The Leaving (31 page)

“Wow,” Scarlett said.

“I think it was smart.” He nodded. “What else were they supposed to do? Spend their whole life mourning and wishing they still had a kid? Build some crazy stone monument? Blame it all on aliens?”

“Nadia!” A woman was calling from the other room. “Belle!”

“What?” Belle said back.

“Where are your ballet shoes?” from the hall.

“In the bag!” Nadia shouted.

“Come on or we’ll be late.”

Belle dropped the dolls on the rug, stood, said “See ya,” and left the room. Nadia followed, giving Scarlett a smile and a wave.

Adam just watched them go, then said, “They’re pretty much my favorite people on the planet right now.”

“Mine, too, I think.” Scarlett smiled. “Speaking of which, why have you been avoiding us?”

“I don’t know, Scarlett.” He leaned forward in his chair. “I definitely sensed there was something maybe not great between Lucas and me. I felt tension that first night back and figured I should trust that. Now maybe we know more about why I felt that. If it’s true about you and me. Did you tell him?”

“He deserved to know. We remember so little. It seems unfair to hold back anything we actually know.”

He got up and went to a window, looked out. “Do you really trust hypnosis? Or Kristen?”

“I don’t know,” Scarlett said. “I think so. What do
you
trust? Who?”

He said, “I’ve started to trust that maybe it’s okay—maybe even better than okay—that we don’t remember.”

“That sounds like giving up.”

He got up again and picked up a guitar Scarlett hadn’t noticed in the corner. It looked comfortable in his hands. His fingers knew what they were doing when they found strings and frets. He sat and started to play.

She recognized the chords right away.

Knew some of the words before he started singing them.

And started to feel ill.

Started to feel her world tilt again in a way it hadn’t in days.

The song tugged at her, and not in a nice way.

It was an aggravating tug, an unwanted pull.

And after a few more lines, she felt herself burst open, like a confetti cannon.

Joy, pain.

The things you can’t forget even if you tried.

Drizzling down around her, blurring the air she breathed.

With each new note, she remembered running.

Fighting.

Aching.

For their lives.

Then snapping back.

Repeating.

Aching again.

Fear.

Running.

Snapping.

Struggling.

Failing.

Giving in.

He finished the song and looked up. “It’s the only song I can play full from beginning to end and it makes me want to throw up.”

“Who’s it by? Did
you
write it? What does it mean?” she asked. “It’s a message for us, right? A clue? One we left for ourselves?”

“Is it?” He put the guitar down. “Because to me it feels like a warning. It’s telling me to stop digging because I won’t like what I find.”

“We have to figure it out. What if it could somehow help explain everything and clear Lucas? You
have heard
that he was arrested, right?”

“Of course.” He stood. “I haven’t played that song for anyone else and I’m not going to.”

She stood, too.

“Most people never know why bad things happen to them.” He folded his arms. “John Norton did it. I’ve moved on.”

She moved on, too, by getting up and leaving. When she was tempted to skip the bottom step out front, she caught herself, grabbed the railing, and took them one at a time.

She tried to hum the song to herself.

It was already gone.

Lucas

The local jail felt like something out of the Old West. Basic slammer. Keys on silver hoops. Lucas would be sent off to a proper prison farther north tomorrow if Ryan couldn’t secure a bail bond—ten percent of the $1 million price tag the judge had put on Lucas, who was only even allowed bail and pretrial release at all because he was under the age of eighteen. Ryan was going through the motions, making calls to their father’s lawyers, but Lucas wasn’t hopeful. Overnight, he’d shared his small cell with a few drunk college students and a lone prostitute who’d grumbled loudly the whole time about entrapment.

An officer came down the hall in the late morning, handcuffs in hand, and told Lucas he had a visitor. That didn’t take long, Ryan running out of options. Since there was no real visiting room, he was escorted to an interview room.

Chambers met him outside the room, unlocked the handcuffs the escorting officer had put on him. “Ten minutes,” Chambers said, and he opened the door. “I’ll be back and we’ll all talk.”

Sashor sat at a metal table.

“What are you doing here?” Lucas stepped into the room.

“I felt bad about our last chat,” Sashor said. “And I wanted to see you before you, well . . .”

Lucas took the chair across from him; it shrieked across the floor when he moved it. “Do you think I did it?”

“No.” Sashor folded his hands on the table in front of him; a thick silver band on his right ring finger. “But what I think really doesn’t matter. Do
you
think you did it?”

“No.” Lucas smiled. “But what I think doesn’t really seem to matter, either. This theory that I killed him and we escaped? It makes no sense. Was his corpse driving that van? Or wait, no, it was his ghost, I bet.”

“I think they’re still working out the details of that theory.” Sashor shrugged. “I get the sense they thought an arrest might shake something loose.”

“A patsy!”

“That’s a word for it,” Sashor said. “But in the meantime, I was talking to Chambers. He told me they analyzed the photos they found—the hot air balloon and carousel and all. And they found
other prints
from those sets, some photos of you all doing those things. Those things
really happened
.”

Lucas had seen some of the pictures; a detective had brought them by the holding cell that morning and Lucas—at that point the only one left in there—had asked for time with them, to study them, to see if they’d help make sense of things in a more satisfying way. But hadn’t been allowed. “I’m not even sure I care.”

“Better to come back with a happy memory than a traumatic one, though.” Sashor released his folded hands in a sudden burst.

“So I rode a carousel by the beach one day. So there are pictures of me riding a bike and holding a soccer ball and blowing out ten candles on a cake. So what?”

“Well, at least now you know it wasn’t
all
bad.”

“These people. Or John Norton, if you believe that theory. He doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.”

Sashor sat back in his chair, then had to swipe his dreads out from behind him. “How are things with you and Scarlett?”

How best to say it?

