Five Days in Summer

their friends and family started to blur as he searched for the right person to come save his children. But finally he understood that there was only one person, that Geary’s first suggestion had been right.
    In the morning, Will would get Maxi from the hospital and drive Sarah and the children back to New York. He would tell Sarah tonight.
    He lifted Emily’s address book to his nose and closed his eyes and drifted into her scent. If there was a pinprick of hope left in the universe, he had to find it. He would find it. He would.
    “Stop! Stop! ”
    He heard the second shout first.
    “Stop!”
    Will bolted up the stairs and out the front door. The boys were racing around the cul-de-sac, their sneakers skidding clouds of dust into a fog. Sarah stood at the edge of her cactus bed, her neck straining with each “Stop!” Laughing, Sam chased David, reaching to grab his shirt and almost getting it before the distance between them expanded. David was taut as an arrow, accelerating with determination, going fast, faster — faster than his brother could possibly run. Proving he could not be beat. Sam’s backside was white with dust; his knees were scraped and bloodied. Will could see he had fallen, which must have been when Sarah’s nerves had snapped.
    “That’s enough!” Will called. “Boys, come back to the house!”
    David glanced back over his shoulder. A grin shadowed his face so quickly Will wasn’t sure. Then, at the top of the circle, David turned onto the old Indian road. Sam pivoted forward to catch his breath, then resumed the race, following David into the flickering afternoon shade.
    Will sprinted past Sarah and gained on Sam.
    “Come on, Dad. Let’s catch him!”
    Will kept running. He could hear Sammie shuffling to a stop behind him, watching the chase unfold as if he had passed the baton in a relay. But it wasn’t a race, it wasn’t a game, and Will understood his sons couldn’t know this. He felt like the linchpin of a seesaw, moderating his sons’ rivalry with no hope of neutralizing their fierce imbalance or of convincing them of the simple fact that they were on the same team. Will knew that the race was a yearning, a distortion of something they couldn’t say. The most primal impulse in their small bodies was to find their mother, as fast as they could.
    “Stop!” he called to David. “Stop!”
    Sunlight carved a gap in the shade, and just as David passed through it, brightening his gleam of sweat, Will caught up with him. Will was close enough to hear the heaving efforts of David’s breath and the crunch of each foot as it barreled over the raw earth. He could feel the strife of David’s pumping limbs. He sensed that David felt him close, and was proud of the determination that kept his son running. Proud and terrified.
    “Stop!”
    David twisted to the left and bounded over a log into the woods. For a split second he looked back to see if Will had made it. Will was right behind him. He reached out and caught David’s arm as it paused in an effort to propel himself ever forward.
    Will loved David. Had loved him first. Loved him more stubbornly than he had known was possible.
    A quick glance at the ground reassured Will that the fall wouldn’t be too hard.
    One tug on David’s wrist stopped him. A pull reeled him backward. But what Will hadn’t expected was David’s agility in response. David swung his body under Will’s arm and reversed the force. Will toppled into the air with a stunned pride only a father could feel for a child whose accomplishments were greater than he had imagined. The body that hit the ground was not David’s. And the fall was sharper than Will had guessed.
    But even so, Will had won.
    David stopped.

Chapter 20
    By the time Geary and Amy got back to the station, it was late in the afternoon and the sun was low in a pale yellow sky.
    Amy drove into the back parking lot and slowed to a stop. The lot was filled to capacity by state police cars, an unmarked van Geary recognized as from the Crime Lab — big, no windows, nice and clean — and the tidy sedans favored by the feds.
    “And so the fun begins,” Geary said.
    Amy drove around the other side to get to the public lot out front. This time she stopped short.
    “Didn’t take long, did it,” she said.
    Four television vans were parked off to the side, just out of view of the front entrance. The Cape Cod Times ’s very own Eric Smith was holding court with a group of reporters, having his