Dead to You (19 page)

“Thanks.”

“So you were in St. Louis for almost a year, then, huh? But weren’t you in the south, too?”

“Around seven years with Eleanor in Oklahoma. I guess I was there from the beginning, after the abduction, but we moved around all the time and I’m not sure about the early years.” I trace my thumb along her forefinger. “Then a year in Omaha at the youth home, until I ran away from there. Hitchhiked to wherever truckers would take me after that, and I ended up homeless in St. Louis. It wasn’t too bad there. I’d go back if I had to.”

Cami reads over the first page again. I stare at the green seatback in front of me and ponder what I’ve just said.
I’d go back if I had to.
Would I? I can’t imagine going back to that kind of homeless life, especially now. You’re always either freezing or burning up or soaking wet, never able to get a good, deep sleep, always on the lookout for somebody to call the cops or kick you out of doorways. Always watching for people to throw stuff away, then diving after it. Smoking old cigarette butts like they’re comfort food until the filter melts and your mouth tastes like burned plastic, drinking cold, bitter coffee out of people’s discarded Starbucks cups.

People who don’t have a clue say stupid things, like,
When things get bad enough for those people, there’s no shame left
. They’re wrong. There’s a lot of fucking shame. It feels like total crap, living like that. Not going back there. Ever.

Cami looks up. “That was nice of the librarian to let you hang out to get warm every night.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Stewart. He was cool. Didn’t call security on me. I just kept to myself, mostly. Sometimes he’d come up to me and make like he packed too much in his lunch, couldn’t eat it all . . .” I trail off because it sounds weird to tell her I scarfed down the librarian’s leftover sandwiches, kept the ziplock baggies until I was alone so I could lick out the extra peanut butter, then use the baggies to go Dumpster diving. I’m just not that guy anymore.

“I’m so glad you found that website and came home.” Cami rests our entwined fingers on my thigh and leans up against me. My eyes practically roll back in my head just having her near. I’ll never get over this feeling. Like I belong with someone. Like I’m finally part of something safe, something strong. Something I can count on. Like the world, the continents, really could come back together one day, the edges of land sealing up that big space of water and sky and nothingness between them.

It’s a windy spring day. Cami and I get off the
bus and start walking toward her house, as usual. “I finished my collage,” I say. “Made a frame for it and everything. Maybe you can come by tonight and see it.”

“Sure,” she says. Her hair flies in the wind and I get a faceful of it, but I don’t mind. We hang around for a minute on her front step, kissing and enjoying the warmer weather, but the clouds are building. It looks like rain. The snow is mostly gone except for the biggest piles, which have shrunk considerably and now look more like mud mounds, and the soggy yellow grass is flattened as though a steamroller went over the lawns. The snow family in my front yard is long gone.

Blake is just a fly in my life. He buzzes by now and then, and I wave him away. At counseling the other day, we talked about one of us moving in with Grandma and Grandpa for the summer, but then we started arguing about which one of us would have to go. I know I don’t want to.

The hysterics thing is getting better, it really is, thanks to Cami. She totally helps me lighten up. But it’s still there sometimes when I think about things too hard and when my brain gets too full of all the crap that has happened since I came home.

I kiss Cami good-bye and jog across the yards to my house. There’s an unfamiliar black sedan driving down the street slowly, with two guys in the front seat peering out the windows, like they’re looking for an address. It gives me a chill when I remember Blake’s account of the abduction—two guys in a black car—and it’s creepy, even though I know it’s ridiculous to let my mind go there.

I go inside, straight to the kitchen. Gracie is eating ice cream and she instinctively moves across the table from where I set my backpack. Never trusting me near her snacks. I grin and sit down. Mama sits down too and we talk for a minute about the day and about English class and how we’re diagramming sentences, which I kind of secretly like to do.

It’s starting to rain when the doorbell rings.

I look out the window. The black car from a few minutes ago is in the driveway.

“Can you answer it, hon?” Mama asks me. “I haven’t sat down all day.” She looks tired.

“Sure,” I say. My stomach clenches.

I go to the mudroom, open the door a crack, and see them. One is short and bald, the other is taller with a mustache. “Hello?” I open the door a bit farther.

“Is this the De Wilde residence?”

I nod.

The guy with the mustache asks, “Is there a parent or guardian at home?” He flips open a badge and holds it up so I can see.

“Just a minute.” I close the door and go tell Mama that the police are here.

Gracie’s eyes bug out, and Mama stares at me. And then she stands and rushes to the door, whispering, “Oh my God, Paul.” And suddenly I wonder if Dad was killed or something terrible like that. I follow Mama to the door, and Gracie goes to Blake’s room. I can hear her high-pitched voice telling him the police are here.

Mama opens the door and invites them into the mudroom. “Can I help you?” I can hear the anxiety in her voice. She smoothes her cardigan nervously.

“Are you Maria De Wilde?”

“Yes.”

The bald guy introduces himself as Detective Somebody. I don’t catch the name. I’m getting light-headed.

“Would you like to sit down?” the bald guy asks Mama.

“No, thank you. What is it?” Mama asks. “Please, just tell me. Did something happen to Paul?”

The two guys exchange a quick glance, and then the bald guy says, “No, Mrs. De Wilde. We’re here about your son Ethan.”

