Page 18 of Just My Luck

He set down the leaf blower and tapped on the hale door. “Eddie? It’s Jim, the gardener from the other day. Your sister asked me to check in on you before I start the leaf blowing here. Are you in there?”

No answer from inside the hale. He looked around to make sure no one was watching. It was strictly against the rules for a gardener to step inside a hale, and the last time he’d done it, he’d gotten caught. If it hadn’t been Zara, who was also breaking the rules, he would have gotten fired. He couldn’t count on getting lucky again.

He turned the knob, expecting the door to be locked, but it opened easily. It must have been left unlocked for cleaning. In fact, he saw as soon as he walked in, the housekeeping staff hadn’t been in here yet. The couch pillows were strewn about the living room, glasses still crowded the coffee table, and a pile of damp towels sat on the floor.

“Eddie?” he called softly. When he got no answer, his stomach tightened. He pulled out his phone and called the front desk.

“Royal Leilani Resort, one moment, please.” The receptionist put him on hold.

Goddamn it. He didn’t want to wait until the receptionist tracked down Zara. He ended the call and went to search the rest of the hale.

It was empty.

A terrible sense of dread crept into his gut. Had Eddie run away? Or had someone taken him? Zara obviously felt that the unoccupied hales were safe for her little brother, but evildoers were everywhere, even at elite luxury resorts. Maybe even especially there. When people had lots of money, they could get to the point where they felt immune from consequences. That could make them dangerous.

He opened the sliding glass doors and ran into the backyard. This particular hale didn’t have a pool. Instead it featured a barbecue grill and a round outdoor table under a striped umbrella. It was known as the Jacaranda hale thanks to the tall tree that shaded the yard and littered it with ethereal lavender flower petals.

Eddie wasn’t sitting at the table, nor was he napping on the grass.

Just as Lincoln was about to give up the search, he heard a soft, ‘help,’ from somewhere above his head.

“Eddie?” he called. “Where are you?”

“Up here. In the tree. I’m stuck.”

The sound of the boy’s voice gave him a sharp rush of relief. He peered higher into the branches, noting their smooth gray bark, and there was Eddie, stretched on his stomach halfway down a branch, hanging on for dear life. He could see the boy’s curly brown hair and one skinned knee, but not much more than that.

“Did you climb up there?” Stupid question. It wasn’t as if a bird had dropped him there.

“Yes,” said Eddie in a meek voice. “Don’t tell Zara.”

“Let’s get you down first.” He analyzed the situation. As a kid, he used to love climbing trees. The Kerr estate had several ancient magnolia trees that were like safe havens for him. He used to imagine them as his friends, even held silent conversations with them. He’d ask them why people sometimes gave him weird looks, why conversations would stop in his presence, and what was it about him that made him different. The trees never had an answer, but their solid presence was a comfort to a lonely boy.

Sadly, their nanny had thrown a fit when she’d found him in the live oak tree tangled in Spanish moss. She’d gone to his mother, who’d laid down the law. No more climbing trees.

But even today, whenever he went back to his mother’s house, he took the time to put his hand on the bark of those old magnolias.

He hadn’t climbed a tree in over twenty years, but maybe it was like riding a bike. The only problem was that the branch Eddie was clinging to might break under the weight of two people. Better to get a ladder.

“Can you hang on for a few minutes while I go grab a ladder?” he asked the boy. Gazing past silvery leaves and purple flowers, he had the disorienting sense of time being distorted. It was him up in that tree, that young, lonely boy from years ago, and yet this was also him on the ground looking up.

“I don’t know.” Eddie whimpered, his body shaking. “I’m pretty tired.”

“How long have you been up there?”

“I don’t know.”

Right. Kids didn’t have the same grasp of time as adults. They didn’t generally have Patek Philippe watches, after all.

“Okay. Don’t worry about that. Can you back down towards the trunk? I can climb up and help you from there.”

“I tried that. That’s how I got stuck. Every time I try to move it hurts really bad.”

A stub of a dead branch was probably digging into him. It was possible that if Eddie pushed through that obstacle, he could reach the trunk. But what if he got even more injured in the process?

He judged the distance from the ground to the branch, and figured it was about fifteen feet. If he positioned himself under the branch and encouraged Eddie to let go, he could break his fall.

Or they could both break their necks. Not an ideal plan, but maybe the best under the circumstances.