Once Was Lost (8 page)

“Oh, she called the Shaws last night,” Dad says when the story is over. “So did Jody’s father’s old college roommate. He works for a regional FBI office and is on his way here to help.”

“That’s good, right?”

“It definitely doesn’t hurt. Listen, Sammy.” He hesitates. That moment of hesitation and the way he says my name means this won’t be good.

I watch Ralph hunched over my bowl, his gray fur coming up in unruly tufts around his shoulders.

“With everything that’s going on,” Dad continues, “I don’t like leaving you alone so much. It looks like I’m basically becoming the Shaws’ official spokesperson. There are so many media requests and intrusions on their privacy, you wouldn’t believe. They don’t want to pay some stranger to handle this stuff, and they shouldn’t have to when they’ve got their church family. And until they catch this guy…”

“You’re sending me away?”

“No, not
away
, away. Honestly, Sam, I want to. But we can’t afford a ticket to Grandma’s, and she can’t afford a ticket here. And you know the Hathaways love you.”

I look at him. “You’re making me live with Vanessa?”

He laughs. “You say that like I’m sending you to Siberia. It’s not even two miles away, and she’s your best friend.”

“Did you check with Mom?”

“Check with her?” he asks, puzzled.

“Check with her.” I get up and take the bowl away from Ralph. He isn’t quite done, and races after me into the kitchen. “Discuss,” I say over my shoulder. “Like, call her and say, ‘I’m thinking about having Sam live with Vanessa until this is over and what do you think about that?’ ”

“I don’t think we should bother her.”

“How do you know? Have you even talked to her in the last week?”

I run the water, hard, to rinse my bowl, drowning out his silence. When I turn around, he’s coming in with his coffee cup. “I didn’t feel like it was a decision I needed help with. They’ve got cable, air-conditioning, home-cooked meals, they love you, you love them…”

But it’s not home.

That’s what Mom would have said to him, what she would have known about me and where I need to be right now. Sober, tipsy, drunk, whatever, she’s the one who’s been here, and she’s the one who really knows me.

I fold my arms. “Why did you say on the news me and Jody are friends?”

“What?”

“Don’t talk about me on TV, okay?”

“All right,” he says slowly, but I can see he doesn’t get why.

I start to notice how clean the kitchen is. All the surfaces have been straightened up and wiped shiny. Mom’s notes and papers and mail are gone. I look in the trash and see them underneath a wet pile of coffee grounds. It must have been Erin who threw them away, since I’ve already told Dad not to.

The sight of random slips of paper with Mom’s handwriting on them, in the trash, water-stained and covered in coffee grounds, leaves yet another part of me crushed.

I reconsider Vanessa’s. Home doesn’t feel like home anyway, so why not leave.

“What about Ralph?” I ask. “While I’m at Vanessa’s.”

“I’ll feed him.”

“You’ll forget.”

“I promise I won’t.” He turns his hands palms-up, helpless. “I just don’t know what else to do right now.”

I pick up Ralph and scratch behind his ears. “Don’t make me go today.” I want to at least get started on my backyard project. I want time to think. Maybe try calling Mom again. “I’ll go tomorrow.”

“Sam…”

“Please?”

He nods, and glances at the clock on the coffeemaker. “I’ve got to go over to the office for a few hours, then to the Shaws’. Okay?”

“Go. I’ll be fine here.”

I walk toward Main, my flip-flops slapping against the hot sidewalk. The streets are empty, just like the picture on the news this morning. It’s not like Pineview is usually crawling with children or anything, but today they’re noticeably absent. There are things out here, though, that weren’t here before: blue ribbons. Tied onto trees, and fence posts, and mailboxes. Symbols that we’re waiting for Jody to come home.

I pass a house with a few old ladies sitting on the porch, drinking iced tea and playing cards. One of them calls me over. It’s Ida Larson, from church.

I cross the brown lawn and climb the porch steps.

“Does your father know you’re out wandering the streets?” Ida ruffles the hem of her blue print dress, fanning the air up her legs.

“I’m just going to the hardware store.”

Ida and one of her card-mates exchange a glance. “Cal Stewart,” she says. “New in town. Bought the store from the Penfolds three years ago.”

