Chapter 10 #2
Trent frowned at her, then glanced at Ricky, wearing a highly exaggerated puzzled expression, and stated, “I’m not sure I see a problem with that. Like no problem at all. How about you, Ricky?”
As they all broke into fits of laughter, she was thoroughly enjoying the byplay between them and the experience of seeing Trent—and Ricky—in a completely different light.
When they had ordered their ice cream and actually had it in their hands, Ricky wanted to sit outside on one of the picnic tables.
As they settled outside, Ricky was busy kicking the table so hard that his foot was bouncing back off again.
She leaned over, placed a hand on his foot, and said, “Other people are sitting here too.”
Immediately Ricky stared at her in surprise, looked over at Trent, and started to smile. He shook his head and declared, “He doesn’t mind.”
“Maybe not,” Trent acknowledged, “but the noise is kind of irritating.”
Immediately Ricky stopped, looking from one to the other, and then sighed. “Yeah, okay.”
She laughed. “So, if Trent says something, you’ll listen, but if I say something—”
Ricky smirked at her and interjected, “Trent’s been gone all morning, so technically I’ve been listening to you all day.”
“The things you say for a six-year-old,” she muttered, “are rather unbelievable.”
Trent agreed, “Like seriously.”
“I know,” she declared. “So adult one moment and then so not the next.”
“But I’m not an adult,” Ricky argued. “I’m even better.”
“And what’s that?” Trent asked.
“I’m a kid. Kids are much better than adults.
Adults are serious. They have problems. They’ve got all these things that they have to do.
But kids? We’re just out here having fun,” Ricky explained, turning to Naomi now.
“You’re always thinking ahead, like the whole time we were at the park, you were worried that Trent wasn’t coming back.
You were worried about the future. You’re worried about so much that you can’t even have fun sometimes.
If you just thought about today as being today, then you wouldn’t have to worry about it. ”
She blinked several times at the long tirade, then finally spoke. “Well, sometimes adults have things that they need to worry about.”
“No,” Ricky countered, his tone so serious. “You don’t ever have something you need to worry about, and you should just take the time to enjoy now instead of all the other things you have on your mind.”
Trent gently clasped a hand on Ricky’s shoulder and stated, “Those are very wise words. If all of us could just slow down a bit, life would be a whole lot easier, wouldn’t it?”
“Exactly,” Ricky said, with a big grin, “but people never listen to kids. So that’s why it’s just better to be a kid.”
“Why? Because nobody listens to you?” she asked in confusion.
“Partly,” he agreed, “because, if you think about it, we can’t ever really be wrong. Since you don’t listen to us in the first place, it doesn’t really matter what we say, so we can cut loose with all our best ideas.”
She burst out laughing, and Ricky just grinned impudently at her as he finished off his ice cream. Then he got up and walked over to a small monkey bar playground they had here and proceeded to play.
Trent leaned closer and whispered, “He really is amazing.”
She nodded. “I know,” she agreed proudly, with a big smile. “But trying to preserve that amazement, trying to keep all that raw beauty? … It’s definitely a challenge.” She turned to Trent and asked, “How did the lawyer’s visit go?”
“Frustrating in some ways. I had to threaten my way in again.”
She frowned at that. “I know lawyers are notorious about things like that,” she began, “but it is frustrating when he’s the only contact we have. I always end up feeling like I’m imposing. Although he’s right in that I do get paid very well.”
“Well, I had something to say to him about the lack of consideration for you, the stingy process for getting the money you need to do your job and all, so that’s likely to change.”
“Or it’ll change for five minutes,” she pointed out, “and then you’re gone, and things will revert right back to normal again.”
He nodded. “That could happen, and I’m not saying it won’t, but let’s hope that today brought something more. He’s definitely going to try to get a hold of Ricky’s parents again.”
“You sure?”
“I think so,” he replied, still sounding not so certain.
“How can they be so completely callous after the kidnapping, when they may or might not have lost their son?”
“I don’t think they thought of it that way,” he stated. “I’m pretty sure they’re thinking that everything’s fine and that people are just making a big deal out of nothing.”
“Oh, now that could be true,” she conceded, sitting back to consider that, “because, Lord knows, enough people are out there thinking exactly that, which is also frustrating when you’re doing what you can and trying hard to keep everything moving along.
