Twelve
TWELVE
ETHAN
T he flavor of cabernet sauvignon had only ever been just okay until Ethan tasted it on Taylor Frost’s lips.
It was a quick kiss. A chaste kiss. A kiss that could mean nothing or everything.
A kiss—Ethan’s first in some time—that is occupying so much of his brain space that he likely will get nothing productive done today.
“Why do you look like that?” Gabriel asks, rattling by the reception desk with his toolbox in one hand and a coffee from How Do You Brew in the other.
“Look like what?” Ethan asks, hackles up.
“I’m not sure. Like you took an edible and put on a Bruce Springsteen record.”
Ethan squawks, “Is that what you think I do in my spare time?”
“I have seen you do that in your spare time,” he says with oomph. “That time you asked me to come over and help you with the hot water heater. I was late. I think you thought I wouldn’t show.”
“In fairness, you’re not always the most reliable when it comes to timetables,” he says, coming out from behind his desk to reorganize the brochures in the stand near the entrance. Barely anybody takes them these days what with Google and Yelp, but this wood unit has been there since they opened, and he can’t bring himself to part with it.
“Says the guy who arrived fifteen minutes late this morning, and I had to check in the first guests.” The sides of Gabriel’s mouth draw up as if by fishing hooks. “Oh, meu amigo . You got laid last night, didn’t you?”
Ethan’s stomach hardens. “No.”
“Hey, your secret’s safe with me.” Gabriel clicks his tongue.
“First off, I know that’s not true. You tell Giselle everything.”
“I’m not supposed to tell my wife about my friend’s escapades?” he asks, eyebrow quirked and hands spread. “Your secret’s safe with us .”
Ethan deadpans, “There’s no secret to tell. We had some wine, we read some stories, he fell asleep on the couch and I carried him to bed.”
“Whose bed?” His eyebrow quirks up even higher.
“ His bed. The guest bed. The bed in Samara’s room.”
“You carried him?”
His fists clench even though he’s holding brochures for the Calico art gallery. The glossy paper crunches into a ball in his palm. He’ll have to go into town and replace these. “You know firsthand how awful that couch is to sleep on. Remember years and years ago when you and Giselle were fighting?”
“I learned my lesson. I don’t critique her pasteles de nata anymore. But it seems like you don’t learn your lesson ever . The lesson about how I inevitably get everything out of you eventually, so tell me now or tell me later, but you’ll slip up and I’m going to—”
“He kissed me! Okay, happy?” Ethan slaps his hands against his thighs.
Gabriel sports a shit-eating smirk. “You dirty dog.”
“I am not—”
“Help! Please, I need some help.” A woman rushes into the lobby. Her hair is a mess, her sunglasses are half falling off and her body language is frantic. He places her as Gus’s mom from the archery lesson and the story time yesterday.
“Ma’am, what’s happened?” Ethan asks.
“My son— He’s—” she attempts to catch her breath “—wandered off. He does this sometimes. We checked all the usual spots and with the pond and the woods and the road, I’m… I need to find him.”
Ethan snaps the walkie-talkie off his belt buckle and immediately radios the entire staff to start looking. “Don’t worry,” he reassures her. “We’ll find him. He can’t have gone far.”
Adrenaline pumps through his bloodstream as the search ensues. Gabriel branches off in a different direction so they cover more ground. Birds chirp happily from the treetops, but their calls have an eerie ring to them. Birds push their babies from their nests as early as twelve days after they’re born. A human parent could never. The urge to protect, to keep near, is too strong. God, he misses Samara more than anything, which zeroes in his focus until a familiar tie-dyed hoodie steps into his path.
“What’s wrong? You looked panicked,” says Taylor.
His heart palpitates inside his chest, and his lungs feel incapable of gulping in enough oxygen. Somehow, he manages to spit out, “There’s a child missing. We’re all looking for him.” He doesn’t stop to converse. Instead, he continues around Taylor on the path. If his panic over Gus missing met the panic over Taylor’s good-night kiss, he’d be too dizzy to go on. His knees would cease to function.
A second set of footsteps crunch on the path behind him. “It’s okay. We’re handling it.” The words come out gruff, and they burn a little in his throat.
“Have you checked the pool house?” Taylor asks, suddenly in lockstep beside him, undeterred by Ethan’s remark.
“No. It’s closed. The pool is closed.”
“When has a Closed sign ever stopped a curious kid before?”
Ethan doubles back without giving Taylor any credit for the good idea. They’re picking up speed as they pass the picnic area. The wooden door is locked and sealed, but he locates the right key on his bulbous key ring anyhow and pushes inside. The bathrooms and curtained changing stations are disquietingly empty. Like the moment in an ’80s slasher movie before the masked killer jumps from his hiding spot.
