Sarah was out of breath, having run to the Forum office as fast as she could from the school, where she had just finished work. She was preoccupied but stopped short when she saw Tom’s bandaged chin.
“What happened to you?”
“Tripped and fell.”
“Oh.”
“Last night, outside. Patch of ice.”
She didn’t ask a further question because the subject on her mind was so much more pressing.
“Angie is in jail,” she said. “I need to go up to Telluride.”
Tom didn’t move. He had been deeply immersed in his own troubles since the visit from the sheriff that morning and had no need of somebody else’s. The temptation was strong to push Sarah away, or to turn the tables and ask her to help him, to plead weakness, exhaustion, indifference, or ordinary selfishness. Even as his life was collapsing in on him, putting him under pressure that was becoming more unbearable the more he dwelled on it, Sarah’s life was clearly proceeding on its own catastrophic course. There seemed to be no stopping it.
“The baby’s been taken by social services,” Sarah said. “They’ll put him in foster care if I don’t go now and he’ll be there all weekend.”
She answered his silence by adding, “I thought maybe you could come with me. I don’t know who else to ask.”
“Okay,” he said, feeling instantly lighter. “Let’s go.”
Movement, he realized, was a vast improvement over sitting in his office waiting for the other shoe to drop, and to become re-engaged with Sarah at this moment, putting his own misery on the back burner in order to tend to hers, actually came as a respite.
Topping the hill as they drove up and out of the San Miguel river valley to Wright’s Mesa, Tom and Sarah could not see the San Miguel Mountains ahead; they were wrapped in thick clouds. The previous evening’s storm had moved east from Radium and it was snowing in the high country. Winter brought frigid air but little snow to the West End and the sky overhead was pale blue.
Sarah needed him, Tom thought. She could have gone alone to bail her daughter out of jail and rescue her grandson, but she felt the need for support and wasn’t afraid to ask him for it. Or he was the only alternative. He would have imagined given all the concern voiced in the first week after Ray disappeared, with the community rallying around so vocally and devoting itself to the search, that there would be plenty of other people Sarah could lean on. But he remembered how desolate things got just a few weeks after his father’s death, when for a time he was his mother’s primary source of emotional support. After the official mourning is over and daily life returns for everyone else, the family’s real sense of loss sets in for a long winter.
And yet, Tom wondered, why him? When had he and Sarah bonded to the point that she turned to him first when faced with a new crisis? Admittedly, the two of them shared something profound. She must have sensed that Ray Walker’s disappearance had become almost as deeply personal for him as it was for her. By insistently looking for Ray over her objections, Tom had forced himself into her life. He had become deeply entangled. Now, in a sharp reversal, as if it were a matter of establishing some basic physical equilibrium, she had asked for his help and he had reluctantly agreed. Their unusual courtship included full- and half-steps forward, backward, and to the side – by both of them.
Turning his thoughts over, Tom asked himself why he didn’t tell her immediately, as she sat next to him in the car, about Brubaker’s death; she would hear about it soon enough, certainly no later than the next Thursday, when the paper was published. He understood that to discuss it would lead to a discussion he was not yet prepared to have with her. What would he say when she speculated about who might have killed Brubaker? That her missing husband was the sheriff’s preferred suspect? Or that he, Tom, was the guilty party? Neither option was palatable, and the only other possibility, that Brubaker’s killing was completely unrelated to Ray’s disappearance, would surely seem incredible to Sarah. So Tom resorted to misdirection.
“What about Craig?” he asked. “The baby’s father? Where is he?”
“I can’t reach him.”
After traversing the mesa, the road began the climb to Telluride and there the snow began, an amazingly abrupt transition to an entirely different climatic zone. Just as the snow on the road forced Tom to slow down to a crawl, Sarah began talking again.
“She got fired from her job,” Sarah said. “They accused her of taking some jewelry from a guest’s room and called the cops. And when the cops got there, she started cursing at them. They charged her with resisting arrest and found the jewelry in her pocket.”
“Jesus,” Tom said.
“Then because she was in jail, she couldn’t get Tyler from daycare, and social services got involved. A social worker called me and told me the whole thing.”
Telluride was not in Slickrock County; they were outside Sheriff Martin’s domain, in a much richer county. The San Miguel County Jail was a modern fortress of steel and concrete, its high walls capped by concertina wire, to Tom’s eye far more formidable than a resort area jail needed to have been. It was set off by itself on a side road where tourists would never see it.
“I’m here about Angela Pellison,” Sarah told the deputy sitting at the front desk. “And her baby.”
“Have a seat,” the woman said.
“How many prisoners can this jail hold?” Tom asked.
The deputy looked at him quizzically.
“Professional curiosity,” Tom explained, handing her a business card. “I publish the Forum down in Radium.”
“Forty,” the jailer said. “Thirty men, ten women.”
