9. Chloe
I returned home in an exhausted but strangely upbeat mood. Not only was dinner taken care of, courtesy of a cheese-covered dish that both looked and smelled delicious, but the only emergency phone call I’d received all day was from Theo’s school reminding me that every child was required by law to keep his shoes on in the classroom, even if he had chosen onychocryptosis as his Science Word of the Day.
Fortunately for both me and the school secretary who’d been forced to make the call, I was at the reference desk at the time. It had taken me all of five seconds to log in to Google and come to the conclusion that Theo had decided to share his ingrown toenail with his fellow classmates. It took five seconds more to write myself a note reminding me to make him an appointment with our general practitioner. If his toe was getting bad enough to pull out and frighten his classmates with, then it was probably time to get the inflammation looked at.
Unfortunately, my mood took a turn for the worse when I parked the station wagon in my usual spot and slid out of the seat. Even though it was too early for Trixie and Theo to be home yet, Noodle and Gummy Bear were nowhere to be seen.
“Gummy Bear?” I called as I stepped through the house. On any given day, there was only a fifty percent chance the dog would answer, but I had to try anyway. “Noodle? Where are you guys?”
No one answered, and the more time I spent looking around the house, the less likely it seemed that someone would. There was no sign that my brother had touched any of the snacks or ordered a pizza like I’d told him to. His bottle of water was untouched, the television remote exactly where I’d left it. Most damningly, however, was that his graphic novels were nowhere to be seen.
There were only two things in this world that Noodle treasured most: the Nightwave series and that slobbering, useless lump of a dog. If he were to run away into the forest again, those were the exact two things I’d expect him to take.
Not food. Not water. Not a sleeping bag. Not anything even remotely useful to sustain life.
I dashed out the door with my heart in my throat. I had no idea how far a preteen with a freshly broken leg and a rented pair of crutches could get, but he had at least a six-hour head start on me. I didn’t like my odds.
Nor did I like how the road stretched off in two different directions with half a dozen walking paths thrown in for terrible measure. In Colville, the national forest was never more than a stone’s throw from any given location. For the longest moment, I toyed with the idea of dashing back inside and pulling that slip of paper from between the pages of A Farewell to Arms. Of everyone in the world who could track and hunt a missing kid, Zach seemed like the most qualified candidate. I had no doubt that he’d be able to drop his nose to the dirt, sniff a few times, and tell me exactly where to find my missing brother.
“No,” I said aloud. I wrapped my arms tightly around my midsection—partly to stop the acid feeling in my stomach from taking over, and partly because I was cold. The fall temperatures were already dropping earlier and earlier with each passing day. “That isn’t an option. I’m sure I can find him on my own. I just need to think.”
That was when I heard the howl.
At first, the sound was only a faint one, and I barely recognized it. Gummy Bear wasn’t a dog given to howling in the normal way of things. Not only did it require too much effort, but bulldogs treat the process of creating a howl like summoning a demon. There’s chanting and crackling and way more saliva than seems necessary. The longer the sound went on, however, the more I realized what I was hearing. And, more important, where it was coming from.
“Gummy Bear?” I called as I ran to the edge of the lawn, where the trellis beckoned me into Jasper Holmes’s garden of good and evil. “Is that you, boy? Are you hurt?”
“Noooooo!” came a scream. That one I recognized just fine. Noodle’s anguish was unmistakable. So was the shriek that followed.
Tearing through a shrub I couldn’t identify, I dashed toward the back of Jasper’s house. I had no idea how—or why—Noodle and Gummy Bear had made their way over here, but I knew that there was nowhere on earth the pair of them would be less welcome. The glimpses I was getting into Jasper’s past through the book notes made him seem slightly more human, but I wasn’t willing to stake anything of value on it.
Especially not my brother.
“Whatever’s going on back here, I—oh! Noodle? Jasper?” My feet dug into the soft, cushiony lawn as I came to a halt. There, in front of me, sat Noodle, kingly in an Adirondack chair and with his leg propped up on a log. In one hand, he held a stick with a string dangling off the end, a literal and proverbial carrot bouncing back and forth. A bite had been taken out of it, courtesy—I assumed—of Gummy Bear, who was actually prancing across the grass in front of him.
