I stand over the stove, poaching an egg in the little pan that has four neat poaching cups, the one Mom used for eggs Benedict. Also, there’s a peeled and sliced banana on a plate, a glass of milk, and a glass of orange juice. I want to show my dad that I do listen to what he says, and I can take care of myself and he doesn’t need to make me move to Vanessa’s.
But when he comes into the kitchen, his first words to me are, “You’ve got your stuff together?”
He’s purposeful as he heads to the coffee pot, eager to check this off his to-do list.
“Not yet.”
“I need to be out of here in forty-five minutes. I’m sitting down with the Shaws to plan the prayer vigil for tomorrow night. The press wants to come, and it’s sort of a logistical nightmare.” He dumps a full coffee filter into the trash and whips open a kitchen drawer to get a new one.
“What about Mom?” I ask, poking at the egg in the poaching cup. It’s still jiggly.
“What?”
Hello. My mother. Your wife? “We were going to talk about planning a visit?”
He scoops coffee out of the can he keeps in the fridge. The spoon scrapes the bottom with a metallic ring. “Yes, we were.” He measures out water. Turns on the pot. Thinking what to say next. “And we will. Let me get this prayer service out of the way and we will.”
There’s always something in the way. If you ask him for things on a Wednesday or after, he says let me get Sunday out of the way. Then Sunday is out of the way and he says let me catch up and recover, so basically Tuesday is the only day of the week he’s not in recovery or needing to get something out of the way. And this has nothing to do with Jody. It’s always like this.
But now, I’m taking matters into my own hands. Seeing Erin’s car in our driveway last night and imagining seeing it there again has made me determined to get Dad to see Mom. To look at her, and remember who is who. “We could go get her after church on Sunday and go to the Lodge.”
He sniffs at a carton of half-and-half. “Oh. Let’s see what else is going on—a lot can happen between now and Sunday.”
“The Lodge is practically halfway to New Beginnings, and we go almost every Sunday anyway. Let’s just call her right now.”
I turn off the flame under my egg and reach for the phone. Dad looks at his watch, but I think he knows he’s out of excuses. I punch in the number and go through the automated menu to talk to a person, a man. “Is Laura Taylor available?”
“You can leave a message and we’ll make sure she gets it.”
“This is her daughter. I left a message before.”
“Yeah, I think I got that message off the system. I delivered it myself.”
“Are you sure?” I feel Dad’s eyes on me, but I keep mine on the stove.
“Do you want to leave another message?”
I just want to hear her voice.
“Yeah. Tell her I called and she should call me back. About brunch on Sunday.” I give him my cell number and make him say it back, in case there’s any chance my mom forgot it. When I hang up I go straight to my egg to put it on the plate, but the whites stick to the poaching cup and by the time I get it out the whole thing is a mess. My eyes fill with tears but I’m making myself not cry, not cry, as I sit to eat.
I wish that for once, my dad, who always has the right words for everyone else, would have a clue what to say to me.
He does try to talk to me on the ride to Vanessa’s, but not about Mom. “We never finished our discussion last night,” Dad says.
“There are a lot of discussions we never finish.”
“About Nick, Sam.” He’s not playing around. “I need to have your word that you won’t see him without my permission.” Which is more explicitly anti-Nick than what he said last night about not taking rides in general.
I say okay, just to end this. And also because Dad didn’t keep his word about calling Mom, or about talking about our plan, or about half a dozen other things I can think of off the top of my head, including how he was going to teach me to drive this summer. I’m figuring out, finally, that it’s easier to do what he does: give your word and then make up an excuse later.
When we pull up to Vanessa’s, I can see her waiting on her wide front porch, swinging in the hammock, one foot on the ground, pushing herself back and forth. Daisy is underneath, napping. I start to climb out of the car and my dad says, “Sam, this is just for a few days. A week, tops.”
How do you know? I want to ask. I don’t know if he’s saying he’s confident Jody will be found, or he’s confident she won’t and then we’ll go back to normal, or he’s confident Mom will actually want to come home after her time is up even though she won’t even return a phone call. The way things have been going, I don’t know how he can be so sure about anything.