“A lot of crime around here?” Tom asked.
“More than people know.”
“DUIs?”
“Not only. I’d say about as much domestic abuse and a lot of disorderlies after the bars close. You’d be surprised what goes on after one a.m…”
Tom silently completed her thought: “…after all the decent people have gone to bed.” Only the cops and the miscreants themselves fully experience life in society’s underbelly.
A crying baby announced the arrival of the woman carrying him. Sarah jumped to take Tyler from her.
“I’m Rachel Smith,” the woman said. “I’m with San Miguel County social services. There’s a room in the back where we can talk.”
She looked over at Tom.
“Friend of the family,” he said. “Tom Austin.”
“Would you like Tom to join us?” Rachel asked Sarah, who nodded.
“Thank you for coming so quickly,” Rachel said when they reached the barren room, harshly lit and furnished with nothing more than a banquet table and metal folding chairs. Apart from saving taxpayer dollars, the sheriff had no interest in making people feel comfortable there.
“The baby, his name is Tyler, isn’t it? I’m afraid he may not be right. Colic or something worse. He’ll need to see a doctor as soon as possible for a complete evaluation. He’s more than fussy. He’s impossible to comfort.”
Indeed, Tyler was still wailing.
“He’s just been away from his mother too long,” Sarah said. “He’s probably just hungry. I’ve got a bottle for him.”
She rocked Tyler in her arms as she rummaged through her bag for the bottle.
“My job is to protect the child. I’m not confident he’ll be safe with his mother,” the social worker said.
“He’ll be safe with me. I’m his grandmother.”
“We much prefer to place a child with a close family member when we can,” the woman said, with a warm smile. “But once a child is referred to us, it can get tricky. I can release Tyler to you because you are his grandmother and you have a clean record. I checked because I was hoping we wouldn’t have to place him in foster care. But if you take him you’ll have to agree to certain conditions. And we’ll have to follow up and make sure he’s being properly cared for.”
“Angie can take care of him.”
“I can’t take that chance,” Rachel cautioned. “We see many cases of child neglect like this stemming from methamphetamine addiction. We don’t see many where the situation improves quickly.”
Sarah gasped. “What do you mean addiction?”
“I believe that Tyler was probably born with meth in his system.”
“That’s just not possible.”
“Angie’s only been charged with felony theft and resisting arrest,” Rachel persisted. “The police didn’t find any drugs on her or they would have charged her with possession, too. But it seems clear she was high on meth or she wouldn’t have been so belligerent. She exhibits all of the symptoms. Her moodiness is quite striking. You need to get her some help.”
Sarah was having such a difficult time absorbing what she was being told that the social worker turned to Tom for help in getting through.
“We can refer you to several good drug rehabilitation programs. And if you need financial assistance, the state might be able to help out some.”
“I’m just a friend,” Tom said, his hands raised in a defensive posture.
“Thank you,” Sarah said. “We’ll do whatever we have to do.”
“You can bond Angie out now if you’re prepared to take responsibility for her.”
“Of course I am. She’s my daughter.”
“But I need absolute assurances from you that you will protect the baby. You can’t leave him alone with her. Not even for a few minutes. You have to agree to wean him immediately, if he’s still breastfeeding. And more than assurances, we’ll need to schedule a home visit for Monday to evaluate the conditions at your home and we’ll need to devise an appropriate monitoring plan. You need to assume legal responsibility, at least temporarily. Are you prepared to do all that?”
Sarah sighed. “If I have to,” she said.
As Tom witnessed this exchange between Sarah and the social worker to the sound of Tyler’s anguished cries, he wondered when he could make his escape.
Maybe, he thought darkly, Ray had in fact fled after all. Anyone would want to run from the train wreck that Angie presented. So how exactly had he been sucked in?
Angie wasn’t tweaking by the time they saw her; she had crashed. Dressed in an orange jumpsuit, there was none of her normal air of defiance; she looked defeated and afraid. Her face was flushed and she shuddered involuntarily every twenty or thirty seconds.
“Mommy,” she said, when she saw Sarah, and she grabbed Tyler, who had finally fallen asleep in his grandmother’s arms. She gazed into his face with an unnatural intensity and held him too tightly, waking him up. He started bawling again.
“Let me, honey,” Sarah said, taking Tyler back.
Rachel explained that she was releasing Tyler not to Angie, but to Sarah, adding that Angie could be with Tyler only when Sarah was present, until there was time to do a thorough evaluation.
“Do I have to agree?” Angie asked.
“If you don’t, I’ll have to put Tyler in foster care.”
Angie made a show of trying to read the document Rachel put before her, as a conspicuous demonstration that she was a responsible adult, but she gave up quickly.
“Where do I sign?” she asked, with plain irritation.