Three years’ residency is “new in town” here, especially to people like Ida. She’s suspicious of everyone and always calls our house if her Sunday offering check isn’t deposited by Tuesday morning. “I don’t want my signature out there floating around where gosh-knows-who-all can see it, forge it, and take me for every penny.”

“How’s your mother, sweetie?” Ida asks now.

“Fine.”

While Ida watches me, the rest of them look at their cards. “You just tell her that the Lord doesn’t give a person more than he knows they can bear.”

Ida Larson knows? Then everyone must know.

“Yes, ma’am.”

My cell phone, in my shorts pocket, rings. I pull it out. “It’s my dad,” I tell the ladies, and they all smile and nod, like of course it would be my dad because that’s how in touch we are with each other and isn’t it great how Pastor Charlie is young and modern? “Have a nice day.”

I go down the steps, and hit the button on my phone that will send my dad to voice mail, then slide it open as I walk away, pretending to talk. Even though he didn’t explicitly say I couldn’t go anywhere, I pretty much implied that I’d be locked up safe at home. Not answering his call saves me a lie.

Two blocks later I’m standing in front of the hardware store, watching Cal crouch in the window arranging a display of fans and garden hoses and potting soil.

I let my hand rest on the door for a second, staring at the flyer of Jody taped to the glass. It’s the same picture they put on the TV this morning and now the whole country has seen her smiling face, full of braces.

When I go in, the strand of bells Cal has hanging on the handle jingles. His voice comes from the window: “Be right with you.”

There’s an end display of citronella candles and yellow jacket traps. I straighten them and wish I had a dust cloth or something. The store is a little sad right now, neglected. One thing you could say about the old owners is that they kept it clean.

“Oh,” Cal says when he comes out and sees me. “The resident xeriscaper.”

He wears a store apron with his name embroidered on the pocket, his wire-rim glasses resting on the top of his head.

“Yeah, well.” I pick up a tube of cream that claims to be both a sunblock and a mosquito repellent. “Does this stuff work?”

“I’ve never tried it, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t.”

I put the tube back. “Um, you know that plastic sheeting I got on Saturday?”

“Yes?” He’s half-looking at a clipboard.

“I’m not sure exactly what I’m supposed to do with it.”

“Cover up the lawn or weeds or whatever plants you want to kill.” He looks up and smiles briefly. “Not much to it.”

“How long does it take?”

“Depends. On the weather, on the types of plants. I’m sure you can find information online.”

Online. Of course. Everything is online, only I’m not allowed online, but I’m too embarrassed to tell him that. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

He wanders off with his clipboard. Still trying to work out a plan for the yard, I look at the rack of seed packets. The pictures of the flowers on the packets make it look so easy: dig hole, insert seed, water, and voilà—beautiful, colorful flowers.

Two summers ago there was a heat wave almost like the one we’re having now, but my mom and dad planted our garden anyway, putting in the butterfly bushes and hollyhocks together. Dad laid the flagstone path. They bought yard furniture. It wasn’t like last summer, when the good days were few and far between. This was a months-long stretch of togetherness. They’d let me stay up late into the night so I could sit with them out there, watching the stars. My mom seemed so happy. Open. Even the way she wore her hair back then told you something, always off her face so you could see her eyes smiling out at you.

I wish I understood what happened between then and now. I wish there was a way to put your finger on the map of life and trace backwards, to figure out exactly when things had changed so much: when we started getting the dregs of Dad, if that was before or after the drinking getting bad. If one caused the other, or if it was true what they say about it not being anyone’s fault but instead genetics, or fate, or whatever you want to call it. My great-grandpa was an alcoholic, and sometimes my grandma in Michigan doesn’t know how to stop once she starts. Still, it doesn’t explain how one summer there were real smiles and yard projects and watching the stars together, and then what seemed like minutes later the yard and everything else were a total mess.

“Wildflowers do pretty well in the heat,” Cal says from behind the register. “The ones on the rack should be right for this region.”

“Oh,” I say, turning, “I didn’t bring money. I’m just kind of… looking.”

He opens the register. “I’m sure I can advance you a couple of dollars. Just have your folks take care of it next time they’re in.”

There’s only one folk right now, I want to say, and he’s trying to get me out of the way so he can focus on the truly important stuff. Like Jody and her family. “Are you sure?” I ask.