My eyes open wide. Blake and Gracie are here now too, gathered in the doorway, and we’re all completely silent. Gracie looks up at me. Blake’s face is intense, hoping for dirt to mock me with, I’m sure.

“What about him?” Mama looks concerned now, less scared. I rack my brains, trying to think of anything I could have done wrong. Driving violations, maybe? It can’t be. I’ve been very careful and I still only have my permit, so I’m always with Mama or Dad. I haven’t done anything. I’m sure of it. But the panic grows.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to sit down?”

“Yes, I’m sure.” Instead, Mama grips the doorframe.

The bald guy nods. “Mrs. De Wilde, your son Ethan was abducted nine years ago, is that correct?”

“Yes. Did you find that woman Eleanor?”

“No, ma’am. I’m afraid we have sad news. We’ve found the remains of Ethan’s body.”

Mama’s jaw drops, and for a moment it’s completely silent. “What?”

“Your son is dead, ma’am. Some hikers strayed off trail up near the Canadian border and found his remains. His death . . . we believe it happened a short time after he was abducted.” He pauses. “Tests confirm it’s your son Ethan. I’m so sorry.”

The words jump around in my head, not making sense. My stomach hurts.

Mama clutches her sweater at her throat and glances at me, then back at them. Her voice wavers. “He’s not dead. You’ve made a mistake . . .”

“No, ma’am. I’m sorry,” the detective says firmly, like he’s probably had to do a hundred times. “There’s no mistake. We compared DNA to the missing person’s follicle sample on file—hair that was pulled from Ethan’s comb back when he was abducted. Do you recall that, Mrs. De Wilde? The DNA matches.”

I don’t understand. I try to put the words together but my brain is cloudy and won’t let it happen. So I get caught up diagramming the detective’s sentences in my head like I’m sitting in English class, wondering what the hell they’re doing with my comb, like maybe I dropped it when I got off the bus and they’re returning it. Thinking maybe I should be grateful.

My body is so numb I can’t feel my fingers. The words repeat in my ears. Slowly the cloudiness clears.

And everything changes. The numbness goes away, and pain, like nausea, washes over me. The sentences come together, and finally . . .
finally
I understand them. I understand everything. I know where my lost memories are, the ones I’ve been searching for, the ones I was sure would come back someday. Racetracks and sno-cones and Rags the dog . . . and a brother I loved. All those memories are frozen, irretrievable. Buried in the wilderness under nine years of snow, nestled alongside the bones of a strange boy.

A boy named Ethan, who once had a comb, and hair that was not my hair.

I hear a ghastly moan and look around, dazed, before I realize it escaped from inside me.

As if he’s just awakened from a trance, Blake turns slowly and looks at me, horrified. Scared.

Gracie doesn’t understand. She tilts her head, stares. Her pink lips make a little O.

Mama’s eyes meet mine. Her face crinkles and then slacks as all the color drains out of it.

Bile jumps to my throat, making me choke, cough. The dam in my brain, the one that always tries to hold back the fear and truth and insanity of my fucking life, bursts wide open and it’s a flood in there. I can’t hold it back, and I can’t swim.

I can’t breathe.

All the memories flail around—Ellen’s crack-whore boyfriends beating the shit out of us. Me crying out “Mom!” and her too fucked up from drugs or fists to stop them or to help me. Running from the men, from the dealers, from the landlord, from the cops. And her getting rid of me. That’s what messed me up the worst. After all of that, she dumped me off and never came back. Real mothers wouldn’t do that.

Would they?

How could they?

I wonder, when was the first time I thought about it . . . wished for it? Was it tiny at first? So tiny, maybe, that it was barely even a complete thought. It hummed to me.
Maybe I have a different family somewhere.
I remember it now. On the freezing-cold nights, it gave me something to stay alive for. God, I wanted it so bad. The library, the searches. And then, bam! There, on the screen in front of me. Like looking in a mirror. Every day I stared at that picture, every day I read a little bit more, thinking maybe. Maybe.

Maybe.

Imagining it. The more I learned about the boy, the more uncertain I was about my past. The more convinced I became. This was it.

I was so sure.

And now . . . here in the mudroom, it’s all crashing down and I’m drowning in it.

Ethan is dead.

I am nothing. Nameless. No one.

I gasp for air.

When Mama cries out, I hear months, years, of grief in her voice. Her sweet, dark eyes and little round body, her fingers that slip off the doorframe and clutch at her throat, just like the first time I saw her, her faltering knees that threaten to buckle.

I turn away, lean hard against the wall, feeling my gut seize up, the boot kicking my ribs and stopping my breath, and then I push against the service door to the garage as if the wood, the brass handle, can give me strength to face them. To face these people, this family surrounding me . . . as they begin breaking to pieces all over again.

I glance at Gracie as she starts to point at me, and I imagine what she’s about to say to the police, to Mama.

That’s Efan right there,
she’ll explain, all innocent and beautiful. Then she’ll smile proudly like she solved the puzzle.

And they’ll have to tell her, after.

And Cami . . . oh God. The boot kicks so hard my ribs crack. My body tenses and wants to crack too.

It’s not fair. It isn’t. Not to Mama, or any of them.

Not to me.

As time speeds up again, I open the door and take one last look over my shoulder at the devastation I created. At my sweet Gracie . . . My heart rips. And at Blake, who will finally be right. And then I look at the detectives, imagining the scene when it all spills out. That old, familiar panic wells up.