“I was mostly remembering good things—only feeling good ones; she was remembering bad.”

Sashor smiled. “Sounds like me and most women I’ve dated.”

“When one of your girlfriends did the ‘Thriller’ dance in her underwear,” Lucas said. “Was that good or bad?”

“Ah, you assume it was
her
in the underwear.”

“Now I’m sorry I asked.”

Sashor smiled. “I have some serious moves.”

“I’m sure,” Lucas said. “Apparently Scarlett kissed Adam? Or at least Kristen said she remembered that happening. Under hypnosis.”

“Does Scarlett remember?”

“No,” Lucas said. “Anyway, it’s a relief that we don’t have to try to make something between us work now. It’s like being freed from inheriting a legacy I wasn’t even sure I wanted.”

“Fair enough.” Sashor nodded. “So listen, I came here to tell you what Chambers and I have been doing; and he’ll join us in a minute, like he said. What we’ve done is gone back to find other kids who were at the school shooting, kids who were only four, who were at the open house, to see how many of them remember the shooting.”

Lucas sat up straighter, leaned forward. “And . . . ?”

“And they all remember it. I could only find a sample, but it’s a significant number of kids, significant enough to give me pause.”

“Go on.” Lucas wanted the information to come faster, wished he could speed-read Sashor’s thoughts.

“It’s been bothering me from the beginning, that you could remember certain things from early childhood but not this huge event. And we were thinking, well, maybe you were there but didn’t see anything specifically horrible so it didn’t register. But there are at least a few other kids who can ID some of you from photos we showed them of you when you were young. They say you were there. All of you. They all remember the shooter, the principal, screaming, blood, awful stuff.
You
saw awful stuff.”

Lucas felt a darkening in his mind, spotted the distant glow of an idea.

“And the six of you were
taken from school
,” Sashor said. “Not from a playground. Not from home.”

This time a different kind of
click-hiss
and
snap
, like an image appearing on photo paper in rippling water in the darkroom of his mind. He said, “Erasing the shooting was the whole point to begin with?”

AVERY

School had been a disaster. Matt Rogoff had asked her how her spring break had been and she’d asked him if he ever read the news. Emma had signed Avery up for auditions and then snatched the pen away when Avery went to cross her name out. Sam had said “hey” and acted too-cool-for-school. The halls had been plastered with signs for the junior prom; she’d voted in favor of “A Time to Remember” as the theme months ago and now cringed. Alongside those signs were flyers about the shooting anniversary memorial next week. Worst of all, a note appeared in her locker:
Welcome back, you evil cow
.

She’d had no choice but to duck out before facing the prospect of Mr. Knopf prattling on
en français
for forty-five minutes.

At home, she heard her father; he was in his office with the door open: “Yes, I suppose it’s run its course. So yes, shut it down.”

“What were you talking about?” She popped her head in when he hung up. “Shut what down?”

“The tip line.” He looked at his watch. “Why aren’t you in school?”

“But we haven’t found Max yet.” Avery’s tongue burned.

He rubbed his eyes. “I know you
really
wanted to find him, Ave, but we need to start facing facts.”

“There
are
no facts. Not about Max.” She seriously felt like she could breathe fire.

“I’m sorry, hon. It’s done. They found the person who did it and they didn’t find Max.”

“But Lucas doesn’t even believe it’s the right place. And if the call about John Norton’s body was even legitimate, why not leave a name? They didn’t even claim the reward!”

“Avery, we need to move on.”

“You’ve been saying that for
years
, Dad.” She was shouting now. “Has it worked?”

“Keeping the tip line open isn’t going to change that. They’ve sent me all the recordings. And at this point Chambers says it’s just the same nut-job calling. Cryptic nonsense. I’m not going to pay to staff an answering service indefinitely when Max was probably killed and his body was probably dumped in the Everglades or who even knows where?” He looked at his watch again. “I have to head into the office. I’m sorry. We’ll talk later, okay?”

He left.

Fine.

She’d move on.

She went and got a few large trash bags from the kitchen and grabbed a few empty Amazon boxes from the garage, where the recycling hadn’t been broken down yet and
obviously her flip-flops were never going to arrive
.

She went back upstairs and into Max’s room and put her supplies down. She took a good look around, closed her eyes for a moment, opened them, and picked up a trash bag. She started with Max’s dress er drawers, emptying them of clothes. Tiny shorts and socks. Super hero shirts. She’d put it all in that drop box behind the VFW hall. They’d find new, good homes. They’d be worn by real, live boys.

Next, she set about boxing up toys.

X-Men.

Plastic toy soldiers.

LEGOs.

So. Many. LEGOs.

Transformers.

Plastic dinosaurs.

Pirate this, pirate that.

Matchbox cars.

She filled two boxes without having to pause. But paused at:

Daphne

Velma.

Fred.

Shaggy.

Scooby.

But they had to go.

She turned to face the framed photos on the wall. This time, a smaller box. This time, more care in the packing. This box she’d keep.

Her and Max on that carousel at Disney.

Max at his first soccer game.

Max as a baby, leaning on a big blue rubber ball at some indoor play space.

Christmas. Santa’s lap. Her on one side, him on the other.

He was dead.

Her parents were going to have to accept it.

She’d have to accept it.

The world would always see her as an only child, but she’d always know better.

Down the hall in her room, she hid the box where no one would ever find it but her.

Back in Max’s room, she stripped the bed, folded everything neatly before putting it all in another bag, another one for the donation dump.

She made four trips down to the garage. Hiding the stuff in a corner. She’d have to get rid of it fast, or else her mother would find it, say it was too soon, put it all back, make a scene.

There was no point in telling anyone about the newest note. The writing was different, anyway.

And maybe she
was
an evil cow.

Maybe she deserved the hate being sent her way.

S
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