Tom could see that the social worker was unsure if she was making the right call by releasing the baby to Sarah. He felt she was looking to him for reassurance when she glanced in his direction. He nodded slightly, hoping that she would read his deep misgivings – and not his acquiescence, much less his endorsement – in his admittedly subtle expression. Please, he was thinking, as if thinking it hard enough could transmit his strong advice telepathically to the social worker without his having to say it out loud, as if prayer might actually work sometimes, please put the baby in foster care.
No such luck. A half hour later he was back in his car, driving down the canyon, with Sarah, Angie and Tyler riding in the back seat.
“I’ve already lost Ray,” he heard Sarah say. “I can’t stand the thought of losing you, too. But Angie, I want you to know that I absolutely refuse to lose Tyler.”
“Don’t fucking start in,” Angie said. “Not now.” Her voice was hoarse. “I just got out of fuckin’ jail.”
“Where is Craig?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re a mother now. You have a duty, not just to yourself. You have your baby, another human being, to think about.”
No reply.
“You promised you’d stop taking meth.”
No reply.
“The social worker thinks that Tyler has meth in his system. She says you can’t breastfeed him any more.”
“Fuck her! She’s full of shit. He’s just a cranky baby. You even told me some babies are difficult…. You said it’s colic. Plus, I hate breastfeeding anyway.”
“Meth….”
“Will you stop fucking talking about meth? You don’t know anything about it.”
“Something changed you, Angie. And if it’s not meth, I don’t know what it is. Whatever happened to my sweet little girl?”
“She fuckin’ grew up. It happens.”
“You didn’t just promise me. You promised Ray….”
“Well Ray isn’t exactly here, is he?” Angie said coldly. “He gave up and he left. So I guess you’ll just have to figure out how to handle me all by yourself.”
“She’s not by herself,” Tom interjected, rising to Sarah’s defense, rejecting the cruel insinuation that Ray Walker had given up on his wife. He had to admit, though, that he couldn’t have blamed Ray for giving up on his daughter.
“Oh great,” Angie groaned. “Now this one wants to play daddy.”
With that, she started sobbing theatrically, as if her father’s abandonment of her, or the mere mention of it, or more pointedly Tom’s gall in trying to assume Ray’s role in her life, entitled her to every bit of the trauma she was suffering. Clearly, there had been strong words exchanged about Angie’s meth habit before Ray disappeared. Had Ray been able to keep his daughter off drugs while he was around, making her current relapse a consequence of his being gone? Or had Angie’s addiction somehow exposed her father to risk? Could that explain Sarah’s evasiveness, a concern that to uncover what had happened to Ray could pose a similar risk to her daughter?
But Ray had not been able to keep his daughter away from meth in the first place and Craig clearly exerted a strong contrary influence. Angie would probably be going through exactly the same torment now if it had been Ray and not Tom who had driven with Sarah to Telluride to bail their daughter out of jail and rescue their grandchild. If Ray’s disappearance and Angie’s dissolution were tied together, the link did not need to be so direct as cause-and-effect. Far more likely that it was something in the water they both drank and the forbidding landscape they shared.
“Oh, honey, it will be all right,” Sarah said reassuringly. “Somehow….”
But neither Angie nor Tyler stopped bawling, and Tom was quite certain that Angie wouldn’t be all right, at least not anytime soon. He was impressed by Sarah’s devotion to her broken daughter, which so easily transcended their current misery, and could only assume that a parent easily remembers back to when the child was still malleable and full of promise. This was yet another example of how the past can trump the present. He thought back to his one previous encounter with Angie, when she was a pre-adolescent, and how, then, talking about the mountain lion she had bagged, she had struck him only as unformed, more a vessel for Ray’s hopes than a girl with meaningful aspirations or interests of her own. Now she was totally debauched by meth, but beneath her crystalline armor there must be a warm-blooded person who once had the capacity to be molded into somebody with a soul. One thing she clearly did not lack for was the love of her parents. So what had gone so terribly wrong? As Sarah had suggested, meth was a sufficient explanation, even though a drug counselor would surely insist that there was something more, something deeply psychological, behind the addiction.
Not another word was spoken on the rest of the drive to Radium, and when they reached the doublewide, Angie dragged herself to the room she had shared with her brother before she had moved out to live with Craig, and she slammed the door behind her.
“What’s wrong with her?” asked Ray Jr., who was sitting at the kitchen table doing homework.
“She got herself arrested,” Sarah said dully.
“Arrested? Like jail arrested? Whoa….”
He was already on her way to the bedroom to learn the glamorous details for himself.
“What do I do now?” Sarah asked, the whimpering baby in her arms.
If only out of necessity, because Ray was gone, she had flung open the door to the chaos of her life. For multiple reasons of his own, not least the simple circumstance of his being there, he had walked in.
“Maybe I can help,” he found himself saying