EVERYTHING ABOUT JUSTIN BEING HOME SURPRISED GRIFF. Their mother had stopped going to work and to Marine Lab, but started cleaning the house and cooking meals again. Gone were the days when they’d heat up canned ravioli for supper, or when she’d wear the same T-shirt she’d slept in to her job at the dry cleaner’s. Likewise the days when she had more hair on her calves than Griff did. (He realized—remembered—that his mother had been pretty, and he saw that she would be again; her eyes caught light in such a way that she looked young, mischievous.) Vacuum cleaner tracks in the carpet. Bathroom faucets gleaming so brightly he could see his reflection. His family started venturing into the backyard again, and there was a feeling of shared enterprise as they prepped for the barbecue. They spent evenings pulling weeds, cutting dead limbs from the trees, replacing split boards in the fence. While the workers laid the new sod, his father planted the small palm tree the governor had sent. Within hours, walking into the backyard felt like walking into a different life. Whether the life was new or old, Griff couldn’t tell. He only knew the one they’d been slogging through was gone.
Justin looked almost exactly how Griff had expected. In the four years he’d been gone, the police had generated age-progressed photographs, but the images always looked warped and bulbous. It wasn’t until Justin had stepped out of their father’s truck that first night that Griff realized he too had been picturing how his brother would age. Justin was taller and his hair had grown out; he’d put on enough weight to dull his features, which made Griff feel as if he were constantly seeing him from far away. He asked for second helpings at almost every meal. He could beat elaborate videogames in two hours, usually without sacrificing any of his extra lives. (“Most kidnap victims are videogame wizards,” he’d joked. “We’re also really good at channel surfing and eating ramen.”) His sleeping pattern was completely reversed. He limped a little sometimes, though no one seemed to comment on it, so Griff thought he might be imagining it. He’d developed a habit of cracking his neck and reading the newspaper. There was a capaciousness in him, an alluring air of knowingness, like a new student who’d transferred to Southport from a school in a bigger city. A glow, Griff thought. Justin was infinitely watchable; he sometimes seemed to glimmer, or the air around him rippled, the way it did over baking asphalt. Griff had long felt a secret significance as Justin’s brother and now, with him home, the feeling was evolving, deepening. He often caught himself wanting to hug Justin, but not knowing if he should, and he’d again endure the awkward sensation of having a crush on him.
“Do I look that different?” Justin asked one afternoon. He was eating cereal from the box, watching ESPN.
“What?”
“You’re staring again. Like you don’t recognize me.”
“Oh,” Griff said. “Sorry.”
“So do I?”
“No. I recognize you.”
“Liar,” Justin said.
ON THE EVENING AFTER THE NEW SOD HAD BEEN LAID, GRIFF suggested they go skate at the Teepee, but Justin wanted to practice before seeing anyone. They took their boards onto the back patio. Their parents were in the kitchen, cleaning up after supper. At first, Justin rode his old board. It had been under his bed for three years, his name graffitied onto the grip tape with paint pen—that had been the trend before he went missing. “This brings some things back,” Justin said, and Griff wondered if his parents could hear. But the board’s shape was cumbersome compared to newer models, and with all of the time passed, the deck had gone soft and lost its pop, so they took turns on Griff’s. The yard smelled ripe in the humidity. Damp, turned earth. Griff had been looking forward to skating with his brother since he’d been found, though he realized it only now. He understood that every trick he’d learned had been to impress Justin.
And he’d learned a lot of tricks. Before, Justin seemed to ride away from a new trick every day. When Griff was just learning to ollie, Justin was clearing the six stairs behind the junior high’s gymnasium; he’d even done boardslides down the handrail at the marina. Before Griff had become the Little Brother of the Kid Who’d Been Kidnapped, he’d been the Little Brother of the Kid Who’d Done the Marina Rail. Now Justin was awkward on the board. His weight was off, his timing delayed. Griff had been expecting Justin to dazzle him with new tricks, an expectation that embarrassed him as he watched Justin grow frustrated. It was disappointing, and being disappointed felt cruel. When Griff’s turns came, he intentionally botched his tricks.
