Noah's Rainy Day (49 page)

Max cleared his throat. “He’s not your Papa.”

“I know, Daddy. You are. It’s just a name. We were just pretending until you came to pick me up.”

Max smiled and touched his son’s cheek. For the first time, I could see what Ida had seen in Max. He wasn’t such an asshole after all. Little Max
started to tell Noah stories, everything that had been happening since they left the outhouse. I noticed that little Max was sporting the same color wristband as Noah, a hospital band.

“Hey, Noah,” little Max said. “Sorry I called you ‘broken baby.’ I just didn’t understand why you weren’t talking to me. Your aunt explained. She says you talk in smiles. Do you?”

Noah’s smile was wide. Little Max started giggling and chattering, telling stories and asking Noah questions.

I mouthed, “Is he okay?”

Max stepped nearer and I rose from my bed, stepping closer to him so we could talk without the boys hearing us.

“He’ll be fine. It appears Fletcher didn’t molest him, which is a miracle. Based on those horrid photos they found, we all would have thought—”

I shook my head. “Me too, but apparently the boy who got away and lived to tell about it said that Fletcher never did anything sexual to him, either. Just took nude photos of him, slept with him in the same bed on occasion, but never violated him in any way. At least physically.”

“Fletcher’s lucky he committed suicide, Liv, because seriously,” Max said giving me a grave look, “I don’t know what I would have done to him after seeing those photos of little Max. You guys did a brilliant job.”

“Thank you, but don’t thank me. Noah did all the heavy lifting. If he hadn’t told us about little Max, if he hadn’t figured it out and left that audio recording on his pin, I don’t know if we would have ever figured out what had happened. We would have been too late.”

Max chuckled.

“What?”

“Liv, Noah can’t even talk.”

“Oh really?”

Max glanced at Noah, who was intent on listening to little Max and laughing when the boy laughed. “He’s just going with the flow.”

I sighed. “Max, sometimes you can be so dense. He is smart and courageous and communicates all the time, just not like you and I communicate. It’s kind of like you understanding Noah as much as you understand someone who speaks Spanish.”

That made him laugh. “Oh, that’s rich. You remember? It’s my Achilles’ heel.”

“I remember what an asshole you were. And she wasn’t speaking Spanish that day, you idiot. She was practicing her song. Ida’s opera was Italian, for Pete’s sake, and you were supposed to feel the story, not understand every word. Yet you thought she was speaking in code about you,” I said. “Your Achilles’ heel is paranoia. What an asshole.”

“I’ll take your word for it. And thank you for still being classic Liv. It’s what I miss most about not having Ida in my life anymore. I need someone around me who’s not dazzled by money. I need someone honest like you. That, and I miss your mom sharing her Tootsie Rolls with me.”

“From her magic purse,” I agreed. I drew in a deep breath. “How’s Melissa?”

“She’s … she’s changed. So have I. She’s breaking up with Aldo as we speak. She wants to give us another try.”

“Well, good for you. Try not to be such an asshole this time. Melissa’s a nice young lady and little Max deserves parents who don’t fight.”

“Of course he does,” Max said, crossing his arms and rocking back on his heels. “I’m a new man. And thanks for pointing out my flaws so succinctly. You could try to do it a little less often.” He looked over at me. “But your honesty was exactly why I insisted that you be on this case, Liv. I asked for a list of the agents at the Denver Bureau and when I saw your name on it, I knew you could do this, even if you were a first-office agent and just out of Quantico. You’re a ‘no bullshit zone’ for sure, and if I’ve learned nothing else, I’ve learned that I need more people like you in my life.”

“No bullshit? Well, then let me give you some advice. I do think you can learn to be less of an asshole. I do think Melissa cares about little Max, so you need to cut her some slack. And I do think you have a child who needs you both in his life now that Nanny Judy isn’t in it,” I said with a grin.

He laughed. Little Max turned to watch his dad and started giggling. “Daddy, I’ve never seen you laugh like that before.”

“And it’s about time you did, isn’t it little Max?” I asked.

“Well, champ, we better get going. My jet is fueled up and waiting on us. Come on, little Max. Bye, Noah. And Liv, I’ll make sure Chandler knows how well you did, slips you a bonus this holiday.”

At first, I decided to ignore his comment, but then as he was leaving the room with little Max in tow, I said, “Max?”

He turned, a quizzical expression on his charming face.

“Do me one better. Instead of a bonus, would you mind cutting a donation to United Cerebral Palsy in Noah’s name? Since he’s the real hero in all this.”

