Page 99 of Timid (Lark Cove 2)

“So she comes back?” Jackson asked.

“Yeah. She disappears but comes back eventually to take me with her.”

“Not this time.” Jackson shook his head. “She’s not taking you again. You’re here.”

Ryder studied Jackson’s face, like he didn’t believe that could be true. “Really?”

“Really, kid. We’ll make sure she can’t take you again.”

Tears welled in Ryder’s brown eyes. He sniffled, trying to clear them up, but a week’s worth of high emotions was too much. He broke down, slouching in his seat, and cried. Jackson’s hand stayed on his knee the entire time.

Jackson looked at me, his face a mixture of fury at his mother and pain for his brother. I gave him a reassuring smile and hoped he knew he wasn’t in this alone.

Melissa Page might not realize it yet, but she’d lost both of her sons. Now that they’d found each other, they wouldn’t need her ever again.

It took a few minutes for Ryder to calm down, and when he did, he pulled in few shaking breaths before looking at Jackson. “I don’t want to go with her again.”

“You won’t,” Jackson declared. “I’ll go talk to a lawyer on Monday. We’ll figure out a way for me to become your legal guardian. But that means you need to tell us all about the past. I gotta know what happened with you and Mom. No surprises.”

“Okay.” Ryder nodded. “Like what do you want to know?”

“Well, to start, let’s go over where you were living. Las Vegas, right?”

Ryder had given us enough information about his school that I’d been able to call and get the records transferred up to Lark Cove. But other than the school’s name in Las Vegas, we didn’t know much else. They would only transfer the records to the school so I hadn’t gotten to see them.

“Yeah. We lived in Vegas for a while with Mom’s boyfriend. Christopher.” Ryder rolled his eyes. “He’s an asshole.”

“Why’d you guys leave Vegas?”

“Christopher dumped Mom. They got in a big fight one night, and the next morning, Mom loaded us up and drove us to Denver. That’s when she got the idea to come looking for you.”

Because she’d needed a place to leave her kid.

“Where did you live before Vegas?” I asked Ryder.

“All over. Kansas. Alabama. Iowa. I was born in West Virginia.”

Which meant after Melissa had abandoned Jackson in New York, she likely hadn’t gone back to Pennsylvania where he’d been born. She’d slowly made her way out West.

“What kind of jobs did she have?” Jackson asked.

Ryder shrugged. “None really. She always had a guy or something. A couple times we lived alone, but it never lasted.”

“And who’d she leave you with when she’d disappear?” I asked. “Was it other family? Or your dad?”

“No. I don’t know my dad. She never told me his name. Mostly, she left me with her friends and neighbors. It was never for long. A couple weeks and then she’d be back. The longest was a month.”

If that pattern continued, it meant she’d be back and back soon.

As harsh as it sounded in my head, I wished she’d do to Ryder what she’d done to Jackson—leave and never look back. It would be hard for Ryder, but I still felt like it would be better for him never to see that woman again.

“Did she say she was coming back?” Jackson asked.

Ryder shook his head. “Not this time.”

Jackson and I shared a look, wishing for the exact same thing.

We both wanted Melissa Page to just become a bad memory.