Chapter 4
I did not wait until morning.
At ninety-seven, people assume you become patient.
That is nonsense.
Age teaches you exactly how little time deserves wasting.
Ray arrived twenty minutes later.
I was already wearing my coat.
Margaret stood beside me arguing into her phone.
“Aunt Eleanor, you cannot leave in the middle of the night.”
“My great-grandson is missing.”
“You met him five minutes ago through a telephone.”
“He’s still mine.”
That ended the argument.
Margaret came too.
Ray drove.
The motorcycle stayed home.
He borrowed a black SUV from another biker named Moose.
I decided not to ask why a man called Moose owned such a clean vehicle.
We drove through the night.
Emily called police again while we were on the road.
They had already issued a missing juvenile notice.
Thomas Carter was fourteen.
Brown hair.
Thin.
Five feet seven.
Gray sweatshirt.
Black backpack.
He had left after learning about his great-grandfather’s death online.
That detail hurt.
He had apparently known Thomas Whitmore through letters.
“He wrote to him?” I asked.
Emily hesitated.
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Since Thomas was seven.”
Seven years.
My husband had corresponded with our great-grandson for seven years.
I felt anger again.
Then shame for being angry while a child was missing.
“What did they write about?”
“Everything.”
School.
Baseball.
Motorcycles.
History.
Thomas had mailed him tools for his twelfth birthday.
Of course he had.
My husband could apparently build an entire secret family using postage stamps.
“Why didn’t your son tell you where he was going?”
Emily cried quietly.
“Because we fought.”
“About what?”
“You.”
I stared at the dashboard.
Emily had told her son they could not travel to the funeral.
She said it would reopen wounds.
Young Thomas became furious.
“He said Grandpa Thomas always told him family shouldn’t let fear make decisions.”
I almost laughed.
That sounded exactly like my husband.
Then the boy packed a bag.
Emily thought he had gone to a friend’s house.
By the time she discovered otherwise, he had been gone six hours.
“Does he have money?”
“About eighty dollars.”
“Phone?”
“He left it.”
Ray cursed quietly.
I understood why.
A teenager without a phone was difficult to trace.
“How would he get here?”
“Bus.”
Ray glanced at me.
“Columbus station?”
Emily said police had already checked.
No confirmed sighting.
We reached her house shortly before three in the morning.
Emily stood on the porch.
When I saw her, I knew instantly.
David.
Her eyes were his.
Same shape.
Same nervous blink.
Same way of pressing her lips together when trying not to cry.
She stared at me too.
“Grandma Eleanor?”
Nobody had called me Grandma in more than fifty years.
I nearly collapsed.
Emily ran toward me.
We held each other.
All my anger disappeared for that moment.
She smelled like lavender detergent.
Her body shook against mine.
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
We cried for everything.
David.
Thomas.
Lost years.
And the boy currently somewhere alone.
Inside, photographs covered the mantel.
Emily as a child.
Emily graduating.
Emily holding a baby.
Thomas Carter growing from a round-faced toddler into a lanky teenager.
Then I saw one photograph that stopped me.
My husband stood beside Thomas at what looked like a park.
“What is that?”
Emily followed my gaze.
“Three years ago.”
“He met him?”
“Yes.”
My chest tightened.
“Thomas came here?”
“Twice.”
Margaret whispered,
“Oh, Uncle Thomas.”
I sat down.
My husband had traveled to Ohio and never told me.
“When?”
Emily gave dates.
One matched a weekend Thomas told me he was attending a veterans’ reunion.
Another was the day he supposedly drove north to buy a rare engine part.
I could not believe him.
I could believe him completely.
That contradiction hurt.
Ray placed a hand on my shoulder.
“We find the boy first.”
He was right.
At four in the morning, Ray began making calls.
The same network that had filled my street with motorcycles woke up again.
Bikers in Ohio.
Pennsylvania.
Indiana.
West Virginia.
Truck drivers.
Mechanics.
Roadside diners.
Gas stations.
Within an hour, dozens of people were watching bus terminals and highways.
I stared at Ray.
“You can really do this?”
“We look after our own.”
“Thomas is not one of your bikers.”
Ray looked offended.
“He’s your great-grandson.”
Apparently that answered everything.
At sunrise, police received a report.
