The rest of the day Joey's thoughts were more on Glenn than the job. Several times his mother cautioned him with a slight smile to get his mind back where it belonged.
Finally, the day ended. Mary, who’d been helping out as much as she could, seemed a bit put out at the idea they were going to spend another night at Glenn's even though she understood why. So she asked Joey's mother, "Can't Joey go up there to take care of him? Do we all need to?"
"I do need to check up on him," Joey's mother replied, "but then I guess you and I can come back here, or you can wait at our house if you want to."
Mary practically glowed with happiness. "Please. I'd like that."
"Then that's how we'll do it."
"You know," Joey said quietly when Mary went into the kitchen to get ready to leave, "she's hoping that you'll let her live with us."
"I know, and it's something I've been considering. However I'm not going to make a decision until I've talked with Harv, and you of course." She saw Harv pull up in front of the coffeehouse and added, "And now is not the time for it."
Twenty minutes later, Mary was happily ensconced in their house. She'd been given permission to explore as long as she stayed out of their bedrooms, and then to get supper started while Harv was driving Joey and his mother up to Glenn's house.
Harv commented as they turned onto the side road, "Glenn must be feeling a bit better. I saw him late this afternoon in Johnny's cab. Or at least I think it was him."
"I doubt it," Joey's mother said. "Even with the crutches he's hardly mobile enough to be out and about yet."
"Yeah, it was probably just some tourist or someone visiting family." He turned up the lane to Glenn's house and parked in front of it a couple of minutes later. Then, while Joey and his mother went up to knock on the front door, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and waited. He turned in surprise when Joey opened the truck door and asked if he had something that he could use to pry open one of the windows.
"He's not answering," Joey said when Harv asked. "Something must have happened; maybe he started bleeding out or something and…" Panic limned Joey's face.
Harv jumped out, grabbed a pry-bar from the back of the truck and followed Joey back to the house. It was obvious from what he could see through a couple of windows that Glenn was not downstairs. "He might be sleeping, you know," he pointed out to his sister.
"If he is, we'll deal with his being upset that we broke in," she told him as she watched him leverage the front window open. They all jumped in surprise when the security system's alarms started blaring. That didn't stop Joey, followed by the others, from climbing into the living room.
"If he was sleeping, he's not anymore," Harv said over the noise.
When Glenn didn't appear they began to search, certain that something must have gone wrong. It was Joey's mother who first concluded he wasn't there when she entered Glenn's bedroom and saw the closet standing open, the bar bare of clothes. A quick check showed her that he'd packed up whatever personal items were in the bathroom, as well as the clothes in the dresser. She walked quickly to the hall in time to see Joey going into another room. He returned moments later frowning deeply.
"His… he had some things in a closet. They're not there now."
Joey's mom sighed deeply. "I'm afraid he's gone."
"He can't be!" Joey exclaimed angrily. "He wouldn't…" he whispered.
Without a word she wrapped her arms around him, feeling him shudder. "For whatever reason, and we may never know what it was, he did."
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