Vanessa doesn’t talk to me at breakfast. She tried last night, before bed, when she was helping me set up my sleeping bag downstairs on the sectional sofa. She didn’t even want me sleeping in the same room as her.
“… I’m just asking, Sam. Maybe you can’t explain it to your dad because he’s your dad, but you could explain it to me. You could at least try. To explain why you’d think it was anywhere near okay to just disappear, considering Jody.”
“I can’t explain” was all I could say to Vanessa. I almost called Nick about six different times during the night, but I don’t know what I would have said to him, either, and anyway whatever connection I imagined I had with him was obviously just that—imagined. When he said to look for him after the vigil, that was just a polite way to end a phone conversation.
Now Vanessa crunches her cereal with a blank look on her face, staring past me. Mr. and Mrs. Hathaway aren’t exactly chatty, either, mad that I’d put them in the position of feeling guilty or responsible if something happened to me. Even Robby seems like he’s over the novelty of me living with them and keeps his eyes on the puzzle on the back of the cereal box.
I excuse myself from the table.
“We’ll be leaving for church in ten minutes,” Mrs. Hathaway says. “Meet us in the front room.”
There’s hardly anyone at youth group; just me and Vanessa and Paul and Kacey Franklin. Families are making their last summer trips before school starts, going on with their lives. I don’t know where Daniel is. Erin hasn’t planned anything for us to do other than sit around and talk about how we’re dealing with the Jody situation, but it seems like no one is in the mood. Vanessa protests my stupidity of yesterday by keeping her arms crossed and refusing to say anything.
I’m staring at the COMMUNITY HAPPENS! poster wondering how it’s going to feel to see my mom, when Kacey says, “Um, I guess I have something to share.”
I look at her. We all do. I don’t think Kacey’s said anything in youth group, ever, except when we were discussing planning and organizing.
“Go ahead,” Erin says, smiling encouragingly.
Kacey runs her fingers through the ends of her hair. “You know how I only come here because my parents make me? I could have stayed home today, with my brother, but I wanted to be here. I wanted to.” When no one reacts, she looks around the room. “For real, that’s big. I’m serious.”
“What do you think changed?” Erin asks.
“I think I might believe in God.” She says it almost with a shrug, like it’s just that easy.
“Why?” I ask. Everyone stares at me, like I’ve said a bad word or something. Maybe it was the way I said it.
Kacey is the only one who takes my question seriously. “I think because of Jody.”
The thing that has made me not believe in God, or not want to, or at least the thing that’s pushed me over the edge after a year of doubt, is the same thing that makes Kacey believe?
“I don’t get it,” I say.
Vanessa unfolds her arms and sits forward. “She realized she needs help,” she says to me.
“No,” Kacey says, shaking her head. “That’s not it. I think my parents make me come because they believe it’s just what you do if you want a good life. Like, if you don’t want bad things to happen to you. After Jody, it’s like, now we all know that just because we come here every Sunday… that doesn’t protect us from bad things happening, right?”
“Yeah?” Paul says.
I watch Kacey’s face, waiting to see if I can grab hold of one little corner of her belief and let it carry me.
“But everyone’s still here,” Kacey says. “I mean, the vigil was packed. And I got here this morning and the parking lot’s full. So all these people must be here for some other reason. Some real… reason.” She looks around at us. “Right?”
“Right,” Erin says, and we all stare at Kacey, like we’d never thought of that. Because maybe we hadn’t.
After youth group, Erin pulls me aside and says, “So what’s this thing about you running off yesterday and not telling anyone where you were going?”
I can’t believe my dad, who barely has time to acknowledge that I exist, has somehow already managed to find a few minutes to tell Erin about yesterday.
“Come on, Sam.” She smiles her open, clear smile, like I can trust her. “Let me help you figure it out. I’m good at this, it’s my job.”
I stare. “If you’re so good at it, you don’t need me to help you figure it out.”
Her mouth shrinks out of the smile and she puts her hand on my arm, and I realize she actually thinks she does have it figured out. “It’s your mom, and also a father thing, I know. I totally get that. You’re acting out. I have a few issues there myself, you know? With my dad. Let’s talk about it, let’s—”
I pull my arm away. “Could you just…” Leave us alone, is how I want to finish that. “We’re seeing my mom today. You probably know.”
