I paced. This room was wider than Barson’s office, almost six steps across. I counted them over and over as I walked from one wall to the other. When I was a kid, I saw a tiger in a cage at the zoo who did this exact thing, pacing back and forth in front of the viewing window, danger coiled in the muscles that rippled under her coat. I wondered if she did it because she was scared too.
“Daniel,” Alicia said cautiously. “How you doing? Can I get you something?”
“I can’t do this,” I said. “I can’t do this, Alicia. I have to get out of here.”
“Hey, it’s going to be okay,” she said in her most soothing voice. “I promise.”
“You can’t!” I snapped. “You don’t know it’s going to be okay. You don’t know anything!”
Then the door opened. And the world started to move real slow.
• • •
Warner came in first. Behind him I could see just a corner of a person, an impression of neatly brushed brown hair. Then he stepped out from behind Warner and became whole. Patrick. Broader in the shoulders than I remembered but with a thinner face. Tall and handsome and solid except for the sharpness of his patrician nose. He was dressed in an impeccable gray suit, something I was not expecting. I guess I wasn’t the only one who’d changed in the last six years.
Behind him, holding on to his hand, was Alexis. As insubstantial as Patrick was solid, blonde and delicate, a dandelion of a person. Patrick had always been like a god to me—gigantic—and he still seemed that way, but Alexis seemed to have gotten smaller.
They stood just inside the doorway, staring at me. I stared back at them. My joints and nerves and blood vessels were all quaking, and I was sure I would shake apart at any moment. They looked at each other, something complex passing between them in their eyes and expressions, and then back at me.
Patrick was the first to move, just a small step taken toward me.
“My God,” he whispered. “It’s really you, isn’t it?”
I nodded dumbly.
He huffed like the air had been pushed out of his lungs, and then he was rushing toward me, grabbing me in a tight hug, filling my nose with the smell of expensive wool and aftershave. His shoulders were shaking as he laughed or cried or both. He believed me, and I felt like a little boy again in his arms.
But it didn’t lessen my fear. If anything, it made it worse. Disappointment after hope can be lethal, and behind Patrick’s back, Alexis was still just standing there. Staring at me. Her eyes looking as scared as I felt.
Patrick pulled away from me and turned to our sister. He reached a hand out to her.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s Danny.”
Her eyes were filled with tears, and she shook her head, just a little.
“Don’t be scared,” Patrick said firmly. “Come hug your brother.”
She looked back and forth between me and Patrick, and then she took a step closer to us.
“Danny?” she said softly.
I nodded, and she reached out slowly, touching the tips of her fingers to my cheek. Like she was afraid her hand might pass right through me.
“I can’t believe it,” she said. She started to cry and wrapped her arms around my neck, holding me with more strength than I would have thought her capable of.
“Hi, Alexis,” I whispered.
Patrick laughed. “Why so formal, little brother?”
I swallowed. Warner nodded at Alicia, and the two of them slipped silently out of the interview room, leaving the three of us alone. Alexis let go of me.
Time passed in a blur of tears and laughter and talk. I couldn’t stop staring at them, drinking in the way they looked at me. Patrick asked what had happened to me, where I’d been for the last six years. Warner had told them what I’d told him, but he still had so many questions. Alexis just looked at me and silently swiped at tears that escaped her eyes while Patrick asked me question after question.
But my answers wouldn’t come. My throat locked up around them, holding them inside of me. Patrick told me it was okay, that they weren’t going to push me to talk about things I wasn’t ready to. Now was the time for happy things.
“The constable said you don’t remember much,” Patrick said. “About us or your life.”
I nodded. “I guess . . . I guess it was just easier that way. To forget who I’d been.”
He glanced at Alexis and squeezed her hand. “We understand.” Then he smiled in a wobbly way. “It’s so strange to hear you speaking with a Canadian accent.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t thought about that. “I guess . . . the people who had me . . .”
