Tabitha knew that to anyone standing near them, she appeared to be intently focused on the search taking place. In reality, while she wanted to keep her mind on what was happening, her thoughts kept returning to Thaddeus.
He had outright refused to go with them to the site, claiming he had a call with someone or other about the book. Tabitha knew that was just an excuse. She’d said as much to him, her decibel level rising in tandem with her frustration, then stomped off to shelter in her room until it was time to go.
When Anissa had arrived to transport them to the site, Daniel had said goodbye to Thaddeus, but she, nursing her anger, had not. She made a mental note to add that to her regret list. She knew better than to leave someone she loved without a proper goodbye. But Thaddeus could get under her skin like no one else.
Watching as strangers searched for her lost son, she wondered why she could not make peace with the one who was still there. Something stood in the way, but she could not seem to name it. It seemed that she and Thaddeus would forever stand on opposite sides of whatever it was.
Someone tapped her on the shoulder and she turned, thinking it was Anissa, but Anissa was still behind the tape where they weren’t allowed. Instead Tabitha saw a face that seemed familiar but she couldn’t quite place it.
“Yes?” she asked the young man.
“Mrs. Malcor,” he said. “It’s me, Phillip Laney.”
She blinked as two Phillip Laneys merged in her mind. One was Thaddeus’s childhood friend who always seemed to be in her kitchen eating her food, and this other one, the grown-up version. She could see how the one had become the other. Still handsome, but he’d gone a little bit soft. All that eating must’ve caught up to him.
“Daniel,” she said. “Look who it is.” Daniel turned to greet Phillip, then turned back to the search, watching it like he watched football. As if someone was going to score or fumble, win or lose.
She wanted to ask Phillip why he was there. For that matter, she wanted to ask all the onlookers why they were there. She knew why she was there. She was Davy’s mother, and they were looking for Davy. Strangers’ fascination with her son’s disappearance never failed to surprise her.
Phillip glanced around. “Did Thaddeus come?”
“No,” Tabitha said. “He had an important call he had to be on.”
Phillip looked disappointed. “Oh, well, I’m glad I saw you guys.” He shrugged. “I’m seeing Thaddeus tonight anyway.”
“Yes,” Tabitha said. “He mentioned that.” They both stood silently for a moment as Tabitha wondered how to extricate herself from the conversation.
“It was nice of you to come,” she said.
“I felt like I should. I mean, I don’t know if you remember or not, but I was there.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then added, “I mean, that night.”
Tabitha nodded. Of course she remembered.
Phillip continued, “I guess there are things that happen to you as a kid that, you know, stay with you. Like no matter how old you get and how many other things happen, there are some things you just don’t, or can’t, forget.” His eyes flickered over to the team of people searching, then back to her. “That night was like that for me.”
“I understand,” Tabitha said.
Phillip nodded grimly. He looked toward the makeshift parking lot that had been created on a bare patch of land.
“Well, I better get back to work.”
Tabitha nodded. He turned back to face her.
“It was good to see you,” he said.
“You too,” she said, meaning it. She gave him a little wave and turned back to watch the search, thinking of all that had been altered that night, to whatever degree. It was easy to make Davy’s loss her own, to forget how the ripples of that night spread out and out and out. She looked around her at the people gathered, wondering if any of them were there because, like Phillip, that night meant something to them.
Beside her Daniel hummed softly, a tic that showed up whenever he was uncomfortable. The noise was almost inaudible, barely more than the sound of someone inhaling and exhaling. Tabitha doubted anyone else could hear it. But she knew to listen for it. She’d asked him about it long ago and he’d looked at her blankly. “I was humming?”
She’d smiled and nodded. That had been long before Davy went missing. They’d been at one of her pregnancy appointments for Kristyn, back when men were first getting involved with the birth process, and Daniel wasn’t sure that was a good idea.
“What was I humming?” he’d asked.
She’d laughed. “It’s so faint, I can’t tell.”
He’d grinned and started to hum for real, picking a tune at random, one that had played in the car as they’d driven to the doctor, “Keep on Loving You.” But he hadn’t. Or she hadn’t. They hadn’t.
After Davy, it was just too hard. In her experience, once a heart had broken, it never loved quite the same again. They’d given what love they could to their remaining children with little to nothing left over for each other. It happened all the time in cases like theirs. In the end it was easier to succumb to the statistics.
