Tabitha crossed the yard between the two houses that had stood side by side for decades, as had the two families who lived in the houses. She had to warn Marie about what was happening. She spotted someone sitting on the screened porch that stretched along the back of the house. With the news about Davy, she’d almost forgotten that Marie’s daughter, Larkin, and granddaughter had arrived just days ago.
She tugged the porch door open, startling Larkin, who was sitting at the table with a computer open in front of her. Larkin turned, hand on chest, her large blue eyes blinking rapidly.
“Sorry to scare you,” Tabitha said. “I just came over to talk to your mother.” She moved closer and squinted at the computer in front of Larkin. A handsome man’s face filled the screen, his expression a mixture of confusion and concern.
“Is this your husband? On the computer?” Technological advances never failed to mystify—and slightly concern—her. “In . . . real life?”
“Yes,” Larkin said with a little laugh that sounded more sad than happy. “The army set it up so we could talk to each other while he’s deployed.” She sighed. “It’s not the same, of course. But it’s better than nothing.”
Tabitha bent closer and waved at the man on the screen. “Hi, Tyler.” She touched her chest with her hand. “You probably don’t remember me, but I’m Tabitha Malcor, Marie’s next-door neighbor. I was at your wedding.”
“Oh, sure,” Larkin’s husband said, though Tabitha doubted he actually remembered her from the single handshake in the receiving line.
Tabitha had always hoped Larkin and Thaddeus would grow up and get married, but that was not to be. There was a brief spark between the two when they were teens, filling both her and Marie with the crazy hope of shared grandchildren someday. They would daydream about imaginary youngsters traipsing back and forth between their grandmothers’ homes, each already declaring herself to be the favorite grandma who baked the best cookies. But after Davy disappeared, Thaddeus seemed to lose interest in Larkin, in a lot of things.
The thought of Thaddeus made her heart rate increase all over again. The nerve of him, saying he didn’t have time to come home when a family crisis was happening. He was needed! But Thaddeus wasn’t good at being needed.
“I’ll just let you guys get on with your conversation,” she said to Larkin and Tyler. They’d gotten the news of his deployment right around the time they called in hospice for her father, Jim. The timing wasn’t fair, two losses in swift succession. A lot of things in life weren’t fair. If Tabitha knew anything, she knew that.
“Is your mother inside?” she asked, even though she knew the answer already.
“Yes,” Larkin said. “But Audrey’s sleeping, if you could try to be quiet.” She winced a little as she said it. Audrey was Larkin’s four-year-old daughter, a spitfire if ever there was one, and part of the reason Larkin was staying with Marie—to have help since she was newly pregnant and dealing with morning sickness.
Tabitha gave a quick nod of understanding and stepped inside the cool dimness of the house, its scent distinct. She would know this smell anywhere. She could be blindfolded and instantly know that this odd combination of cloves and lemon Pledge and Jim’s lingering cologne (Polo—a gift from Larkin in the ’80s that she kept giving him right up until his last Christmas) was the exact scent of her next-door neighbor’s house. It felt to Tabitha like coming home, or next to home, as it was.
She paused to take a moment before she went to tell Marie what had happened. To warn her? Prepare her? Tabitha didn’t know. Already the press was gathering at her house, knocking on the door, then when turned away, forming their little encampments, if not in her yard, then near it. That sweet girl from the police department was over there now trying to tell her how to handle things, as if Tabitha didn’t already know the drill.
Marie came bustling into the kitchen and jumped at the sight of Tabitha standing by the door. “Good gracious, you startled me! I expected you to be Larkin!” she exclaimed, clutching at her chest.
“Just me,” Tabitha said. She took a step toward Marie, furrowing her brow as a warning that what she’d come to speak about was serious. So much of what they spoke about was serious these days. She missed when they used to have fun, when they used to laugh. She missed being lighthearted. She could no longer remember a time when her heart didn’t weigh a thousand pounds.
“What’s happened?” Marie asked, her brow now furrowed as well.
Tabitha looked over her shoulder, her eyes scanning the kitchen window, which looked out at the Malcor house. Sometimes after Davy had gone missing, she would look out her window and watch Marie wash dishes in her own kitchen. She would wish she was Marie with her one placid daughter, her humdrum life, untouched by tragedy. Now she turned back to Marie.
“The circus is back in town.”