All I can do is nod. He touches my hair. I look at him. Considering everything, he might actually be doing his best. I’m disappointed but also know that if I really thought about it, I could probably come up with at least as many times he’s kept his word as times he hasn’t. Most of all I want to believe—in him, in God, in our family—the way I used to. It used to be that there was always one of them I could count on. If Dad was lost in his work, Mom and I had each other, even if it wasn’t perfect. If Mom was lost in her drinking, Dad would pull us together and get us back on track. And I was always sure God hovered around there among us, somehow.
Right now it’s like we’re three islands, and nothing but oceans between us.
Moving into another family’s house, even temporarily, is just one more thing to separate us.
“Let me help you take your things in,” he says.
“I got it.”
I lean over and give him a kiss, collect my stuff from the back seat, and close the door.
He drives off before I’m even halfway up the walk.
I drop my duffel bag and pillow onto the porch before petting Daisy hello and wedging in next to Vanessa.
“Hey,” she says, scooting over.
“Hi.”
We sway back and forth for a little while, and even though I didn’t want to come here, I’m starting to relax. “It’s kind of nice out,” I say.
“I know. For a change I’m not roasting like a Thanksgiving turkey out here.”
There’s a blue ribbon around the Hathaways’ mailbox. When we’re sitting out here two weeks from now, in a month, in a year, will the ribbons still be up? I wonder how you’re supposed to know the exact moment when there’s no more hope.
“How did it go at Nick’s last night?” Vanessa asks.
“Okay. I mean, sad, but okay.” I don’t really want to share any of the personal stuff Nick and I talked about, or even that he gave me a ride.
“Did he seem… normal? Or, like, weird about Jody? Or anything?”
“He seemed sad, like I said.”
She’s quiet after that. Too quiet, for Vanessa.
I look at her. “What?”
She looks back, touches her neck. “I know you don’t go on the Internet, but you’ll probably hear about it anyway eventually.”
“What?” I repeat.
“There’s this whole big theory about Nick. Being… a suspect.”
Without missing a beat, I say, “That’s stupid.” I can tell from her face and the tone of her voice that some part of her believes it could be true.
“I heard that the police confiscated his laptop,” she says, as if that’s evidence.
“They took all the computers in the house. I heard about it on the news, too. They just wanted to see if Jody had been talking to anyone online or whatever.”
“Yeah, but…”
“Nick didn’t do anything.” I get up off the hammock, throwing Vanessa off balance so that she has to steady herself with her hands and move back to the center. Daisy gets up, too, and stands between us, tail wagging slowly. I pick up my duffel bag, ready to go inside.
“Well I don’t think so, either,” Vanessa says, “but they keep saying it’s usually someone in the family and think how many times you’ve heard stuff like that on the news—how the person who does something horrible is the last you’d suspect.”
“It wasn’t Nick.”
“Okay,” Vanessa says guiltily. Then, with a burst of insistence, says, “But we don’t really know him, do we? I was thinking about it and we see him at church on Sundays and sometimes at youth group stuff and around school but do we know him?”
“We’ve known him as long as we’ve known anybody. You might as well say it’s Daniel, or my dad.”
“That’s not the same.”
“It is, though. If you say it could be Nick, it could be anybody.”
She stares up at me, eyes watery, and says, “That’s what I mean, Sam. It could be anybody.”
And I know what she means, what she’s trying to get across. That a thing like this changes the way you think about everything and everyone, and you can never go back.
Mrs. Hathaway drives us to Daniel’s in the afternoon to swim in his pool. Robby begs to go with us, but Mrs. Hathaway saves the day by offering to take him and any two friends he wants to the water park on Saturday instead.
We lay out in our suits, baking in the three thirty sun. Vanessa and I spent most of the day so far looking at all the Jody news on her dad’s laptop, and now my head is cluttered with the rumors. And they aren’t just about Nick. They’re about Jody’s dad, her uncle, her teachers, some random guy in Ohio. There are people all over the country who think they’ve seen her in their town. Someone in the boonies of Alaska says they saw her, and someone in Chicago says they saw her, on the same day. Already there are all these blogs and websites and message boards filled with theories and guesses and people just trying to figure this out. Finally I told Vanessa, “I don’t want to look at this stuff anymore. It’s crazy.”