Justin was stuck trying kickflips, a basic trick where the board spirals once under your feet. He used to goof around with them, do them with his eyes closed or while taking a swig of Coke. Now he struggled. After a while, he landed one, but he was leaning too far back and the board shot out from under him and he fell backward, hitting the patio hard.
“This fucking sucks,” Justin said.
“You’re just rusty,” Griff said. He couldn’t remember having ever used that expression before. “And you need a new board. We can get Mom and Dad to buy you one.”
Justin twisted to look at his elbow; blood was pilling from where he’d hit the concrete. He said, “Maybe.”
Griff retrieved his board and spun the wheels, pretending to test the bearings. They sounded like rain. Again he wondered if his parents were listening. If not, he wondered if what Justin was saying was something he should relay to them later. When they had come home that first night, his father took Griff aside and made him promise not to ask Justin about what had happened when he was gone, but he’d also told him to listen for anything his brother offered. “Be a detective,” his father had said, not sounding like himself. “You’re on the case.”
Justin took the board and tried another kickflip. He flicked his front foot too hard, so the board wobbled across the patio like a poorly kicked football. He said, “Can you do tre flips?”
“Only sometimes,” Griff lied. A tre flip was a trick where the board simultaneously spun vertical and horizontal rotations under your feet. When Justin went missing, a tre flip was a new top-shelf trick, something only pros were doing; now it was commonplace. Griff had them dialed. One night last year he’d told himself that if he landed twenty in a row Justin would come home safe and soon; he did twenty-three before missing one. He said, “I can do them once in a blue moon.”
Rusty. Once in a blue moon. Where were these words coming from?
“Why do Mom and Dad call you Lobster?”
“I broke my wrists a while back, trying the marina rail. My casts looked like lobster claws.”
“That sucks,” Justin said.
“Eating really sucked. You can’t hold silverware with your thumbs in plaster,” he said.
“I’d like to be able to slide that rail again.”
“You will.”
Justin stood at the edge of the patio, staring at the yard. He said, “You’ve gotten really good.”
“I just skated a lot after you were gone,” Griff said. “Like, a lot. It’s kind of all I did.”
“You should enter those contests they have in Corpus on the T-Head. You’d probably get top five.”
His heart trembled, and he endured the same free-fall feeling he had when Fiona breathed into his ear. He had entered the Corpus contests. His parents had passed out Justin’s flyers to everyone in the crowd, and they’d worn shirts with his picture on them. He’d tried to act like he wasn’t with them, which had disgusted him. It did still.
“Did you ever go to those?” Griff asked. He tried to sound uninvested.
Justin took the skateboard again, tried another kickflip. “I wasn’t allowed,” he said. “But I had friends who went.”
“You had friends?”
His brother laughed, an exciting sound Griff was still getting used to. Justin said, “Of course I had friends.”
“I guess I never thought about it.”
“My life could be pretty normal. Basic cable, fishing, midnight bingo. I was bored a lot.”
A long wind blew. Justin was setting up to try another kickflip, but his wheel hit a pebble and he had to step off the board.
“Did you ever win?”
“Win?” Justin said.
“At bingo.”
“Not even once, but we still went all the time. Sometimes I’d play three cards.”
“Were your friends skaters?”
“No, they just went to check out girls. I was the only one with a girlfriend.”
“You’re like a half-deaf parrot,” Justin said. He tried another kickflip, the board spinning more evenly but still shooting too far ahead of him. He said, “Yes, I had a girlfriend. She lived in our apartment complex. She’s the one who named Sasha.”
He had friends, Griff would tell his parents. And a girlfriend. He lost at bingo.
Justin came close to a kickflip. He said, “Why can’t I just land one?”
“Did you tell your friends?” Griff asked. “Did they, you know, know?”
“I’m sure they do now.”
The light was still on in the kitchen, but Griff couldn’t see his parents. He hoped they’d gone into another room, out of earshot.
“Do you miss your girlfriend? The one who named Sasha.”
“Would you miss Fiona if you were banned from contacting her?”
“That’s how I felt with you,” Griff said. “But worse, way worse.”
Justin raked his fingers through his sweaty hair. He cracked his neck again. After a moment, he started carving around the patio on Griff’s board. He said, “Y’all seem pretty tight, you and Fiona.”
