Heartstopper by Joy Fielding Page B

morning sun, then disappearing without a trace.
    Like Liana Martin.
    Where was she? What had happened to her?
    Sheriff Weber had organized a search party, and the whole town, it seemed, had been out looking for her since Wednesday morning without any success. Sandy was thinking of signing up herself this weekend, if Liana still hadn’t materialized. Was it possible some lunatic had snatched her? Sandy mulled over the rumors sweeping through the town, then shook her head. More likely, Liana had been seduced by some mysterious Internet suitor, and she was just too embarrassed to come back home. Stranger things have happened, Sandy thought with disgust, picturing her husband with Kerri Franklin.
    “What’s the matter?” Rita asked.
    “Just thinking about Liana Martin,” Sandy said. Not quite a lie. Just not the whole truth.
    “I sure hope she’s all right.” Rita stared absently at the eye chart on the far wall.
    Sandy wondered how Liana’s mother was holding up and tried to imagine what she would do if it were her daughter, Megan, who was missing. She shook the thought away with a deliberate toss of her head. It was simply too awful to contemplate.
    “How’s Brian been acting in class?” Rita suddenly inquired about her son. “He seem all right to you?”
    Although Rita had tried to keep her tone casual, Sandy heard the worry in her voice. “He’s fine. We were talking about metaphors the other day, and he was very insightful.”
    “My son was insightful?”
    Sandy nodded. “I think he has quite deep thoughts.”
    “Oh, God.”
    “You have a problem with deep thoughts?”
    “You want to know what he said to me?” Rita asked by way of an answer.
    Sandy wasn’t at all sure she wanted to hear what Rita’s son had said. “What’d he say?” she asked anyway.
    “He hasn’t been sleeping well lately. He’s been waking up in the middle of the night, wandering around the house, going outside for a cigarette. I’ve tried to get him to stop smoking, but …” Rita shrugged. “Anyway, the other night I confronted him, begged him to tell me what was bothering him, and he said …” She paused, released a deep sigh. “He said he didn’t think there was enough oxygen in the air.”
    Sandy might have laughed had it not been for the tears creeping into Rita’s big, hazel eyes. “There isn’t enough oxygen in the air?”
    “He worries about stuff like that,” Rita explained, hands lifting helplessly into the air as her gaze drifted back to the eye chart on the far wall. “I just get so scared. Because of his dad. You know.”
    Sandy knew that Rita’s husband, also named Brian, had suffered from depression for many years before finally committing suicide three years ago. Rumor had it that it was the son who’d discovered his father’s lifeless body hanging from the shower rod when he returned home from school one day, although Rita had never publicly confirmed this.
    “Boys around this age,” Rita continued, “you have to be so careful.”
    Sandy nodded, thinking of her own son. At sixteen, Tim was still the painfully shy boy he’d been for as long as she could remember. Slow to smile, slower to laugh, even slower to make friends, he was the classic outsider: sensitive, introverted, artistic. He preferred classical music to pop, live theater to movies, and books to basketball. Which made him a natural target for boys like Greg Watt and Joey Balfour. Luckily, because he was the teacher’s son, and because his sister was as pretty and popular as she was smart and outgoing, the bullies had seen fit to leave him alone.
    For now.
    “They say that if you can keep them alive until they reach thirty, you’ve got a chance,” Rita said.
    “He’ll be fine,” Sandy told her, in an effort to reassure them both. She stretched for a tissue from the box on the counter and dabbed gently at Rita’s eyes.
    “Anyway, enough of that. I really think you should come out with me tonight. I have a date, and I’m a