The Treasure Man. Pamela Browning

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СКАЧАТЬ did you get in, anyway?” she asked, knowing that Ben must have opened the door for the cat. A glance at her watch told her that it was almost nine o’clock, late by her standards. Usually, when she was here, she was awake at dawn, since the rising sun’s rays easily penetrated the thin curtains of her room.

      Butch meowed and pawed at her leg. “Okay, okay,” she said, lifting the toilet lid. Butch was toilet trained because she’d been relentless in her expectations. She took a dim view of scooping cat litter, and so did her grandmother, who had been skeptical about adopting a pet in the first place. Chloe had insisted that they keep Butch after he’d ventured out of the woods behind their house, skinny and scared. Now he weighed in at a hefty twenty pounds and was afraid of nothing.

      Since Butch preferred privacy when he performed, Chloe wandered into the bedroom. She opened the windows to let in the breeze, marveling at the sight of the waves lapping on the shore. Though born and bred in the heart of Texas, she’d always felt a kinship with the sea.

      Ben was sitting at the edge of the ocean, staring toward the horizon. She almost called to him, but something about the set of his shoulders gave her pause. She read discouragement in the way they slumped, and something else. Sadness? Sorrow? She wasn’t sure, but she sensed that he was weighed down by some indefinable burden. He seemed different from when she’d first met him. In those days, he’d been full of personality, convivial and gregarious. People had been naturally drawn to him, and he’d basked in his own popularity. The change in him tugged at her heart even as she cautioned herself that whatever Ben’s problems were, she wanted no part of them.

      She returned to the bathroom, where Butch was now waiting at the edge of the sink for his morning drink of water. After turning on the tap for him, she flushed the toilet, a skill that the cat had unfortunately not mastered. After one lick at the dripping faucet, Butch gave a disdainful little brrrup!—his equivalent of “yuck”—and jumped down.

      Chloe started a shopping list. Bottled water, she wrote at the top as her cell phone rang. The caller ID revealed that it was Naomi, who, until she’d married her husband, Ray, the summer of high-school graduation, had accompanied her to Sanluca during their childhood summer vacations.

      Naomi wasted no time getting to the point. “Chloe, guess what Tara’s done now.”

      “I couldn’t say right off,” Chloe said cautiously as possibilities sequenced through her mind. Her teenage niece had recently decided that she didn’t want to go back to high school in the fall. “Taken up skydiving? Joined a convent?” Chloe figured the only way to calm Naomi down was to make light of the situation.

      “She’s run away from home, that’s what! Ray and I are frantic with worry. Tara finished her final exams and split. No one has a clue where she is.”

      “Did she leave a note?”

      “She propped a sweet little card on her pillow, telling us not to worry.”

      “As if you wouldn’t.”

      “As if,” Naomi agreed with a sigh.

      “At least Tara took her exams,” Chloe pointed out.

      “Why do you find this funny?” Naomi asked with remarkable forbearance. “We’re beside ourselves with worry.”

      “Tara confided before I left Farish that she’d reformed. My guess is that she’s hiding at a friend’s house and they’re pigging out on hot-fudge sundaes. You used to do that when finals were over, remember?”

      “We’re checking with all her friends, and in the old bunkhouses on some of their parents’ ranches, and every other possible place. The police don’t consider her disappearance a criminal matter because Tara left a note, went of her own accord and kids run away all the time. They believe she’ll be back. I’m not so sure, Chloe. Tara and I had a big argument a couple of days ago.”

      Chloe’s heart sank. “I’m sorry to hear that. Care to tell me about it?” She’d hoped that Tara was sufficiently chastened after her latest transgression of hosting an unchaperoned party when her parents weren’t home. But then, Chloe knew about rebellion for rebellion’s sake. She’d been a difficult teenager herself.

      “On Sunday, Tara wanted to wear this really horrible outfit to church. I mean, it was so short that it would have raised the eyebrows of every little old lady in the congregation, including Grandma. Especially Grandma. And no bra, and—”

      “I don’t wear a bra sometimes.” Like maybe never, Chloe was thinking, if the weather didn’t cool off.

      “You’re a grown woman, free to make your own decisions about how you dress. Tara’s still a kid. I told her that over my dead body would she leave the house in that getup, and she said that she hoped I wasn’t planning to assume room temperature any time soon, but she was going, like it or not. And I said she wasn’t, and she said I was a bitch, and—”

      “She called you a bitch?”

      “As well as other names I would rather not repeat. Then she stormed out of the house, wearing a dress no bigger than a sticky note. Ray and the twins and I waited for her to come home and were late for church because she never showed up. Or at least, she didn’t come home until we were gone. I didn’t figure out until late that night that she’d taken a duffel. She packed clothes, Chloe, and her teddy bear. She never goes anywhere without that bear.”

      Chloe sighed. This sounded like an updated version of her own difficult adolescence, though she hadn’t had the comfort of a stuffed animal when, during Christmas vacation in her senior year of high school, she hitchhiked to visit a boyfriend who had recently moved to California.

      “That’s awful, Naomi. You have my heartfelt sympathies,” Chloe told her.

      “We’ve set off alarms in every direction. I’ve alerted Marilyn and her group in case she shows up in Dallas.” Marilyn, their cousin, and her husband, Donald, had five kids. Tara had been close to that branch of the family most of her life.

      “You’ll call when you find her, won’t you?”

      “Sure. Let’s hope it’s soon.”

      “I’m sure it will be. She’s a good kid, Naomi.”

      “I keep expecting her to walk through the front door—” Naomi broke off her sentence, a sob catching in her throat.

      “I’m so sorry, Mimi.” Chloe was the only one allowed to call Naomi by her old childhood nickname.

      “I’ll keep you posted. I wish I were in Florida with you. I worry about you being all alone there.”

      “Well, don’t. Ben Derrick showed up.”

      “Who?”

      “You wouldn’t remember. You were already married to Ray the summer that Ben boarded at the inn and I was here.”

      “He’s nice?”

      “Also helpful.”

      “Age?”

      It took a moment for Chloe to figure this out. “Thirty-seven.”

      She could picture her sister narrowing her eyes on the other end of the phone. “You haven’t taken СКАЧАТЬ