“I don’t really understand what we are.”
“Welcome to the wonderful world of women, little brother. Have you felt her tits yet?”
“I don’t know,” Griff said. His ears turned red, he could feel it. He raised his eyes to the kitchen window again.
“I think you’d remember. She has great tits.”
“Thanks.”
Justin tried another kickflip, but the board didn’t spin.
“We went to a couple of those Corpus contests,” Griff said. “Mom and Dad wore shirts with your picture. They passed out flyers.”
“I used to see those things everywhere, the flyers,” he said. “I hated the picture. My hair was all jacked-up.”
“Dad cut it in the garage. He cut mine, too. And his.”
“Everyone at school made fun of me—that’s what I remember,” he said. He was carving around the patio again. “How’d you do in those contests?”
Griff was looking into the new yard. He wondered what Justin remembered and what had already been supplanted by the changes. Did he recall the time he’d grabbed an asp on a tallow limb and Papaw pressed chewing tobacco to the sting? The night when Rainbow ate all of the Easter eggs their parents had hidden? Everything seemed so long ago to Griff. Probably there were countless changes that he couldn’t see but were as obvious as Justin’s old skateboard. He tried to picture four years’ worth of boards lined up side by side, where the metamorphosis of shapes would appear gradual and inevitable. He tried to track the changes with the decks he’d ridden, but just then he couldn’t remember how many he’d gone through while Justin was away.
“Hello?” Justin said.
“Sorry,” Griff said, his voice loud in case his parents were listening.
“I asked how you did in the T-Head contests.”
“Contests suck. The judges never know what they’re doing,” Griff said. He didn’t want Justin to know that he’d won both contests, that no one else had stood a chance.
GRIFF HAD FELT FIONA’S TITS. SINCE JUSTIN HAD BEEN BACK, she’d hardly been able to keep her hands off him. When Griff walked her home in the evenings, they left early to make out on the dark playground behind the elementary school. He felt guilty leaving his brother at home, but not guilty enough to let Fiona leave alone. One night, on the merry-go-round, she pulled her shirt over her head and unclasped her bra. Griff was so worried someone would see them he felt nauseated. When he admitted his fear, Fiona said, “That wouldn’t be so bad. Someone watching.” Another night, when his whole family was crowded around the kitchen table playing Trivial Pursuit, she slid her hand between his legs and massaged his thigh.
He loved her aggressiveness, loved the distance he could feel spreading between this new phase of their relationship and what it had been before. There was a new breadth to his life, as if he’d discovered a door in his house that opened into a wing of rooms he’d never known existed. Although he knew he shouldn’t tell anyone about what they did on the playground or under the table, he couldn’t stop himself from imagining how he’d describe the events to Justin. Her skin is like soft amber. Her hair smells cool and sugary. Fiona had said she liked seeing the veins in his forearms, so before walking her home, he’d always slip into the bathroom to sneak twenty push-ups. He floated through his days as distracted by thoughts of Fiona as by those of his brother. They seemed the only two things that had happened in his life: Fiona sliding her long body against his, and Justin coming home. Moments came when doubt would rise in his throat, a confounding fear that Fiona’s passion had more to do with Justin than with him, but he found ways to bury his doubts. He thought of the swell of her chest, how loud her breath could be in his ear, as if he were listening to the ocean in a shell. He imagined marrying her, imagined her name changing again. He whispered it to himself. Fiona Campbell. Mrs. Fiona Campbell.
The night before the barbecue, they fooled around at the Teepee. Griff hadn’t been able to check on the coping since the night the woman at Whataburger asked for Justin’s autograph, so he was relieved to find it intact. And he liked being near the empty pool again, the smell of plaster dust mixing with the sea breeze. He wished he’d thought to bring his board. There would have been time to sneak a few runs in the pool before his parents got worried. After skating with Justin on the patio, he didn’t know when his brother would feel ready to try the Teepee, and Griff worried that if he went skating without him, Justin would feel slighted. As Fiona pinned him against one of the teepees and licked his neck, Griff thought of how off-balance Justin had been, getting so frustrated with not landing kickflips that he’d hurled Griff’s board into the backyard and stormed into the house. When Griff came in, his parents were dousing Justin’s scraped elbow with peroxide over the bathroom sink. They seemed thrilled by the scrape, by the blood as bright as finger paint, almost as if they’d been hoping he’d get hurt so they could bandage his wound. Justin found Griff in the mirror and rolled his eyes.
