Chapter Twenty-nine

Jane clicked off the phone, feeling the tension of the conversation in her shoulders. She and Jonathan had been estranged for more than a decade. The breach had come at his insistence. “Mother,” he had said in their final conversation, “I need to take time off.”

“From what?” Jane had been genuinely puzzled. Since Jonathan had graduated from Harvard, the school where he was a legacy and where his father still taught, he’d been indifferently and sporadically employed in a number of technology ventures, not one of which did anything Jane could understand. Or at least she hadn’t been able to understand how any of them would result in a profit.

“From you,” Jonathan had answered brutally and, as it turned out, finally. He had packed his books and clothes into a giant duffle bag and left the house.

Jane hadn’t been too concerned. She’d assumed he’d gone to his father’s house, which was less than a mile away, a frequent pattern during his stormy teenage years. Goodness knew he didn’t have the funds to go anywhere else. Francis’s second wife, his former department secretary, was at best an indifferent stepmother and occasionally a hostile one. Jane thought Jonathan would soon be back in his boyhood bedroom.

But when, after three days of silence, she’d checked with Francis, he told her he’d given Jonathan a thousand dollars and a car he’d been about to trade in to “see some of the country.” Receiving this news, Jane had taken several deep breaths to calm herself. Jonathan was of age—more than—and there was no longer a custody agreement to govern what she and Francis were obligated to communicate to each other. Still, it would have been nice . . .

A little travel might be good for Jonathan. He hadn’t been making much progress staying at home.

Jane left a cell phone message. Jonathan was still on her calling plan. Over the ensuing weeks and months, she left several more. Some of them teary and pleading, others angry and curt.

Jonathan was in touch with Francis, who assured her their son was fine, traveling westward, having the kinds of adventures people should have when they were young.

“Even though he lived in a dorm, remember he went to college less than a mile from his mommy,” Francis said, using words chosen to prick her. Jonathan had never called her Mommy. “Let him sow his wild oats.”

So Jane had backed off, stepping down the number of calls, the “I just want to know you’re okay” texts and e-mails. And that had been the end. Two years later, she was notified that Jonathan had given up his cell phone number and plan.

That same day, Jonathan had deleted his Facebook. Jane missed it terribly. He hadn’t posted anything since he’d left home, but in the sleepless, early morning hours Jane had often studied it, taking comfort in the photos from his high school prom and camping trips, even the drunken college parties. Since then, Jane had searched every social media site she could think of under every variation of Jonathan’s name she could think of but had found nothing.

She turned to her photo albums and stared at images of the times they had spent together, the vacations in Maine, apple-picking in the fall, and New Year’s Eves with the bridge club kids playing games. The photos of happy times together became fewer and further between in his teenage years, but that was normal, wasn’t it?

Francis refused to pass messages or disclose anything he might know about Jonathan’s life, wherever he was. “This is between the two of you.” Jane suspected he didn’t know much. Francis’s main preoccupation was himself, which had always been an issue with his parenting. Knowing more than Jane did about Jonathan made Francis feel superior. Knowing what Jonathan was actually up to was probably a great deal less satisfying.

Finally, Francis had passed on the information that Jonathan had settled in San Francisco and had a good job in tech. The summer before this one, Jane and Harry had traveled to San Francisco so Harry could teach a class at a conference there. Harry used his connections to turn up a physical address for Jonathan. Jane had gone by Jonathan’s house on a Saturday and had rung the bell. No answer. She had left a note saying she would be in the coffee shop on the corner and had waited for six hours, and returned, and left another note the next day and sat in the café again—except when she was so anxious she needed to move. She passed in front of Jonathan’s house so often, she was worried a neighbor would call the cops. In the café, she studied the face of every appropriately aged male. Did Jonathan lurk under one of those full beards? But all the men were all too tall or short, broad-shouldered or fine-boned, different coloring, different ethnicity. None of them were Jonathan. She would know her own child.

Jonathan’s house in a fully gentrified neighborhood offered no clues. It was painted wood, three stories, the front door up a steep set of steps like all the others in its row. But inside, was it one house—a place for a family? Or was it three lovely floor-though apartments lived in by single adults or couples? Or was it a bunch of single rooms, a remnant of the old, ungentrified neighborhood, lived in by young people who hadn’t yet gotten a toehold in this expensive city? A decade was a long time, especially for the young. There was no telling what Jonathan’s life was like.

Thinking about her son focused Jane on Megan’s absent mother. Though Jane hadn’t seen or heard from her son in over ten years, he lived on in her imagination. He got up every morning and went to a job he loved. She pictured a shadowy presence by his side who might be a wife or a girlfriend. It frustrated Jane that she couldn’t get a look at her even in her mind’s eye. And sometimes the indistinct person carried something that might be a child. The point was, somewhere, Jonathan was alive and functioning in the world. Maybe he was even happy. It was Jane’s most fervent hope.

If he had been missing, Jane would have wanted to know. If he had been in grave danger, she would have wanted to know. If he were . . . She stopped thinking about it abruptly. Somewhere, Megan’s mother was living that nightmare and didn’t even know it.