Free The Missing Place by Sophie Littlefield Page B

car. Shay slid into the driver’s seat and put the key in the ignition, but she didn’t turn it. Colleen put her seat belt on and sat with her arms folded, staring straight ahead.
    Then she started to shake. Shay watched Colleen’s careful composure disintegrate, torn between sympathy and the knowledge that it was going to get a lot harder before it got any easier.
    â€œYou did good,” she said quietly, as silent tears streamed down Colleen’s face.
    Colleen nodded, not bothering to wipe the tears away. “He was just so . . . I don’t know. Smug? Supercilious?”
    â€œI don’t have any idea what that second one means, but I don’t like that fucker. Only it doesn’t matter how we feel about him. We need to use him, Col, you hear? Him and everyone else who can help us. Nothing else matters. Now, we going to the lodge? You ready for that?”
    â€œYes,” Colleen whispered fiercely, digging for a tissue. “Yes, I am.”

eight
    SHAY WAS A good driver, Colleen had to give her that. She’d adapted to the road conditions and didn’t make any of the beginner mistakes that caused so much trouble back east. She hovered under the speed limit, left ample room for the cars in front of her, and dropped back whenever the ubiquitous long-bed trucks passed them.
    They drove back through town, block after block of strip malls and lumberyards and churches now familiar. A few more times back and forth and she’d have the whole town memorized. What was it Paul had said, during his first trip home? That it was easy to feel like you fit in. Something like that. He’d been irritated when Andy called Lawton a one-horse town. Andy hadn’t meant anything by the description, but something had already changed between them: it was as though for the first time in his life Paul had found something that was his alone, and he guarded it jealously.
    By then they’d accepted that nothing they did or said was going to change Paul’s mind. Any hopes that the first few weeks of hard work would convince Paul of the absurdity of his choice were dashed when he returned home even more enthusiastic than before he’d left. He paced the house restlessly during that first visit, and if he didn’t complain out loud that he couldn’t wait for his days off to be over, it was only because they’d all retreated into a state of forced politeness, the aftermath of the violent arguments before he left.
    How Colleen had longed to touch her son during that visit. Toput her arms around him, to inhale his scent, to reassure herself that he was still hers. But something was broken in their relationship. Oh, for heaven’s sake, she knew exactly what was broken, because she’d been the careless one who broke it. She was the one who delivered ultimatums and demands, years and years of them, thinking she was building him into something stronger and better, believing that someday—eventually—he’d come around.
    If she had other sons, she would know what to do next time. Colleen understood now that a boy of eighteen or nineteen might not be a man in every way, but he wasn’t going to let anyone tell him what to do. Her belief in her own authority struck her as ridiculous and even pitiable now, proof of a careless ignorance, which felt, in the worst moments, like the sin that had driven him away.
    She’d been the one to find his note that morning, the morning Andy was supposed to drive him back to Syracuse to start his sophomore year, which was actually his second attempt at his freshman year, though they didn’t discuss that. It should have been Andy who found the note, because he was always up first. He made the coffee and got the paper while she was in the shower, then came up and took his turn in the shower while she dried her hair and dressed. But Colleen hadn’t slept well that night. She woke at three o’clock and tried to get back