Nurses’ voices filtered through the closed door, and their shoes squeaked on the tile floor as they went about their rounds. PA announcements too muffled to understand sounded more like squawks than words. A raven flapped past outside, the noise of its wings audible through the window. Somewhere in the distance, a horn honked, and an engine revved.
The sounds indicated a world continuing to revolve outside the room, but inside their warm cocoon, the Lathan family rested in the quiet comfort of reunion. Jaxon lay back on the pillows of the inclined bed, slowly inhaling and exhaling in a restless sleep. His fingers twitched with his dreams as his hand rested on Connor’s arm. The older boy sprawled in a chair, his head tilted back at an awkward angle, allowing soft snores to emerge from his open mouth. The equipment surrounding the bed hummed and beeped, a soft mechanical background rhythm behind the boys’ breathing.
Heather stood at the head of the bed and admired her boys. Her fingers ran through the thick mat of hair on Jaxon’s head while her mind imagined stroking the soft, silky mane of a little boy years ago, sitting in her lap as he sounded out words from a picture book. She wanted to step out in the hallway and call Donna to come work on his hair, but she didn’t want to risk waking them.
The hair stylist would do wonders for the boy, not just make him look better. She had a knack for listening and making someone feel like she had all of the time in the world for them. Heather had shared her dwindling hopes for finding the boy while settled in Donna’s chair as scissors snipped. They’d compared notes between Connor’s mischief and Donna’s three children’s antics. After each layoff at a town factory, when more jobs went overseas, they mapped out plans to revive Millerton and, more immediately, ways to help those suddenly without jobs. They planned fundraisers and covered-dish suppers.
A simple call to Donna, and she would come scrambling. Heather smiled to herself, recognizing that Donna would show up if for no other reason than to be the first outside the family to witness the return of the missing boy. Demand for appointments in her chair would increase as she passed on what she had seen and heard. And she would plan how to help. Heather wouldn’t be able to pay for anything in town for weeks as the town rallied around her. It’s what Millerton did.
She tucked Jaxon’s hair behind his ear with a gentle swoop of her finger and then slid her light touch across his forehead. She traced the bridge of his nose, relearning the shape of his face. The boy’s eyes shot open with a start, and he jumped, but a smile spread across his face as recognition grew in his eyes. They stared at each other as she let the tips of her fingers bounce over his chapped lip and along the peach fuzz on his chin. Her caress traveled up the side of his face before tracing the scar along the side of his face. “Will you tell me how this happened?” she asked.
He turned his head away, and the smile faded. “You don’t want to know.”
“I know all of Connor’s scars. And I want to know the stories behind yours. That’s what families do—share scars.”
Awakened by the soft conversation, Connor leaned forward over the bed and pointed at a small scar on his lower right arm. “Skateboard into the side of a parked car down at the Dollar General. An old white Cadillac. I bled all over the hood. Old Man Tompkins was so pissed about that.”
Heather shook her head at the profanity, but Connor continued in his carefree way. With a giant grin across his face, the boy’s finger traced a faded inch-long pink line peeking above his eyebrow. “Wiped out my bike into a fence post trying to impress Cecilia Wyatt with my mad skills. She laughed her ass off, but she also said ‘yes’ when I asked her to go to a movie as blood dripped down my face.”
Connor stood tall and lifted his shirt to his shoulders, exposing a toned abdomen. He pointed at the center of his chest. “This scar is where she broke my heart when she dumped me and started dating Carlos Estrella. Guess she liked baseball stars better than BMXers.”
Jaxon sat up and squinted as he studied his brother’s hairless chest. “I don’t see a scar.”
Connor slowly lowered his shirt. “It’s a joke, Jax.”
Jaxon flopped his head on the pillow and stared at the ceiling. “Oh.”
Heather smiled at the disappointed look on her eldest son’s face. He had slipped naturally back into the role of big brother, trying to get the younger boy to laugh at his silly jokes. She hoped time would allow Jaxon to ease back into their banter, but he wasn’t ready yet.
The younger boy turned his head and looked out the window. The wind whipped around the corner of the building. He exhaled deeply and whispered, “Never let them see you.”