There’d been no big blowup. The end had come like a fire dying. The coals just grew colder and colder.
She glanced over at Daniel, wanting to tell him he was humming. She wondered if he would remember that scene from the doctor’s office so long ago. She doubted it. Still, she quietly hummed a few bars of “Keep on Loving You” to herself, her voice soft, so soft she doubted anyone could hear.
* * *
After Anissa had gone home for the night, Thaddeus left to meet Phillip Laney, and Daniel went next door to help Marie fetch her granddaughter’s tiny plastic doll from a sink drain. Tabitha sat in her house alone, appreciating the silence and stillness. She peered through the front window and watched the last of the press pack up to go home for the night.
There had been no new news since the jacket was found. If something else wasn’t found soon, they’d pack up and leave for good. One could only hope. A police car drove by patrolling, as it would every half hour, twenty-four hours a day, until this blew over.
As the cruiser’s taillights faded, her mind went to her regret list for the coming week. Though she would no doubt have many, she wondered if they would be worth writing down. Doing so never seemed to change anything. Was it time to stop the weekly ritual? The regret list, after all, had not put a stop to—or even ebbed, for that matter—her regretting. It never touched the biggest regrets, the ones that lingered no matter how many times she wrote “Je ne regrette rien!”
Through the window, in the failing light, she could make out Daniel emerging from Marie’s house and trekking back over to the home they once shared. He gripped a toolbox he’d left behind when he moved out and never bothered to come back for. Despite the gathering darkness, she could see that he wore a satisfied smile, which meant he’d been able to fix Marie’s problem. Daniel took great satisfaction in fixing other people’s problems, especially when he couldn’t fix his own.
She studied his expression and wondered the same thing she’d wondered for so much of their marriage: What are you thinking? The question made her think of the awful year after they’d started a hotline for people to call in with leads after the police had moved on to other solvable cases. Many nights she awoke to the sound of Daniel’s muffled voice on the other side of the house as he talked to strangers, one in particular. He shared what he was thinking then. Just not with Tabitha.
The woman had phoned initially to say she was a psychic with information about Davy. He was safe, she claimed, abducted by a woman who’d lost her own son. He was living on a farm, doing the chores of the dead boy. He wanted to come home, but he was being fed, his basic needs met. So, while Davy wasn’t happy, he was alive. They should hold on to hope, she said, that Davy would be found, that in short order he would return to them.
Every few weeks, the psychic would call with some new image that had come to her: Davy beside a tractor with dirt smeared on his cheeks; Davy with a cut on his hand, rinsing it with a hand pump at an old-fashioned well; Davy washing dishes at a large farmhouse sink, gruel-like oatmeal slipping out of a bowl and into a drain. Daniel had relayed all of this to the police, who promised to investigate. But the psychic’s claims never led anywhere, and Tabitha wrote her off as a crackpot.
Daniel, however, needed the hope, needed the psychic’s visions of his son rather than the more likely ending the police had tried to prepare them for. He preferred her version of Davy’s fate, and he went out in search of it, traveling to farms and land farther and farther out, traipsing all over the countryside. He would turn down long, winding dirt driveways and knock on farmhouse doors, sometimes being chased away by big angry dogs, sometimes being met with a gun, but other times being given a seat at the table and served a piece of pie.
By day he searched and by night he told the psychic what he’d seen. The psychic encouraged him to keep looking. She assured him Davy was out there, while Tabitha, with all her practical stoicism, worked on accepting that Davy was likely never coming home.
Had Daniel had an affair? Not physically, no. But emotionally, yes. At least as far as Tabitha had been concerned. Daniel had opted to reach out to the woman who shared his views instead of the one who shared his bed. Funny how that could hurt her even now, all these years later, long after the incident was over. In the end, to Daniel, the psychic had been a fraud, but to Tabitha she’d been a thief.
Daniel entered the house and she arranged her face to disguise what she’d just been thinking.
“I guess you were able to fix it,” she said to the man who had once been her husband, her tone pleasant, scrubbed clean of any lingering resentment.
Daniel smiled the smile he gave when he was proud of himself.
“Good as new,” he answered.
October 12, 1985
7:42 p.m.
