Matthew’s bus. All the buses looked the same. What if he lost track of which one was Matthew’s?
Matthew’s bus exited the school lot and turned right, rumbling down Elm Street. Only two other buses followed, the rest all turned left.
He breathed a sigh of relief and eased his foot down on the accelerator.
After a few more blocks the other two buses veered off onto different streets, and Father McCallum found himself directly behind Matthew’s. He watched the kids through the back window of the bus. One of the children stared at him and made a face. He hit the brake, then heard a screech of tires behind him. He stepped on the gas again.
When the bus turned onto Alliance Avenue and began making stops, Father McCallum panicked. Every time the bus stopped he would have to stop right behind it — but that wouldn’t be safe. The kids in the back would surely say something about the old guy who was following them. He tried to slip his jacket off without veering all over the road. He decided he’d turn onto a side street and try to catch up to the bus using a different route. He put the turn signal on, then saw Matthew Younger step off the bus and onto the sidewalk.
He sucked in a breath. A tall, slender woman was waiting for the boy. There were no hugs or smiles. Matthew simply followed the woman when she turned and walked down a side road. The priest pulled up to the curb, and someone honked. His erratic driving hadn’t exactly gone unnoticed.
He looked down the side road and saw the boy following the woman — his mother, the priest guessed. Foster mother, he corrected, remembering what Samantha had told him. He got out of the car and started following Matthew.
It wasn’t long before the pair turned up a pathway and went through the front door of a weather-worn home. Father McCallum waited a few minutes then strolled past the house and noted the address: 55 Union Lane. It was a rough-looking single-storey house in desperate need of repairs. Obviously the Younger family didn’t have much in the way of money, but at least Father McCallum knew where the boy lived.
“Thank you, God,” he whispered, and headed to his rental.