“Mr. B.?”
I could detect movement on the bridge, at the midpoint. I started walking, quickly. “Patty!” I said.
I thought she might run toward me, but as I approached I could see that she looked frightened, as though she doubted it was really me. But when I got to her, and threw my arms around her, held her next to me, she said, “The fuck are you doing here?”
“You’re okay,” I said, holding on to her, not wanting to let go. “You’re okay.”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” she said, and now she was hugging me, too. Her hands touched the gun in the small of my back and pulled away suddenly. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
I let go of her enough to look into her eyes. “I thought you were dead.”
“Fuck, no, here I am,” she said.
I gave this girl—this girl I now knew to be my daughter—another hug.
“What’s the deal, Mr. B.?” she said. “You’re crying.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just glad to find out you’re okay.” I tried to focus. “Everyone’s been worried sick about you. We were thinking the worst.” I thought about Carol Swain, whose level of concern wasn’t exactly off the scale, but she needed to know that her daughter was okay. “You have to call your mother,” I said. “You have to let her know you’re safe.”
“Yeah, sure,” Patty said, rolling her eyes.
“You do. But Patty, have you seen Syd?”
Patty shook her head. “What are you even doing here?” she asked me. “How did you…”
“What about you?” I asked. I needed to get past my emotional response and ask some questions. “What are you doing here?”
Patty seemed to be struggling for an answer. “I’m here looking for Sydney.”
“I figured that,” I said. “But how did you know?”
“She called me,” Patty said quickly. “She called and told me she was here.”
“When?”
“Just, like, yesterday?” Patty said.
“How is she? Is she okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, she’s cool, she’s good.”
I felt relief starting to wash over me, but I still had many questions. “How did you get up here?”
“I, you know, I hitched. Took a while.”
“Patty, why didn’t you just tell me? If Syd told you where she was, why didn’t you let me know? I could have brought you up here.”
Her mouth twitched. “I… I was pissed at you. About the other night. I wanted to make you proud of me. I wanted to bring Syd back myself.”
“Oh, Patty,” I said. “Is that why you weren’t answering my calls?”
She nodded. “I wanted to do it myself. Syd got a job up here, and I went there to find her, but she was gone. I was kind of screening my calls. I didn’t feel like talking to anybody.”
“You left Syd a note,” I said.
“Yeah, but I guess she didn’t get it.”
“You left it at the wrong cabin.”
“Shit.”
“How long have you been on this bridge?”
“Off and on, for hours,” she said.
“Sydney got scared off,” I told her. “She ran away from the inn. I think she saw one of them, looking for her.”
Patty looked scared.
I took hold of her by the shoulders. “This is something you can’t do alone, Patty. These people, the ones who’ve been looking for Syd, they’re very dangerous. They’re killers, Patty. And I think they’re up here right now. There’s been a car following us around.”
“Us?”
“I’m here with Bob. We started driving up when we learned Sydney was here in Stowe.”
“How did you know that?”
“I found out from one of them. Patty, I shot a man tonight. I shot him to find out what he knew. And he told me Sydney was up here.”
Something Jennings had told me shortly after Bob and I started heading up from Milford came into my head.
“Patty,” I said. “This call you got from Sydney. Telling you she was up here. You got that when?”
“Yesterday,” she said.
“Was that the first call?”
“Huh?”
“Was that the first time she called you? Yesterday?”
“Yeah, of course,” she said.
“Because the police, they’ve been looking for you for the last couple of days, and they were checking your cell records.”
“Yeah…”
“And they said there were other calls from Stowe. Much earlier ones.”
“That’s crazy,” she said. “They must have that wrong.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” she insisted.
“Did Sydney call you before? Has she been keeping in touch with you? You haven’t known all along where she’s been, have you?”
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Not for a second, anyway. “What?” she said. “Are you crazy?”
“I’m just trying to figure it all out,” I said. “And I can’t figure out why Sydney would call you to come and get her. Why wouldn’t she have called me, or her mother?”
“I don’t know!” she shouted. “I don’t know! Shit!”