Thirty-nine.
“And then you broke up?” Milo licked his ice cream and looked at Richard with sympathetic eyes.
Richard nodded. He wasn’t sure why he was confiding in this child, but there was something kind in his face that said it was OK. “We shouldn’t really have been together in the first place. It was for the best.”
“But it’s still sad.”
Richard nodded. “It will get better.” He’d elected to go for a milkshake, and took a thoughtful swallow.
Milo said confidently, “My mom says everything gets better eventually, but that sometimes it takes a long time, and you shouldn’t rush it.” Of course, she had been talking about a twisted ankle, but he expected the concept was the same. He suddenly missed his mom, and wished he was home. She always smelled of cookies, she was always soft and warm, she was always there.
Theo was finishing his ice cream, but he chimed in. “My mom and dad just broke up. That’s why I’m here.”
“Oh yeah?” Richard frowned at him. “I’m sorry to hear that. My parents broke up, too, when I was your age. It’s really hard.”
Theo nodded. “I want to come and live with my mom.” He looked at Richard. “Did you live with your mom?”
Richard nodded, thinking back to how tired his mom had always been. He’d never before considered how hard it must have been for her, and was suddenly ashamed of himself. He looked at these children, dealing with the same shit he had dealt with, feeling the same ache and not understanding how they could fix it. He realized losing Anne hurt so much because it was a fresh cut on a very old scar.
“Do your parents know where you are?” he asked them.
Theo looked at Milo, who licked his cone for a moment while he thought. Eventually he shook his head. “No,” he said. “Theo ran away, and I wanted to make sure he didn’t get lost, so I came, too.”
Richard pulled out his phone. “Well then, you should probably call them.”
It was Michael who answered his phone, and Michael who went to get the boys. Frances and Ava sat on the sofa, side by side, watching the play of police car lights and reporters’ cameras on the inside of the curtains. Eventually Ava cleared her throat.
“Well, it was an effective image, even if it wasn’t very pretty.”
Frances sighed. “You don’t think ‘gaping neck wound’ was maybe a little harsh?”
“Not at all.”
“OK. That makes me feel better.”
“Good.” They lapsed into silence again.
“Are you going to ground Milo for, like, a year?”
Frances shrugged. “Maybe. Right now I’m just so overwhelmingly relieved he’s in one piece and found that I’m ready to throw him a parade. Not a great parenting choice, but whatever.”
Ava shifted a little on the sofa, inching closer to her mom. “You always make us feel like you’d be ready to throw us a parade at a moment’s notice.”
“I do?”
Ava nodded. “Yeah. You’re very . . . supportive.”
“How annoying.”
“It is.”
“Maybe if I were a little firmer with you guys Milo wouldn’t have run away and you wouldn’t be so angry with me all the time.”
Ava looked surprised. “I’m not angry with you all the time.”
“Yes, you are. Or you seem to be, anyway.” Frances put her arm around Ava’s shoulder, and tugged her closer. “I don’t mean to be so annoying. I just never had a teenager before and I’m scrambling to keep up.”
“That’s OK. I’ve never been a teenager before, so we’re in the same boat.”
Frances took a chance. “Who is Piper? Is she the one who’s making you unhappy?”
Ava was silent for a moment, then sighed and answered. “No, she’s really just a girl at school. I thought we were friends, but then suddenly there was all this drama and now we’re not friends.” She closed her eyes, unseen by her mother, who nonetheless squeezed her. “It’s very hard to know what’s going on, you know? No one is what you think they are.” She sighed once more. “Not even me. I don’t know who I am anymore, and when I think I know I change again. It’s very confusing. You and dad are the only ones who stay the same.”
They sat there some more, saying nothing in a companionable way. These quiet moments are the mortar that holds families together, yet they often pass unnoticed. Frances reveled in them; it was her superpower.
“Do you ever feel like running away?” Ava asked her.
Frances shook her head. “Where would I go? Everything I love is here.” She rested her cheek against Ava’s hair, smelling—yet again—her shampoo on someone else’s head. “Do you?”
“Yes and no. Yes, because I’d like to be somewhere else or someone else or sometime else. But no, because you’d just come after me.” She looked at her lap, to hide the happiness she felt at that fact.
“I’m afraid so.”
Ava straightened up and looked at Frances. “You know, I was worried about Theo until I knew he was with Milo. That meant they’d gone under their own steam, rather than being snatched by some asshole, right?”
“Sure. At least, more likely that.”
“And Milo knows what I know, which is that you would never stop looking for him. You told us that all the time when we were little.”
