Long Lost (2 page)

“Brad!”

At first, I thought it was one of my staff trying to catch my attention about something I’d forgotten. But when I turned, I didn’t recognize the man hurrying toward me. He was in his mid—thirties, rough—looking, with a dirty tan and matted long hair. For a moment, I thought he might be a construction worker I’d met on one of my projects. His clothes certainly looked the part: scuffed work boots, dusty jeans, and a wrinkled denim shirt with its sleeves rolled up. But I’ve got a good memory for faces, and I was sure I’d have remembered the two—inch scar on his chin.

“Brad! My God, I can’t believe it!” The man dropped a battered knapsack to the sidewalk. “After all these years! Christ Almighty!”

I must have looked baffled. I like to think people enjoy my company, but very few have ever been so enthusiastic about seeing me. Apparently we had once known each other, although I hadn’t the vaguest idea who the guy was.

His broad grin revealed a chipped front tooth. “You don’t recognize me? Come on,
I’d
have recognized you anywhere! I did on television! It’s me!”

My brain was working slowly, trying to search my memory. “I’m afraid I don’t —”

“Peter! Your
brother
!”

Now everything became totally clear. My brain worked very fast.

The man reached out. “It’s so damned good to see you!”

“Keep your hands away from me, you son of a bitch.”

“What?” The man looked shocked.

“Come any closer, I’ll call the police. If you think you’re going to get money from —”

“Brad, what are you talking about?”

“You watched the
CBS Sunday
program, didn’t you?” “

Yes, but —”

“You made a mistake, you bastard. It isn’t going to work.”

On TV, the reporter had mentioned Petey’s disappearance. The day after the show, six different men had called my office, claiming to be Petey. “Your long—lost brother,” each of them cheerily said. The first call had excited me, but after a few minutes' conversation, I realized that the guy hadn’t the faintest idea about how Petey had disappeared or where it had happened or what our home life had been like. The next two callers had been even worse liars. They all wanted money. I told my secretary not to put through any more calls from anyone who claimed to be my brother. The next three con men lied to her, pretending to have legitimate business, tricking her into transferring the call. The moment they started their spiel, I slammed down the phone. The day after that, my secretary managed to intercept eight more calls from men who claimed to be Petey.

Now they were showing up in person.

“Stay the hell away from me.” Too impatient to go down to the traffic light, I turned sharply, found a break in traffic, and headed across the street.

“Brad! For God’s sake, listen!” the man yelled. “It really is
me
!”

My back stiffened with anger as I kept walking.

“What do I have to do to make you believe me?” the man shouted.

I reached the street’s center line, waiting impatiently for another break in traffic.

“When they grabbed me, I was riding home on my bicycle!” the man yelled.

Furious, I spun. “The reporter mentioned that on television! Get away from me before I beat the shit out of you.”

“Brad, you’d have a harder time outfighting me than when we were kids. The bike was blue.”

That last statement almost didn’t register, I was so angry. Then the image of Petey’s blue bike hit me.

“
That
wasn’t mentioned on television,” the man said.

“It was in the newspaper at the time. All you needed to do was phone the Woodford library and ask the reference department to check the issues of the local newspaper for that month and year. It wouldn’t have been hard to get details about Petey’s disappearance.”

“
My
disappearance,” the man said.

On each side, cars beeped in warning as they sped past.

“We shared the same room,” the man said. “Was
that
ever printed?”

I frowned, uneasy.

“We slept in bunk beds,” the man said, raising his voice. “I had the top. I had a model of a helicopter hanging from a cord attached to the ceiling just above me. I liked to take it down and spin the blades.”

My frown deepened.

“Dad had the tip of the little finger on his left hand cut off in an accident at the furniture factory. He loved to fish. The summer before I disappeared, he took you and me camping out here in Colorado. Mom wouldn’t go. She was afraid of being outdoors because of her allergy to bee stings. Even the sight of a bee threw her into a panic.”

Memories flooded through me. There was no way this stranger could have learned any of those details just by checking old newspapers. None of that information had ever been printed.

“Petey?”