A boy matching Thomas’s description had boarded a bus from Columbus to Pittsburgh the previous evening.
Not toward me.
Away from me.
Emily looked confused.
“Why Pittsburgh?”
Ray asked for the exact route.
The bus stopped in several towns.
One of them was Fairmont.
Ray froze.
“What?”
He looked at me.
“Did your husband ever talk about Fairmont?”
My heart shifted.
“Yes.”
Thomas had served in the Army with a man named Joseph Lane.
Joe lived in Fairmont.
They had remained close until Joe died.
Then I remembered something else.
Joe owned a motorcycle collection.
Including an Indian Chief.
“Thomas’s old motorcycle.”
Ray nodded.
“What?”
“Thomas sold his Indian to Joe when David was born.”
I stared.
“He told me he sold it to a stranger.”
“Joe kept it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I helped Thomas buy it back.”
I almost threw my cane at him.
“You know entirely too much about my husband.”
Despite everything, Margaret laughed.
So did Emily.
It was the first laughter in that house.
Ray continued.
“Thomas bought the bike back five years ago.”
“Where is it?”
“Still in Joe’s barn.”
“Why?”
“He said someday it belonged to someone else.”
We all understood at once.
Young Thomas.
The boy knew.
“He’s going to the motorcycle,” I said.
Ray was already moving.
Fairmont was ninety minutes away.
Police were notified.
So were bikers in the area.
We drove fast but legally, mostly because Margaret threatened Ray’s life whenever the speedometer climbed.
When we reached Joe Lane’s old property, the barn door was open.
A sheriff’s car was already there.
Emily ran first.
I followed as quickly as my cane allowed.
Inside, morning sunlight slipped through cracks in the wood.
An old red Indian motorcycle sat beneath a dusty cover.
And beside it, curled on the floor with his backpack under his head, was a teenage boy.
Emily screamed his name.
“Thomas!”
He woke with a start.
His mother reached him first.
She grabbed him.
Hit his shoulder once.
Then hugged him so tightly he could barely breathe.
“You scared me to death!”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t get to do this!”
“I know.”
She cried into his hair.
Then the boy looked past her.
At me.
Everything inside me stopped.
Thomas had David’s eyes.
But his smile—
His smile belonged to my husband.
The boy slowly stood.
“You’re Eleanor.”
Not Grandma.
Not yet.
I nodded.
“I am.”
He reached into his backpack.
Then pulled out a photograph.
My wedding picture.
Thomas and me in 1950.
“Grandpa said if anything happened to him, I should find you.”
My eyes filled.
“He told you that?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t he tell me about you?”
Thomas looked down.
“He said he was afraid.”
I almost laughed through my tears.
“Your great-grandfather was afraid of many ridiculous things.”
The boy smiled.
Then his face crumpled.
“I never got to say goodbye.”
I opened my arms.
He hesitated only one second.
Then he came to me.
My great-grandson folded himself carefully around my ninety-seven-year-old body.
I held him.
And something in me that had been empty since David died suddenly filled.
Not completely.
Grief does not disappear like that.
But it made room.
Afterward, Ray uncovered the motorcycle.
Red paint.
Chrome.
Old leather seat.
I recognized it from photographs taken before David was born.
“My God.”
Thomas Carter touched the handlebars.
“Grandpa said this was yours too.”
“It was.”
“Do you hate him?”
The question surprised me.
“Who?”
“Grandpa Thomas.”
I looked at the motorcycle.
Then at the boy.
“No.”
“But you’re mad at him.”
“Very.”
He nodded thoughtfully.
“I was mad at Mom too.”
Emily crossed her arms.
“You still should be worried about yourself.”
The boy looked guilty.
I almost smiled.
Then Ray discovered something beneath the motorcycle seat.
A small metal box.
My name was engraved on top.
Of course it was.
I looked toward heaven.
“Thomas Whitmore, if you left me another secret, I swear I will find a way to argue with you in the afterlife.”
Ray opened the box.
Inside was a bank book.
A deed.
And another letter.
This one was dated only six months earlier.
The first line read:
Eleanor, this time please let me explain before you get angry.
I laughed so hard I started crying.
May you like
Then I read what he had done.
And suddenly I understood why Thomas had spent his final years secretly rebuilding a family he feared he had broken forever.
