Drawn Into Darkness by Nancy Springer Page A

God’s sake, without getting hair stuck in his nails. He studied his own hands, dry and taupe like winter leaves, as he held Oliver and stroked him. Oliver, small enough to heft yet big enough to provide a warm and reassuring weight in his lap, felt like a grandchild—but Ned knew that was wistful thinking. What little family he had didn’t want anything to do with him. That was what came of being an alcoholic, taking no responsibility, losing job after job, deserting his wife and kids. Going for a geographical cure instead of for sobriety.
    Well, he finally had sobriety now, starting right after his ex-wife had died, shocking him into taking a hard look at his own mortality. He’d stayed at the same address in Birmingham, same apartment, for almost eight years now. He had a steady job, and he had Oliver, named after Oliver Twist because his puppy eyes had constantly begged,
Please, sir, may I have more?
That was last year, when Ned had found him shivering in an alley. Now Oliver had plenty to eat, and he was Ned Bradley’s own very special spotted mutt and cherished companion.
    â€œTime to get down, woofhead,” Ned told the dog with a final pat, standing up. Lacking a lap, Oliver decamped. Ned took a few long-legged strides across his apartment to the computer, drawn like a moth at twilight to the white light of its screen. He never took part in Birmingham’s Southern-fried bar scene anymore; now this was his evening ritual. Once online, he went directly to the Web site dedicated to the search for Justin Bradley.
    His grandson.
    Still missing.
    There seemed to be no new developments, dammit. There hardly ever were anymore. So Ned lost himself in contemplation of the boy’s captured-in-time face, absorbing it visually and viscerally, memorizing it in his gut, warming his heart in the cappuccino glow of the boy’s eyes, more heartening to him than anyone else’s best smile. Justin looked like a kid with his soul intact. Those openhearted eyes and the firm curves of the kid’s chin reminded him of his son, Chad, when he had been that age, which was about the time that Ned had left for good.
    Not that he had seen Chad much since, drunken ass that he, Ned, had been. But he did remember.
    And he dearly remembered his few hours with Charles Stuart Bradley’s children. Ned had gone to see his dying wife mostly to apologize. His apologies were accepted by her but not by their son, all grown up and pissed at him proportionately. It was meeting Justin and Kyle and Kayla that had really pushed Ned to change. He had three grandchildren. He had wasted too much of his life.
    So he had done the hard work to get himself clean and sober. And then, just when he was getting up the nerve to approach his son and his family again, he started to see their faces nightly on the TV. Chad all choked up, and Amy crying alongside her husband and begging an unknown abductor to please bring back her child.
    Justin. Taken away.
    Ned had thought he could only make things worse for them by intruding. Or maybe, face it, he was a coward. But ever since then, Ned had dedicated himself as if he were a candle lit for Justin. Visiting the Web site daily. Anonymously donating all the financial help he could afford. Alert day after day, at the office building where he worked and around town, in case he might, just might, be the one to sight the boy, even though he knew that his chances were ridiculously, outrageously, infinitesimally small.
    Ned explored the Web site and found nothing new except a few more sympathetic comments. No fresh hope. And with every day that passed, hope was harder to hold on to. With a kind of glum, muted anger Ned booted down the computer. The damn thing took its time, finally darkening like a blinded Cyclops, leaving the apartment shadowy; it was getting dark outside. Nightfall.
    â€œOliver,” Ned said to the dog, “I want to get out of here.”
    Go to a bar, get a drink, be