Chapter 16: Deer

Cal was out of his chair before I had put the phone down.

"What is it?"

"Teddy's gone. He walked out of the house."

He didn't ask who or why.

"My truck's at the side door," he said.

We left the hearing with half the room turning to watch us go.

The drive home took six minutes.

I counted every one, with my hands tight between my knees and the wipers going.

"He's three," I said. "It's forty degrees. It's dark."

"He knows the drive."

"He knows the front steps."

"Nora." Cal kept his eyes on the road. "Which way would he go?"

I thought about it.

I thought about a small boy in the kitchen on the first morning, sitting in my lap, asking in a loud whisper whether I did the voices.

"To me," I said. "He'd go to find me."

"You weren't there."

"He doesn't know that. He'd go to where I sleep."

"Kitchen," Cal said, and turned the wheel, and the headlights swung across the front of the house.

The kitchen was dark.

Delphine was on the porch steps in her slippers and a cardigan, with the front door open behind her and every light in the house on.

"He's not in the garden!" she called. "I've been through the garden twice!"

"Cal, look."

The carriage house stood at the end of the drive, and the side door was open a hand's width.

A strip of yellow lantern light lay across the gravel.

I was out of the truck before it had stopped.

I got to the door first, and then I couldn't go in.

The cot stood against the back wall, and on it, curled under Cal's canvas coat, lay a small boy in dinosaur pajamas and one rain boot.

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