Sweat ran down Connor’s back despite the cold air. He leaned over, hands balanced on his knees, and sucked in a lungful of air. Both pride and exhaustion coursed through his body as he watched Jaxon ride in big looping circles in the road, amazed by how fast the boy had learned how to ride his bike.
Relearned, he reminded himself. Even better, remembered.
The shock of hearing Jaxon say he didn’t know how to ride a bike had dulled. He simply meant he had forgotten, as he had forgotten so many things, locked away in that dungeon all of those years. Everything would come back to him. Connor would have his little brother back again.
“Give me a sec to get my bike. We’ll go find some trails.”
Jaxon braked and wobbled a little before getting his feet planted firmly on the pavement. He nodded toward Heather, who stood shoulder to shoulder with Harold in the front yard, watching them like hawks. “She’ll be okay if we go off like that?”
Connor flashed his brilliant devil-may-care smile in the sun. “When I promise her I won’t let you out of my sight, yeah. And don’t worry—I won’t.” He ran around the back of the house and pulled open the squeaky door to an old storage building. Pushing aside a lawnmower and some yard tools, he extracted his BMX bicycle and rolled it into the yard. Rust speckled the faded green paint. The handlebar grips were wrapped in tape to hide their wear. He brushed the spiderwebs off and oiled the chain, mentally noting how many months had passed since he last rode—back in the heat of summer, he thought, with a couple of buddies after high-school graduation. The pickup truck Harold had helped him buy had become his preferred method of transportation, but it would be fun to trail ride again.
He mounted the bike and rode to the front of the house, skidding to a stop on the grass in front his parents. They were being friendlier and warmer than he had seen in years, probably ever. Over the last couple of years, as Harold had so obviously been trying to rebuild a bridge with Connor, they had declared a tenuous truce and were polite to each other. He knew that was for his own benefit, not theirs. Without a common child, they would long ago have gone their separate ways.
Now that they have both sons back, maybe…
But he couldn’t let his thoughts get ahead of him. “Cool present, Dad. I think he got the hang of it again quick, so I’m going to take him out on some trails if that’s cool.”
Heather chewed on her lip as she watched her younger son circling in the road, only a few wobbles noticeable. “You think he’s ready?”
Harold smiled at Connor and said, “With his big-brother guardian, he’ll be fine.”
She reluctantly nodded her agreement. “Just be back for dinner.”
Before she could change her mind, Connor waved and pedaled down the drive, motioning for his brother to follow. Jaxon quickly fell alongside, and they chatted as they cruised at a comfortable speed. They zigged and zagged through the neighborhoods, turning right and then left, aimless and having fun. They slowed at each intersection as Connor urged Jaxon to look both ways for cars, even if he had the right-of-way. Safety first, he admonished, feeling adult in his words.
After half an hour of riding aimlessly, they pulled up to the end of Broad Street, across from Abe’s Market. The road to the left twisted up into the mountains and into the next county. The road directly across entered the town’s industrial park, a collection of aging manufacturing plants that provided the backbone of jobs to Millerton. Many had closed over the years, their parking lots sprouting tall weeds and closed off with rusting chains. Connor worked in a factory inside the complex, hoping to never hear that his own employer was going bust. Since it was a Saturday, the plants were mostly closed and quiet, the blinking traffic light dancing on the overhead wires in the breeze with no traffic to control.
To the right was the entrance to the town park. During a summer Saturday, ballgames would be played on the open fields, walkers hiked the network of paths, and kids played on the swings. But the colder days of winter found the park mostly empty.
Connor looked at the options. The mountain road was too steep. The security guards at the industrial park would chase them out. And the park…. well, the park was a bad idea. He said, “Let’s turn around.”
“Oh. Is it late?”
“No, I just thought…”
Jaxon pointed at the park. “What about in there? Can we ride there?”
Connor looked at his brother. “Are you sure you’re okay with that?”
Jaxon shrugged. They rode their bikes past the entrance signs and down the main road, swerving around the humps built in the pavement to slow cars. The ballfields on their left were empty, muddy from the snow that had melted off days before. Behind the fields, a nature trail wandered through the woods, but no one ventured into the cold shade. Farther down on their right, they pulled into a nearly empty parking lot in front of a children’s playground. Three kids climbed playsets built over beds made from chunks of recycled tires that provided a soft landing from falls as a mom sat on a bench in the sunshine reading a romance novel. Another child was being pushed in a swing by her mother.
Balancing on one foot, Connor looked around and swallowed hard. “Doesn’t it freak you out to be back here?”
Swiveling his head to scan the area, Jaxon looked perplexed. “Why would it?”
Connor didn’t know what reaction he had expected, but he hadn’t been prepared for a total lack of response. He couldn’t believe Jaxon didn’t even recognize the place. Maybe he had blocked it all from his memory.
“This… it’s the last place I saw you. My friends wanted to race on the bike trails, and we knew you couldn’t keep up, so I told you to stay here on the swings. When I came back, you were gone.”
Jaxon looked around, his eyes glistening in the sunlight. His voice broke. “Oh. That was here?”
