The pastor showed up as he always did when something happened with Davy’s case, even though the Malcor family had not attended church in years. Thaddeus said something brief but polite to the man, then sought shelter in the backyard.
He stood alone in the dewy grass and inhaled great gulps of the cool morning air, his mind a jumble of thoughts, his heart clenching with what he knew were the beginning pangs of grief. In a way, he had been grieving his brother for over two decades, but the true grief began when the sheriff and that skittish woman showed up at their door, bearing news bad enough to warrant pulling sleeping people from warm beds.
He concentrated on breathing in and out, in and out, doing his best to ignore the headache he’d woken with thanks to the countless beers he’d pounded the night before. Slowly, the night came back to him in flashes, ending with him sitting in the car beside Larkin after she’d driven them home. He remembered talking to her but couldn’t remember everything they’d said. He didn’t think he’d said too much; he didn’t have that nagging feeling he’d had after his night with Nicole. At least there was that.
As much as he’d prefer to think about the night before—the last night, it would turn out, his family would ever carry the scrap of hope that Davy was alive—the words the sheriff said reasserted themselves.
Davy was dead. They’d found his body. Gordon Swift, the man they’d long suspected, was being brought in for more questioning because of evidence found with Davy’s body. There would be a press conference. They were expected to be there. They wanted someone from the family to make a statement.
Without an ounce of hubris, he knew all eyes would be on him at that press conference because of his book, and he wished writing a memoir had never crossed his mind. He thought back to when he’d had the idea. He’d gone to a writer’s conference, paid one thousand dollars to spend a weekend with other writers trying to be published. The workshop leader, a writer of some renown, had asked her students what haunted them. When they were alone and quiet, she’d asked, what thoughts came back to them?
The answer for him, of course, was plain. He’d planned to spend that weekend working on his novel about a man rebuilding his life after being cut from a Major League Baseball team. Instead he’d written about Davy. At the end of the weekend he’d read what he’d written aloud to their little group, and afterward the writer of some renown had encouraged him to “see where it led.”
He looked around at the irony of where it had led him, which was right back to the place he’d hoped his writing would take him away from. What had ever made him think that putting himself at the center of his brother’s story was a good idea? Because, he realized now, he’d held on to the false security that Davy would stay missing and never be found. He’d banked on Davy remaining a mystery forever with Thaddeus existing safely inside that mystery. He cradled his aching head in his hands and closed his eyes. In the blackness of his mind, Davy was there, as he always was.
“Will you throw the baseball with me, TJ? I need to practice before Little League starts.”
“Wanna see me juggle? I can keep three balls in the air at once! Soon it’ll be four!”
“I saw you with Larkin. You like her, don’t you? Do you wanna kiss her? That’s gross.”
“Please let me go with you, TJ. I don’t want to stay here with Kristy. She’s a baby. I won’t bother you and your friends, I promise. Mom said I could.”
He squeezed his eyes tightly together, as if the act would banish Davy from his mind. But Davy persisted, just like he always did. Davy was gone but not gone, haunting him, forever his eleven-year-old kid brother, forever asking things of him he hadn’t been willing to give and now, it was official, never would.
The sound of a child laughing interrupted him and he thought for a panicky moment that Davy was there. He opened his eyes, half expecting to see the ghost of his brother in front of him. But there was no one. Had he imagined the laughter? He scanned the yard, and a pink blur caught his eye. Then, running after it, a blue blur.
He blinked, and Larkin and a little girl who looked just like her came into focus as they approached.
“Hi,” the little girl said. Larkin had told him her name last night, but he’d either forgotten it or not really paid attention in the first place. Truth be told, he wasn’t super interested in the child Larkin had with another man.
“Hi,” he said, hoping it wasn’t obvious that he’d been having an existential moment just before they showed up.
Larkin rushed forward and took the little girl’s hand. “Ok, Audrey, you’ve said hello. Now let’s leave him alone.” She attempted to pull the child away, but Audrey—that was her name—didn’t budge.
“What’s your name?” the little girl asked, a challenge in her voice like she was daring him to answer. She had wispy blonde hair that was escaping from a ponytail and bright blue eyes that, he could tell, missed nothing.
“Thaddeus,” he said, smiling in what he hoped was a reassuring way. “And you’re Audrey.”
The girl nodded proudly. “Audrey Marie Simmons. My middle name is after my grandma.” She turned and pointed at the house next door. “That’s where my grandma lives.” She turned back. “What’s your middle name?”
“Oh, Audrey, for heaven’s sakes, it’s early and Thaddeus has probably just woken up,” Larkin said. She threw Thaddeus an apologetic look. “I know I have.” She pointed at her daughter. “Someone escaped while I was trying to make us some breakfast.” She looked down at her attire helplessly. Both she and the kid were wearing pajamas.
“I want to know his middle name first,” Audrey argued.
“I don’t see why it matters,” Larkin argued back, and Thaddeus had a good idea how their days went in the house next door, engaged in a battle of wills, waiting for the day they could go home. For a moment he pitied Larkin. It felt good to pity someone besides himself.
“I just want to know.” Audrey crossed her arms and looked from her mother to Thaddeus.
