Once Was Lost

  I don’t want to let go. When I finally do, Dad gives her a short hug and a kiss on the cheek but they don’t look each other in the eye. His movements are jerky, and spots of sweat are spreading under his armpits.

  Margaret folds her hands together and says, “Good, then.” She looks at my mom. “I’ll see you in an hour?”

  Mom nods and I realize Margaret is her escort or chaperone, not just a ride. She walks toward the lot to do whatever it is she’s going to do for the next hour while we have brunch.

  “Do you want to sit out on the deck or inside?” Dad asks, still not quite letting his eyes stop anywhere near Mom’s face.

  “It’s up to you,” Mom says.

  They’re being so polite.

  “Sam?” Dad asks.

  “Either way.”

  He opens the door to go in. “I guess we’ll just take whatever they’ve got.”

  Half an hour later I have my pancakes, Dad has his French toast special, and Mom has her two-egg breakfast, just like always, except now the tomato juice the waiter brings is just tomato juice. We did end up seated on the deck and at least half a dozen people from church have come to our table to say hi to my mom, tell her how great she looks, that they miss her, and ask how it’s going. I wish this town had just one more place that was open on Sundays.

  “Fine,” she says.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  And when they say they’re looking forward to having her back, she smiles and says, “Me, too.” But when another person asks when that will be, she says, “I’m not sure.”

  Dad glances up from his French toast. “Your thirty days will be up pretty soon.”

  She pushes some egg around on the plate, takes a bite of toast. Her eyes wander the deck. Maybe she’s looking for Margaret to magically appear and tell her what to say to that. “Well.”

  That’s all she’s able to come up with on her own right away, but I have the feeling that if we wait, she’ll say more. Except Dad suddenly changes the subject to Jody, talking about how the investigation seems to have hit another dead end. “I just wish they could figure out something,” he says to his French toast. “Any little something to hold on to.”

  Mom should be irritated that Dad kind of hijacked the conversation, because that’s something they used to fight about—how he’s not so good at listening, how he doesn’t notice when the things that are important to him aren’t the same things that are important to her. But she almost seems to click on for the first time since we got here, and says, “I’ve been so sad about it. It’s hard to be away while all this is happening, and watch it on the news instead of being a part of it. It feels at such a distance.”

  She could have returned my calls to tell me that. We could have been talking about Jody all this time. “I helped with the search,” I say.

  “Did you?” Mom gives me her full attention. And there’s something about her eyes that tells me she’s really here, truly, with us. Mentally, emotionally, physically here. I get a glimpse of some kind of reassurance that whatever she’s doing and learning at rehab really is making her into her true self.

  “Yeah, but then—” I’m about to tell her how I passed out and was sick with heat exhaustion and in bed for a day, all of it, but Dad interrupts me.

  “Well, you’ve seen on the news how the search has gone,” Dad says.

  I guess I’m not supposed to upset her with the fact that I passed out. Pretty much every detail of my life right now is upsetting, so I decide that for the rest of brunch I’ll only open my mouth to insert pancakes.

  “I saw interviews with people coming out of the prayer vigil on the news,” Mom says to Dad. “It sounds like it went well.”

  Dad agrees with an mm, and tells Mom a little bit about how many people came and what the choir sang and I stare out over the deck rail, into the foothills, into the woods, until the waiter clears our plates and Dad lays down the well-worn credit card and Mom blurts, “I’m thinking about staying at New Beginnings.”

  I turn my attention back to the table. “What?” I ask, even though I was afraid this is what’s been coming.

  “Beyond the thirty days.”

  “Oh,” Dad says.

  I flash on a picture of myself living in Vanessa’s basement until graduation. From a school where I don’t know anyone.

  “I know we don’t have the money. It’s just that I think… I know… I’m not going to be ready.” She folds and re-folds her napkin. “I feel like I’m just now—”

  “How much longer?” I ask.

  She sweeps her hair off her face and for a second I can see both her eyes. “I don’t know. I need to talk to Margaret about it.” Her hair slips back down. “You two are doing all right.”

  “No,” I say.

  Dad pats my arm. “It’s okay.”

  Mom looks at me. “Aren’t you?”

  And from the feel of Dad’s eyes on me, I won’t be saying anything to Mom right now other than, “Yeah, we’re fine.”

  Our credit card goes through—maybe miracles do happen—and we say good-bye to people on our way out, and Margaret is waiting at the hostess’s desk. Mom hugs me good-bye. It’s shorter this time because now I feel, I don’t know, so disappointed and distracted. Dad kisses her cheek again. Back in the car, Dad lets out a big breath and I lean my seat back and close my eyes and wish I’d asked why she didn’t call me back.

  KPXU

  LIVE @ FIVE

  One week after the disappearance of thirteen-year-old Jody Shaw, presumed kidnapped, a national tabloid claims to know the identities of the men who submitted to polygraph tests on Saturday. The National Investigator reports that Donald Phillips, a teacher at Jody’s junior high school, and Charlie Taylor, the pastor of Pineview Community Church, were both administered the test. Police Chief Marty Spencer would not confirm, and said that while they still do not have an identified suspect, they are building a profile of what this suspect may be like. They believe it is someone Jody knows and that this person is still in the area.

