If You Tell by Olsen Gregg

Author:Olsen, Gregg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FORTY

Lara Watson figured her grandson Shane was being a typical teenager whenever she reached out to talk to him. In addition, her timing must have been seriously off because he never made it to the phone.

“Just missed him,” Shelly frequently moaned, claiming he was off hanging out with some high school buddies. A couple of times, however, Shelly played the victim and said she was at her wit’s end because Shane had run away.

“Don’t worry,” she said, making a show of putting on a brave face. “He always comes back, or we’ll find him and bring him home.”

During those exchanges, Lara would thank her lucky stars that Shelly was looking out for Shane. He’d be running on the streets of Tacoma if not for Shelly and Dave. Though she had initially been skeptical about the rough-around-the-edges boy’s potential impact on the girls, she was happy that he had a life that included school, chores, and family time like trips to the coast. Shane had never let on to Lara what was really going on at the Knotek place, with Kathy, or the things that Shelly made him do. Not even a whiff of it. He didn’t tell her how he slept on a concrete floor in a cold basement, or in Nikki’s closet, or, at times, in an outbuilding at Monohon Landing.

When the teenager with the big smile and eager sense of humor vanished, Shelly didn’t tell her stepmother about it for the longest time. In fact, whenever Lara sent a check for Christmas or his birthday, it got cashed immediately—endorsed by Shane.

“Can I talk to him?” Lara asked Shelly, who adeptly pushed the request aside with an excuse.

Shelly sighed as if she understood the disappointment. “He’s not home.”

“He’s never home,” Lara grumbled.

“Teenagers,” Shelly shot back with a short laugh. “What can you do?”

Every time that happened, Shane’s grandmother would hang up, somehow placated by her stepdaughter’s insistence that Shane was doing fine, doing just what kids do. Later, it would eat at her as to why she put up with it. She should have pushed Shelly a lot harder. But she’d allowed herself to accept what Shelly was saying.

Teenagers!

“I have no doubts that Shane would have been happy to call me back,” Lara said, many years later.

Except he never did.

Finally, after a series of similar exchanges, Shelly finally divulged to her stepmother that Shane wasn’t coming back to Raymond anytime soon.

“He’s up in Alaska,” she said with a sigh. “He’s working on a fishing boat up there. You know that he’s been wanting to do that for a long time.”

Shelly’s story was plausible yet still not quite right. He would have told his grandmother his plans.

“I just talked to him,” Shelly went on. “He’s doing great. He loves it up there. It’s his dream come true. I’ll tell him to call you the next time we talk.”

“He never said that to me,” Lara said, pushing back a little.

Shelly seemed miffed. “What?”

Lara pushed a little harder. “That fishing was his dream.

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