Ethan still hastily knocks on every stall door just to be safe.
Already back outside, Taylor scouts the perimeter of the pool area. The mist-sheened cover is on, so there’s no chance Gus tried to go for a swim, thankfully. Ethan furiously rakes his hands through his hair, nearly clawing out the pomade he sometimes uses on mornings when his hair won’t cooperate.
Taylor appears focused but calm. “We’re going to find him. Like you said last night, kids are surprisingly resilient.”
“It’s not Gus that I’m worried most about. It’s his mom,” Ethan admits over the noxious pounding in his ears. “I would not wish this feeling on any parent. It’s the worst.” He clutches his chest.
“Samara doesn’t seem like the type to run away,” says Taylor as they inspect along the tree line at the perimeter of the property. What are they even looking for? Footprints? Hansel--esque bread crumbs?
“When she was eight, we’d driven over an hour and some change to the Palisades mall to buy Amy a birthday gift. Samara had watched some teen movie that had a mall in it, and we don’t have one local, so I figured, what the heck? The novelty will be fun. We’ll shop in person instead of online for a change,” he recounts as they venture into the trees. “I regretted it immediately. I forgot how crowded and loud malls are. I was in a bad mood. I left her at a table in the food court while I went to order her chicken nuggets and, when I came back, she’d disappeared. I frantically started asking everyone around if they’d seen my daughter. This was before she had her own cell phone. I felt like the world’s worst dad. I was scared out of my mind.”
“I bet,” Taylor says.
“I remembered she’d thrown a fit in Sephora over a lip gloss I wouldn’t buy for her. She was too young. We were there to get her mom makeup wipes, not some Jenner-approved nonsense. I found her at the register, talking to the salesperson, asking if she could pay for the lip gloss with two quarters and a punch card for Froyo. The saleswoman was a parent and knew immediately what I was going through from the frenzied look in my eyes.”
“Did you buy Samara the lip gloss?” Taylor asks.
Ethan sighs loudly. “I…did. Not because I’m a pushover but because the saleswoman was going to give it to us for free, and I figured if I couldn’t hit home the lesson about listening to your parents, I could at least show her that you should only accept gifts if you’re in need.”
“Not sure I agree with that.”
“It was a seven-dollar lip gloss, and I got the woman’s employee discount anyway. She’d done enough.”
“You’re a good dad, Ethan,” Taylor says.
Ethan wants to balk at this. How can one be a good dad from hundreds and hundreds of miles away? But the force behind Taylor’s words makes them sink in. He is fiercely protective of his daughter. He imagines this is more than Taylor can say about either of his own parents. “Thanks,” Ethan says, smiling down at Taylor. “I wonder where Gus’s dad is in all this…?”
Taylor’s features brighten. “Wait, the kid that’s missing is Gus? The one from the archery class?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because at the end of the lesson, he was begging his parents to go over and play with Nana. Does Nana have a doghouse anywhere?” Taylor asks.
Their brains meld. They sprint off in the direction of Ethan’s cottage. For a few minutes, there’s nothing but the sounds of their panting and the soles of their shoes slamming the ground beneath.
In the distance, Gus kneels down beside Nana, whose head pops out from the inlet of her teal-colored doghouse. Her wagging tail thumps against the inside walls, sounding like a drumbeat. She perks up at the boom of Ethan’s voice.
Gus stands up and steps back with a posture that screams I’ve been caught .
“What are you doing out here?” Ethan asks Gus as they jog up to the house.
He shrugs innocently, lips zipped. Shame zaps off him.
“It’s okay. You’re not in trouble,” Taylor says, though Ethan’s not so sure from the way Gus’s mom was looking when he left the lobby. A harsh grounding might be in the child’s future.
Gus’s wide eyes tilt up. “My mom wouldn’t let me pet the dog yesterday. I just wanted to say hi. And today she’s been reading her stupid book all day, and I got bored, so I went looking and I got lost, but then I found this cottage and saw the doghouse and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. I know.”
How many times had Ethan wandered into a different aisle in the grocery store as a kid, giving his mom a heart attack? Boredom is a beast for those with ADHD. Not that Ethan should be diagnosing a child he barely knows. He just sees bits of his own neurodivergence in the kid’s behaviors. That’s all. A kindred spirit that he hopes grows up with more support than he had.
So instead of reprimanding him or scolding him, Ethan leashes up Nana and together all four of them return to the main resort.
“A lost boy with Nana. So Peter-Pan-coded,” says Taylor to lighten the mood.
Ethan can breathe again now that the boy is in sight, so he lets out a hearty laugh and leads the charge to reunite the family.