When Denver failed to make the meeting with Regan, my faith slipped off the mountain. First I thought of calling the highway patrol to report an accident. But I changed my mind as I imagined the dispatcher breaking into a belly laugh when I told what I’d done. Besides, Denver was supposed to have crossed three states, and I had no idea where to tell the authorities to look for him.
It ate at me that Denver had all my numbers but that I had not heard from him in two days. I remembered how wide his eyes got when I handed over the $700—it must have seemed to him a small fortune. I flashed back to a lecture I’d gotten from Don Shisler about the fate of a buck in the hands of a bum. Maybe the temptation had been too great.
Maybe he’d taken the money, the truck, and Regan’s stuff and set up housekeeping in Mexico. Or Canada. He’d always said he wanted to see Canada.
I hated to tell Deborah that Denver was missing, but I knew she could hear, each time Regan and I touched base on the telephone, that our voices had climbed the octaves from concern to worry to panic. So I went into the bedroom and told her.
Her response was vintage Deborah: “Well, why don’t you stop worrying and let’s start praying for Denver’s safety?”
I knelt beside the bed, and we held hands and prayed. We’d been like that for only a few minutes when the phone rang. It was Regan: “He’s here!”