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September carried the pot of coffee to the stained glass table, topped off her own "son-of-a-peach" mug, and poured Claire another cup.
The woman offered a tremulous smile, pushed black curly hair out of her blue eyes, and took a sip. Shadow nudged her with his nose, and Claire tentatively patted his head. "You’d think he’s mean with that scary ragged ear, but he's actually nice." She sounded surprised.
"Shadow and I consider that a badge of honor." The gunshot that took Shadow's ear tip could have killed her instead. Shadow had every reason to be suspicious of strangers, yet he still met the world with wide-eyed puppy optimism. She shouldn't be surprised he'd responded to Claire's tears the same way he did hers. Dogs read and reacted to emotions much more strongly than people imagined. Shadow had a gift for knowing when and how to soothe distress.
"Thanks for not calling the police." Claire stopped petting Shadow, and he whined and nosed her hand.
"It’s only a reprieve, until you tell me what this is all about." September took another swallow. Something told her she needed to get fully caffeinated to meet this day.
"I drove straight through the night, thank God the roads were good this time. So tired, I'm not thinking straight, or I never would've come into your home. I've never done anything like that before." Claire's swollen eyes must have cried miles of tears. She suffered from terminal bed head, endearing on a youngster but tragic on an adult. The constellation of freckles dusting her nose and cheeks stood out in stark contrast to a ghost-pale complexion born of weeks of worry. "There's a lot of things I've never done before. Things change when you have kids." The words were bittersweet.
"You got that right." September rose and crossed to Shadow's food bowl. So many things these days reminded her of Steven, her sister's autistic son. She'd first trained Shadow to be Steven's service dog. Legally, she had no kids, other than the four-legged wonders she lived with. And she liked it that way.
Shadow rose, shook himself, and eagerly headed to the filled dish September set on the floor. "Must be pretty important to drive from Chicago to break into my house. What's the deal?" She opened a drawer, took out a bottle of pills and rattled it, and Macy appeared in the stairway. "Don't mind me, I need to feed and medicate the troops."
Claire stared as the shaggy twenty-pound feline gave her a cursory once over, pointedly ignored her further, and leaped from a standing start to the top of the refrigerator. "Like I said, I tried to call you. Left a bunch of messages since last November, and never got an answer."
September froze. So, that's what this was about. "Macy, pill time. Open." The cat obligingly opened his mouth to accept the tiny pill. September made a "click" sound with her tongue, and Macy trilled with eagerness for the treat reward.
"Did that cat just. . .? Never mind." Claire turned away, swallowed a slug of coffee, and then studied the empty cup as though it held answers to the universe. "My daughter Tracy just turned six. She's autistic."
Like Steven. "I can't help you." She'd put that horror behind her, and wanted no reminders. Besides, it was a police matter now. September filled Macy's bowl with food, and set it on top of the refrigerator out of dog nose-sniffing range.
"My husband and I, we prayed for a miracle. And we got it."
"Claire, I can't help you." She stared into the sink, refused to turn around. Her sister April prayed for that same miracle for Steven, and it nearly got them both killed.
"They took all our savings; we'll lose our house. Maybe our marriage." She knuckled her eyes, and her voice turned fierce. "But it's all worth it because we got our Tracy. Our little girl."
September finally faced Claire. "But that has nothing to do with me. Don't you understand? I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do, even if I wanted to." September resented Claire's stinging litany. "My sister pulled me into that mess. Steven got out of the hospital, the psych ward, last month, and April's still recovering from being shot." September crossed to the smaller woman, and spoke with gentle firmness. "People died, Claire. I'm sorry about your daughter, but Tracy isn't the only one hurt, and I can't go back in time and make it go away. Believe me, I wish I could. At least the people responsible are in jail." She took a breath, knowing what Claire wanted. "There's no more medicine."
"You're wrong." Claire straightened in her chair, and pushed the cup aside. "Not everyone is in jail. That's why I'm here. Those of us at the last Rebirth Gathering got a supply of the medicine, and a promise we'd get refills as needed. We get the medicine every six weeks by mail as long as we pay." She sounded bitter.
The news hit September like a gut punch. "The Ghost? Gerald Baumgarten? He's still selling that poison?"
"DOCTOR Baumgarten." Claire corrected her, still defending the lunatic. "It's not poison. He saved my daughter, and hundreds like her, from being locked inside themselves. I'll be forever grateful for that. He says the cost went up because he had to go underground." Her chin jutted out with accusation.
Shadow leaned against September’s thigh, and she absently stroked the dog's neck. He could tell when her stress levels skyrocketed, and right now, Mt. Vesuvius was a sparkler in comparison.
