Light the Lamp (33 page)

“
Can you just tell me if she’s staying here?” I begged. “Noelle Payne. She’s got long blond hair and blue eyes, and she’s always smiling and laughing.” Except for when I made her cry. “She’s young, in her mid-twenties. I know this was one of the places she’d thought about going.”
 

Back on the first night we’d met, she had asked me to bring her here. I couldn’t do it then, and I hated the thought that she might be here now when she could be home with me.

For a brief moment, the woman hesitated, but then she pointed to the exit again, waving us out with her other hand. “I can’t reveal anything about the woman who are here.”

“
She’s his girlfriend, though,” Babs said.
 

“
An awful lot of these women are someone’s girlfriend or someone’s wife,” she said, scowling. “And that’s why I can’t reveal anything. Some are here because they weren’t safe at home. Others are here because they don’t have a home. I’m not letting you in, and I’m not telling you anything about anyone who may or may not be here, so you might as well just go before I call the police to have you escorted out. I’m very sorry.”
 

She had told me, though, whether she’d intended to or not. Noelle might not be here right now, but she had at least been here at some point. I knew it from the way the manager had hesitated. That short flash of indecision had been enough of a tell.

“
Is she volunteering at the dog rescue?” I asked. That was the next place I planned to look for her. I wished that I’d gone with her on one of my days off so her friends there would know who I was. She’d told me about them, but did they know about me? Maybe they would be more willing to aid me than this woman was. “Helping Hands, I think it was called? She sometimes goes to help them out.”
 

“
If I knew that, I wouldn’t be able to tell you, sir.”
 

There was too much emphasis in this woman’s voice. Noelle had at least spent some time at Helping Hands, then. Maybe she wasn’t there right now, but I had to find out. I had to talk to them.

This shelter manager was trying hard to do her job, but she was failing. Everything she said revealed a little bit more to me.

I pulled Noelle’s cell phone and charger and my credit card out of my pocket, and I passed them over to the woman. I’d charged the phone fully last night, just in case I found someone who had seen her. “Please, if you see Noelle, give these to her. I’m not stalking her. I don’t want to hurt her. I just want to be sure she’s okay.”

She looked at me with eyes filled with indecision. “I can’t—”

“
You can. We won’t cause you any more problems and we’ll go now, but please take these for her.” I pressed them into the woman’s hands and closed her fingers over them.
 

In the end, she agreed to take the phone and card and pass them on to Noelle when and if she saw her.

Babs and I left. The shelter was in Old Town, but Helping Hands was in the Hawthorne District, so we got back in my car and headed that direction. If we didn’t find her at Helping Hands, our next stop was going to be the park she’d taken me to the day I’d bought my car.

Zee and Soupy had spent the morning calling the police department and hospitals to see if they could learn anything about where Noelle might be from them, so far to no avail. Jonny had organized more than half the guys on the team to divide up into pairs and head out to the various parks throughout the city. Webs and his family were going to every homeless shelter or service in Portland to see what they could learn, other than this one that Noelle had mentioned to me specifically before. Even Jim Sutter and the coaching staff had gotten in on the search; they’d been on the phones, trying to find Noelle’s brothers in case they could help us in any way or point us in a direction to look for her that we might not have thought of on our own.

Babs used the GPS on his phone to direct me through town. About ten minutes after we left the shelter, we pulled in to the tiny parking lot—four spaces, total—in front of Helping Hands Dog Rescue. It was an old, brick building that had seen better days. I put the car in park and went inside.

A man with pale skin and stringy, blond hair looked up and smiled when we went through the door. He was kneeling on the floor, a chubby boxer puppy at his feet with its tongue hanging out. “Hi, guys,” he said, grabbing the puppy by its collar so it wouldn’t dart out the door past us. “Are you looking to adopt a dog today?”

This must be Phil, then—one of Noelle’s closest friends.

“
Not today, no.” I couldn’t stop myself from dropping down to pet the pup. It barked and licked my hand, its lopped-off tail wagging hard enough to make a breeze, at least it would have if it hadn’t been docked. I scratched behind its ears. “I’m actually looking for Noelle.”
 

A door in the back opened, and a woman with graying hair and glasses came into the main lobby with us—Cindy, I supposed. “And what do you want with Noelle?” she asked, closing the door before crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at me.

This woman wasn’t going to pretend with me, then. Was Noelle here? The anticipation of maybe getting to see her squeezed me, like steel bands tightening around my chest. I forced myself to leave the dog alone, and I stood up. Phil did the same, planting his feet apart in a stance meant to intimidate. Babs dropped down to the floor, sitting cross-legged, and took over where I’d left off.

“
I want to know that she’s okay.”
 

“
You’re Liam?” Phil asked. “You’re the asshole who took her home with you when she’d never met you before? What particular brand of fucked up must you be to think doing something like that was all right? Who does things like that?”
 

When he put it that way, it sounded crazy. I hadn’t thought about like that, though. I still couldn’t. “And you’re Phil?” I asked with just as much venom as he’d used. These supposed
friends
hadn’t done much for her over the last few months, as far as I could tell. “And Cindy? I don’t want to hurt her,” I added, trying to force some calmness back into my voice.

“
Well, you have,” Cindy said. “She’d never tell you so because she’s the sort who always tries to take everyone else’s hurts onto herself and never wants anyone to see when she’s hurt, but you’ve hurt her.”
 

