Chapter 11 – Breaking the Rules

Justin yawned as he opened the door to his bus “bedroom”, scratching his stomach. He had groaned when he woke up inexplicably, noticing that the clock said it was already past two in the morning.

He shuffled out to the dinette area, hoping he would find something to drink in the fridge that would put him back to sleep. After their bus had broken down in Canada, they had managed to get better buses – more like RVs, so that now each of them had their own small room. It was nothing like their own homes, but it was nicer and a lot more private, and made all of them feel a little more at home – especially Addy.

He thought he was the only one awake on the bus. He knew that Liam would be passed out in his travel crib, and he thought Addy and Lance would be catching some sleep as long as they could, with Liam still getting used to being on the road and waking up every few hours. So he was surprised when, just after he opened the refrigerator, he heard hushed arguing behind their closed door.

He moved closer to the door and leaned in, putting his ear up against it.

“Why are you taking it out on me?” he heard Addy say.

“Because I'm upset, that means I'm taking it out on you?” Lance responded.

“I'm the one you're yelling at, Lance.”

“I'm not yelling,” he said.

“Close enough,” she responded to him. “You act like it's my fault I'm not pregnant yet.”

Justin's eyes went wide, and he moved his head away from the door a moment.

“Don't go there tonight, Addy.”

“Go where, Lance?” Addy responded to his warning tone. “That it's obviously one of us that is to blame? And of course it's me, because that makes the most sense...”

“That's where,” Lance said, clearly raising his voice. “That, right there. You have this idea in your head that your body doesn't work right, and now because I'm upset that you're not pregnant yet after all this trying, you want to put words in my mouth and make it so that I'm saying the same thing. Don't take your insecurities and put the blame on me.”

“Then don't take your frustrations out on me.”

“I had plans,” he said. “You of all people should understand that.”

“And aren't you the one who told me three years ago that you can't plan life?” she asked. “That it's all one big jumbled, crazy mess of whatever happens? You can't predict it and you can't change it?”

“You and me, Addy!” he yelled. “No one could have planned you and me – but people plan to have babies all the time!”

“Lance, it's really not a big deal,” she said. “So maybe we can't have another baby. It's not the end of the world.”

“You act like you don't even want to have any more kids.”

“I do,” she said, her voice tense. “But I don't want this stress of trying to have more and not getting pregnant to end up tearing us apart and leaving Liam from a broken home.”

“So what are you saying?”

“We've been trying, and trying, and trying, Lance,” she said. “I've been doing this for a year – and I'm tired of every month, taking pregnancy test after pregnancy test. I'm tired of getting let down. Now you're on tour, and...I think we should take a break from it.”

Justin got a chance to let everything sink in when they both went silent behind the door. He knew Addy and Lance had been fighting a lot lately – hearing some of their other arguments at night when they didn't know he couldn't sleep – but he had no idea it all came down to having another baby.

“Take all the time you need, Ad,” he finally heard Lance say.

“What does that mean?”

“I'm done.”

Justin went slack-jawed, not believing what he was hearing.

“Done with what exactly?” she asked. “Done with this, or done with me?”

Justin waited for the answer, but all he heard was silence – until Addy spoke up.

“I guess I'll sleep in the lounge tonight.”

Justin heard her light footsteps and panicked, taking a seat in the padded booth that made a good stand-in for their kitchen table, trying to pretend that he had been there all along.

When she opened the door and walked out, he couldn't stop his mouth from dropping open again. He had been around Addy enough to be comfortable with her, but nowhere near comfortable enough to see her in only a lacy bra and panties, covered by a flimsy, silky robe that she let hang wide open.

“Addy...”

“Jesus!”

She shrieked and turned quickly, causing him to jump as well.

“Uh, Addy, um...robe,” he said, averting his eyes.

“Oh Jesus,” she said, realizing how much she was revealing, quickly closing her robe. “Justin, what the hell are you doing out here, sneaking around?”

“Um, I live on this bus,” he said with a chuckle. “Kind of like you and Lance.”

“Shouldn't you be in bed?” she asked.

“Shouldn't you?”

“I probably should be,” she said.

“What the hell was that all about?” he asked.

“What was what about?”

“Addy, I heard you,” he said. “You and Lance. Fighting. Again. I heard some of the things you were saying too.”

She sighed.