“You don’t have to talk about it now,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said. I tried to make the vowel rounder, more like the way Patrick would say it.
“Lex, where’s your phone?” he asked.
Alexis—Lex—dug into her purse and pulled out her cell phone. She seemed to understand exactly what Patrick was asking, because she opened up the pictures she had saved there, and the three of us bent over the screen.
“That’s Mia,” Lex said when she brought up a picture of a brunette little girl in pigtails and a yellow dress. “Can you believe how big she’s gotten? She was practically a baby when . . .”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. Patrick reached behind me to lay a hand on her back.
“She looks just like your dad, huh?” he said. He swiped the photo of Mia aside, and one of a pale, slim boy with glasses and a hint of a smirk around his lips replaced it. “And there’s Nicholas. He started visiting colleges a few months ago, and he swears he’s not going to pick any school within a thousand miles of California.”
I smiled. “Sounds like Nicholas.”
Lex looked up at me and then back down at her phone, swiping through photos until she found one of Mom, who was like a perfect blend of Patrick and herself. Tall and solid like Patrick. Blonde and beautiful—even if that beauty was fading around the edges—like Lex. In the picture, Mom was standing beside Mia as she blew out candles on a birthday cake. She was smiling, but the expression didn’t reach her eyes, which were focused somewhere in the distance.
“How is she?” I asked.
“She’s . . .” Patrick cleared his throat. “She’ll be happy to see you.”
They showed me dozens more pictures. My dad, our house, our old golden retriever Honey, my best friend Andrew, who Lex told me had moved to Arizona with his family a few years ago. Neighbors and cousins and playmates whose names I couldn’t tell them. I feigned some recognition for their benefit, but I doubt it was convincing. It was like looking at pictures of another person’s life.
But it was a life I wanted.
“Don’t worry,” Lex said. “We’ll help you remember.”
The door to the interview room opened, and Warner stuck his head in. “How are we doing in here?”
Patrick stood. “When can we take our brother home?”
“Well, now, that’s a bit of a tricky question,” Warner said. “He can’t just stroll over the border. He has no passport or identification.”
Lex dug into her purse and came out with a folder that she handed to the constable. “His birth certificate and social security card.”
“That takes care of the identification part,” Patrick said.
Warner looked at the documents inside the folder, faint frown lines appearing between his eyebrows. “Well. I’m sure this will help, but . . .”
“What?” Patrick asked.
Warner’s eyes flicked over to me and back again. “Maybe we should speak out in the hallway, Mr. McConnell?”
Patrick followed Warner outside, while Lex stayed with me. Even with the door closed, we could hear their muffled voices, but not well enough to make out any of their words. I didn’t have to hear to know, though. Daniel Tate’s birth certificate only proved that he had been born, not that I was him.
“Don’t worry,” Lex told me. “Patrick will get this all straightened out.”
She so
unded sure. How could she sound so sure?
“Yeah?” I said.
“He’s very persuasive. And very stubborn.” Her eyes shifted to the door. “He always gets what he wants.”
The voices in the hall were getting louder. I could make out words now.
“Absolutely not!” Patrick said.
Warner was calmer and therefore harder to hear. “. . . simple test . . . verify . . .”
My nails dug into the flesh of my palms.
“. . . not doing a DNA test! That boy has been terribly abused, and we won’t subject him . . . don’t want him to think we have any doubts . . .”
I looked at Lex. Her eyes dropped from mine, but she wrapped an arm around my shoulders, her cashmere sweater warm and soft where it rested against the bare skin of my neck. I could feel her trembling. The door suddenly opened, and Patrick came back into the interview room.
“This is my brother, Constable,” he was saying. “Do you think there’s any chance my sister and I wouldn’t be able to tell?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” Warner said, “but if you’d just let us confirm—”
“We’re not waiting weeks for a test to come back and tell us what we already know,” Patrick said. “My brother is coming home with us as soon as possible.”