Larkin’s sigh in response sounded like half exhaustion, half surrender. She looked at him. “I’m afraid my mother has been putting a lot of emphasis on middle names because Audrey’s middle name is her name, and apparently she never wants Audrey to forget it.” She widened her eyes as if to say, “Please just play along.”
He smiled. “My middle name is James,” he told Audrey as Larkin mouthed, “Thank you.” She seemed so grateful, so he kept talking. “When I was a little kid, everyone called me by my initials, TJ, for Thaddeus James. And my brother”—his voice caught at the mention of Davy, but he made himself finish—“My brother’s name was David Joel. At first my parents thought they’d call us TJ and DJ. But that turned out to be way too confusing. So they ended up just calling him Davy.”
Tears pricked his eyes and he swallowed hard against the knot in his throat. He looked over to find Larkin staring at him, a wary look on her face.
“I bet you didn’t know that,” he said to Larkin. For a moment it was like they were back in that dark car, just the two of them.
She shook her head and reached to pull her daughter closer, the mention of Davy probably reminding her that bad things can happen to innocents. When she met his eyes, her own were shining with unshed tears.
“Audrey,” she said. “Why don’t you run inside and see if Grandma is up yet.”
“If she’s not, can I wake her?” Audrey looked up at her mom, and he could feel the love that passed between the two, superseding the bickering.
“Sure,” said Larkin. She gave Audrey a gentle push toward her house, and thankfully, this time the child didn’t protest but scampered off, singing to herself as she ran.
“What happened?” Larkin asked, her voice barely audible.
He both loved and hated that she knew something significant had happened, something more than the jacket that had summoned him home. Maybe she’d seen the pastor arrive and put two and two together, or maybe it was the way he’d just spoken of Davy, but she didn’t need to be told. He hadn’t had to spell it out for her. She knew him. She always had.
“The sheriff was here,” he told her, working to control his voice. “They found him.” Her hand flew to her mouth and her eyes widened. The tears she’d been holding back fell freely.
She stepped forward, erasing the space between them as she reached for him in much the same way she had reached for her daughter, reflexively, protectively. He let her take him into her arms and sank into the comfort he hadn’t known he was looking for when he ran from the room where he’d learned that his lost brother had finally been found.
October 12, 1985
8:30 p.m.
The white wine has grown warm in her hands, yet Tabby makes no effort to refresh it as she half listens to the small talk made by the women surrounding her and half surveys the clusters of people dotted around the Myerses’ house. She’s reached the stage in the night where her head hums pleasantly, her senses satisfactorily dulled by the wine so that everything matters and nothing matters at the same time. She feels free and unfettered yet bound to those she loves. And at that moment, she loves everyone—her friends, her neighbors, her children, her husband.
More than once she’s caught Danny’s eye, thrilling a little when he winks at her from across the room, a fantasy playing out in her mind of going home to find the kids tucked in their beds, fast asleep, then hurrying to their room. She will, she decides, perform a slow striptease for him once they get behind their own locked door. Normally she shucks off her clothes and dives under the covers so he can’t see her post-childbirth body. But not tonight, she promises herself. Tonight she will be brave. She will stand naked before him. She will leave the lights on, even.
“Don’t you think, Tabby?” Marie is asking. Tabby turns toward the sound of her name, caught in the midst of her little fantasy.
“Sorry, what?” she asks her best friend, the woman she’d been fortunate enough to move next door to. When she first arrived in Wynotte, Tabby had felt displaced, homesick, a simmering anger at Danny constantly burbling under her skin for moving her far from her home and family in Ohio. How had she ended up in the South, of all places, where people said “ma’am” and “y’all” with no sense of irony, where a vowel was stretched to two syllables without an ounce of shame?
She’d hated it, but then she’d met Marie, who’d made it bearable. In the years they’ve been next-door neighbors, this place has become home. She shudders at the thought of going back to Ohio, with its gray, cold winters, to her family of origin, who no longer understand her. Geography, Tabby knows now, matters. Geography can change everything.
“Please don’t tell me you’re fantasizing about going home with Danny after this,” Marie says. “The last thing y’all need is another baby.”
Tabby pretends to hit her friend. “Don’t you dare wish that on me when I’m finally getting my life back. This is the first time I’ve been out of the house with makeup on in weeks.”
Marie laughs. “Well, it shows. You two are like a coupla kids.” She elbows Tabby. “Just look at Danny over there. He might be standing with Jim and those guys, but he can’t keep his eyes off you.” At once four pairs of eyes seek out Danny across the room. Caught ogling his own wife, he looks away, but not before they all break out in laughter.
“I’d be amazed if Jim has looked over here at me even once tonight,” Marie says. Tabby starts to argue with her friend—Marie and Jim have what anyone would deem a good marriage, even if it isn’t necessarily a sexually charged one.
Before she can speak, Belinda Watts cuts in. “I’d be amazed if Ted remembered I was here at all.” Which results in more laughter.
As the others launch into complaining about their husbands, Marie whispers in Tabby’s ear, “Face it, kid, you’re lucky” and gives her shoulder a squeeze.
Tabby nods even as a lump forms in her throat. She recalls the scene before they left home: the boys fighting, Kristy covered in ketchup, her yelling at everyone. She’d forgotten, that’s all. She’d forgotten how lucky she is.
From across the room Tabby waits to catch Danny’s eye once more, then she gives him a wink, vowing to herself she won’t forget again.