Chapter 11

Ginger

 

 

1986

 

 

Every day, a little more each day, I wondered what was wrong with me. What gaping character flaw made me so unlovable? Unredeemable? Unsalvageable?

For nine months I wondered this. That’s when my husband left me and took my beating heart with him, and I hadn’t stopped dying since that day. I died the afternoon I came home and found the bed made, Rick’s clothes gone, and a note with no forwarding address:

 

I tried, but I’m done. You’re a hard habit to break, but it’s time to go our separate ways. You’re better off without me.

 

Only Rick was unoriginal enough to use a snippet of song lyrics from a Chicago ballad to destroy me.

I died again as he had made himself invisible, a prodigal father, only to torture his son with a single return visit that lasted a long weekend. I died again when his son disappeared, when no one would help me, and again when the county threatened to take my home away. I was tired of dying inside.

Janet from aerobics class would ask me how I was doing. I couldn’t lie, but the reality was as stark and terrible as it had always been. There were not enough leg lifts or butt crunches to give me back my self-worth. There were not enough days, months, or years to make me okay.

The beach house felt especially lonely since Cole disappeared. He’d been missing for over three months now, and the police had long ago given up searching. They were still convinced he had drowned, but every bone in my body told me he was alive. Out there somewhere. Crying for his mommy.

Right now we would have been about to start bath time and a story before bed, and I’d be kissing his little knuckle and elbow dimples. From the living room we’d overhear Benny cackling at whoever just got slimed on You Can’t Do That on Television. On this porch, where I chased afternoons away cuddling Cole in this hammock, time stood still as I remembered him.

The late summer heat was intense, and central air-conditioning was a luxury I couldn’t afford, so I spent my afternoons reading under the palm trees in the backyard, watching the neighbors water their lawns, or head out to the beach. Until the neighbors started disappearing.

One by one the houses along Beachside Drive emptied out their residents, the dwellings left abandoned and rotting. Soon the smiling faces that I had spent my entire lifetime greeting vanished, their driveways empty patches of asphalt, their yards overgrown.

I’d been approached a couple times by a real estate tycoon offering to buy my property after I got my first overdue property tax bill that I could never afford, no matter how many shifts I worked at Debbie’s Diner. “I can offer you top dollar for this termite-infested pile of splinters, enough that you can live on!” he had promised while insulting my family’s handiwork. I’d had my fill of empty promises with my ex-husband Rick, thank you very much.

Corbin Roth resembled a snake oil salesman more than a condo developer, his oily black hair and beady eyes prickling the hairs on my neck. There was no way in hell I’d ever agree to part with the “pile of splinters” my grandfather had built, or the beachfront land that my father had passed down to me. I didn’t care if I was the last resident on the block—this was all that was left of my family legacy; all my memories of Cole lived here, and so would I.

I often imagined Cole finding his way home, with me here to greet him. I clung to this vision like it was my lifeline.

The Kit-Cat Klock, the black cat pendulum wall clock, smiled at me as his eyes and tail swiveled back and forth on the kitchen wall visible through the open back porch door. I was due to pick Benny up from school. Shutting the book I’d been reading—Stephen King’s IT, which had just been released, and I was lucky enough to grab the last available copy from the Bloodson Bay Public Library—I left it on my hammock, swiped my car keys off the back porch, and headed around the house. A row of palm trees and tall pampas grass gave my property a bit of privacy from the surrounding beach and the well-worn access path the locals used. Most of the beach bums had left for the evening as the heat was quickly dying with the sunset.

I was walking down the pathway around the side of the house toward where I parked my car in the driveway. A voice along the parallel access called out, “Hey, lady!”

Startled, I turned to look. I was used to people passing by, but usually they kept to themselves.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

Then I instantly felt afraid.

The speaker wore a ski mask—unusual here in the South, even in the dead of winter—and his pocket took the shape of a gun as he lifted it to chest-level and pointed it at me.

“Uhhh…this is a holdup! Give me your money!” he yelled.

My hands reflexively flew up in front of me, as if that would block a bullet.

“I…I don’t have any on me,” I tried to explain. My fingers tightened around the keys in my palm as I slid the shaft through my fingers, ready to jab him with its teeth if he got any closer. Not that he would need to. I’d brought a key to a gunfight!

I looked around for some type of weapon. Anything I could use to defend myself if he didn’t like my answer.

“You live here, don’t you?” He nodded toward my house, pocket gun still aimed at me.