Heather leaned over Jaxon, tears filling her eyes, and softly kissed the scar. “You never need to hide your scars from us.”
“Not the scars.” Jaxon’s gray-blue eyes drifted down to look into her face. “That was his first rule. Never let them see you.”
“Who’s them?”
“Anyone. If someone came to the house, we were supposed to stay quiet and not draw attention to the basement. Never let them see you.”
“A lot of people visited?”
He paused in thought. “No. We could go months between. Hunters sometimes stumbled out of the woods. Or somebody heard they could buy moonshine, though it wasn’t true, ’cause he didn’t sell to people he didn’t know, and people he knew wouldn’t dare show up at his house.”
He adjusted himself in bed. “A preacher showed up several times.”
Heather and Connor exchanged a puzzled glance. She asked, “A preacher?”
“We giggled because the preacher kept asking him if he had been saved. Hell, we needed saving, not him, but the preacher never had a clue we were there. The last time the preacher came, he pointed a shotgun at him and told him to never come back or he would get to see God up close and personal.” His eyes focused on the ceiling tiles above his head. “I hope he has met God really up close now.”
She replied, “I don’t think God will waste any time with him before sending him straight to hell.”
“Nope.”
She reached to trace his scar, but he pulled back. She tucked her hand to her side and asked, “None of the visitors ever saw you?”
“Never.” Jaxon ran his tongue along his chapped lips. “Until the hiker. He’s the only one who ever did.”
“Hiker?”
“We were sitting in the basement like always when we heard him come out of the woods and ask for directions. He said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail but took a side trail and got lost. His voice sounded real happy, like a guy just out to have fun. He called out, and then…”
Connor and Heather exchanged glances, waiting for Jaxon to continue. “Then he answered. He didn’t sound mad or angry but almost nice. He told him real calmly how to get back out to the road. Took his own sweet time telling him too. Guess he didn’t have that shotgun close. Anyway, the hiker would have left, but...”
Heather reached out to stroke Jaxon’s hair and was surprised to see her fingers quaking. Do I really want to know what happened? Connor’s scars came from childhood antics, silly stunts to impress his friends or some girl. But Jaxon’s scars were delivered by someone else. Dread filled her as she quietly asked, “What happened?”
Jaxon picked at the bandage on his left hand. “You gotta understand, it’d been really bad for a couple of weeks. He had gone hunting and left us alone. We rationed the food, but we never knew how long he would be gone. You want to make it last, but it’s hard when you don’t know when more is coming. By the time he got back, we hadn’t eaten for a couple of days and were starving.”
“He brought back a deer or something?”
A wry smile crept across the boy’s face as if he was the only one in on the joke. His eyes clouded. “Not that kind of hunting. For a new… boy.”
“Oh.” Heather swallowed hard. “Did he find one?”
“Yeah.” Jaxon turned his head away and looked out the window. His voice became mechanical and emotionless. “He had one, but the kid was real sick. He shoved him down the steps and told us we better get him healthy or else.”
“What did you do?”
“The only thing we ever could do was give kids food and water, and for normal sick stuff, that worked. Well, usually it worked. But we were out of food and real low on water. And this kid told us he was a diabetic and needed insulin every day.”
Jaxon inhaled deeply. “A dictionary teaches you tons, but it doesn’t do everything. Diabetes—any of various abnormal conditions characterized by the secretion and excretion of excessive amounts of urine. We didn’t even understand what to look for. Insulin was a little more helpful because it said glucose—a crystalline sugar.”
He pulled the blankets up to his chin and closed his eyes. “But we couldn’t ask for sugar. You didn’t ask him for anything. You took what he gave you. And you figured out how to deal with everything else. We tried. Tried everything we could think of.” He took a slobbery breath. “But… he didn’t make it.”
Connor leaned over until the boys’ foreheads touched and whispered, “That ain’t your fault, Jax.”
“I know. Sometimes, it just happens.” His eyes fluttered open. “But see, we knew what would happen next. We knew how mad he would be. He had just gotten the kid, and now he was going to have to go hunting again, or one of us would have to…”
Jaxon swallowed, and he turned his eyes away from them. “It was just Kevin and me then. We were older than what he...”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “We’d failed. And he was madder than I’d ever seen.”