“I’m not an expert, but I’m sure the authorities will require some kind of proof besides your word before they allow him across the border,” Warner said.
“We’ll see about that. I’ve already called the embassy, and they’re sending someone over. In the meantime, you’re not to touch him.” Patrick’s voice was steely. “He’s a minor, and I have power of attorney from our mother, making me his legal guardian, and I forbid it. We’ll see what the embassy has to say.”
• • •
The official from the embassy arrived with surprising—or maybe not so surprising—swiftness. She introduced herself as Sheila Brindell. Although her suit couldn’t have cost half of what Patrick’s did, she had the aura and graying hair of someone with authority. She wore no wedding ring but did have a small heart pendant around her neck. Only children buy women jewelry with hearts on them, so my guess was she was a career bureaucrat who’d been too consumed with climbing the professional ladder to bother dating and now smiled wistfully at babies in strollers and doted on her nieces and nephews to make up for it. Hard on the outside with a gushy, sentimental center. She sat down opposite Patrick, Lex, and me while Warner observed from a chair in the corner.
“I’m sure you’ll understand this is a highly unusual situation, Mr. McConnell,” she said, clicking the top of her pen subconsciously.
“I think you’ll find that no one understands that better than we do,” Patrick said. “We appreciate you accommodating us on such short notice.”
“Yes, of course,” she said. “The consul asked me to handle this personally and to ensure that everything was settled as quickly as possible.”
Patrick just smiled coolly. There was something happening here that I didn’t understand, some unspoken transaction taking place between this woman and my brother.
“However, before we can issue Daniel an expedited passport, I need to ask him some questions,” Ms. Brindell continued. “I need assurance that he is who you claim.”
“Of course,” Patrick said.
“In the absence of a DNA test . . .”
Lex tensed beside me.
“. . . this interview will have to serve,” she said. “Daniel, can you tell me your middle name?”
“Wait,” Patrick said. “My brother has severe memory loss from the trauma—”
“It’s okay,” I said. I knew the answer. “My middle name is Arthur.”
She nodded. “And your date of birth?”
“November sixteenth, 2000.”
“Can you tell me the names of your family?” she asked. “Just immediate family will do.”
My throat was dry, so with the very tips of my fingers I grabbed the bottle of water a deputy had brought me earlier, taking a long swig before I answered. “My parents are Jessica and Robert Tate. Patrick and Alexis McConnell are my half brother and sister. My older brother is Nicholas, and my little sister is Mia.” I could see that Ms. Brindell was trying to keep her face neutral, so I added, “They’re the best family in world.”
She looked down briefly at the table top and then exchanged another meaningful glance with Patrick. Then she opened her briefcase and pulled a stack of paper from it. She handed the stack to me, and I found it was photographs printed on regular office paper.
“Can you identify the people you just named for me, Daniel?”
I started to leaf through the photos. “Here’s Nicholas,” I said, pulling out what looked like a school portrait and sliding the picture toward her. I flipped past a couple of pictures of people I didn’t recognize, looking for Mia or my parents, when my eyes caught another familiar face mixed in with the strangers. My pulse quickened. I pulled out the picture: a teenage girl with round cheeks and spiky hair, posing with a snowboard. I never would have recognized her if Lex hadn’t shown me her picture just a couple of hours earlier.
“This is my cousin. Her name is . . . Ravenna.” It was lucky for me she had such a stupid name; it made it easy for me to remember. “After the town in Italy where she was born.”
Ms. Brindell raised an eyebrow and then, slowly, smiled. It had been a test. She wanted to see if I could pick out people from my past I wasn’t explicitly told to look for. I looked at the photographs more closely as I went through the rest, picking out the faces I recognized from Lex’s phone.
“This is my grandmother. She died when I was young. This looks like my best friend Andrew.” I could feel Lex and Patrick exchanging glances over my head, but none of us said a word. I flipped past a photograph of Mia on a swing set without comment and eventually reached the final picture, where a blonde woman and dark-haired man in formalwear danced at some kind of party. “This is my mom and dad.”