“Yes.” My voice wavered as my gaze kept skimming, but the only thing within reach was a garden hose…which I now realized I had left on as a tiny drip leaked from the nozzle sprayer screwed into the hose end.

It was worth a try…

I jumped toward the hose, grabbed the nozzle, and aimed it at the robber, spraying him full-blast in the face. He turned and cowered, backing away from the blast as I started screaming for help. I stomped toward him, dragging the hose, still dousing him, until I was close enough to whack the nozzle over his skull again and again and again…until he turned and ran down the street, while I ran inside to call the cops.

Out of breath and out of my mind, I slammed the front door behind me, leaning against it to keep me upright. Eventually my legs crumpled beneath me as I sank to the floor, letting my mind spin out for a moment. I had almost died. I had almost orphaned my son. It was all too much, all too soon. I couldn’t handle any more chaos.

What was a robber doing out in broad daylight, on a public access beach? It didn’t make sense. And something vaguely familiar about the man struck me. Maybe it was his scrawny build. Maybe it was the way he moved. I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly about him made me think of the man on the beach the night Cole disappeared, but there it was. As blatant as if it were fact.

Spinning the olive-green rotary dial around seven times, I dialed the Bloodson Bay Police Department directly, as I had the number to the main desk memorized by now. I also knew all the officers by voice, so when Officer Martina Carillo picked up, I addressed her by her first name.

“Officer Martina, it’s me, Ginger Mallowan.”

I heard her sigh of frustration as she replied, “Miss Mallowan, we’ve already gone over this a million times. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing more we can do for you.”

“No, I’m not calling about Cole. I was just robbed—well, almost robbed. Right outside my home! I chased him off with a garden hose.”

Her voice instantly picked up energy. “A garden hose, huh? Pretty resourceful. Beachside Drive, right?”

“Yeah. The robber was on the short side, and skinny. He was wearing a mask, but I could tell he was white. Can you send a patrol car down here to see if they can catch him? Or at least make sure he’s gone?”

“One minute.” I heard a shuffle of paper in the background. “That’s the fourth robbery attempt we’ve had this week down there. And over a dozen calls about a man fitting that description loitering on the beach after curfew.”

The town had enforced a beach curfew after dark to deal with the recent crime wave. A nice notion, but criminals didn’t care about curfews.

“When did this neighborhood become crime central? Do you think it’s possible there’s a connection between this delinquent hoser and Cole’s disappearance?”

“I get it. You want a connection, and I want a connection for you if it meant we could bring your son home, but child abduction and a small-time thief are two very different things. It’s a stretch to assume the same person could be behind them both. And as much as you don’t want to admit it, Ginger, there’s no evidence that Cole was ever taken. It is just more likely that he—”

“I know, I know. You think he drowned. But I know my son. He knew how to handle the water.”

“He wasn’t even two years old.” Her tone softened with sympathy. “Kids that age don’t understand risk or danger, Ginger. I’m trying to lay it out for you truthfully, because I want you to be able to move on.”

“So that you don’t have to deal with me anymore?” I spat back.

“No, because I took this job to protect and serve our community. I’m trying to protect and serve you here, Ginger. I don’t want to see this destroy you.”

I needed her to at least look into it. I couldn’t give up on searching for Cole, not yet. I didn’t believe in coincidence. There had to be a reason all of this was happening at the same time—Cole’s disappearance, the robbery…I was being targeted. I just knew. But no one believed me. I wanted just one person to believe me.

“Officer Martina, you’re about to get married and start a family.” Yes, I got to know her that well as she had shared bits of her personal life with me during my many visits at the police station. I also knew that she would soon be Mrs. Carillo-Hughes. Hyphenated, she insisted, which I thought was pretty progressive. When she confessed that having a baby was at the top of her priority list, I found the fire I needed to light under her to get her to help me. I only needed to fan that flame. “Imagine if your child disappeared one night, but a few minutes before that you saw a skinny white male, around five-foot-nine, following you on the beach. Then a couple months later you’re held up at gunpoint—in a town where that never happens—by a skinny white male, around five-foot-nine.”

“Like I said, it could just be a really big coincidence.”

“Do you really think small-town Bloodson Bay is so crime-ridden that we’ve got a slew of skinny white male five-foot-nine thieves and child abductors running around? Or is it more likely that one horrible criminal who is really good at hiding his tracks is behind all this, and perhaps he’s targeting me?”

“Why would he target you specifically?” she threw back at me.

“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

When Officer Martina said nothing more, I knew she was now wondering the same thing.