“The lingerie. You not taking your anxiety medication. You never having a drink when we go out,” he said. “You're trying to have another baby, aren't you?”

“Justin, you should go to bed...”

“Addy, answer me.”

“Yes,” she said forcefully. “Yes, we are, okay? Can we not talk about this?”

“The only reason you wouldn't want to talk about it is because it's not going well, and you're afraid,” Justin said.

“Yeah, I am afraid,” she said. “I'm afraid that it's all happening again. And I'm stressed because of this tour, and...Mel...”

She sighed as she looked away.

“I have something that might take your mind off it,” he said with a smile.

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“This probably isn't exactly recommended for trying to get pregnant, you know.”

Justin laughed looking at Addy as she put the joint to her mouth and inhaled anyway.

“Doesn't look like that's stopping you,” he said.

“Am I a bad mom?” she asked, letting the smoke filter out of her mouth.

“Why do you ask me that?” he said.

“I'm dragging my one-year-old on a cross-country tour, letting him sleep in a Pack N' Play on a moving bus or a hotel room every night,” she said. “I should be arranging play dates and finding preschools for him – and instead I'm somewhere between Georgia and Alabama sitting here with you at three in the morning in a bra and panties smoking pot.”

“You analyze things way too much, Ad,” he said. “Your son is with family, people he loves and trusts. He gets to see his dad every night, which is a lot better than his dad being gone all the time on the road. And smoking weed once in a while isn't going to kill anybody, especially since Li isn't even in the room.”

“Lance might once he finds out though,” she said.

He smiled. “He won't kill you if you don't kill him. He smoked with me three weeks ago at four in the morning when he couldn't sleep.”

“And that little bastard didn't even bother to wake me up,” she said, causing him to laugh as she handed the joint to him. “I haven't done this since college.”

“You smoked pot in college?” he said in disbelief.

“You act surprised,” she said.

“Coming from the good little girl who threatens to wash my mouth out with soap every hour, yeah it sort of surprises me,” he said.

“I had a rebellious stage,” she said. “When my parents died, I had to grow up fast. And when my grandma died, I just...sort of fell apart.”

“Is that when it all started?” he asked. “I mean, all this, with you and the anxiety and...well, the way you are.”

“I guess so. I never really had a lot of family,” she said with a shrug. “My dad was an only child, and my grandpa died when I was a baby. My mom had a brother but she stopped talking to him and her parents before I was even born. So when I lost my grandma, I lost pretty much the last person I had ever grown up with. So yeah, I kind of lost it. I started worrying about who would die next – I sort of became one of those end-of-the-world people. I expected people around me to die. It gave me anxiety. Then it developed into anxiety about everything else. I learned to deal with it until my daughter died, and then the panic attacks started.”

“Well, this,” he said, holding up the joint in his hand, “will chill you.”

She chuckled. “Justin, nothing chills me. This just...makes me not care enough about the shit I'm worrying about.” She paused. “And it makes me hungry.”

“Chips,” he said, pointing a finger at her as he exhaled and handed the joint back over to her. “There's chips in the cabinet. I know I saw 'em the other day.”

“What flavor?”

“Does it matter?” he asked.

“Hell no, but I thought I might as well ask.” He lifted himself off the carpet of the lounge while she took a last puff and smashed the end of the joint out in the ashtray next to her, quickly doing the same to follow after him.

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“Oh, fuck.”

Justin adjusted the sunglasses snugly against his face as he stepped off the bus. It had finally stopped in Greensboro at 7:30 that morning and the sun was in full-on assault mode.

“Is it possible for the sun to shine this brightly?” Addy said, squinting before she did the same with her own sunglasses. “Or is it the apocalypse?”

“This is how it starts,” Justin said, roughly pulling his bag off the bus by dragging it along the ground. “The fires of Hell are actually the sun burning our retinas.”

“It's your own fault you two are dragging ass this morning,” Lance said, Liam holding tightly onto his neck. “I smelled the lounge this morning. The bus reeks like a frat house. Pot, guys? Really?”

“Pull the stick out of your ass, dad,” Justin said. “We couldn't sleep. It's called 'medical marijuana'.”

“Yeah, that'll hold up in court,” Lance said. “Hope Johnny doesn't have to sleep on our bus anytime soon. He's gonna kick your asses.”

“Johnny'll probably join us,” Justin said with a smirk.