Fiona kissed him—hard and deep. She braided her leg with his, hooked her arms behind his back and pulled his hair. He tasted sweet tea on her tongue and smelled her perfume, a scent that recalled the socks he’d hidden under his mattress. He hadn’t smelled the socks since Justin’s return, and now he wanted to move them before he forgot where they were, before his mother found them. Fiona moaned. She bit his lip hard, a pinch of pain behind his knees.
“Where are you?” Fiona said.
“Between you and a teepee.”
She was staring into his eyes, squinting, as if to gauge whether he was lying. She leaned in to kiss him again, but then paused and pulled back. Her face scrunched up. She said, “I’m not used to saying this, but am I moving too fast for you?”
“Justin had a girlfriend.”
“So do you, and she’d like to get to second base before walking home.”
“It seems weird to me. I never imagined him having a girlfriend.”
Fiona pushed herself off him, smoothed her black shirt. In the distance, small fireworks crackled. Tomorrow was the Fourth.
“I mean, I want him to have been happy, but I guess I also want him to be happier now.”
“Maybe he’s lying, trying to impress you.”
Griff shrugged. Earlier that night, they’d watched a movie Papaw had brought over from the pawnshop. They’d eaten popcorn. Sasha had been coiled in Justin’s lap like a small plate. As Griff and Fiona were leaving, Justin was reading the newspaper. He had it in front of his face and, without lowering it, said, “You kids be careful.”
Another small burst of fireworks. They sounded like paper being ripped from a spiral notebook. Fiona said, “Louise and George know his parents a little bit. Dwight Buford’s. I guess I’ve met them, too, but I don’t remember. George thinks someone is going to torch the Bufords’ boat in the marina. It’s called Oil-n-Water.”
“They’ll probably move,” Griff said, repeating what he’d overheard his grandfather saying a few nights before. “They’ll probably sell the house after the trial and head to Florida.”
“His mother’s on oxygen. Lung cancer, I think.”
“Did I tell you people ask Justin to sign autographs?”
“Only about fifty times,” she said, smiling. Then after a moment she said, “Y’all took the postcard down from the fridge.”
“One of my parents did,” he said. “They don’t want things around that draw attention to what happened.”
“So you don’t think they’ll ask him about it?”
“Now that he’s home I don’t think the postcard matters anymore.”
Fiona extended her leg and drew shapes on the ground with her toe.
“I went through nineteen different skateboards while he was gone. We were skating the other night and I saw how old his deck was. I didn’t realize how much the shapes had changed, and so I’ve been trying to figure out how many boards I’ve gone through. It was nineteen.”
“He was gone a long time,” she said, her voice sounding frayed, as if he were hearing her from far away.
“Did you mean what you said?” Griff asked.
“Tell me what I said, doll.”
“That I have a girlfriend.”
“You’re too good,” she said. She bit his earlobe, ran her fingers through his hair. “You’re just too, too good.”
GRIFF SPENT THE AFTERNOON OF THE FOURTH HELPING HIS PARENTS ready the backyard, hanging crepe paper streamers and carrying meat from the kitchen to his father at the grill and then back inside to his mother once it was cooked. He made sure the digital camera was charged and the Handycam’s discs were formatted, and he sliced boiled eggs for the mustard potato salad his mother was making. He answered the door when Ronnie Dawes and his mother brought over a plate of cupcakes; he told Ronnie that Justin was sleeping, but that he’d tell him they’d come over to say hello. Ronnie threw his head back and clapped, reminding Griff of a seal. When Papaw arrived with a cedar picnic table in the bed of his truck, Griff helped carry it into the backyard. “Smells mighty fine back here,” Papaw said to Griff’s father at the grill. Smoldering mesquite and peppercorn-rubbed beef. An offshore breeze was blowing, pulling the smoke from the pit across the backyard like a ribbon.