As if this sight wasn’t startling enough, Jasper Holmes himself sat in an identical chair, a steaming mug of tea in one hand and a paperback copy of North and South in the other.
Of all these things—my brother relaxing in Jasper’s backyard, Gummy Bear disporting himself like an actual dog, and Jasper reading a romance—the last one was what alarmed me the most. North and South wasn’t just romantic fiction; it was also deeply religious and full of saccharine sentiment—all things I never would’ve associated with this man.
“Hey, Chloe!” Noodle cried before I could say any of the things I was feeling. “Watch this!”
He proceeded to bob the carrot in front of him as Gummy Bear wheezed and snapped in an effort to clamp the garden-fresh vegetable in his hungry jaws. The poor old bulldog couldn’t get much air, but that didn’t stop him from heaving his chubby body as high as it could go.
“I’m fishing for Gummy Bears,” Noodle added, beaming at me. “Did you know dogs can eat carrots? And that they like them? Mr. Holmes says it’s good for him. It’ll make his breath smell less like death warmed over.”
“I don’t… I’m not…” I cast a bewildered glance at Jasper and back at my brother, my confusion giving away to a different sensation. Shock, maybe? Prostration? I hadn’t heard Noodle speak that many words in succession in years. “Mr. Holmes, did you do this?”
“You already called me Jasper once,” he grumbled as he slipped a bookmark between the pages and set the book carefully aside. “You might as well keep doing it.”
“I don’t understand. What are you three doing out here? Did Noodle come to pay you a visit?”
“You didn’t cash the check,” Jasper replied.
It took me a moment to realize what he was saying. “The book check?” I asked, blinking. “No. I haven’t had a chance to stop by the bank yet.”
I also hadn’t decided on a proper sum of money—partly because I feared Jasper might end up demanding my soul if I took too much, but also because I was waiting to see what kind of medical bill the hospital planned to slap me with.
“You were supposed to cash the check,” he echoed, this time with a curl to his lip that made me take a protective step in front of Noodle. Not that my action was appreciated. Noodle let out a grunt of frustration.
“You’re in the way, Chloe. Gummy Bear can’t jump over you.”
“Oh. Sorry.” I immediately stepped aside, but the damage had already been done. And by damage, I mean Jasper Holmes had somehow gotten the upper hand despite having kidnapped my brother and his not-very-guarded guard dog.
“You can’t leave a boy with a broken leg home alone all day,” he said, that curl still in his lip. “Do you have any idea what could have happened to him?”
Yes, I could. Hence the fact that I’d dashed over here like my whole life depended on it. In many ways, it did.
“He could have fallen or tripped over that blasted dog,” Jasper said. “He might have slipped into shock or taken too many pain pills. Hell, for all you know, someone could have broken in and taken everything you own.”
This last one gave me the courage to speak up. “Sorry, but anyone breaking into our house is going to be very disappointed. Unless they want a cracked laptop, a set of mismatched dinner plates, or a pile of laundry so deep I think there might be baby clothes at the bottom, there’s not much to be had.”
I could have kept going, but Noodle gave a low cough. His voice dropped down to its customary whisper. “Don’t be mad, Chloe. Mr. Holmes said I can keep him company for a few days. Did you know that he’s never read a graphic novel before? He says he likes gory stories, so I loaned him one of mine. I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course it’s okay,” I said, ruffling his hair in what I hoped was a soothing manner. My hands still shook as I came down from the adrenaline, but I don’t think he noticed. “But we can’t ask Mr. Holmes—”
“Jasper,” the man in question grunted.
“We can’t ask Jasper to babysit you. I’m sure he has lots of things he should be doing—”
This time, Jasper didn’t grunt so much as laugh. It was a rough, coarse sound, almost like Gummy Bear summoning demons with his howl.
“I don’t have anything to do, and you know it,” he said. Then, more hesitantly, “Until you make alternate arrangements, you can send the boy here in the morning. I’ll make sure he eats and doesn’t get into any trouble.”
