The Light at the End of the Tunnel Read Online Free Page A

more.
He knows we’re onto him now, so—“
    “ Onto him?”
    “Yes!” She practically screamed her answer,
“He smirked when you weren’t looking so that I would look like a
fool who needs her head examined! He knows, Evan! He’s just a baby,
but also he’s…he’s…I don’t know. I just don’t know!”
    “Will you be all right while I’m gone?”
    “Yes, just please try to hurry, and, Evan,
we’re leaving tonight. Call your boss and just tell him…that
there’s an emergency in our family and we have to leave.
Immediately.”
    “All right, dear.” Evan hurried to the
kitchen and got the second bottle of formula heating. He wished he
could share what he knew of the child with his wife, but she was
upset enough with what she did know, so he would hold off for then.
Maybe forever.
    A few minutes later he returned with the
fresh bottle and handed it over.
    Leslie took it, put it to the mouth and he
immediately stopped screaming and started sucking, again
furiously.
    “He’s probably doing this so that he will get
sick and puke on both of us,” Leslie said, quietly, “Wash the extra
bottles, Evan, and mix up extra batches of formula, and we’ll take
our own tap water, and pack us both three suits of extra clothes.
And our winter coats! The farther west we go likely the colder it
will get. We’ll probably be gone for Christmas—damn it! My sister
was expecting us and our new baby, Evan, what can we tell her?””
    “We’ll think of something, honey.” Evan
stared at his wife. She was speaking differently than he had ever
heard her, so completely sure of what she wanted to do. He agreed;
he just wished he had seen more of the baby’s antics then just that
with the umbilical cord, but that should have been enough. And it
was enough. You know what you’re doing, my darling, and I’m with
you.

     
    Chapter 7 The Abandonment

    Just after dark, three days later they
entered the small city of Wayne Ridge, Nebraska, about the center
of the state, and pulled into a station. Evan started to get out.
They needed gas, and something to eat.
    “Wait, Evan,” Leslie said, “Let’s do it
first, then we can go back to that little town about thirty miles
back.” She leaned over and looked at the gauges, “We’ll have enough
gas.”
    Evan slipped back behind the wheel, closed
the door, and glanced at his wife. Her gaze and demeanor were calm,
her beautiful dark eyes shining. And she held the baby against her
bosom as if she loved the child, but he knew she somehow was able
to fake it, and in faking it, convince the child that all was
okay.
    When out of the child’s hearing they had
decided to never talk bad about him again—at least not in front of
him—and that, both of them, especially Leslie, would feign love for
him. Even while discussing it they had both felt foolish. A child
just two months old could not understand speech, or could he?
    During the incident three nights earlier,
they remembered that every word they said just made the child cry
louder…and, seemingly, angrier, but when, through intense emotion
on Leslie’s part, she had again taken the child into her arms and
held him, and…loved him, and he had settled down.
    “We do need to know where the hospital is
though,” Evan said, but even as he said the word ‘hospital,’ he noticed a change in the child’s expression. He had thought the
child was asleep, “I’ll be right back.” He stepped out, hurried
into the station, asked for and received a phone book—could hear
the child crying, loudly and angrily again—wrote down the
address—and almost without decision tore out the page with the city
map—hurried back, and again slid in behind the wheel.
    “There, there,” Leslie was saying, rocking
the child in front of her, totally acting the loving mother. She
glanced at her husband. Her eyes snapped, but she said quietly and
under control, “Let’s go!”
    As Evan drove and watched street signs he
pulled out the phone book