“
Badly,” Phil grumbled.
 

I knew that. I’d seen it all over her face in the days leading up to her leaving. I’d known it as early as the day we spent at the park, when she’d wanted to leave because I had tried to buy her a car. I just didn’t know what to do about it. Frustrated beyond belief, I spun around and bounced my fist against the glass windows.

The puppy jumped up against my legs, trying to get my attention and affection. I let one hand drop down to rub its head. These people
were
her friends, though. If they couldn’t help me, who could? “I just don’t know how to give her what she needs. She doesn’t want the things I can give her. She keeps telling me I’m shutting her out, that I have a wall up, but I don’t know how to change that.”

“
Do you even know what it is she really needs?” Cindy asked me. I turned, and she’d gone to sit behind a desk. Her eyes were on her computer, her hands on the keyboard, but the way her head was angled made it clear she was still focused on me.
 

The dog yipped and jumped. I guess I’d neglected to scratch its ears for a little too long. Babs pulled the dog closer to him, and in no time the two of them were wrestling on the floor and seemingly oblivious to the rest of us, even though I didn’t doubt for a second that he was taking in every word that was said.

“
If I knew that, I doubt I’d be hurting her.”
 

She stopped typing and leveled me with a stare. “Noelle needs for her life to have meaning.”

What the fuck was that supposed to mean?
Everyone’s
life had meaning. I shook my head, not understanding. “She has confidence. She doesn’t feel like she’s worthless.”

“
That’s not what we mean,” Phil said. “She’s got to have a greater purpose, something bigger than just herself, something that she can work toward and believe in. Something that will make the world a better place. Otherwise she feels unfulfilled. Noelle is a giver. She’ll give everything she is and all that she has—for the right cause. Being with you, she wasn’t able to do any of that.”
 

“
I would never have stopped her from doing anything she wanted to do.” Would I have? I mean, I wanted to be with her, to spend time with her, but I would never have dreamed of telling her she couldn’t volunteer here at the dog shelter. She could do what she wanted.
 

“
That may be,” Cindy said, “but Noelle felt like she was being stifled by you. She can’t live like that.”
 

I wouldn’t want her to live like that, either. I dragged a hand down my face, and nearly a week’s worth of stubble scratched the inside of my palm. “Is she here?” I croaked.

“
No, she’s not,” he said.
 

“
Do you expect her back?”
 

“
I couldn’t say,” Cindy responded, and I had to chuckle. She wasn’t being coy with me or beating around the bush. She was just being baldly honest. How would anyone know if they could expect Noelle to come back? She was one of those people who just flitted through life, moving from one thing to the next with little thought of other people worrying about her.
 

“
All right.” I stared down at Babs and the dog while I debated what to do from here. Nothing really mattered, nothing would change, unless I could see her. I needed to talk to her, face-to-face, so we could get on the same page. “Will you give her a message for me if you see her?” I asked after a minute.
 

“
Depends on what you intend to do if you find her,” the man replied.
 

“
I just want to talk to her. And if she doesn’t want to talk to me, then that’s her prerogative.”
 

“
I’ll tell her,” Cindy said, eyeing Phil with a meaningful look.
 

“
Thank you.” A bit of the pressure around my chest released. Not much, but enough that I could breathe again. “Tell her I left a phone and a credit card for her at the shelter. And tell her one more thing. Tell her
jag älskar dig
.”
 

Cindy repeated it a few times, making sure she could pronounce it properly, which made me believe she actually intended to relay my message. When we were both satisfied with her ability to get the message across to Noelle, I looked down to Babs. “You ready to move on to the next stop?”

“
Almost.” He got up from the floor, and the puppy followed him when he took a few steps over to the desk with the woman. “What’ll it take for me to be able to adopt this little guy?” he asked.
 

It shouldn’t have surprised me, considering he’d been playing with that dog since pretty much the moment we walked through the door, acting like a kid instead of the man he was growing to be, but it did.

“
I didn’t know you wanted a dog,” I said when he started filling out the paperwork she passed over to him.
 

“
I didn’t, either.” Babs grinned at me, and his dimples popped to the surface. “But it’s not for me. It’s for Ellie.”
 

I still had no clue what he was planning, but I decided to just go with it. Babs may be young, but he was pretty smart when it came down to it. And he and Noelle had always gotten on well.

It wouldn’t hurt, and I was running out of ideas.

 

Of course, tonight
would be the night that the Max train I was on decided to malfunction. I dug out the watch Liam had put in my tote bag. It was already 7:49, and we were still waiting on a technician to arrive.

If I got off here and walked to the nearest bus stop, I could get back to the shelter. It just wouldn’t happen before eight. There was no telling how long it would be before they had this train running again, though, so that was probably my best option. And there was always the chance that a bed would still be open for me when I got there. Maybe it wasn’t likely, but it was a possibility.

I pushed away the thought that there hadn’t been a single night I’d been there when it hadn’t been filled to capacity. Thinking about that wouldn’t help. Not at all.

Slinging the straps of my tote bag over my shoulder, I got up and started my trek to the bus stop, glancing up at the sky to see the gathered clouds. By the time I got back to the shelter, it was 8:23. Bonnie looked up at me with sad eyes when I came through the door.

“
No more beds tonight?” I asked, even though I could read the answer in her eyes.