The games are in full force when Davy makes it back to where the other kids are. He sees that teams have already been chosen, sides clearly drawn. He missed his chance to play when he went to show TJ the rock. Stupid TJ and his stupid friends, thinking they’re so cool—too cool for shiny rocks and little kids. Maybe he’ll tell his parents about the plastic bag full of lumps, about how mean TJ was, and get TJ in trouble.
Davy stands outside of the group of kids, looking in as he debates whether to get on his bike and pedal home without telling TJ he’s leaving. Let him worry. He imagines TJ searching the fields, calling his name, panic mounting. He imagines TJ having to tell their parents he lost him. A smile creeps onto Davy’s face as he savors that scenario. It would serve his brother right.
He looks over to see a girl standing several feet away, also on the fringe of the action, smiling back at him. She gives him a little wave and begins walking toward him. Davy realizes she probably thinks his smile was meant for her. He gulps, recognition dawning as she draws closer.
She’s the new girl in his class. He’s heard the other girls making fun of her on the playground, pretending to be the Peanuts character who talks about her “naturally curly hair” as she pats her curls. To be fair, the girl’s hair is quite curly. The other kids, while not exactly nice, aren’t wrong. The mass of it bobs as she walks, coils springing from her head in all directions. He’s never seen someone with hair as riotous as hers. He kind of likes it, though he’d never admit that out loud.
She comes to stand beside him, and he panics at the thought of speaking to her. As a rule, Davy doesn’t talk to girls. Not if he can help it. TJ has told him it won’t stay that way much longer, but he still firmly believes girls have cooties.
“You’re Davy, right?” the girl asks.
Internally, Davy blanches. She knows his name? He nods, his voice no longer accessible to him.
She points to herself and says, “I’m Anissa.” The action reminds him of the black-and-white Tarzan movies that come on Channel 18 on Saturday afternoons: “Me, Tarzan. You, Jane.” He bites back a smile and nods again.
Behind her the games continue. They are playing red rover, two lines stretching across the field, a human chain. Davy is actually glad he was too late to join this game; the impact of the bodies always hurts his arms. He tries to recall the names of the arm bones. They learned all the major bones of the body in science class last year. Davy likes science. His dad says maybe he can major in it someday. Maybe he could even be a doctor. The problem with being a doctor, though, is he doesn’t like the sight of blood.
Davy and the girl stand side by side quietly watching the game as Davy wonders how to get away from her. The night stretches out in front of him, a long inky ribbon of boredom waving like a banner. He can’t just stand around watching other kids play all night. Yet he isn’t sure he should leave without telling someone. But he doesn’t dare go back to TJ and his friends.
The girl points at the game. “You got here too late too?” She pulls a mournful face.
“Sorta,” Davy says. He doesn’t want to explain the whole story to the girl with the bouncing curls. It’s too embarrassing to admit how much his brother doesn’t want him around, how his parents abandoned him to go to a stupid party, how his only other choice this evening was to stay at home with a babysitter and his little sister.
“Do you live around here?” the girl asks. She seems determined to get him to talk.
He points to where the road in front of the farm forks off in the general direction of his neighborhood.
“Over that way,” he says. “I rode my bike.” A moment of silence passes before he realizes he should ask her if she lives nearby. She might live in his neighborhood, he supposes, but he doesn’t think so. He knows pretty much everyone in his neighborhood, including the dogs and some of the cats.
“You?” he asks.
She turns and points toward where he left his bike. “See those houses, on the other side of the street?”
Davy nods. He’s always wondered about the people who live in those tiny homes; mostly he’s wondered who would ever want to. They’re old, run-down houses with mud for yards, missing shingles, and tiny front porches that slope into the ground. His father called it “migrant housing.” But Davy doesn’t know what a migrant is.
“I live in that middle one,” she says.
“Oh.” He works hard to keep any pity out of his voice, to find something nice to say in response. “That’s pretty close to where I live,” he adds. “You can’t see it from here, but mine’s over there.” He uses his finger to draw a line in the sky from her house, as a bird would fly, to where his house is tucked away around the bend and out of sight.
“We just moved here,” she explains, and he wonders if she’s embarrassed about where she lives. He would be. “My mom got a new job. She says this house is temporary. That once she gets a few paychecks we’ll get something better. We had to move here because she broke up with her boyfriend, Les. Les used to take care of us, but now, since they broke up, he doesn’t anymore. So she has to make her own way.”
