Don’t Look Behind You

saddened to learn that he had lost his mother so early in his life that he barely remembered her.
    Cindy Tyler and Ty Hansen were in either the eighth or ninth grade when they met. Although they were both good-looking young teens, they would never be romantically attached, but Cindy would listen to Ty as he talked about his problems. She thought it was terribly sad that he had grown up without a mother.
    Ty was only two when Joann went away. It was clear that Ty was going to be very tall—like his father—but he was quite thin at that age. Even so, he was a good athlete—especially when it came to baseball. Even that didn’t endear him to Bob Hansen.
    Joann Hansen had once had wonderful plans for her children’s futures. However difficult her marriage was, she loved all four of her children devotedly. They were extremely intelligent children with natural musical talent, and their mother had encouraged them in whatever they wanted to do. She had been forced to give up Bobby because she feared for
his
life, her first baby girl had died in the night without warning, and she was extremely grateful to have Nick, Kandy Kay, and Ty. She hoped to find a way to raise Bobby, too. He was her firstborn and she loved him so much.
    She was a natural mother, ready to endure whatever she had to to keep them safe.
    Any mother’s greatest fear is not for her own life—but that fate will take her away from her children’s lives. In both the human and the animal kingdom, there may be nothing stronger than a mother’s love and her need to protect her young.
    When Joann disappeared, her children suffered—as they would for the rest of their lives—even if they managed to pick up the shattered pieces and rearrange them into a semblance of normalcy.

Chapter Ten
KANDY KAY
    All three of Bob and Joann Hansen’s children had inherited their father’s elongated chin and his height, but his daughter—Kandy Kay—looked the most like him. She had strong features like Bob, but hers were feminine. She had thick long brown hair and a slender figure. As she grew up, she became more and more beautiful.
    Bob Hansen owned a number of horses, which he kept in rented pasture land a few blocks away. Des Moines was far more rural in the fifties and sixties, and there were several meadows a block or so from “downtown.” Today, most of the fields are covered with sprawling apartments and their parking lots.
    Bob bought Kandy her own horse—Poker Chips—and she loved him dearly, but she resented it when her father wanted to show off her riding skills to his friends. She longed to ride free with Poker Chips.
    Kandy sensed early on that she was part of the facade that her father had contrived to impress other people, and she wasn’t comfortable with it. The Hansen children allknew that the smiling glad-hander that their father was in public was very different when their front door closed behind them.
    Bob still owned the Willows Apartments that he built at the bottom of the hill just below the brown house: red-brick, flat-roofed, small apartments surrounded by concrete. Because the town had long since dammed up a small lake unwisely, during heavy rains the Willows’ parking lot flooded, and sometimes the units themselves were endangered.
    When Kandy was just sixteen, Bob let her have her own apartment—the end unit to the west. Bob Hansen also moved his son Ty into the Willows Apartments when he was in high school. It appeared that Bob felt sixteen or seventeen years was long enough to raise any child. He had his own life to live.
    Bob sold the brown house and moved to Kent, several miles away.
    Nick Hansen was a genius. After high school, he joined the navy and studied nuclear physics; he was the top honors graduate in 1984 with a grade average of 98.43 percent.
    Living in her own apartment meant far too much freedom for Kandy—a teenager in the eleventh grade. Bob Hansen also bought Kandy a new car. Since they were old enough to have licenses, the Hansen teenagers had shared the use of an old station wagon, each handing it down to the next youngest when they were able to buy their own cars.
    Bob bought Kandy her own car when she got her apartment. It was white and detailed with orange, yellow, and red bursts of fire.
    A sixteen-year-old girl with an apartment of her own was an easy target for men who were attracted to her. Kandy didn’t have the protection and parental concern she needed, although it may be that she had
never
had that.