She closed the laptop and said, “I know. Every day I promise myself I’m not going to look, but then I do and I can’t stop.”
My dad not wanting me to be alone with Nick makes a little more sense, considering everything I saw online. Not that I think there’s even a remote chance it could be him, but I can see how easy it is to get paranoid.
Now Daniel and Vanessa are theorizing some more. “Maybe she did run away,” he says. “Or maybe at first she was taken but now she has that thing. That syndrome.”
“Stockholm,” Vanessa says. “Stockholm syndrome.”
“Yeah, that. And now she’s like in a cult and we should leave her alone.”
“I don’t think you can get that so quick.” Vanessa props herself up on her elbow. “And if she’s in a cult, we should definitely not leave her alone. Cults are bad, remember? As a future pastor I’d think you’d know that.”
He groans. “I wish I’d kept my fat mouth shut about the pastor thing.”
I get up and slip into the pool, letting the water close over me. It’s not as cool as I wish it were, but at least it’s quiet, surrounding me with the white noise of the pool filter. I try to clear my head so it’s as quiet as the pool, using an image of how I want our garden to look as a way to silence everything else. Then I hear a muffled splash and re-emerge. Daniel swims toward me, making a shark fin out of his hands, palms pressed together on the top of his submerged head. It’s very sixth grade.
I paddle away from him for a few yards, then we both stop. He comes up out of the water, shaking his head, droplets of water staying on his pale skin—the skin of someone who spends more time with his computer than in the outdoors. “You okay?” he asks.
“No,” I say, tiptoeing backward on the rough bottom of the pool, toward deeper water.
“Me, neither.”
“Do you really wish you hadn’t said anything about what happened to you in Mexico?” I tread water, letting the smooth, warmish waves of it churn over and around my arms.
“I don’t know. I just know I want to do something… meaningful. I want to do what God wants me to do. And I thought it was that.” He pulls a green pool noodle over and drapes his arms on it. “I didn’t know there’d be all this extra stuff, whatever it is, when I tell people. They either look at me like I’m insane or start asking me deep theological questions about the meaning of life.”
I wonder if that’s how it feels to my dad, still. That everyone thinks he’s crazy, or that he has all the answers. I just want him to have some of the answers. “Remember what my dad said. You could be God’s Chosen Waiter.”
“Yeah, well, your dad makes everything sound meaningful, and easy.”
“It’s an act.” I dive under the water and come back up near the edge, intentionally splashing Vanessa. She squeals and sits up. “I think I’m starting to burn,” I say. “Let’s call your mom to pick us up.”
LIVE @ FIVE
The mood here in Pineview has turned somber as the fifth day of the search for Jody Shaw comes to a close. Several leads in the case have evaporated as quickly as they came and investigators are no closer to finding the thirteen-year-old, missing since Sunday. Police have said that no one, including family members, has been eliminated as a suspect but emphasize that the family has been cooperative. Regional FBI agents are working with local authorities; attempts to link Jody’s case to those of two girls missing in southern Oregon have failed. Sympathy for the Shaw family was palpable at Library Square today as volunteers waited in line and local companies donated food and drinks to searchers. A tip line has been set up for those with any information about the case. The numbers are at the bottom of your screen.
Pineview Community Church will hold a prayer vigil tomorrow night at seven PM; people of all faiths are welcome.
This is Melinda Ford, reporting live from the KPXU studio.
“Mom,” Vanessa says from her beanbag chair in front of the TV. “We have to go to that.” She looks at me. “You want to, right?”
“Yeah,” I say, even though really, I’m not sure.
“Of course,” Mrs. Hathaway says. “We’ll all go.”
After dinner we sack out in a pile of pillows in the basement, eating ice cream while Robby plays video games. I’ve kept my cell phone close all day in case Mom calls. Or Dad. Or anyone. When we got back from Daniel’s I called my own phone from the Hathaways’, just to make sure it works. It does.
“This reminds me of the old days,” Vanessa says.
“The ‘old days,’ like, last year?”
She looks at me. “No. I mean like the old days. Like when you used to be here every weekend. When your mom and dad would come for dinner, and you’d stay to sleep over, and we’d sit down here while they were up there.”
