Free No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay Page A

“For meteors?”
    I waved my hand dismissively. “It’s nothing.”
    “You think?” the doctor asked.
    “Oh yeah,” I said. “She’s just very interested in the solar system, in space, other planets.”
    “But you did buy her the telescope.”
    “Sure.”
    “Because she’s worried an asteroid will destroy the Earth,” Dr. Kinzler reminded me.
    “It’s helped put her fears at ease, plus she uses it to look at the stars and the planets,” I said. “And the neighbors, too, for all I know.” I smiled.
    “How about her anxiety level overall? Would you say it’s still somewhat heightened, or is it dissipating?”
    “Dissipating,” I said, as Cynthia said, “Still up there.”
    Dr. Kinzler’s eyebrows went up a notch. I hated it when they did that.
    “I think she’s still anxious,” Cynthia said, glancing at me. “She’s very fragile at times.”
    Dr. Kinzler nodded thoughtfully. She was looking at Cynthia when she asked, “Why do you think that is?”
    Cynthia wasn’t stupid. She knew where Dr. Kinzler was going. She’d gone down this road before. “You think it’s rubbing off me.”
    Dr. Kinzler’s shoulders raised a fraction of an inch. A conservative shrug. “What do you think?”
    “I try not to worry in front of her,” Cynthia said. “We try not to talk about things in front of her.”
    I guess I made a noise, a snort or a sniff or something, enough to get their attention.
    “Yes?” Dr. Kinzler said.
    “She knows,” I said. “Grace knows a lot more than she lets on. She’s seen the show.”
    “What?” Cynthia said.
    “She saw it at a friend’s house.”
    “Who?” Cynthia demanded. “I want a name.”
    “I don’t know. And I don’t think there’s any point beating it out of Grace.” I glanced at Dr. Kinzler. “That was just a figure of speech.”
    Dr. Kinzler nodded.
    Cynthia bit her lower lip. “She’s not ready. She doesn’t need to know these things about me. Not now. She needs to be protected.”
    “That’s one of the toughest things about being a parent,” Dr. Kinzler said. “Realizing that you can’t protect your children from everything.”
    Cynthia let that sink in a moment, then, “There was a phone call.”
    She gave Dr. Kinzler the details, offered up a near-verbatim account. Dr. Kinzler asked a few questions that were similar to mine. Did she recognize the voice, had he ever called before, that kind of thing. Then, from Dr. Kinzler:
    “The caller said that your family wants to forgive you. What do you think he meant by that?”
    “It doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “It was just a crank call.”
    Dr. Kinzler gave me a look that I took to mean, “Shut up.”
    “That’s the part I keep thinking about,” Cynthia said. “What’s he saying they forgive me for? For not finding them? For not doing more to find out what happened to them?”
    “You could hardly be expected to,” Dr. Kinzler said. “You were a child. Fourteen is still a child.”
    “And then I wonder, do they think it was my fault that it happened in the first place? Was it my fault that they left? What could I have done that would make them leave me in the middle of the night?”
    “There’s part of you that still believes that it was somehow your responsibility,” Dr. Kinzler said.
    “Look,” I said before Cynthia could respond. “It was a
crank call.
All sorts of people saw that show. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a few nutcases would come out of the woodwork.”
    Dr. Kinzler sighed softly and looked at me. “Terry, maybe this would be a good time for Cynthia and me to speak one-on-one.”
    “No, it’s okay,” Cynthia said. “He doesn’t have to go.”
    “Terry,” Dr. Kinzler said, trying so hard to be patient that I could tell she was pissed, “of course it may have been a crank call, but what the caller said can trigger feelings in Cynthia just the same, and by understanding her reaction to those feelings we have a better chance of working through