She heaves a world-weary sigh. “It’s hard to be a single mother and take care of two kids.” She glances over at Davy with wide eyes. “I have an older sister.” She points at the house again. “She’s in there right now, waiting on some boy to call her. She was supposed to make popcorn and watch a movie with me, but noooo.”
“So who invited you here?” he asks.
She presses her lips together and thinks about it, then laughs. “Well, no one.”
Davy’s eyes are saucers. “I don’t think I could do that.”
“Do what?”
“Just come over here without an invitation,” he says.
She shrugs. “It was better than sitting at home waiting on my sister to stop waiting for the phone to ring.” She nudges him with her elbow. “And hey, look, I already made a friend.”
Embarrassed, he ducks his head, hoping she doesn’t get the wrong idea and think he likes her or something. TJ told him it was easy for girls to get the wrong idea. TJ was talking about Larkin, of course, though he would never admit it. TJ and Larkin used to be friends, but he doesn’t think that’s true anymore.
TJ doesn’t know Davy saw them kissing after Kristy’s birthday party last week. He’d been headed outside to find out what Larkin thought about his juggling performance. And there they’d been, their bodies mashed up against each other, their mouths pressed together. It had been so gross that Davy had felt the birthday cake in his stomach go sour. He’d hurried away before they saw him watching.
“What’s your name again?” Davy asks, because he has forgotten it already.
“Anissa,” she says and does not scold him for forgetting, which he appreciates.
He nods once and says it aloud. “Anissa.” Now he will remember. They stand silently and watch the games, the batch of kids spilling out across the field.
“What is this place anyway?” Anissa asks.
“It used to be a farm, but I don’t think it is anymore,” Davy says.
“How come?”
Davy shakes his head. “I think the farmer died. Or something.” He stretches out his arms. “When we first moved here, all these fields were planted. There was stuff growing everywhere. Corn mostly, but other stuff too. Once, over there”—he points to his right, to the farthest field away, down closer to the farmer’s house—“They grew cotton. I didn’t even know you could grow cotton! I thought they made it in factories!” He drops his arms and shakes his head. “Now there’s nothing.”
Anissa shakes her head along with him. “It’s like that John Cougar Mellencamp song, ‘Blood on the Scarecrow.’” She raises her eyebrows. “Have you heard it?”
Davy isn’t sure he has. The only music he’s been listening to lately is his cassette tape of the Back to the Future soundtrack. But he nods like he has, then changes the subject.
“The old lady—the farmer’s wife?—still lives there,” he says. “I think.” He points in the same direction where the cotton once grew. “Her house is way back there. Once, TJ—that’s my older brother—and I rode our bikes all the way down the lane that goes right up to the house.” He takes his finger and traces where the lane starts up by the main road, following the path down to where he can barely make out the roof of the big house in the distance. His throat feels tight at the memory, not because of what they did but because it was a time when TJ didn’t mind doing things with him.
“TJ said we were trespassing, that we could get arrested.”
Anissa widens her eyes at this and he nods, then grins.
“But we did it anyway.”
Anissa’s eyes light up. “Let’s go see,” she says. Together they stare out into the distance toward where the big old house sits, a grand house where danger could lurk. He shivers a little at the thought, but he can’t look like a wimp in front of this girl, especially considering she’s the one who suggested it.
“It’s kinda far away,” he tries to hedge. “And it’s pretty dark. I mean, there’s not much of a moon tonight. You know, to guide us.”
Anissa squints up at the sky. “It’s a crescent,” she says, pointing at the sliver.
“Like I said, it’s not much,” he says again, hoping he’s talked her out of it.
She puts her hand on her hip. “You’d rather stand around here doing nothing?”
“We could get arrested for trespassing.” He doesn’t feel as safe attempting something risky at night with this girl as he did with TJ in broad daylight. “It’s against the law.”
He looks toward the farmer’s house, then fleetingly in the direction of where his brother and his friends are. Then he looks over at the other kids. Red rover has broken up and they seem to be chasing each other around with no rhyme or reason. If they stay, he and Anissa could get in on the next game.
Or they could get left out again.
“Come on,” she beckons with her whole arm. “Live a little.”
When she starts walking, Davy doesn’t see that he has much choice but to follow.