And her dad would play his guitar, old songs from when they were all in high school, and they’d try to remember the words, and laugh so much.
“It wasn’t that long ago,” I say.
She puts her spoon down. “Yeah, Sam, it was. It was forever ago. And then you, like, disappeared. I mean, where did you go?”
I stare into my bowl, pushing the melting ice cream around. Vanessa is remembering our childhood, basically. And I understand why, I do. But like so many things, it’s gone. “I don’t know. Nowhere.”
“You could have talked to me about your mom.”
I glance at Robby, whose thumbs are working like mad on his game controller. “She didn’t want people to know.”
“It’s not like I would have told anyone.”
“I know.” It’s just hard, I want to say. The things that happen in your house, with your family, are personal. How do you talk about finding the spaghetti sauce lid in your dinner or the ice cube trays full of water in the towel closet? How do you talk about helping your mom put on her lipstick, so carefully, because her hands are shaking, so that it looks as perfect as she needs it to look before she can face the world?
All I can say to Vanessa is, “I’m sorry. Now you know. Now everyone knows.”
She goes back to scraping her spoon in the bowl. “She’ll come back and be a lot better. You’ll have a fresh start.”
I know the place is called New Beginnings, but I don’t think it works quite like that. You can’t just erase everything that came before.
Vanessa’s mom calls down the stairs. “Robby, come on up and brush your teeth and get your pj’s on.”
He puts down the controller and switches off the game without protest. Such an easy kid. He gets to the bottom of the staircase before turning to me and saying, “Night, Sam. Your mom’ll get better.”
Of all the things people have said and not said to me over the last couple of days, this is the one that makes me want to cry. It’s so unexpected, and Robby sounds so sure, the way only a seven-year-old can. I barely manage to get out a “Thanks, Robby,” without my voice cracking.
Then, my cell rings; I lunge for it. I don’t recognize the number, but I’m sure it’s New Beginnings. “Hello?”
“Hey.”
It’s Nick.
“Oh,” I say, surprised. “Hi.”
Vanessa is watching me. “One sec,” I say to Nick, then stand and tell Vanessa, “Be right back,” before going upstairs and slipping into the guest bathroom at the end of the hall. “Hi.”
“So, how are you?” Nick asks.
“Okay. How are you?”
“Um, you know. Bad.” Then he kind of laughs, and it dawns on me that of course he’d know, too, all the stuff it says about him online. “Am I interrupting anything?”
“No. I’m just at Vanessa’s.”
“I can call you back later if you’re busy.”
I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror. There’s a nice, soft light in here that makes my skin look good and my hair shiny. I wonder how Nick sees me. Just someone who can use his “big brother skills”? Or as a real friend?
“Actually,” I say, watching the way my mouth looks when I talk. “I kind of moved in. Temporarily.”
“Really? Why?”
“My dad thinks it’s bad for me to be alone so much. And he’s busy with… everything.”
“Yeah. He’s helping my parents a lot. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I turn away from the mirror, still waiting for the reason he called.
“He and Erin just left here after working out stuff for the vigil thing,” Nick says, “and I was just thinking about you. So I thought I’d call and say hi. How’s your mom?”
“I don’t know. I’ve left a couple of messages for her and she hasn’t called me back.” It’s the first time I’ve said that out loud, and even though the truth of it feels bad, it’s a relief to say.
“Oh. That’s kinda… that sucks.”
“She doesn’t have to be there that much longer.” Emphasis on the have to. She could stay longer, if she wants. “Maybe she’s just trying to get through it.”
“Maybe. But she should call you back. You’re her daughter.”
I gnaw on one of my knuckles. My stomach feels shaky. All I can say is, “Uh-huh.” Because now my mind is stuck on what he said about how my dad and Erin just left his house, together. And I’m here. And our house is sitting there, empty.
“Sorry, you probably don’t want to talk about it. I guess it’s nice for me to talk about someone else’s problems for a change but if you don’t want to…”
After taking a deep breath, I say, “I guess I’ll see you at the vigil?”
“Yeah. I’ll be there. Come find me after, okay?”
“Okay.”
