Chapter Fifteen Piper
Chapter Fifteen
Piper
Piper pulled into her driveway, stopped the car, and then stared, perplexed at the strange little tableau next door.
Three boys stood beside a minivan with all the doors flung open. The older boys wore a catatonic expression while the youngest openly sobbed.
Meanwhile her neighbor . . . what was her name? Cathy? Caroline? She’d only met this neighbor once, briefly, the day they moved in.
Whatever her name, this woman stood beside her minivan, bent at the waist, shoulders heaving as she . . .
Vomited?
Piper squinted. Yup. That’s right. Her neighbor was vomiting all over the driveway.
The woman’s face was paper white with a clammy sheen. Piper had seen that look before on diplomats attempting to power through state dinners while suffering the double whammy of jet lag and a don’t-drink-the-water stomach bug.
She opened the center console of her SUV and grabbed the paper towels, trash bags, and first aid kit stashed inside.
Scenarios whizzed through her mind. Could her neighbor be a day drinker? A drug user? A microdosing tech bro? Had she traveled to the Congo recently and contracted Ebola?
Piper ran across her own impeccable green lawn, maintained with pride and joy by her husband on the days he was actually home, and crossed the border into the Land of Boys, where everything from the baseballs in the flower beds to the bin of hockey sticks and Nerf guns on the front porch screamed This is why we can’t have nice things.
She approached her neighbor warily.
The woman leaned against the car, bent at the waist, hands resting on her knees. She’d stopped vomiting, but a malodourous puddle pooled on the concrete between her feet.
Three boys who shared the woman’s blond hair and blue eyes stood beside her, helpless and wide eyed, the youngest with tears streaking his face. Must be her sons.
The oldest boy rested a hand on his mother’s back, and Piper’s heart softened. He had not yet learned that when women puked, you held their hair back, but he’d make a wonderful boyfriend someday.
The woman looked at Piper with a thousand-yard stare and pulled her cell phone from her back pocket. “I left him.”
Ah. Divorce. Infidelity. Possibly domestic abuse. She’d seen it all before in her long law enforcement career.
Piper ripped a paper towel from the roll and stooped to mop up the pile of vomit in the driveway. “Your husband?”
“My son,” the woman said softly. “I left my son at a truck stop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.”
Piper stopped cleaning. “You did what?”
“I left my son at a truck stop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike,” her neighbor repeated in a hollow voice. “Accidentally,” she added as an afterthought.
“You’re sure?” Piper knew the question was stupid the moment she uttered it, but she couldn’t help herself. How exactly did a person manage to leave a child at a truck stop?
“He isn’t here, is he?” The woman sounded argumentative.
“I see three boys,” Piper conceded as she rose to stand. “Is there . . . another one?”
“Yes. Yes, there is.” Her neighbor wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “And I forgot him.”
“Where?”
“Big Jim’s Travel Plaza,” the woman repeated in a robotic voice. She sounded like a slightly deranged Alexa.
“Have you called the police?” Piper asked.
The woman shook her head. Then she bent at the waist and threw up again.
Piper stepped quickly out of the vomit-shrapnel radius. Her neighbor was obviously in shock.
“I’ll call the police,” she said firmly.
She pried the woman’s cell phone from her hand and called the truck stop, then dialed 911 with her own phone, while also texting a friend who worked for the Virginia Highway Patrol.
Meanwhile her neighbor had begun to babble incoherently, muttering the name of the truck stop under her breath, and something about blankets.
With both phones held to her ears, Piper used her elbows to guide her neighbor toward the front porch.
She instructed one boy to clean up the vomit and told another to get his mom a glass of water.
Then Piper turned to the oldest son, who sat beside his mother on the porch, helplessly rubbing his hand across her back in tiny circles.
“Where’s your dad?” she asked.
The boy looked startled by the question. “He was in Kansas. Or maybe Oklahoma. I’m not sure. He’s supposed to fly home tonight.”
“Do you have a phone? Can you reach him?”
The boy shook his head. “I tried. But I think he’s in the air.”
“What’s your mom’s name?”
“Kiersten,” the boy said. “Kiersten Cleaver. And my brother is Johnny.”
“Hold on,” Piper said to the 911 dispatcher on the other end of the line. Then she knelt in front of Kiersten and looked her directly in the eye. “Kiersten, can you spell your son’s first, middle, and last name for me.”
Kiersten nodded. “J-o-h-n C-o-l-i-n C-l-e-a-v-e-r.”
“What was he wearing?” Piper broke off before adding, “When you last saw him.” But it didn’t matter.
Kiersten burst into tears, choking out the words between sobs. “A red . . . Minnesota Twins . . . T-shirt. Blue Adidas running shorts . . . and . . . white Nike tennis shoes.”
Piper relayed the information to the dispatcher and gave the same information to the person who answered the phone at the truck stop.
Relief flooded her body as she broke into a wide smile.
Thank God.
“They found him. He’s sitting behind the counter with the cashier. They’ve been trying to reach you, but he didn’t know your cell phone number.” She handed the phone to Kiersten. “You can talk to him.”
Kiersten took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Piper watched as her neighbor pulled her frayed nerves back together and injected her voice with a note of cheerful calm.
“Hi, honey. Are you okay?”
She couldn’t hear the answer on the other end of the line, but whatever he said brought a smile to Kiersten’s ravaged face.
“You can eat as many powdered donuts as you want,” Kiersten said, wiping away the silent tears streaming down her cheeks. “And I’m just going to stay right here on the phone with you while you eat them, okay?”
A moment later the 911 dispatcher came back on the line. The highway patrol had arrived at the truck stop. Piper gave her phone to Kiersten, and Kiersten spoke with the officer.
After a short conversation, she hung up Piper’s phone. Then she spoke to her son again on her own phone.
“The officers will drive you home now, okay? I’ll be waiting right here. See you soon, okay?”
The moment she disconnected the call, Kiersten burst into a fresh round of sobs and threw her arms around Piper. Her oldest son leaped from the porch with a whoop of joy and went to tell his brothers.
Piper repressed a groan as Kiersten clung to her. Just her luck. A hugger.
She endured Kiersten’s damp embrace for a full minute before attempting, gently, to disentangle herself.
Then she looked up to find her across-the-street neighbor, Rosamund, approaching.
She didn’t know Rosamund well . . . they’d had a few pleasant conversations by the mailbox since Rosamund moved in a couple of years ago. They’d even made vague plans to carpool home from school, which never materialized because of conflicting after-school activities.
The tight feeling in her chest loosened as Rosamund approached.
Because Piper could make phone calls and find lost children, but the hugging and the tears and the crying .
. . well, this whole situation was way beyond her emotional pay grade.
She needed some help here. And maybe Rosamund could provide it.