He nods. “Pick one and take it, it’s fine.” I take a packet of seeds for flowers that look small and undemanding, and bring it to the register so that he can make up an IOU.

“Thanks.” I turn toward the door to leave.

When I’m almost there, he calls after me. “Be careful out there.”

“I will.”

And I leave the store, the bells jingling behind me.

Back at home, I lie on my parents’ bed, under the ceiling fan. I roll to my mom’s side, smelling her pillow, but whatever trace of her there’d been is aired out and washed out. I stare at my cell phone for a long time, the New Beginnings card next to me on the blanket. Maybe there’s a good reason she can’t call me, like she’s in group meetings and counseling and whatever else they make you do in rehab.

Even if there is a good reason, and honestly I can’t think of one, it still hurts.

I had all these big plans for the yard today but now that I’m home I can’t get myself up and doing anything. Gravity is powerful. It’s still before noon, and I already slept like twelve hours last night, but my eyes want to close and I let them.

Pretty soon, I’m asleep.

I dream of Jody. She’s in a hole in the ground, looking up. All I can see is her dirty, looking-up face, and there’s no one around but me. No context, no sense of if I’m in Pineview or in a forest or a desert. Just me, Jody, and the hole. I lower a ladder. But instead of Jody climbing up, I climb down. We’re both in the hole, staring at each other. She looks older than her picture on the flyer; her braces are off. She holds out her hand. I grab it. And then I wake up.

In the yard, I struggle with the black plastic sheeting, which I probably shouldn’t be doing since it’s early afternoon, the hottest part of the day. My cell phone rings. It’s Erin.

“Ah-ha,” she says when I answer. “Your dad suspected you might answer if it was me and not him.”

I move into a shady spot, kicking the pile of sheeting into a manageable lump. “You’re with my dad?”

“I’m at the office. Just taking care of some youth group business. Speaking of which, we’re getting together tonight at Vanessa’s to bake brownies and take them over to Nick’s. It’s the best we could think of right now.”

It’s easy to see how this will go: Dad takes me to youth group, and since it’s at Vanessa’s he’ll say why don’t I just pack a bag to stay over, thereby denying me the one more night at home he promised me this morning. Which somehow feels important.

“I’m still not feeling super great,” I say. “I should probably stay home.”

“It will not be strenuous, I promise. And you’ll be well fortified because I’m going to cook you guys dinner.”

“You’re cooking dinner for the whole youth group?”

“No no, just for you and your dad… Here, I’m going to put you on speaker.”

“Hey, Sammy.” My dad sounds upbeat, energetic, and not mad that I didn’t answer his call earlier. “How’s your day?”

“Fine.” I sit on one of the dirty plastic patio chairs, trying to think of what I can tell him I’ve been doing all day since I probably shouldn’t mention going out, assuming Ida Larson hasn’t already called him to squeal. “I’m just—”

But he cuts me off. “Here’s the plan: I’m leaving the office now to check in with the Shaws. Then I’ll come home, and Erin is going to bring us dinner at six, and afterward you guys will go do brownies at Vanessa’s.”

“And she’ll bring me home?”

“Sure,” Erin says.

Church people only bring meals to other church people when something is wrong. When people are “going through a hard time,” as Erin always puts it whenever us youth group kids do meals for people. Casseroles when Heidi Capp’s dad had cancer. Soup after the Fletchers had triplets. Brownies for Nick. And dinner for us—motherless and wifeless us.

“We don’t need you to cook dinner,” I say.

My dad laughs and says loudly, “Yes, we do! Pay no attention to the child!” They sound like they’re having so much fun. I watch Ralph pounce on a butterfly.

“Dad, I can cook.” Which I know is a direct contradiction to our conversation at the grocery store, but I can at least make some instant rice and open a can of fruit cocktail or something.

“I’m bringing food,” Erin says. “Don’t even worry about it.”

“Can you take me off speaker? And let me talk to my dad?”

“Oh, okay.”

He comes on the line. “Everything all right?”

“I don’t know if I want to go to youth group tonight. I might be coming down with something.” I move my flip-flopped toe over the plastic sheeting. Saying I’m sick could go either way in terms of trying to get him to change his mind about me moving to Vanessa’s. He might just say it’s better to be where Mrs. Hathaway can take care of me. Or he might decide to take care of me himself.