“We had a goldfish in our room. But neither of us liked to clean the bowl. One day we came home from school, and the bedroom stank. The fish was dead. We put the fish in a matchbox and had a funeral in the backyard. When we came back to where we’d buried it, we found a hole where the neighbor’s cat had dug up the fish.”

“Petey.” As I started back toward him, I almost got hit by a car. “Jesus, it
is
you.”

“We once broke a window playing catch in the house. Dad grounded us for a week.”

This time,
I
was the one reaching out. I’ve never hugged anybody harder. He smelled of spearmint gum and cigarette smoke. His arms were tremendously strong. “Petey.” I could barely get the words out. “Whatever happened to you?”

3

Pedaling home. Angry. Feelings hurt. A car coming next to him, moving slowly, keeping pace with him. A woman in the front passenger seat rolling down her window, asking directions to the interstate. Telling her. The woman not seeming to listen. The sour—looking man at the steering wheel not seeming to care, either. The woman asking, “Do you believe in God?” What kind of question? The woman asking, “Do you believe in the end of the world?” The car veering in front of him. Scared. Hopping the bicycle onto the sidewalk. The woman jumping from the car, chasing him. A sneaker slipping off a pedal. A vacant lot. Bushes. The woman grabbing him. The man unlocking the trunk, throwing him in. The trunk lid banging shut. Darkness. Screaming. Pounding. Not enough air. Passing out.

Petey described it to me as we faced each other in an isolated booth at the rear of the deli I’d been headed toward.

“You never should have made me leave that baseball game,” he said.

“I know that.” My voice broke. “God, don’t I know it.”

“The woman was older than Mom. She had crow’s—feet around her eyes. Gray roots in her hair. Pinched lips. Awful thin … Stooped shoulders … Floppy arms. Reminded me of a bird, but she sure was strong. The man had dirty long hair and hadn’t shaved. He wore coveralls and smelled of chewing tobacco.”

“What did they want with you? Were you …” I couldn’t make myself use the word
molested.

Petey looked away. “They drove me to a farm in West Virginia.”

“Just across the border? You were that close?”

“Near a town called Redemption. Sick joke, huh? Really, that’s what it was called, although I didn’t find out the name for quite a while. They kept me a prisoner, until I escaped. When I was sixteen.”

“Sixteen? But all this time? Why didn’t you come to us?”

“I thought about it.” Petey looked uncomfortable. “I just couldn’t make myself.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket.

But as he lit a match, a waitress stopped at our table. “I’m sorry, sir. Smoking isn’t permitted in here.”

Petey’s craggy features hardened. “Fine.”

“Can I take your orders?”

“You’re good at giving them.”

“What?”

“Corned beef,” I told the waitress, breaking the tension.

Petey impatiently shoved his cigarettes back into his pocket. “A couple of Buds.”

As she left, I glanced around, assuring myself that no customers were close enough to hear what we were saying.

“What did you mean, you couldn’t make yourself come to us?”

“The man kept telling me Mom and Dad would never take me back.”

“What?”

“Not after what he did to … He said Mom and Dad would be disgusted, they’d …”

“Disown you? They wouldn’t have.” I felt tight with sadness.

“I understand that now. But when I escaped … let’s just say I wasn’t myself. Where they kept me a prisoner was an underground room.”

“Jesus.”

“I didn’t see the light of day for seven years.” His cheek muscles hardened. “Not that I knew how much time had passed. When I got out, it took me quite a while to figure what was what.”

“But what have you been doing?”

Petey looked tortured. “Roaming around. Working construction jobs. Driving trucks. A little of everything. Just after my twenty—first birthday, I happened to be driving a rig to Columbus. I worked up the nerve to go to Woodford and take a look at our place.”

“The house had been sold by then.”

“So I found out.”

“And Dad had died.”

“I found that out, too. Nobody remembered where Mrs. Denning and her son Brad had moved.”

“We were in Columbus with Mom’s parents.”

“So close.” Petey shook his head in despair. “I didn’t know Mom’s maiden name, so I couldn’t track her through her parents.”

“But the police could have helped you find us.”

“Not without asking me a lot of questions I didn’t want to answer.”