When I hang up, all of Nick’s words are running through my head. Until now, I’ve been convincing myself that Mom would have a good reason for not calling me, but there isn’t one. There just isn’t one. Like Nick said, I’m her daughter. And my dad is her husband. And he’s with someone else right now. Maybe. Suddenly, I have to know for sure.
Panicked, I come out of the bathroom and run into Mr. Hathaway in the hall. “Um,” I say, and he stops. “I’m really sorry but I left something at my house that I need.”
“I can run you by in the morning to get anything you need,” he says, smiling helpfully.
“I kind of need it tonight.”
“Oh, well.” He checks his watch. “You sure it’s not something Vanessa or her mom can… supply you with for tonight? Did you check under the sink?” He thinks it’s female products.
“It’s not.”
He feels bad for me for everything that’s going on, I can tell, and doesn’t press further. “Sure. Okay. Grab Vanessa and I’ll take you.”
In the Hathaways’ minivan I try to stay calm and think about what I’ll do if Erin’s car is parked at our house. This was stupid. Because now if it’s there, Vanessa and her dad will know, too. I think of what I could say. Like that they have a meeting about the prayer vigil or youth stuff. I’ll pretend it’s normal, I’ll pretend not to notice it.
Before we left, Vanessa asked what we’re getting. “Just something I need,” I told her. She looked at me funny but didn’t ask for more. Now we’re sitting in the back of the van and her dad has the AC up to the point I wish I had a sweater. It’s not quite dark out yet, but getting there.
We turn the corner to my block. I crane my neck to see past Mr. Hathaway’s head and get a glimpse of the house. There are no cars out front, not even my dad’s, and I know there can’t be any in the garage other than my mom’s, which has been parked there since her accident and arrest. The driveway lights are on but otherwise the house looks empty. I blow breath out.
“You have your key?” Mr. Hathaway asks as he pulls into the drive.
“Yeah.” I open the sliding door and climb out, then realize Mr. Hathaway and Vanessa are getting out, too. “Oh, I’ll just be a second; you don’t have to come in.”
“No, no. Dad duty. I’m not sending you into a dark house alone.”
“And I’m not sitting here by myself,” Vanessa adds.
They follow me to the door. I hesitate, wondering where my dad is, anyway, if he’s not here. Maybe they’re at her house. Or maybe I’m just crazy for thinking anything could possibly be going on. Jody’s family needs my dad right now, and they need Erin, too. They need anyone who can help and of course Dad and Erin are going to be there at the same time, helping. He’s just not home yet, that’s all. Maybe he went out for coffee with Erin, to talk. It’s not a crime.
I push open the door and a blast of heat hits us. “Sorry it’s so stuffy,” I say over my shoulder to Vanessa and her dad. “I’ll be fast.” Ralph runs to the door. I flip on the living room light and pet him, then turn to Vanessa. “Will you check his food bowl?” Mostly that’s to keep her from following me to my room, where I’m supposed to be getting this so-called item that I absolutely had to have tonight.
In my room, I take my school backpack out of the closet and look around for stuff to put in it: the gardening book I bought from the hardware store on Saturday—a lifetime ago. An extra pair of shorts. The rooster clock stares at me from my desk and suddenly I know just what to do with it. I put that in the backpack, too, which now looks nice and full. On the way out, I stop to pick up the picture of my mom and me that I keep on my dresser. It’s from two years ago at my eighth-grade graduation. She’s looking out from under her perfect ash-blond bob, her arm around me, smiling like crazy. She’s beautiful. I got a citizenship award and a soccer award, and she was so proud of me, but it’s Dad who’s behind the camera, and really that smile is for him.
I take the picture. Instead of putting it in my backpack, I go into my parents’ room and place it on my dad’s nightstand, right in the spot where he usually sets his cell phone to charge while he sleeps.
Back out in the living room, I lift my backpack and say to Mr. Hathaway and Vanessa, “Got it.”
Around three in the morning I wake up with the urge to pee. Quiet as I can, I slip the rooster clock out of my backpack, and on the way to the bathroom, I creep to Robby’s door. It’s open, spilling a faint yellow pool from his plug-in night light. I go in and set the clock, carefully, on his race car–shaped bureau.