Claire's voice shook. "Three nights ago, Tracy disappeared, and it's your fault."
September’s legs turned to Jell-O. Another child lost, needing to be found? She couldn't play that emotional hide and seek game, not again.
"I can't call the police. They'd take Tracy away. They only care about catching the Doctor. They'd be like you. Prejudiced because of what happened, never mind our children's needs. I can't let that happen, not to Tracy, not to any of the kids." Claire clenched her fists, clearly struggling for control.
Shadow whined and pushed against September. "I'm sorry, I truly am. But you're wasting time. How could a six-year-old get all the way here from Chicago?" She'd escaped that city nearly a decade ago, and would never willingly return. Bad enough she visited the place in her nightmares. She’d never move forward as long as the past kept dragging her back. Her mouth turned sour, signaling an imminent flashback, and September sank to the floor and opened her arms to Shadow's insistent nudging. She grabbed him like a furry life preserver.
"Tracy came here. Where it all began." Claire sank to the floor next to September, and spoke with a mother’s passion, begging for her child's life. "Soon as we discovered her gone, I called my friend Elaine. Her son Lenny also got the treatment last November, and he disappeared the same time. We think they’re together."
It made no sense. "Kids on the Spectrum often wander. You can't know they're here." That's why she'd originally trained Shadow, to keep Steven safe. Shadow only became her service dog when Steven spent months in the hospital after the drug fiasco. "Just call the police. You wouldn't need to say anything about their meds."
"Lenny took Elaine's van. We know they're on the road, and we know they planned to come here." She pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket, smoothed it, and handed it to September. "I don't know why they're here, but Lenny left this note."
September reluctantly took the page, torn none too neatly from a spiral bound notepad, and smoothed it against the slate floor. It featured a beautifully rendered drawing with a few block letters. She saw a van traveling on a road, complete with patched tires and rust spots. A boy with short brown hair sat in the driver's seat, while a pretty girl with freckles and black pigtails peered out the passenger window, holding a green dinosaur in one hand and pill bottle filled with blue and white capsules in the other. The detail amazed her.
"It says, 'No worry Tracy and me fix.' Nothing about coming here." September tried to give back the page.
Claire tapped one corner of the page at the end of the highway. "There, see that? They're both on the highway, Lenny driving and Tracy with her medication and Grooby, the dinosaur. And there at the end of the road, the destination."
September stood up. "It's a city, with the red sunset reflecting in the windows. Lenny's a talented boy, but it could be any city."
"Look closer. Lenny's art communicates both literally and symbolically. Sometimes it's hard to understand but Elaine's gotten very good at reading his messages." Claire stabbed the paper again. "There are exactly twelve pills left in Tracy's bottle, and they left three days ago so she has only two or three days left before they're gone. You know what happens when they stop taking the meds. I know you do. It happened to Steven, I read about it in all the news reports. "
September flinched. Other children, including Steven, suffered psychosis when the medicine stopped. Her nephew stole his father's antique gun, wounded the Doctor's mother, and a near miss blasted Shadow's ear. Only intensive therapy over the past several months allowed Steven to leave the Dallas hospital but he'd never be a normal child.
"Please, September. Look again. And then if you don't see what Elaine and I saw, I'll ... I'll go away and leave you alone." Her voice broke.
Reluctantly, September examined the paper. A frantic parent saw special meaning in everything, and she had no wish to deny that hope, and hurt Claire any further.
Damn Gerald Baumgarten to hell. His accomplices including his recovered mother awaited trial, but he'd escaped, disappeared despite the manhunt. She wondered if the authorities knew the lunatic’s vision survived, and that he continued to devastate families with his quack drug, while sucking them dry of hope and funds. No parent deserved such anguish. Now Claire wanted to drag September back into the nightmare.
"Right there, at the city destination. In the windows. I saw it driving in over the hill into town as the sun came up over the buildings. What do you see?" Claire prompted, eyes impossibly bright.
Squinting, September held the page closer and then sucked in a breath. Rendered in intricate detail, Lenny had drawn signature buildings of Heartland, Texas in stylized but recognizable detail. To make the point irrefutable, what she'd thought to be sunlight reflection instead named the place. In the window of each building shined a tiny red heart.
Claire smiled with triumph. “You see it, don’t you? You do.”
September looked from the page to the woman, and Claire’s expression acknowledged her triumph; gaining a reluctant ally. Even if she’d wanted to, September couldn’t deny that Claire had won this round.
Hands on hips and voice fierce, Claire stood as tall as her petite frame allowed. "You're going to find my daughter."