It sure would help to have a little bit of reassurance from them. ”
She turned for a better view of Ricky, still playing on the monkey bars. “I mostly want Ricky to have the reassurance. He needs to know that his family is actually there for him.”
“And yet you already know that they aren’t.”
“I do know,” she grumbled, her voice tightening with frustration.
“How hard is it to just make a phone call, to actually just say something to him about a failed sailing trip that he was so looking forward to?” She turned to Trent.
“Do you really buy the theory that we got the wrong message, simply because they dialed one digit off?”
“I’m not sure about that yet,” he told her. “I mean, in one way, yeah, it absolutely could happen. If your phone number is one away from what they were expecting the number to be, it certainly could and does happen. It’s not common, but that doesn’t mean it’s not in the realm of possibility.”
She shook her head. “To just imagine all that happening to us because of something so stupid makes me even madder.” He didn’t say anything, but he did nod, a questioning look in his eye. She had to ask, “Now what?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll have to wait and see what the parents say. If they’re out of the country, and they don’t want to come back to the States, not a whole lot I can do about it. However, I do want an explanation, and I do want intel as to what they might have known about any of this.”
“They wouldn’t have known about it,” she declared in surprise. “That wouldn’t have been something they had anything to do with. They are his parents, for heaven’s sake. I’m just … kind of sad and sorry for Ricky’s sake.”
“Me too,” he replied, “which is one of the reasons we must get more answers instead of just sitting around and waiting.”
“And yet that sitting around and waiting is really peaceful,” she noted, with a smile. “We have had enough action for a lifetime.”
His smile deepened. He got up and turned to look around.
She frowned up at him and said, “And yet you’re still looking for a problem, aren’t you?”
“I am, not to see if there is a problem but to ensure there isn’t a problem,” he corrected her gently.
“Yet you can’t quite shake the idea that something is happening, can you?”
“Something is off about all of this, and that’s the part I don’t quite understand. Until I can get my head wrapped around it and can feel secure about what’s going on—which could be nothing at this point, and it should be nothing—I can’t let it go because I can’t quite settle it.”
She slowly nodded. “I’m glad you shared that because I can’t believe that this is over yet either. However, who should give a damn at this point?”
“Only the people who you might be able to identify,” he suggested. “We do have a police artist coming to your place today, and we’ll go from there.”
“The sooner, the better,” she muttered, “but I’m not sure I like the idea of a police artist coming into Ricky’s home.”
“And here I thought he might be more interested in that than to go to a police station, where he might see things that are a whole lot worse.”
She immediately grabbed Trent’s arm, closed her eyes, and whispered, “Right. I wasn’t thinking about that. Thank you.”
“Of course you weren’t. This is one of many firsts for you,” he pointed out, with a smile. Then he reached out a hand and said, “Come on. Almost time to be home for the police artist, so let’s move in that direction. Plus, Ricky may need extra persuasion to get going.”
She called Ricky closer and said, “Time to go home, buddy.”
“What if I don’t want to?” he asked, staring at her in surprise.
“Well, we could have a problem over that, but I don’t think you want to delay things because we have—” She faced Trent and asked, “Do you want to tell him?”
“We have a police artist coming,” Trent told Ricky in a straightforward and mild tone.
Immediately Ricky dropped from the monkey bars. “A police artist?” he repeated, as he bounced closer, his curiosity well and truly spiked. “You mean, somebody coming over and us telling them what somebody looks like?”
“Exactly,” she replied. “They want to know if we can tell them anything at all about the people who were on the boat.”
He stared at her and then hung his head. “What if I don’t want to remember?”
“You don’t have to,” she stated immediately. “This is more about me talking to them than you talking to them.”
He stared at her curiously. “Do you remember what they look like?”
“I remember some of it,” she replied, with a pat on his cheeks. “Do you?”
He nodded slowly. “I remember some of it too.”
“Well, maybe between the two of us,” she suggested, reaching out a hand, “we can give them enough details that they can find them.”
“They don’t want to be found,” Ricky declared, yet he took her hand in his.
“No, they don’t, but we don’t want them to ever think that coming back after us is an option,” she added. “We want those guys caught and in jail, so that it won’t happen to us ever again.”
His haunted gaze turned to Trent. He asked him, “Do you think it’s better if I work with them?”