“You didn’t recognize your sister, Mia,” Ms. Brindell said.
I blinked. “She was only a baby the last time I saw her.”
She just nodded. I handed her the stack of pictures. Beside me, Patrick gasped and grabbed my wrist, and I jumped.
“My God,” he said, examining the small, dark patch of skin on the back of my hand, halfway between my thumb and forefinger. I could feel his hand shaking, and he looked from the spot up to me with wide eyes. “Jesus Christ.”
I frowned. Why was he—
“Mr. McConnell?”
Patrick dragged his gaze away from mine to look at Ms. Brindell. “You want proof?” he said shakily. “Check your file. Danny was born with this birthmark.”
Ms. Brindell looked at the spot on my hand and then down at the papers in front of her. Lex leaned forward to look too, and one of her hands flew to her mouth.
“You’re right. Café au lait spot above left thumb,” Ms. Brindell read from the report. She looked up at us and smiled. “I’m satisfied.”
“So . . . you’ll approve an expedited passport?” Lex asked breathlessly.
Ms. Brindell began to pack up her things. “We’ll get the paperwork started immediately. You can go home tomorrow, Daniel.”
• • •
Go home, go home, go home. The phrase thumped in my ears like a heartbeat as I packed my meager belongings.
• • •
The next morning, with my stiff new passport stuck in the pocket of my coat, I said good-bye to Alicia in front of the American Embassy. She hugged me and whispered in my ear.
“Good luck, Danny.”
Patrick beckoned from the town car he’d hired to take us to the airport. In that moment all I wanted was to go back to Short Term 8 with Alicia, to disappear again into the crowd there. I was right on the verge of getting everything I’d always wanted, but if I didn’t know they would catch me before I got five blocks, I would have run like hell.
Instead, I got into the car and watched
Alicia wave to me until she was out of sight.
We sat in first class. The flight attendant brought Patrick and Lex glasses of champagne, which Lex quickly downed, and gave me a couple of warm cookies before we’d even taken off. The week before I’d been sleeping in a bus shelter and subsisting on bags of chips and candy bars pilfered from convenience stores.
I should have been happy. I shouldn’t have been struggling to swallow around the cookie that felt dry and tasteless in my mouth, but maybe happiness wasn’t something I was capable of anymore. Even if I was, I didn’t think I’d have been able to feel it over the fear pounding through my veins, like a tide that only came in, rising higher and higher inside of me until I could barely breathe.
They were going to be waiting at the airport when we arrived. The Tates. They would look at me and this would all be over, and it scared the hell out of me.
Because, of course, I wasn’t Daniel Tate.
• • •
I know I said I was going to tell you the truth. But I lied. It’s just what I do. Frankly, you have no one to blame but yourself if you believed me for even a second.
Everything from this point on is true, though. I swear. Not even I could make up what happened next.
• • •
I was screwed. Somehow I had fooled Patrick and Lex, but I wouldn’t fool the whole family. I couldn’t.
Lex caught my hand as I brought it to my mouth to bite at a stubby fingernail.
“Don’t be nervous,” she said, although she looked as uneasy as I felt. She lowered my hand back to my lap and squeezed my fingers. “Everyone’s going to be so happy to see you.”
“Who’s going to be there?” I asked.
“Just Mom and the kids. We didn’t want to overwhelm you.”
I nodded. Just Jessica, Daniel’s mother, and his siblings Nicholas and Mia. I’d found out from Patrick and Lex yesterday that Daniel’s father had been in prison for the past two years for tax evasion and embezzlement, and Mia had been too young when Daniel disappeared to even remember him, so that just left two people for me to worry about. It might as well have been a hundred, because I couldn’t imagine a mother looking into the eyes of a stranger and believing for a second that he was her son. No matter how badly she wanted him to be.