AND THEY SHALL BECOME ONE

Chapter 3 Life Goes On

Joan skipped supper that evening, but on Sunday morning hunger finally drove her down to breakfast. It turned out that only her mother and Luke were there. Lily and Kevin had gone home last night, and Joan wondered, a bit enviously, whether they had made love. Lily had once confirmed that they could, in spite of Kevin's paralysis, but was shy of giving details.

Dad had gone off to his office, apparently having decided that hunting for Adam from there was acceptable as long as he did it on his own time.

"So when does your summer job at the labs begin?" Mom was asking Luke.

"Couple of weeks."

"Do you have plans for what to do in the meantime?"

"I thought I might take riding lessons."

Helen nearly choked on her orange juice. "You, on a horse?"

"What's wrong with that?"

"I thought your childhood fantasy was to fly on a starship, sitting with Checkov and Silly--"

"That's Sulu!"

"I suppose," Joan said teasingly, "Luke thinks it would be cool to go riding with Grace during the summer. Maggie Begh gave her a horse for her birthday."

Mom suddenly got stern. "Grace. I should've known. This is about following your girlfriend over to the Third World, isn't it?"

Joan groaned. This argument had been going on, in one form or another, ever since Grace decided to join a famine-relief organization after graduation, and Luke had declared an intention of following her instead of going to Harvard. Since the relief workers were required to know how to ride animals, in case they got stranded somewhere without advanced transportation, Luke suddenly wanted riding lessons. Joan would probably have seen this coming if she wasn't so pre-occupied by her failed wedding. But at least it meant that neither family member was pestering her with questions about Adam.

"It's a noble cause," declared Luke defensively.

"There are lots of noble causes, Luke," countered Helen. "You can go to school and improve your knowledge, and someday you'll invent something that'll benefit humanity. That's a noble cause."

"I'll decide which one to follow."

"But you're NOT making good decisions. Take the time last month you followed her family to New York. Have you repaid Joan for your travel expenses?"

"I don't care about--" Joan tried to put in.

"And you still haven't told us where you stayed that night. Grace's bed, wasn't it?"

"That's a very personal matter," said Luke, turning red. Given his light skin and blonde hair, he blushed very visibly.

"You're 17, Luke, and very hormonal. And you've gotten in the grip of an older woman who --"

"Older woman? Grace is just 7 months older than I am. She was still in the womb when you got pregnant with me."

That stopped Helen for a minute, as it was unspoken but common knowledge in the family that Helen's third pregnancy had come as a shock. She had borne Joan only a month before and Helen had assumed that she was not fertile.

Before Helen could think of a rejoinder, the kitchen phone rang, and the mother went to get it. "No, Will isn't here; he's at the office--"

"We can't win," Luke whispered to Joan angrily. "First the Polonskis think I'm a scheming seducer, and when I finally convince them otherwise, Mother decides that Grace is a h-h-whore."

"I think she feels she's losing control everywhere," Joan whispered back. "She can't cure Kevin, my marriage mess means she can't help me OR Adam. So she focuses on you."

"Well, I'm going to the riding stable anyway. Care to come along?"

"I don't like horses."

"Well, there's the park across the street. I just thought you'd want to get out of the house."

"Good idea."

---

Approaching Arcadia's main park gave Joan uncomfortable flashes of déjà vu. On the south border she saw the bench, where she and Adam had sat while he assured her that he believed her story about God. He had SO wanted to please her then. On the east side she saw the playground where she had learned Double Dutch and tried to befriend Casper. But Casper had disappeared, just like Adam--

The stables were across the street from the north end of the park. Experienced equestrians would ride across the street and use a bridle path that ran along the park's northern boundary. Joan had tended to avoid the area because she had blamed contact with horses for her attack of Lyme Disease. But at least that meant that this end of the park held no memories for her.

There was a playground south of the bridle path, and next to it, a grove of trees. Joan decided to walk among the trees, where it was shady.

Hearing some rustling in the trees, Joan looked up and saw a little boy sitting on a high limb. It was hard for her to estimate distance, but he was WAY UP THERE. "Hey!" She called. "That's dangerous. Where's your mom?"

