Linwood Barclay - No Time for Goodbye

Contents

This is for my wife, Neetha

May 1983

When Cynthia woke up , it was so quiet in the house she thought it must be Saturday.

If only.

If thered ever been a day that she needed to be a Saturday, to be anything but a school day, this was it. Her stomach was still doing the occasional somersault, her head was full of cement, and it took some effort to keep it from falling forward or onto her shoulders.

Jesus, what the hell was that in the wastepaper basket next to the bed? She couldnt even remember throwing up in the night, but if you were looking for evidence, there it was.

She had to deal with this first, before her parents came in. Cynthia got to her feet, wobbled a moment, grabbed the small plastic container with one hand and opened her bedroom door a crack with the other. There was no one in the hall, so she slipped past the open doors of her brothers and parents bedrooms and into the bathroom, closing the door and locking it behind her.

She emptied the bucket into the toilet, rinsed it in the tub, took a bleary-eyed look at herself in the mirror. So, this is how a fourteen-year-old girl looks when she gets hammered. Not a pretty sight. She could barely remember what Vince had given her to try the night before, stuff hed snuck out of his house. A couple of cans of Bud, some vodka, gin, an already opened bottle of red wine. Shed promised to bring some of her dads rum, but had chickened out in the end.

Something was niggling at her. Something about the bedrooms.

She splashed cold water on her face, dried off with a towel. Cynthia took a deep breath, tried to pull herself together, in case her mother was waiting for her on the other side of the door.

She wasnt.

Cynthia headed back to her room, feeling the broadloom under her toes. Along the way, she glanced into her brother Todds room, then her parents. The beds were made. Her mother didnt usually get around to making them until later in the morningTodd never made his own, and their mother let him get away with itbut here they were, looking as though theyd never been slept in.

Cynthia felt a wave of panic. Was she already late for school? Just how late was it?

She could see Todds clock on his bedside table from where she stood. Just ten before eight. Nearly half an hour before she usually left for her first class.

The house was still.

She could usually hear her parents down in the kitchen about this time. Even if they werent speaking to each other, which was often the case, thered be the faint sounds of the fridge opening and closing, a spatula scraping against a frying pan, the muffled rattling of dishes in the sink. Someone, her father usually, leafing through the pages of the morning newspaper, grunting about something in the news that irritated him.

Weird.

She went into her room, the walls plastered with posters of KISS and other soul-destroying performers that gave her parents fits, and closed the door. Pull it together, she told herself. Show up for breakfast like nothing ever happened. Pretend there wasnt a screaming match the night before. Act like her father hadnt dragged her out of her much older boyfriends car and taken her home.

She glanced at her ninth-grade math text sitting atop her open notebook on her desk. Shed only managed half the questions before shed gone out the night before, deluded herself into thinking that if she got up early enough she could finish them in the morning.

Yeah, that was gonna happen.

Todd was usually banging around this time of the morning. In and out of the bathroom, putting Led Zeppelin on his stereo, shouting downstairs to his mother asking where his pants were, burping, waiting until he was at Cynthias door to rip one off.

She couldnt remember him saying anything about going in to school early, but why would he tell her anyway? They didnt often walk together. She was a geeky ninth grader to him, although she was giving it her best shot to get into as much bad stuff as he was. Waitll she told him about getting really drunk for the first time. No, wait, hed just rat her out later when he was in the doghouse himself and needed to score points.

Okay, so maybe Todd had to go to school early, but where were her mother and father?

Her dad, maybe hed left on another business trip before the sun even came up. He was always heading off somewhere, you could never keep track. Too bad he hadnt been away the night before.

And her mother, maybe shed driven Todd to school or something.

She got dressed. Jeans, a sweater. Put on her makeup. Enough not to look like shit, but not too much that her mother started making cracks about her going to tramp tryouts.

When she got to the kitchen, she just stood there.

No cereal boxes out, no juice, no coffee in the coffeemaker. No plates out, no bread in the toaster, no mugs. No bowl with a trace of milk and soggy Rice Krispies in the sink. The kitchen looked exactly as it had after her mother had cleaned up from dinner the night before.

Cynthia glanced about for a note. Her mom was big about leaving notes when she had to go out. Even when she was angry. A long enough note to say, On your own today, or Make yourself some eggs, have to drive Todd, or just Back later. If she was really angry, instead of signing off with Love, Mom, shed write L, Mom.

There was no note.

Cynthia worked up the nerve to shout, Mom? Her own voice suddenly sounded strange to her. Maybe because there was something in it she didnt want to recognize.

When her mother didnt answer, she called out again. Dad? Again, nothing.

This, she surmised, must be her punishment. Shed pissed off her parents, disappointed them, and now they were going to act like she didnt exist. Silent treatment, on a nuclear scale.

Okay, she could deal with that. It beat a huge confrontation first thing in the morning.

Cynthia didnt feel she could keep down any breakfast, so she grabbed the schoolbooks she needed and headed out the door.

The Journal Courier, rolled up with a rubber band like a log, lay on the front step.

Cynthia kicked it out of her way, not really thinking about it, and strode down the empty drivewayher fathers Dodge and mothers Ford Escort were both gonein the direction of Milford South High School. Maybe, if she could find her brother, shed learn just what was going on, just how much trouble she might actually be in.

Plenty, she figured.

Shed missed curfew, an early one of eight oclock. It was a school night, first of all, and then thered been that call earlier in the evening from Mrs. Asphodel about how if she didnt hand in her English assignments, she wasnt going to pass. She told her parents she was going to Pams house to do homework, that Pam was going to help her get caught up on her English stuff, even though it was stupid and a total waste of time, and her parents said okay, but you still have to be home by eight. Come on, she said, shed barely have time to get one assignment done, and did they want her to fail? Was that what they wanted?

Eight, her father said. No later. Well, screw that, she thought. Shed be home when she got home.

When Cynthia wasnt home by eight-fifteen, her mother phoned Pams house, got Pams mother, said, Hi, its Patricia Bigge? Cynthias mom? Could I talk to Cynthia, please? And Pams mother said, Huh? Not only was Cynthia not there, but Pam wasnt even home.

That was when Cynthias father grabbed the faded fedora hat he never went anywhere without, got in his Dodge, and started driving around the neighborhood, looking for her. He suspected she might be with that Vince Fleming boy, the seventeen-year-old from the eleventh grade, the one who had his license, who drove around in a rusted red 1970 Mustang. Clayton and Patricia Bigge didnt much care for him. Tough kid, troubled family, bad influence. Cynthia had heard her parents talking one night, about Vinces father, that he was some bad guy or something, but she figured it was just bullshit.