She nods, and the smile comes back, but it’s different this time, forced. “I heard.”
“I’m just nervous. Sorry.”
“It’s going to be okay,” she says. To me, she doesn’t sound all that convinced.
The service seems strange, and I don’t know if it’s because of the way I’m feeling or because Gerald doesn’t show up, and we have to sing all the hymns a capella since Mr. Hathaway forgot to bring his guitar, which I’m sure is somehow my fault. One of the choir members runs over to the piano to hit a note before every song, to get us started in the right key, but it’s still not sounding so good.
The air-conditioning can’t keep up with the heat. People fan themselves with whatever is handy and look at their watches a lot. And of course we’re all thinking of Jody and how last week at this time she sang that beautiful solo. And everyone needs my dad to say the right things, to open to the perfect verse. But the Psalm reading falls flat and the Old Testament promises sound unbelievable and the sermon is disjointed and hard to follow. I can feel Dad straining to make a point that not even he’s sure of, and I wonder if he’s thinking about how in about an hour we’re going to see Mom.
Dad tells the congregation that because of the heat and lack of accompaniment we’re skipping the final hymn and going right to the benediction.
My stomach flutters. Now there’s only the fellowship time and a car ride between us and whatever is going to happen to our family next.
In the car, Dad strips off his tie and throws it into the backseat, loosening the top buttons of his shirt. We get out onto the highway and you can’t even tell that it poured down rain yesterday; the hills along the road look as brown and dry as ever.
“How was youth group?” Dad asks. It’s the same post-church conversation we always have, so far.
“Fine.”
We drive another five minutes before he says, “I’m trying to understand. Help me.”
I look out at the brown hills whipping by in a blur. “I can’t,” I say. “I don’t know.”
“Normally it wouldn’t be that big a deal. Everyone needs some time alone sometimes. But Sammy, right now you can’t—”
“I know.”
More driving.
“Sam,” he starts, and sounds so confident that I turn to him and wait, hope, for him to say what I need him to say. I don’t know what that is, but I think I’ll know it when I hear it. “When we see Mom, I don’t want to upset her with all this stuff. You running off yesterday, whatever else. She’s got enough on her mind.”
We turn up the road to the Lodge.
He glances at me. “Okay? Sam?”
I assume we should also not upset her with the news that I’m not living at home, that Erin spends so much time with Dad, that I’m changing schools, or any other true facts about our lives. “Okay.”
As soon as we pull into the parking lot, I see her. She’s standing in the shade out in front, wearing a cotton skirt and sandals and an eyelet blouse. My breath catches. The parking lot gets blurry. I blink a few times and look at her again and think how pretty she is, and how small and thin and holding her body in this way that makes you think she’s not sure something won’t come along and blow her away.
She turns away from us and points her finger to the car and someone else comes out of the shade, a woman with short gray hair. I recognize her from the day we got our tour of New Beginnings. Margaret, I think, is her name.
Dad looks at himself in the visor mirror, touching his hair, while I watch Mom and Margaret talk. Mom shakes her head. Margaret puts one hand on each of Mom’s shoulders and comes in close, like my soccer coach sometimes would, back when I still played, and she had to tell me something important about the game. Mom shakes her head some more. Margaret gets closer, bends her head as if to make sure Mom is really looking at her, really hearing her.
Mom is being coached. On how to get through lunch with her own family.
Dad flips the visor back up. “Okay. Remember what I said.” Then he looks at me and blows air out, his cheeks puffing. “I’m nervous, too.”
I nod, thinking we could be less nervous if we weren’t trying to hide everything. That’s been part of the problem all along.
When we get to where Mom and Margaret are waiting, I want to run up and hug her but suddenly I feel shy around my own mom, and she’s frozen stiff, and I can’t really see her face as it’s hidden by her bob, which has grown some since she left and hangs over her eye. There’s still a faint scratch and bump on her cheek from the accident. Then, she smiles a scared sort of smile and lifts her arms, and when we hug she holds on an extra second or two and says my name: “Samara. You look so beautiful.” I inhale. Her hair smells different. She must have run out of her own shampoo. But she’s still Mom.