  In the last week, police dispatchers have been swamped with close to 3,000 tips from around the country, including a Florida “clairvoyant” who says Jody is alive, possibly in Nevada. According to Chief Spencer, only about one tenth of the leads are worthy of follow-up.

  The story of Jody’s disappearance has now made headlines around the globe, moving the First Lady to place a call to Jody’s parents, expressing sympathy and hope for the girl’s safe return.

  I’m staring at the TV, not sure I’ve heard right.

  Mr. Hathaway mutes the news. Vanessa looks at me. “Did you know?”

  I shake my head. Apparently my father did have a real reason for not answering his phone yesterday morning when I called. He was busy being a suspect. My face gets hot and my stomach hurts, but I don’t want them all to see me lose it.

  Robby, who’s been lying on the floor on his stomach, watching, turns over and asks his dad, “What’s a polygraph?”

  “Lie detector test,” I say. I crawl down onto the floor next to him. “The police have a machine that can tell if you’re lying.”

  He looks worried, then asks, “Why did Pastor Charlie have to take a lie detector test?”

  “Robber, bud, don’t worry about it,” Mr. Hathaway says. “He’s just helping them find Jody.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m gonna…,” I say, not bothering to finish the sentence as I get up and head for the basement.

  “Sam?” Mrs. Hathaway calls after me. But what can she say? I just heard, along with the whole town, that my dad had to take a test to prove he didn’t do something awful to Jody. I stop halfway down the stairs, realizing that Melinda Ford didn’t say anything about the test results. Then my imagination goes wild and by the time I punch my dad’s number into my cell, I’m picturing him in police custody, and all this is the real reason he sent me to live here.

  He answers on the first ring. “Sam. I was just about to call you.”

  “Why didn?
??t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t have a chance. I didn’t know—”

  “You didn’t have a chance? We spent like an hour in the car together today.”

  “Honey, I didn’t think it would get out. It was supposed to be confidential.”

  “Well, it isn’t. Now everyone knows.” I wonder if Mom saw the news report. And if she did, would that be the kind of thing that would make it hard for her to come home.

  “Let me explain,” Dad says. He sounds as urgent as I feel, and that makes me sit on the stair and listen. “The police asked everyone close to Jody’s family to voluntarily eliminate themselves, just to give them some things to check off their list, no stone unturned.”

  “Why couldn’t they say that on the news?”

  “They don’t like to tell the media very much if they think it could hurt the investigation. That’s just how it works.”

  I wait for him to say it, but when he doesn’t, I ask, “Well, did they? Eliminate you?”

  He laughs in a big, relieved burst of breath. “Yes. Sam, yes.”

  “Dad. I want to come home.”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  I rephrase it. “I need to come home, Dad,” and squint my eyes shut, afraid of his answer.

  When he finally says, “Okay,” I stand up and go straight to my duffel bag, ready to pack.

  “Can you come get me right now?”

  “Yes.”

  It’s the first real yes I’ve had in a long time.

  Day 10

  Monday

  My phone chimes with a text at two in the morning.

  Are you awake?

  It’s from Nick. I stare at it awhile, baffled and still half-asleep. The house is so quiet, just the sound of the floor fan in my room and crickets outside the window, and Nick is awake a couple of miles away, maybe also hearing fans and crickets, and thinking of me.

  I text back. Sort of.

  Call me?

  The hall, lit only by the bathroom night-light, is even quieter than my room. I find my flip-flops near the back door and slide them on before going into the garage through the inside door off the kitchen, where I figure I can talk without waking up my dad. After flipping on the light, I unfold a camping chair, sit down, and take a deep breath before calling Nick.

  He answers halfway through the first ring. “Sam?”

  “Hi.”

  “Hey. I didn’t think you’d really be up.”

  He sounds like less than himself, and I don’t think it’s just because it’s two am. “Is everything okay?”

  “I can’t sleep, and really wanted to hear a friendly voice. And I thought of you.”

  Why me? I think. Of course that’s not the kind of thing you ask.

  “I saw you at the vigil,” I say, “but there were so many people, and you looked busy with your family.” And Dorrie.

  “Oh, yeah. That whole thing was kind of… I mean, your dad did a great job with it and everything, but in a way it made me feel worse.”

  I’m so relieved I’m not the only one. “I know. I left halfway through to go outside. It was just hard. With all those strangers.”

  “That was part of it. Also, I don’t know if it really makes a difference.” He’s quiet for a while then, before saying, “I don’t mean I think prayer doesn’t work. I’m just… Okay, you know when people at church say, ‘I’ll pray for you,’ or something and you wonder if they really will? Like maybe they say it because it’s what they’re supposed to say in a church when you find out someone’s life is gone into the crapper. Like, ‘I just found out my mom has cancer and the doctors give her three weeks to live.’ What can you say to that? So you say, ‘I’ll pray,’ and then that person’s mom dies in exactly three weeks anyway. Part of me couldn’t help but think the vigil was that, times a million.”