That was what they’d called it back then, when Davy went missing, when the media descended on them with their prying eyes and invasive equipment and feet trampling the grass with no regard for whose property was whose. Marie and Jim had gotten as good as Daniel and Tabitha at running them off, shouting at them from their open front doors to please go away, to leave them in peace. As if peace would come if the press left, as if that was all it would take.
Every few years when there was news of Davy, it happened again. People, it seemed, would always be interested in her missing son. She remembered something suddenly: Thaddeus, back when he was still called TJ, charging at a reporter like an angry bull, screaming as he ran, “Leave us alone!” She wondered if he had put that episode in his book. Tabitha wouldn’t know. She’d never read past the first few chapters. She often wondered if that made her a bad mother. (For the record, she had included it on her regret list the week she’d closed the book and put it away.)
“They found his jacket,” she said. “There’s a police spokesperson already at the house to handle the vultures.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Or try to.”
“The jacket?” Marie asked.
Tabitha nodded. Marie had gone with her to the fabric store to help her look for a paisley that would be a close match to the paisley on Marty McFly’s Back to the Future denim jacket cuff. They’d been so overjoyed to find something that worked, they’d done a little dance in the aisle, the two of them in on the birthday surprise they knew would delight a certain little boy. Davy, the sweeter of her two sons, the one who was easiest to love.
“Where?” Marie’s voice had nearly left her from the shock.
“The old Oxendine place. Some developer finally bought it. Decided to walk the property after he closed on it, and . . . there it was.”
“Just lying out in the open?” Marie’s voice was barely more than a squeak.
“No. In some old outbuilding that I guess was never searched. One of the many places they neglected to look.” Tabitha felt heat in her cheeks. Old anger rose within her at the thought of the botched investigation into Davy’s disappearance, the cops’ lack of follow-through, their insistence that he’d run away or gotten lost, that they had nothing to worry about and he’d turn up, all while precious time was lost.
“Never searched . . .” Marie echoed. And Tabitha knew what she was thinking because she had already had the same thought. If Davy’s jacket was there, was he also?
“They’ve started a search,” she said. “A proper one this time.” Marie crossed herself, a reflex that seemed fitting.
“Have you spoken to Daniel?” Marie asked.
Tabitha nodded. “He’s coming over.” She shrugged as if it was nothing. “The police would like us to be together, just to keep us informed of what’s going on as efficiently as possible.”
Marie raised her eyebrows. “Well, that won’t be awkward at all,” she said, then smiled.
Tabitha couldn’t help but smile in response. It would be awkward having Daniel back in the house they once shared, a house he hadn’t lived in for over fifteen years. They’d limped along for five painful years after Davy went missing, their determination to stay together ebbing with each passing year. By the time they threw in the towel, it was a mere formality. He started traveling extensively for work, any excuse to stay away. And when he was home, she often slept in Davy’s bed.
They’d handled the grief so differently that it had rendered them different people. People neither of them knew anymore. She thought of his voice on the phone earlier, tight and guarded, as if she was a stranger, which, she supposed, she was. That they would be stuck together waiting for news of the child they both lost only added to the stress of an immensely stressful situation. But what choice did they have? She only hoped he didn’t bring his girlfriend; she was thankful he didn’t have a wife.
“Well, you can hide out here anytime you need a break. I’ll be right here,” Marie said. Her voice shook and Tabitha saw that her eyes shone with unshed tears. Marie wasn’t just her neighbor; she was her best friend, the one person other than Daniel who’d walked through all of this since the beginning. Marie had been by her side when they got the call that Davy was missing. And there she had stayed.
Tabitha pointed a finger at her old friend. “Don’t start,” she admonished. Even as she said it, she could feel the prick of her own tears trying to collect. She blinked them away.
The back door opened and Larkin entered the kitchen, which made it as good a time as any for Tabitha to take her leave.
“Well, I better get back over there. I left that girl Pete Lancaster sent over all alone in the house.”
Tabitha didn’t really want the girl there—didn’t want to feel the constant need to entertain her—but there hadn’t been a choice. The girl’s job, as Pete had explained it, was to update them on new information and serve as a buffer between them and the media. They’d never sent someone over to sit with them, which told Tabitha this time was different from the others. The other times had never lasted more than a day—a sighting quickly proven to be mistaken identity, a confession from a prisoner revealed to be a hoax in a matter of hours, a de rigueur story on the anniversary of the disappearance. Usually the press showed up, then left just as quickly as they’d come.