I don’t want to let go. When I finally do, Dad gives her a short hug and a kiss on the cheek but they don’t look each other in the eye. His movements are jerky, and spots of sweat are spreading under his armpits.
Margaret folds her hands together and says, “Good, then.” She looks at my mom. “I’ll see you in an hour?”
Mom nods and I realize Margaret is her escort or chaperone, not just a ride. She walks toward the lot to do whatever it is she’s going to do for the next hour while we have brunch.
“Do you want to sit out on the deck or inside?” Dad asks, still not quite letting his eyes stop anywhere near Mom’s face.
“It’s up to you,” Mom says.
They’re being so polite.
“Sam?” Dad asks.
“Either way.”
He opens the door to go in. “I guess we’ll just take whatever they’ve got.”
Half an hour later I have my pancakes, Dad has his French toast special, and Mom has her two-egg breakfast, just like always, except now the tomato juice the waiter brings is just tomato juice. We did end up seated on the deck and at least half a dozen people from church have come to our table to say hi to my mom, tell her how great she looks, that they miss her, and ask how it’s going. I wish this town had just one more place that was open on Sundays.
“Thank you,” she says.
And when they say they’re looking forward to having her back, she smiles and says, “Me, too.” But when another person asks when that will be, she says, “I’m not sure.”
Dad glances up from his French toast. “Your thirty days will be up pretty soon.”
She pushes some egg around on the plate, takes a bite of toast. Her eyes wander the deck. Maybe she’s looking for Margaret to magically appear and tell her what to say to that. “Well.”
That’s all she’s able to come up with on her own right away, but I have the feeling that if we wait, she’ll say more. Except Dad suddenly changes the subject to Jody, talking about how the investigation seems to have hit another dead end. “I just wish they could figure out something,” he says to his French toast. “Any little something to hold on to.”
Mom should be irritated that Dad kind of hijacked the conversation, because that’s something they used to fight about—how he’s not so good at listening, how he doesn’t notice when the things that are important to him aren’t the same things that are important to her. But she almost seems to click on for the first time since we got here, and says, “I’ve been so sad about it. It’s hard to be away while all this is happening, and watch it on the news instead of being a part of it. It feels at such a distance.”
She could have returned my calls to tell me that. We could have been talking about Jody all this time. “I helped with the search,” I say.
“Did you?” Mom gives me her full attention. And there’s something about her eyes that tells me she’s really here, truly, with us. Mentally, emotionally, physically here. I get a glimpse of some kind of reassurance that whatever she’s doing and learning at rehab really is making her into her true self.
“Yeah, but then—” I’m about to tell her how I passed out and was sick with heat exhaustion and in bed for a day, all of it, but Dad interrupts me.
“Well, you’ve seen on the news how the search has gone,” Dad says.
I guess I’m not supposed to upset her with the fact that I passed out. Pretty much every detail of my life right now is upsetting, so I decide that for the rest of brunch I’ll only open my mouth to insert pancakes.
“I saw interviews with people coming out of the prayer vigil on the news,” Mom says to Dad. “It sounds like it went well.”
Dad agrees with an mm, and tells Mom a little bit about how many people came and what the choir sang and I stare out over the deck rail, into the foothills, into the woods, until the waiter clears our plates and Dad lays down the well-worn credit card and Mom blurts, “I’m thinking about staying at New Beginnings.”
I turn my attention back to the table. “What?” I ask, even though I was afraid this is what’s been coming.
“Beyond the thirty days.”
“Oh,” Dad says.
I flash on a picture of myself living in Vanessa’s basement until graduation. From a school where I don’t know anyone.
“I know we don’t have the money. It’s just that I think… I know… I’m not going to be ready.” She folds and re-folds her napkin. “I feel like I’m just now—”
“How much longer?” I ask.
She sweeps her hair off her face and for a second I can see both her eyes. “I don’t know. I need to talk to Margaret about it.” Her hair slips back down. “You two are doing all right.”