Max looked over at Noah’s hospital bed and offered a crooked smile. Little Max pranced around his dad repeating, “Please, Daddy? Please?”

Noah lay still, listening to Max’s answer.

“How does a half million sound, Noah?”

Noah squealed, his arms and legs pulling into his chest, he was so excited.

Max looked back at me. “Maybe you’re right.”

And then Max and little Max were gone.

Noah truly had done all the heavy lifting on this case, leading me to solve the abduction of Maximillian Bennett Williams III despite so many disbelievers. Without his help, without him figuring out who Clint was, without him triggering the spy pin and recording Fletcher’s voice with little Max, with Fletcher kidnapping Noah, we would have never been able to find little Max and close the case, allowing us to bury Fletcher’s evil deeds along with his carcass.

The coward.

Jack had called me earlier before stopping by and told me what had happened during Fletcher’s interrogation, where he had owned up to nothing and resolutely professed he had killed no one. Jack believed him. He concluded Fletcher was too much of a coward and calculatedly discarded the boys in such a way that killing them was unnecessary, leaving them to fend for themselves in the wild like he had Clint. There were unsolved cases to recover some of those missing boys’ bodies, if ever, but now that they had located Fletcher’s favorite haunt, where I had found Clint’s backpack and where Fletcher had left little Max and Noah to die, the team would have a place to start looking.

And Jack also told me about how Fletcher committed suicide in his cell, how Jack was the last person to see him alive, and how glad he was that the world was rid of his filth and evil.

I thought about how Jack had told me he loved me for the first time tonight. And how he hadn’t given me time to tell him I loved him back. I wish I had. I think. But my head was still swimming in all the confusion and with the lack of sleep.

It had been a very long day. Now that Noah was back to sleep, I snuggled
up beside him in bed, closed my eyes, and counted Noah’s smiles as I began to doze. Noah’s gentle purr beside me led my mind to the memories of hearing little Max and Noah laughing, until the joyful laughs became like the rumble of a lawn mower, and made me recall a laugh that made my insides warm and my spirits lift. It was Streeter’s laugh. And I was jolted awake.

He was standing above the hospital bed and I thought he was a dream. “You’re always there, aren’t you?”

His grin was real. The five o’clock shadow was rough against my fingertips as I instinctively reached out to touch his face as I had done so many times since I’d first met him in Fort Collins this summer.

My eyes snapped open, realizing none of this was a dream and that Streeter Pierce was actually standing by Noah’s bed. “Oh, sorry! I thought I was dreaming.”

I slipped out of bed and rose to stand next to him, looking down at Noah.

Streeter’s grin widened. “It’s okay. Just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

“Great! Never better. The good news is my rib is
not
broken. Told you so.” I drew in a breath and sat on the unoccupied bed, where he joined me. “The bad news is my arm
is
.” I lifted the cast for him to see. “Want to be the first to sign it?”

“I see everyone’s been lining up to sign Noah’s cast. Sorry I missed the celebration. He deserved it. He’s a hero. And so are you.”

I lowered my eyes. “I’m no hero. And no one believes that Noah actually solved anything. They don’t get it.”

“Well, I do. And I talked to the mayor. They are dedicating this year’s New Year’s Eve parade in Noah’s honor and want him to be the Grand Marshall. Think he’ll be up for it?”

My smile was easy. “Of course. He’s the strongest kid I know.”

“Clever, how you figured out where to find the boys, Liv. We would have been too late, if it weren’t for you connecting the dots to Clint from last year.”

“I didn’t. I swear. That was Noah. All I did was find Clint’s backpack. Luck, really.”

Streeter shook his head. “Not luck. Skill. And you’ll both be joining the mayor on the lead car in the parade, my dear. So dress warmly.”

He smiled and I sensed he was about to leave. But I didn’t want him to. “Streeter?”

He arched his eyebrows and smiled.

“I don’t know if I made the right decision,” I said.

For a long moment, he simply stared at me. Then he scooted closer to me on the bed, put his arm over my shoulder. “About what?”

I looked over at Noah. I wanted to tell him about Jack. That he’d said he loved me and that I didn’t know how to answer him. Instead, I said, “About the FBI. I have to admit, my mind wasn’t on finding little Max at the end. It was on finding Noah. On family.”

A tear slid down my cheek as I gazed over at Noah, asleep and at peace. I turned back to seek an answer from Streeter on my dilemma.

His crooked grin was reassuring somehow. He reached up with his thumb and wiped away the tear from my cheek. “That’s normal.”

He stood up and moved closer to Noah’s bed, away from me.