“It’s not like I haven’t done this before,” she tossed over her shoulder as she headed for the door.
Tabitha had been elected the family spokesperson from the beginning. She’d done the talking on TV and radio and on panels and once in front of Congress. Until Thaddeus wrote that book, she’d been the only one of them to speak publicly about Davy. Daniel had refused, claiming stage fright. But someone had to tell Davy’s story. And now she would do it again. She could feel the heavy mantle of responsibility settling back on her shoulders, weighing her down as she said her goodbyes, exited Marie’s house, and made her way back across their yards.
At some point she crossed the line that delineated where one yard ended and the other began. But damned if she knew where it was.
October 12, 1985
6:03 p.m.
TJ stands in the driveway and waves goodbye to his parents and Larkin, balancing his bike against his hip as he waits for Davy to come out of the house so they can ride the short distance to the field where Phillip and the other guys are waiting. TJ just has to ignore the creeping guilt he feels for not being completely honest with his parents about their plans for tonight.
Their plans aren’t that bad, he reassures himself. They’re just going to try beer. It’s no worse than Phillip looking at the Playboy magazines he hides under his bed. It’s just one of those things teenagers do. And TJ is a teenager. He has been for two years, and this is the first time he’s done anything that would qualify as teen rebellion.
He is not, he justifies to himself as the birds start to sing their goodbyes to the sun, a bad person. And if you get right down to it, he hasn’t actually lied. Still, he hears his mother’s voice as if she is standing right beside him and not on her way to a party: “A lie of omission is still a lie, Thaddeus James.”
He looks back over his shoulder at the house and wonders what’s keeping Davy. A trickle of sweat snakes down his back, landing in the waistband of his shorts. Though it’s October, it’s still hot outside. His mother has complained about the heat, saying she wants to make soups and casseroles, fall comfort foods, like she used to do back in Ohio at this time of year. But since they live in the South, that has to wait till much later when it finally does get cold. His mother rarely seems to miss Ohio, but she does miss having a real fall. TJ knows this because she says it all the time.
The door opens and TJ huffs his displeasure at being kept waiting. “Finally,” he says, turning to see that it’s not Davy but Larkin emerging from the house with Kristy by her side. His heart’s rhythm goes from a whole note to an eighth note just at the sight of her. When he kissed her last week, the beat went to a sixteenth note. He hadn’t known a heart could go that fast without passing out or dying. TJ learned about music stuff from his grandpa, who died a year ago, and who he misses but doesn’t like to talk about.
Seeing TJ standing there, Larkin stops short, shifting awkwardly as she points to Kristy. “She wanted to come look for lightning bugs,” she says, answering a question TJ didn’t ask. TJ wonders if Larkin’s heart is also racing. He wishes he could ask her but instead he just nods, blushing a little at the mention of the lightning bugs.
Larkin and Kristy had spent hours catching lightning bugs together in the evenings this past summer. They’d made a little house to keep them in—a mason jar with holes Larkin poked into the lid with an ice pick. She’d wielded the ice pick like she was Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, and TJ had laughed. He’d never realized Larkin was funny. He’d never paid her much attention till then. Then it was like she was everywhere and on his mind constantly.
The first night they’d caught lightning bugs, he’d stayed outside talking with Larkin long after Kristy and the lightning bugs had gone to bed. Before that night, his conversations with Larkin had been limited to the kind that required one-word responses. But that night TJ discovered that Larkin was more interesting to talk to than he’d expected, different from his friends and, in some ways, better.
He’d wanted to keep talking until the sun came up and would have, if not for her father calling her inside, leaving him sitting in the dewy grass alone, looking up at the stars, until he also went inside. But not before throwing a backward glance at Larkin’s house and wondering if she was also thinking about their conversation, if she, too, felt that something between them had changed, the path forward suddenly veering in a whole new direction.
That next morning the lightning bugs, trapped in their prison, had all died. He’d had to make up a story for a bawling Kristy about how they’d all fallen into a deep sleep like Sleeping Beauty but would come back to life when it got dark. He pretended to go outside and “free” them with the promise that they would return and she could catch them again.