Just in case I got the wrong idea about this generous offer, he made a motion as if to spit at my feet. “I won’t do more than that, mind. I don’t change diapers, and I won’t do any dressing changes. I’m not a nursemaid.”
I doubted anyone would ever accuse Jasper of being a nursemaid, but Noodle only grinned.
“I don’t wear diapers,” he said and then cast an expectant look my way. “Well, Chloe? Can I?”
Every fiber of my being balked at this arrangement. Not only did I loathe the idea of owing this man a favor for, well, anything, but I’d noticed a particularly flourishing patch of crocuses and lilies in the shape of a rectangle near the back of the garden. A quote from the burial scene in Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd immediately sprang to my mind.
The crocuses and hyacinths were to grow in rows; some of the summer flowers he placed over her head and feet, the lilies and forget-me-nots over her heart. The remainder were dispersed in the spaces between these.
Now that I knew Jasper was an avid reader, it seemed possible that he’d read the same book and took it upon himself to festoon Catherine’s burial ground with a flower for each part of her body. Murderers could be weird like that.
Although it wasn’t the best justification I’d ever come up with, it wasn’t the worst, either, so I held on to it with both hands. When you were grasping at straws, you couldn’t be too particular about how flimsy they were.
But then Jasper ruined it.
“It’s not as if you have any other choice,” he said with something like a sneer. “Or did you want me to call CPS over this, too?”
His words hit me like a blow to the chest, staggering me backwards. Walking out on three kids under the age of eleven wasn’t the same as leaving a twelve-year-old home alone for a six-hour shift at the local library, but that didn’t seem to matter to my heart. The guilt I’d been grappling with all day was lodged there as solidly as a stone wall.
“That was uncalled for,” I said, my voice deceptively quiet.
“I know it was. Is that a yes on my offer?”
I was getting close, but I couldn’t seem to force the words out. Giving Jasper the care of my brother was almost as bad as handing Noodle the phone number none of us wanted to call. You didn’t just open the gates and invite the enemy in. Shakespeare didn’t say it first, but he certainly said it best: That way madness lies.
“Chloe?” Noodle prodded. The longer I took to respond, the more his face balled up in a worried pinch. “You don’t mind, do you? I promise to be good and not get in the way. I like Jasper. He doesn’t pick.”
Noodle’s remark gave me pause. My brother didn’t like very many people, and he admitted to liking even less. And that small concession—that Jasper didn’t “pick”—carried a lot more meaning than either of them realized. Every day of his life, Noodle was surrounded by adults who chipped away at him. At his confidence and his courage, at all the things about him they refused to understand. I suspected that Jasper’s restraint in this arena had more to do with his lack of interest in his fellow human beings than softhearted sentiment, but I wasn’t about to attempt an explanation.
“Okay. Fine. Whatever.” With each concession, I felt myself moving closer to the dark side. “But I want to state for the record that I don’t like any of this.”
“Yes!” Noodle said.
“Awwooo!” Gummy Bear agreed.
Jasper was the last to react. “There’s no need to be so dramatic,” he said. He came as near to rolling his eyes as I imagined he was capable. “I won’t hurt the boy. Contrary to popular legend, I wasn’t always the village outcast.”
Since this was very much in line with what was scribbled in the margins of the library books, I felt emboldened to speak.
“If that’s true, then what did you used to be?” I asked.
I could tell I’d caught him off guard. He blinked at me a few times before managing a grunt. “The problem with young people,” he said in a tone that oozed sarcasm, “is that you believe you’re the only ones to experience life. You think everything that came before you walked onto the scene is just make-believe.”
“Is this where you tell me about your friend Beef fighting his way through life again?” I asked. “Because I’m not sure that metaphor is going to work a second time.”
Jasper picked up his book and flipped it to the bookmarked section. I craned my neck to see if there was any writing in it, but the pages were as crisp and clear as a new Scholastic Book Fair purchase.
“No,” he said and started to read. “This is where I tell you that a librarian should know better. If you aren’t aware of the power of a good piece of fiction by now, you never will be.”