"I'm okay." The boy called down, reaching for a nearby branch. Two seconds later he tumbled off his limb and started falling. He landed on the ground with a thud and started screaming.

Joan rushed over to look at him. She had no medical training and could not tell if there was anything wrong, but soothing words and reassuring pats she managed to calm him a bit. He was still sobbing from pain.

Joan thrust her hand in her jeans pocket, but her cell phone wasn't there. She hadn't been very organized this morning. Instead she got to her feet. "Help! Help! Is there a doctor nearby?"

A thirtyish woman walked up. "I'm a nurse. What -- oh!" she said, seeing the boy and guessing the problem. She knelt and gave him an experienced examination. "Broken leg at the least. We ought to get him to the emergency clinic. Is this your kid?"

"Mine? No." Joan wondered whether she looked like a woman old enough to have a five-year-old kid.

"We need to find his family. Otherwise they'll wonder where he's gone." She turned to the little boy. "Where's your mommy?"

"Sister. Pony." He gasped between sobs.

Joan ran back to the bridle path and looked around. Several riders who didn't match the description, but finally she saw a young woman in jeans leading a pony; a girl even younger than the injured boy was in the saddle.

"Excuse me; do you have a little boy? Blue jeans, green shirt?"

"Yes--?"

"He got hurt over there. A nurse is with him."

The mother snatched up the girl and ran in the direction Joan pointed, leaving Joan with the pony. Joan awkwardly led the pet to a nearby tree and tied the reins to a small branch, hoping another rider would see and report it.

By the time she got back to the tree, the nurse had explained the situation to the mother and the two were clearly about to walk away toward the parking lot. But the mother took a second to talk to Joan. "I shouldn't have let him out of my sight. You're the one who saw it happen and got help. Thank you. God bless you, miss."

Yeah, that may be a little redundant--

---

"I'm feeling a lot better now," Joan told Grace that evening. She was visiting the rabbi's house, not wanting the "older woman" to run into her mother. "Adam treated me like crap, but I'm NOT crap. I can still help people, create good ripples."

"Yeah," said Grace, frowning.

"What's wrong, Grace?"

"Nothing."

"Come on, spill it!"

"Well-- don't think it was all too well timed?"

"Huh?"

"Here's you, needing your self-confidence boosted. And presto, an accident happens where you do everything right, and your confidence gets boosted."

"What? Are you saying God knocked the poor kid out of the tree?"

"Or tempted him to climb up too high, knowing the consequences. After all, who's more important to God, the kid or the girl he's been cultivating for the last 3 years? He foreknew the kid wouldn't be hurt too bad -- or intervened to make sure of it."

"Do you really think so?"

"I don't know!" yelled Grace, letting all her emotions show for one of the first times since Joan had met her. "I'm in a terrible mood, all sorts of things going through my head. I've known Rove for longer than you have, and he wouldn't trust me to know what was going on!"

"Can you guess?"

"I have an idea. You don't want to know."

"Tell me!"

"All right. Girardi, Adam's disappearance may have had nothing to do with YOU. Keep in mind what his mother did to herself. Could he have decided to do the same thing? In which case, he may simply have wanted to leave you out of it."

"My God! We've GOT to find Adam."

----

Joan slept very poorly that night. The next day would ordinarily have been a work day, but of course she had reserved it off for the honeymoon that didn't happen, and didn't feel like calling in and explaining everything to Sammy. So she simply lay in bed and sulked.

"Joan! Could you come down?" came Helen's voice.

"Do I have to?"

"There's a Fed-ex man here, needs your signature."

Joan got up and put a robe over her pajamas; that would have to do as far as decency went. Going through the motions, she went down, signed for the package, and opened it without much curiosity about the contents.

There was no letter. Inside was simply a check, from Adam Rove to Joan Girardi, for 5,000 dollars. The amount Adam had been paid for his most recent painting. As far as Joan knew, that was the whole of his bank account.

In the "for" blank were simply the words, "I'm sorry, Jane."

TBC