“They’d have arrested the man and woman who kidnapped you.”

“What good would that have done
me
? There’d have been a trial. I’d have had to testify. The story would have been in all the newspapers.” He gestured helplessly. “I felt so …”

“It’s over now. Try to put it behind you. None of it was your fault.”

“I
still
feel …” Petey struggled with the next word, then stopped when the waitress brought our beers. He took a long swallow from his bottle and changed the subject. “What about Mom?”

The question caught me by surprise. “Mom?”

“Yeah, how’s she doing?”

I needed a moment before I could make myself answer. “She died last year.”

“… Oh.” Petey’s voice dropped.

“Cancer.”

“Uh.” It was a quiet exhale. At the same time, it was almost as if he’d been punched. He stared at his beer bottle, but his painful gaze was on something far away.

4

Kate’s normally attractive features looked strained when I walked into the kitchen. She was pacing, talking on the phone, tugging an anxious hand through her long blond hair. Then she saw me, and her shoulders sagged with relief. “He just walked in. I’ll call you back.”

I smiled as she hung up the phone.

“Where have you been? Everybody’s been worried,” Kate said.

“Worried?”

“You had several important meetings this afternoon, but you never showed up. Your office was afraid you’d been in an accident or —”

“Everything’s great. I lost track of the time.”

“— been mugged or —”

“
Better
than great.”

“— had a heart attack or —”

“I’ve got wonderful news.”

“— or God knows what. You’re always Mr. Dependable. Now it’s almost six, and you didn’t call to let me know you were okay, and … Do I smell alcohol on your breath? Have you been drinking?”

“You bet.” I smiled more broadly.

“During the day? Ignoring appointments with clients? What’s gotten into you?”

“I told you, I have wonderful news.”

“
What
news?”

“Petey showed up.”

Kate’s blue eyes looked confused, as if I was speaking gibberish. “Who’s …” At once, she got it. “Good Lord, you don’t mean … your brother.”

“Exactly.”

“But … but you told me you assumed he was dead.”

“I was wrong.”

“You’re positive it’s him?”

“You bet. He told me things only Petey could know. It
has
to be him.”

“And he’s really here? In Denver?”

“Closer than that. He’s on the front porch.”

“What? You left him
outside
?”

“I didn’t want to spring him on you. I wanted to prepare you.” I explained what had happened. “I’ll fill in the details when there’s time. The main thing to know is, he’s been through an awful lot.”

“Then he shouldn’t be cooling his heels on the porch. For heaven’s sake, get him.”

Just then, Jason came in from the backyard. He was eleven but small for his age, so that he looked a lot like Petey had when he’d disappeared. Braces, freckles, glasses, thin. “What’s all the noise about? You guys having an argument?”

“The opposite,” Kate said.

“What’s up?”

Looking at Jason’s glasses, I was reminded that
Petey
had needed glasses, too. But the man outside wasn’t wearing any. I suddenly felt as if I had needles in my stomach. Had I been conned?

Kate crouched before Jason. “Do you remember we told you that your father had a brother?”

“Sure. Dad talked about him on that TV show.”

“He disappeared when he was a boy,” Kate said.

Jason nodded uneasily. “I had a nightmare about it.”

“Well, you don’t have to have nightmares about it anymore,” Kate said. “Guess what? He came back today. You’re going to meet him.”

“Yeah?” Jason brightened. “When?”

“Just as soon as we open the front door.”

I tried to say something to Kate, to express my sudden misgivings, but she was already heading down the hallway toward the front door. The next thing, she had it open, and I don’t know what she expected, but I doubt that the scruffy—looking man out there matched her idealized image of the long—lost brother. He turned from where he’d been smoking a cigarette, admiring the treed area in front of the house. His knapsack was next to him.

“Petey?” Kate asked.

He shifted from one work boot to the other, ill at ease. “These days, I think ‘Peter’ sounds a little more grownup.”

“Please, come in.”

“Thanks.” He looked down at his half—smoked cigarette, glanced at the interior of the house, pinched off the glowing tip, then put the remnant in his shirt pocket.