“Coffee,” Addy growled. “Coffee. Now.”

“I'm with Addy,” Justin said. “From one vice to another.”

Lance shook his head. “You two are worse put together than one of JC.”

Lance shook his head again when Addy walked off and Justin flipped him a middle finger, not bothering to glance back.

He was about to grab his bag off the bus when his phone rang from his pocket.

“God damn it,” he said, adjusting the clingy child in his arms to reach into his pocket. He pulled the phone out, but with his arms loaded down, didn't bother to look at the ID. “Hello?”

“Lance?”

“Yes,” he said, the voice familiar, but he was unable to place it. “I'm sorry, who is this?”

“Joe Abrams.”

“Detective,” Lance said, slightly stunned.

Hearing the word come from Lance's mouth, Addy and Justin both turned their heads to look at him, glancing at each other for only a moment before dropping their bags to the ground and rushing over to where Lance stood.

“What is it?” Addy said. “Is it Mel?”

“I'm sorry to call you at such an early hour,” the detective said.

“What's going on?” Justin asked.

“Lance,” Addy urged.

Lance narrowed his eyes at both of them and held up a hand to hush them.

“It's fine, Joe,” he said. “We were getting off the bus in Greensboro. Is there something I can help you with?”

“No, but there is something I can help you with,” he said in return. “I got the handwriting analysis back on the samples you gave me.”

Lance quickly adjusted the child on his hip and lowered the phone, hitting the speakerphone button, and held the phone out between the three of them.

“Sample A was the birthday card you brought me as a sample of her handwriting under normal conditions, while Sample B was the note left at the apartment the night she disappeared. The findings were that while Sample A and B matched and were written by the same person, Sample A was written with smooth lines and strokes. Sample B was found to have a lot more jagged strokes, skips in flow, and pause spots.”

“And what is that in English, Joe?” Lance said.

“In English?” Joe said. “You were right. The handwriting expert concluded that there was a high chance that Melissa wrote the note under extreme distress.”

“So she didn't run away on her own accord?” Addy said, interrupting.

“I can't say that,” Abrams said. “It's possible that at the time she wrote the note, she was upset at the prospect of leaving and could have been crying and shaking. But this rules out the possibility that she left calmly. She was upset about something. That's an absolute positive.”

“So what are you going to do?” Justin said. “I mean, what's the next step? Are you going to go look for her?”

Abrams sighed. “This doesn't change anything.”

Addy narrowed her eyebrows at the phone in Lance's hand.

“It must change something,” she said angrily. “You said we were right, Joe! If she left under distress like you say, something must be wrong!”

“Addy, please, I'm sorry,” the voice came from the other end. “You were right about the note being written under stress – but I have no evidence to conclude that foul play was involved. Nothing leads to any possibility other than Melissa was upset by something and even though it was a stressful decision, she felt the best action was to pack her things and leave.”

“So you're doing nothing?” Addy said, raising her voice even louder, attracting the attention of Joey, JC, and Stephanie, who had just stepped off the other bus. “You're just going to sit on your ass with this new information and do absolutely nothing?”

“Justin, take her,” Lance said, using a finger to switch off the speakerphone and hold the phone to his ear again.

Justin nodded, grabbing hold of Addy's arm and pulling her away as the rest of the group joined Lance.

“Let go of me,” Addy said, pulling her arm away from Justin's grasp once they had walked across the parking lot.

“You have to calm down,” Justin said.

“Calm down?” she asked, half-yelling. “My best friend is missing and the police are doing nothing about it and I'm supposed to calm down?”

“There's nothing they can do, Ad,” Justin said. “Mel isn't a missing person, and Abrams isn't a missing persons detective anyway.”

“You okay?” Stephanie said, running quickly up to both of them.

“No,” Addy said. “No, I'm not okay. I don't care if Mel isn't technically a missing person to them, or if Abrams isn't a missing persons detective. One of my best friends is missing and no one is doing anything about it. Stephanie, your dad's still a police chief, right?”

“Yeah...”

“And he'd do anything for you, even if it meant breaking a few rules, right?”

“I guess, I mean it depends--”

“Can you call him?”

“Well, yeah, but why?” Stephanie asked, exchanging a glance with Justin.

“If no one else will do anything about this,” Addy said, looking between both of them, “then I will.”