Page 144 of Timid (Lark Cove 2)

For the next hour, Willa and I sat quietly as we listened to Magee’s questions and Ryder’s answers. It took the kid a while to open up, but once he did, Magee only had to guide the conversation.

We learned a lot more about Ryder’s childhood and the lifestyle he’d had with Mom. It made me realize that maybe bouncing from foster home to foster home wasn’t all that bad. At least I’d always had a home, whereas Ryder had slept a lot of his nights in the backseat of Mom’s old car.

Ever since he was a baby, she’d driven him from state to state, following whatever boyfriend she’d been with at the time. Occasionally, they would move in with one and stay for a year or two. But Mom’s relationships never lasted. Just as Ryder would get settled, she’d yank him out of his home and they would be off to somewhere else.

From what Ryder could remember, the longest Mom had stayed in one spot was right after Ryder was born. They’d lived in West Virginia, next door to one of Mom’s cousins, until he turned six.

Then she’d gotten restless. Instead of leaving him behind like she had with me, he became her traveling companion.

It was no wonder he’d gotten so far behind in school.

“So eventually you ended up in Las Vegas, is that right?” Magee asked.

“Yeah.” Ryder nodded. “We lived there with Mom’s ex-boyfriend Christopher.”

“And what was he like?”

Ryder scoffed. “He was a dick.”

“Really?” Magee perked up. So far, Ryder hadn’t had anything negative to say about anyone in his past, even our mother. “Why do you say that?”

“He used to push her around a lot.” Ryder frowned at the recorder. “One time, I came home from school and I saw him yanking her around the living room by her arm. She was crying and had a red mark on her cheek. She made some bull excuses for him, but the guy was a loser. It wasn’t the first time he’d put his hands on her.”

“Do you know what caused that argument?”

Ryder shrugged. “Probably money. That’s what they normally fought about. Christopher always had stacks of cash lying around.”

Warning bells rang in the back of my mind and Willa had the same alarm on her face.

Magee, on the other hand, kept his expression neutral. “What did Christopher do for a living?”

“Some kind of banker, I think,” Ryder answered.

Warning bells turned to blaring sirens.

“Interesting.” Magee jotted something down on his notepad. “Do you happen to know Christopher’s last name?”

“Unger.”

“Good.” Magee kept taking notes. “I don’t suppose you know why they broke up?”

“Not really. They got in a big fight and the next day, Mom told me she was sick of his shit. While he was at work, she loaded up all our stuff and we left.”

“And where did you go?”

“Denver. Mom bought a new car and we camped out in hotels for a while.”

“No school?” Magee asked.

Ryder just shook his head. “No. Mom said we weren’t staying long so I could just hang out and watch TV.”

My hands fisted on my thighs, not for the first time today, in anger at Mom. Instead of doing something for her son, like enrolling him in school or getting a fucking job, she’d let him sit on a hotel bed and watch television for the month of September.

Beside Ryder, Willa’s fists matched my own.

“Then what happened?” Magee asked.

“We came up here to look for Jackson. Mom was running out of money and thought he’d have some.”