“But what if I had made a mistake? This all came so fast, Quantico, my decision to leave the family business. You. Jack.”

I saw his head droop. He remained silent for a long moment as I studied him. “It’s not something you have to decide right now, Liv.”

I wondered if he meant my decision about staying with the FBI or going back to my family’s life of quarrying. Or if he understood that my confusion was much deeper.

Streeter reached in his jacket pocket, bent down to sign Noah’s cast, and then turned to me. I would have sworn there was a tear welling in his eye. He leaned over to sign my cast and slipped out of the room without another word.

I noticed he had signed my cast upside down, so I could see it. But he hadn’t signed his name after all. My eyes fixed on the single word he had scribbled indelibly on my cast.

“Always.”

And I smiled.

I AM HUMBLED BY
the number of book clubs that volunteered to be “beta readers” for this book. Beta testing is a common term in business for benchmarking and measuring the volatility of something, and ever since I was introduced to book clubs across this country with
In the Belly of Jonah
, my first Liv Bergen story, and learned how honest and valid feedback from members of book clubs could be, I decided to choose a “beta reader” book club for each of my books before I sent the manuscript on to my publisher for editing.
Lot’s Return to Sodom
was read by the Tough Ladies of Harding County, a combination of two book clubs from Camp Crook and Buffalo, South Dakota.
Widow’s Might
was read by a book club I hijacked one night when the homeowner suggested I come to the front window and peer in on the group as they discussed
In the Belly of Jonah
. A huge thank you to sisters Ruthie Conway and Sara Gross for that fun experience and for volunteering as the beta readers for
Widow’s Might
, which earned an ABA Indie NextPick.

The volunteers who read and made suggestions to improve
Noah’s Rainy Day
were the wonderful Ladies of the Knight and the Rambling Mustangs book club in Chicago, Illinois. I thank them for their honesty and suggestions for improvement in fleshing out the story. A personal
thank you to Denise Kreb, Jacqui Menich, Kim Cichon, Andrea Bonefas, Sandy Blethen, Christine Lussow, Terri Bauer, Patti Brock, and Julie Caporusso. They invested so much of their precious time to help me and I am so appreciative. Thank you, ladies!

Jeanne Thornton, bless you for coaching me through the edit process, and thanks to Elizabeth Chenette for her expert editing. Jenny Simonson, you provided the common thread throughout all my books, thank you!

And to Team Hoyt—Dick and Rick Hoyt—thank you for making me believe I could write this story and give a voice to the real heroes in this world: people like you, my nephew, and his parents. Warriors and angels.

1. In a departure from Sandra Brannan’s previous Liv Bergen novels, murder wasn’t the central theme in
   Noah’s Rainy Day
   . Did you find the change in story line and writing style refreshing or disappointing?
   

    
   

2. Liv Bergen is blessed with numerous siblings and a strong family. How effectively does the author use the character’s family members to further the story in
   Noah’s Rainy Day
   , using a newly showcased sibling, sister Frances, as the focus in this book?
   

    
   

3. The relationship between Liv Bergen and Streeter Pierce may be hindering Liv’s desire to further her relationship with Jack Linwood. If you were Liv, whose bed would you jump into with both feet, eyes wide, and why?
   

    
   

4. The author raised several serious topics in
   Noah’s Rainy Day
   . What are your experiences with the author’s
   perspective that people with challenges are often seen by society as “invisible” rather than having strong skill sets that may be unseen?
   

    
   

5. Brannan’s FBI agents and DPD touched on the concept that child abductions can most often be linked to family members. The villain in
   Noah’s Rainy Day
   was not typical. What do you think about publicly mapping where sexual predators live in certain communities versus the rights of convicted criminals to privacy?
   

    
   

6. If you had a child or family member with severe challenges and a high requirement for special needs, at what point would you consider institutionalizing your family member and what factors would you imagine most important in your decision?
   

    
   

7. The author found no way around introducing Noah’s voice in the first person. Up until
   Noah’s Rainy Day
   , Brannan had only allowed Liv Bergen the first-person perspective. Did you find the technique effective or off-putting?
   

    
   

8. The story of
   Noah’s Rainy Day
   occurs over a two-day time frame and was less of a murder mystery than it was a cozier mystery with the thrill of a ticking clock: Will the good guys find the bad guys in time to save the boy? Did you like how the author changed her style?
   

    
   

9. Which of Sandra Brannan’s books is your favorite?
   

   In the Belly of Jonah
   (2010)
   

   Lot’s Return to Sodom
   (2011)
   

   Widow’s Might
   (2012)
   

   Noah’s Rainy Day
   (2013)