“No,” I say.
Dad pats my arm. “It’s okay.”
Mom looks at me. “Aren’t you?”
And from the feel of Dad’s eyes on me, I won’t be saying anything to Mom right now other than, “Yeah, we’re fine.”
Our credit card goes through—maybe miracles do happen—and we say good-bye to people on our way out, and Margaret is waiting at the hostess’s desk. Mom hugs me good-bye. It’s shorter this time because now I feel, I don’t know, so disappointed and distracted. Dad kisses her cheek again. Back in the car, Dad lets out a big breath and I lean my seat back and close my eyes and wish I’d asked why she didn’t call me back.
LIVE @ FIVE
One week after the disappearance of thirteen-year-old Jody Shaw, presumed kidnapped, a national tabloid claims to know the identities of the men who submitted to polygraph tests on Saturday. The National Investigator reports that Donald Phillips, a teacher at Jody’s junior high school, and Charlie Taylor, the pastor of Pineview Community Church, were both administered the test. Police Chief Marty Spencer would not confirm, and said that while they still do not have an identified suspect, they are building a profile of what this suspect may be like. They believe it is someone Jody knows and that this person is still in the area.
In the last week, police dispatchers have been swamped with close to 3,000 tips from around the country, including a Florida “clairvoyant” who says Jody is alive, possibly in Nevada. According to Chief Spencer, only about one tenth of the leads are worthy of follow-up.
The story of Jody’s disappearance has now made headlines around the globe, moving the First Lady to place a call to Jody’s parents, expressing sympathy and hope for the girl’s safe return.
I’m staring at the TV, not sure I’ve heard right.
Mr. Hathaway mutes the news. Vanessa looks at me. “Did you know?”
I shake my head. Apparently my father did have a real reason for not answering his phone yesterday morning when I called. He was busy being a suspect. My face gets hot and my stomach hurts, but I don’t want them all to see me lose it.
Robby, who’s been lying on the floor on his stomach, watching, turns over and asks his dad, “What’s a polygraph?”
“Lie detector test,” I say. I crawl down onto the floor next to him. “The police have a machine that can tell if you’re lying.”
He looks worried, then asks, “Why did Pastor Charlie have to take a lie detector test?”
“Robber, bud, don’t worry about it,” Mr. Hathaway says. “He’s just helping them find Jody.”
“Oh.”
“I’m gonna…,” I say, not bothering to finish the sentence as I get up and head for the basement.
“Sam?” Mrs. Hathaway calls after me. But what can she say? I just heard, along with the whole town, that my dad had to take a test to prove he didn’t do something awful to Jody. I stop halfway down the stairs, realizing that Melinda Ford didn’t say anything about the test results. Then my imagination goes wild and by the time I punch my dad’s number into my cell, I’m picturing him in police custody, and all this is the real reason he sent me to live here.
He answers on the first ring. “Sam. I was just about to call you.”
“I didn’t have a chance. I didn’t know—”
“You didn’t have a chance? We spent like an hour in the car together today.”
“Honey, I didn’t think it would get out. It was supposed to be confidential.”
“Well, it isn’t. Now everyone knows.” I wonder if Mom saw the news report. And if she did, would that be the kind of thing that would make it hard for her to come home.
“Let me explain,” Dad says. He sounds as urgent as I feel, and that makes me sit on the stair and listen. “The police asked everyone close to Jody’s family to voluntarily eliminate themselves, just to give them some things to check off their list, no stone unturned.”
“Why couldn’t they say that on the news?”
“They don’t like to tell the media very much if they think it could hurt the investigation. That’s just how it works.”
I wait for him to say it, but when he doesn’t, I ask, “Well, did they? Eliminate you?”
He laughs in a big, relieved burst of breath. “Yes. Sam, yes.”
“Dad. I want to come home.”
He doesn’t say anything.
I rephrase it. “I need to come home, Dad,” and squint my eyes shut, afraid of his answer.
When he finally says, “Okay,” I stand up and go straight to my duffel bag, ready to pack.
“Can you come get me right now?”
“Yes.”
It’s the first real yes I’ve had in a long time.