“I did?” Frances pulled a cushion over and hugged it, still a little freaked out by this day, despite her apparent calm. Luckily, Ava seemed sanguine, so that made one of them.
“Yeah. You said it over and over: If you get lost, stay where you are and wait. Daddy and I will be looking for you and we will never stop. If someone takes you, keep fighting, keep making noise and kicking them in the nuts, because we will be hunting for as long as it takes, and we will never stop.” Ava smiled to herself. “I’ve never been scared of being alone, which I guess is a good thing because the chance of anyone wanting to date me with these eyebrows is remote.”
Frances ignored the eyebrow comment. “Did I literally say nuts?”
Ava shrugged. “You may have. You must have told us five hundred times. Ask Milo. You also went on and on and on about paying attention in parking lots, do you remember that?”
Frances ran her hand through her hair, which made it stand up like a radio antenna, unbeknownst to her. “I sound very boring. What did I say about parking lots?”
“You said,” Ava mimicked her mother’s voice, which was apparently like Daisy Duck’s, “they’re looking for spaces, not children, so be careful.”
“Did I sound like I was on helium?”
“No, only in my head.”
“OK.” Frances had a headache. She couldn’t believe she’d been so rude to Anne. Suddenly, though, she started laughing.
Ava looked at her. “Are you hysterical? Do I need to slap you?”
Frances laughed and shook her head. “No, I’m just laughing at the memory of your father’s face.”
“When you yelled at Anne?”
“No, just in general.” She giggled. “His face makes me laugh. That’s why I love it.”
Ava raised her eyebrows, but her mom was still laughing, so she let it go.
Richard happened to be looking at the boys when the car pulled up in front of them, and when he saw the relief in their shoulders he suddenly got a memory of seeing his mother approaching the school gate at the end of the day: I’m not forgotten. It’s OK now. A tall man got out of the car and came over to him, holding out his hand. Richard, still feeling about eight years old and strangely close to tears, managed to smile at him.
“I will never be able to thank you enough,” Michael said. “I am so grateful.”
Richard shrugged. “It takes a village, right?” He watched the man bend to hug his son, and then pull the other boy into an embrace, too. “Besides, it’s nice to do something helpful for a change.”
The man stood up and smiled at him as he shepherded the boys into the car. “My name’s Michael Bloom,” he said. “If you ever need anything . . .” He handed Richard his card.
Richard grinned at him. “Thanks,” he said. “Glad I could help.”
The car pulled away, and Richard watched it go. Then he turned and walked away himself, tucking Michael’s card in his pocket, where it would be forgotten and washed away into fluff.
The smell of his mother’s perfume always made Theo feel small. Throughout his life elements of it would drift across his path and take him right back to this moment and others like it, when the soft skin of Anne’s neck felt more like home than anything ever would again.
He’d been worried his parents would be furious with him, but they seemed just very glad to see him, and even Kate had cried and held on to him as they sat together on the sofa. After a while his father pulled out of the snuggle and looked at him.
“Why did you run away, Theo? Will you talk about it?”
Theo nodded. A policeman had talked to him briefly, outside, after he and Milo had returned. He could tell the man was annoyed with Milo’s dad for going to fetch them without telling the cops, but Michael had just shrugged and said he’d had no other thought but to get to them as quickly as possible. The man had looked at him thoughtfully and for a moment Theo had felt uncertain, but then the cop’s face had cleared and he’d just led the two boys a little way away and squatted down.
“Is everything OK?” he’d asked. “Are you scared at home?” They’d both shaken their heads. “Why did you run away?”
“I wanted to talk to my mom,” Theo had said.
“I didn’t want him to get lost,” Milo had said. “I’m a Scout, it’s my job to help.”
The cop had smiled a little bit at Milo, then looked at Theo. “Tell your mom and dad everything. Tell them what you want, tell them what you feel. They love you very much and they deserve the truth, alright?”
The two boys had nodded, and then the detective had stood up, ruffled Milo’s hair, and walked off. Now Theo remembered his advice.
“I wanted to be with Mom. I love you, Dad, but I want you to be together again, I want it to be like it was before, even if she did something bad. I want you to accept her apology and let her come home so we can all be together.” He looked at his family. “We are supposed to all be together, whatever happens.”
“She can sleep in my room, if you don’t want to share,” added Kate. “It’s fine. I can move my Beanie Babies.” She looked serious. “I have too many anyway.” Then she shook her head. “No, that’s not true, but I can move them.”
Charlie looked at Anne’s face, the near-miss of the day washing away everything that had come before. They’d held hands and burned with fear, and the annealing had broken open a crack of possibility.
He smiled at her as if they’d never met, and she started to cry.