  Nick mistakes my silence for something it isn’t.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t dump that on you. You probably—”

  “No.” Whatever he thinks I’m “probably” is going to be wrong. “I just didn’t know anyone else… I mean anyone who’s there every week of his own free will… felt that way. I think about that stuff a lot.”

  “Well, yeah,” Nick says. “Everyone has doubts. But I didn’t think you did.”

  “I do.”

  “It’s good you’ve got your dad to talk about it with whenever you want.”

  “It’s not like that,” I say. “It’s actually easier to talk to my mom about that stuff.” There, my voice breaks, and I stop talking even though I want to add something about how that’s why I miss her so much, why I need her now.

  “Hey. She’ll be back soon. It’s going to get better.”

  And I don’t know how he does that. How someone going through everything he’s going through can say exactly what I need to hear, when my own dad, who does this for a living, can’t. I nod, though I know he can’t see me.

  “Speaking of your dad, that’s one reason I was thinking about you. I saw the news today. He talked to us about going in for the polygraph, so I knew, but after it got out I thought about how you’d feel, and I know how I’d feel. I mean I know how I do feel, with half the country saying it’s me. And I wanted to give you advice, which is this: ignore everything everyone says.”

  “Okay. I’ll try.”

  “Are you going to get in trouble for being on the phone this late? Or, I guess, this early?” He sounds better now than he did when this conversation started.

  “I’m in the garage. My dad can’t hear me.”

  “You’re sitting in the garage at two in the morning. Now I really feel bad.”

  “I don’t mind. I have a camp chair. It’s comfy.” I look around, noticing my bike hanging from a hook in the corner and my box of soccer trophies exactly where I put it last summer. “It is kind of hot in here, but my mom keeps it really clean. Kept it.”

  “I do that, too,” Nick says. “I keep switching from present to past to present tense when I talk about Jody. Every time I accidentally say something in the past tense with my mom around, she gets this look on her face like she’s hearing the news all over again. But when I say ‘Jody is’ or ‘Jody does’ or ‘Jody likes,’ that feels wrong, too.”

  I nod.

  “Sam?”

  “Still here. I was just thinking. About the past and present thing. And thinking at least I know where my mom is.”

  “But if she’s not there, she’s not there.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So,” Nick says, “just how clean is your garage? Is it like OCD clean or regular clean?”

  I laugh. “Well, it’s a garage. Regular clean. A lot of stuff is in plastic storage boxes but not everything.” I get up and walk to the big metal shelf where my mom keeps household stuff organized. “For example,” I say, lifting the lid of one bin, “we have wrapping paper, ribbons, and cards neatly organized, but then there are some Christmas decorations sitting on top of all that because whoever put them away was too lazy to find the decoration bin. Probably me.”

  “That’s good. You don’t want to be too perfect.”

  “Some are labeled,” I say, sliding out a large bin that’s on the floor. “Like this one says ‘winter clothes.’ But I bet—” I pry off the lid. The bin is filled with bottles. Empty wine bottles, empty gin bottles. A few dozen of them, which must have been washed out carefully because there’s only the faintest smell of alcohol wafting up.

  “Winter clothes?” Nick asks. “Or… zombie remains? Though I guess the living dead can’t really have remains…”

  I put the lid back on. “Just… junk. Actually. Actually not junk. Empty wine bottles and stuff. My mom must have hidden them here so we wouldn’t find them in the garbage.”

  Nick blows out a breath. “Man. I still can’t picture your mom stumbling around drunk or anything. She always seemed—seems—so together.”

  “She is. She never stumbled around drunk like that. Most of the time we didn’t even know. For her, even passi
ng out was more like laying down to take a nap. It’s not like it is on TV or anything.” I want to change the subject. “Did you decide about college?”

  He tells me about how he went online to pick out his classes, and talked to his assigned roommate on the phone. “I’m still not sure, though. They’re holding my spot so I don’t have to decide right this second or anything.”

  “I’m probably starting a new school, too. I haven’t said anything to anyone about it yet.”

  “No more Amberton? Is that going to be okay?”

  “It’s too expensive. So it has to be okay. But… yeah. I’ll still see Vanessa and Daniel all the time outside of school.”

  “You’ll probably make other friends, too,” he says, sounding so sure.

  “Maybe.” I can’t see myself going up to someone at lunch and introducing myself. I yawn and try to catch myself in time to cover my mouth so Nick won’t know, but he hears me and says, “I should let you get to bed.”

  “Probably.”

  “I’m glad you were up.”

  I don’t tell him I wasn’t actually up until his text woke me. “Me, too.”

  “Good night, Sam.”

  “Night, Nick.”

  After I hang up I sit in the garage awhile longer, going over our conversation, his voice. And what it means that he wanted to talk to me in the middle of the night. I don’t know, maybe nothing. Maybe he’s missing Jody. Maybe he’s fighting with Dorrie again. Or maybe he truly likes me, just likes the person that I am. Maybe we’re friends.

  • • •

  In the morning, I stay in bed a long time, listening to my dad get up, talk to Ralph, make coffee, shower. Eventually, he knocks on my door. “Sam?”

  “Come in.”

  “Hey.” Ralph trots past him and leaps onto my bed, purring and walking over my legs. “Not feeling so good?”