His father had on a Stars and Stripes apron and whistled a tuneless tune at the grill. His mother brought out paper plates and napkins, weighted them down with bottles of ketchup and mustard. She also placed two of the vases of flowers on the picnic table, and Griff saw she was wearing the dolphin pendant he and his father had given her. Her hair was out of its ponytail, brushed and shining. Papaw tossed a ball for Rainbow to chase. After two throws, she took the ball under the house, and he said, “I guess that’s the end of that.” Then he went to water the new palm tree. Everyone was waiting on Justin, but the waiting lacked pressure. They would eat whenever he climbed out of bed, and until then, they’d munch on chips and deviled eggs. Today, the worst of their troubles would be keeping the flies away from the food.
Griff sat at the picnic table with his mother and grandfather. They drank sweet tea. Their red plastic cups left rings of water on the cedar. Griff’s mother sprinkled some salt on a piece of celery, then took a loud bite and looked around the yard as she chewed.
“I’m always hungry now,” she said. “I can hardly remember eating for the last four years. I remember going to restaurants, but I don’t remember taking a single bite. I can’t recall the taste of anything.”
“There’s never anything wrong with getting your appetite back,” Papaw said.
A breeze came along, lifting the edges of napkins. The smell of charcoal smoke and pork ribs, of new grass and layered heat.
“We should buy Justin a new skateboard when we go to Corpus,” Griff said. “His old one is lame.”
“The one with his name on it?” Papaw said. “The one that came through the pawnshop?”
“Of course we’ll get him a new one,” his mother said. “Whatever he wants.”
Papaw had started folding a napkin into triangles, concentrating on getting the edges straight and the corners tight. Once he finished, he said, “Is he all set to meet with the brass in city hall? Not too nervous?”
“Justin’s fine,” his mother said. “Eric and I can’t see straight, but Justin’s cool as a cucumber.”
Papaw said, “He’s due a long run of good luck.”
“He had a girlfriend,” Griff said.
Everyone looked at him, even his father at the grill. The world seemed to lean in around him.
“He told you that?” his mother said.
“His life could be pretty normal. He played bingo and went fishing. And he had a girlfriend. He hated the picture on the flyers.”
“A lot of bingo parlors will have cameras installed. Might be something to have one of Garcia’s boys look into,” Papaw said.
“A girlfriend? In Corpus?” his mother said. She didn’t sound pleased or displeased, but dazed.
Griff couldn’t tell if he’d been right to share the information, couldn’t tell if he’d said too much or too little. The day seemed fractured now, as if everyone was drifting away from each other in different directions. He wanted to say something that would pull them back, tether them together, but he couldn’t think of what.
And then Justin was stepping out of the kitchen, and everyone turned toward him. No one spoke. They were trying to reconcile what they’d just heard with the boy standing before them. Griff wanted to apologize to Justin, to all of them, but he stayed quiet. Justin rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes, then cracked his neck. He surveyed the yard and his stunned family.
After a moment, he said, “God bless America.”
THEY ATE AS THE SUN DROPPED BEHIND THE FENCE, AND A heathered dusk fell over everything. Papaw went around the backyard, lighting the tiki torches, and soon the whistling and popping of small firecrackers started up. To Griff, the noises sounded like an expanding conversation, a complicated and widespread call and response that was happening all around them. His mother kissed the top of his head. Papaw squeezed his shoulder, and his father whispered, “Nice work, detective.” The celebration regained the momentum it had previously lost, and Griff allowed himself to believe he’d been right to share what he knew. Rainbow lay under the picnic table for a while, but when the real fireworks began, she crept under the house. The pink starbursts and hot blue pinwheels, booming and crackling and hissing, left brief imprints of themselves on the sky, like the outlines of leaves on wet cement. Griff’s father made a toast to independence. His mother took pictures: Griff waving a sparkler. Justin hiding his face with his hamburger. Then Griff set up the timer on the camera and they stood by the fence for a family portrait. Right before the flash went off, they all said, “Chickenshit.” It was something they’d done for every family photo before Justin disappeared, but Griff was surprised when he heard their voices. Maybe they were all surprised, shocked by the muscle memory of love. In the picture, everyone was laughing and above their heads, the sky was ablaze with streaks of sharp, colored light.