“Your bike leaned up against that tree over there.” Connor pointed toward an ancient, spreading oak, its thick branches devoid of leaves in the midst of winter. “You couldn’t see up in there in the summer ’cause of the leaves, and I thought you were hiding in it to scare me. We climbed it all the time.”
Jaxon’s eyes got big as he scanned the towering tree. “Climbed up into that?”
“Yeah, sure. We pretended we were paratroopers and jumped off that low-hanging branch and rolled in the grass when we hit.” He pointed to a thick branch near the base of the tree and shook his head sadly. “But you weren’t there, either.”
“What did you do then?”
They straddled their bicycles and listened to the kids play as memories of paralyzing fear coursed through Connor. “We searched the bathrooms over there then rode around the trails, looking for you, thinking maybe you went wandering down one of them. We debated whether you went home, but it didn’t make sense you would leave your bike.”
Connor couldn’t stop the memories. At first that day, he had been frustrated, convinced Jaxon was hiding to play a joke. As time passed and their search spread out, the frustration turned into worry that he had run into a friend and taken off with him—he wasn’t so much worried about Jaxon’s safety as for his own level of trouble. After all, they weren’t supposed to have left the house, and he, being the older brother, was responsible for taking off to the park and for leaving his brother alone.
But his mind kept picking at the bike. Even if Jax had gone to a friend’s house, he would have taken his bike. He loved that thing. No way he would have risked it getting stolen, unless he forgot. Kids forgot stuff all the time, but that would’ve been a big thing to forget.
As the morning had turned to afternoon and then into evening, the worry grew into a fear and finally a panic. His friends had grown quiet, their own doubts mounting, and he finally knew he had to tell his mother what had happened. He was going to be in so much trouble, but they had to find Jax and figure out what had happened.
His last thought as he rode home to tell her was that he was going to kill his brother if he found him hiding and laughing. But by the time night had fallen and the police were combing the park, he was praying that they would find him hiding and laughing.
Connor asked, “Where did he come from? That man? The woods? The bathroom?”
Jaxon looked around, scanning the perimeter of the playground. “The parking lot, I guess. I don’t really know.”
“His van was parked there?”
He shrugged. “I guess so.”
“You don’t remember?”
Jaxon shook his head and looked down at the ground. He whispered, “I don’t know.”
Connor nodded and stared at the empty parking lot, which had been filled with vehicles that summer day. He couldn’t tell if he remembered a brown-on-brown van with a man sitting in the shadows, cigarette smoke curling out the window, or if the power of suggestion now that he knew the story made him think he did.
His voice was quiet as he wrestled with the memories. “They asked me over and over what I saw. Was there a strange car I didn’t recognize? Maybe someone hanging around I didn’t know? And worse, was I sure Dad hadn’t shown up? Did I see him at all that day?” He squinted into the sunshine. “Now that I finally know what happened, I wonder—did I see that man and not know it? If his van was parked here, I would have ridden right by it. I wouldn’t have thought he looked weird or out of place at all. He would have seen us leave and known we left you alone.”
A hand wrapped around Connor’s elbow. “Even if you’d seen him, you couldn’t have known what was going to happen.”
“But if I hadn’t wasted all afternoon scared to tell anyone I couldn’t find you…”
“They still wouldn’t have found...” Jaxon looked at the playground. “It was too late.”
“The sheriff talked to him. Remembered what he had done and drove out there just to ask him. But he didn’t know about the van. If I had remembered the van, described it to the police…”
“Stop it.” Jaxon’s voice was strong, firmer than Connor had heard since he had come home. He was surprised to see tears welling up in his younger brother’s eyes. “I wasn’t the only one, remember? Lots of kids came through that place. And they disappeared the same way. Not a trace. So don’t beat yourself up, okay? Please.”
Connor reached over and squeezed his brother’s shoulder. Just a few days ago, it was so thin that it had felt skeletal, but muscle mass was already rebuilding. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
“I don’t think I could ever go back inside that house. It’s… evil.” Jaxon squeezed the handlebars and twisted the grips. “But here? An awful thing happened here, and I wish it hadn’t, but it was once. And for me, it’s more a story than a memory.”
He sighed and looked around at kids playing, the tree swaying, and a plastic sandwich wrapper blowing across the grass. His voice was distant and soft. “I don’t remember it, the day I disappeared. Or my life before. I’m sorry, I know everyone expects me to remember stuff, but I don’t.”
Connor nodded as if he understood, though he had to admit to himself that he didn’t. He remembered everything about that day. He didn’t get how he could remember every second, and Jaxon didn’t even recognize the place.
He shook off the confusion. He had made a pledge to his brother to help him remember, so he needed to be patient and strong. “It’s okay, Jax, not to remember everything. But when you do, I’m here for you. No matter what you remember.”
Jaxon wiped his sleeve across his face with a loud sniff, leaving a grease streak on his cheek. “Cool.”
“Still want to trail ride?”
Jaxon nodded. The brothers took off down a muddy path through the woods, laughing as they rode.