That night as the little lights had begun to appear, Kristy had crowed that TJ was right, telling Larkin the whole invented tale. When his sister had scampered away to find more victims in the recesses of their yard, Larkin had turned to him, fixing him with her blue gaze.
“You’re a good big brother,” she’d said.
He’d shrugged off the earnestness of her words, the compliment in them. “I just made up something,” he’d said.
She shook her head and smiled with one side of her mouth. “We both know that’s not true.”
And though he knew less about the ways of male/female relationships than he did about the magic of lightning bugs, at that moment TJ had sensed that there was something under her words, something deeper that, for a brief moment, had breached the surface.
Perhaps, he thinks as he stands there waiting for Davy, dealing with girls is like dealing with those lightning bugs—you just make it up as you go along. He looks up at Larkin, standing on his front porch, looking as uncomfortable as he feels.
“I told her the lightning bugs are gone till next summer, but she won’t believe me,” Larkin adds. There is a note of defensiveness in her voice, but he doesn’t know why. He’s the last person who would challenge her story. The lightning bugs are something he likes to think they share.
TJ grips his bike tighter, pulling it close to himself as he shrugs a response, trying his best to play it cool. Phillip has coached him on this: he can’t let on that he’s gone around the bend for this girl. If he comes on too strong, Phillip has told him, she’ll get scared and shut him out. “One kiss is all you’ll ever get,” Phillip had intoned, shaking his head.
One week ago, after Kristy’s fourth birthday party, when he and Larkin were supposed to be cleaning up while the adults drank gin and tonics inside Larkin’s house, he’d kissed her. Since then, though he’s replayed that kiss in his mind countless times, he’s been at a loss for what comes next.
To his relief, the door behind her opens and Davy bolts out—dressed from head to toe like Marty McFly from Back to the Future. TJ is wearing board shorts and a Panama Jack T-shirt, still sweating even as the light drains from the sky. Davy is going to look like an idiot wearing jeans and a jacket. At the very least, TJ notes, he has not added the red puffy vest to complete the look.
Still. His brother is a colossal embarrassment. This summer, all of TJ’s friends started calling Davy “McFly” and the dummy preened like it was a compliment. Because to him, it was. To him, Marty McFly is the coolest. But TJ knows better; it’s clearly Indiana Jones.
When his parents made their compromise, he’d hoped Davy would choose to stay home with Kristy and Larkin, that for once the kid would get that TJ doesn’t want him tagging along. But tonight is no different from the time Davy sat between TJ and Larkin while they were talking, or when he tried to play Marco Polo with TJ’s friends at the pool, or when he sat in the dugout with TJ’s teammates during baseball games. His friends like to include Davy just to razz TJ. They don’t realize how saddled with his brother he feels. Tonight is just another example.
“Hell no,” TJ announces as Davy lopes off the front porch past Kristy and Larkin, his face open and eager. “I’m not taking you anywhere in that ridiculous outfit.” He points back at their house. “Leave that stupid ass jacket here. And do it quick or I’m leaving. You’ve already kept me waiting long enough.”
Davy extends his arms and looks down at himself as if unaware he is wearing a jacket. “I like my jacket,” he says, still looking at it. “It was my birthday present.”
“Well, your birthday was weeks ago. Time to give the jacket a rest. At least for tonight.” TJ tries to soften his voice, hoping kindness will help.
But no. Davy frowns and crosses his arms. “Mom said I can wear this jacket anytime I want. And I want to wear it tonight. It’s cool.” On the porch Larkin takes Kristy’s hand.
“It’s not cool. It’s the opposite of cool. It’s hot out and you’re wearing a damn jacket. You look stupid.” TJ glances nervously in Larkin’s direction, fearing he sounds like a jerk, yet he’s committed to the battle now.
“I’m telling Mom you said I was stupid,” Davy says. Making derogatory comments about someone’s intelligence is a cardinal sin in their household. Punishment would be swift and harsh.
“I didn’t say you were stupid. I said you look stupid wearing the jacket when it’s this hot out.”
“Well, I’m still wearing it. I don’t care what you think, TJ.”
TJ smirks at him. “Yeah, right.” Standing there arguing is only keeping him away from the fun happening in the fields, so TJ changes his approach. “Whatever. Just stay away from me tonight, Davy. I’m sick of you embarrassing me.”
He jumps on his bike and, without waiting for Davy to mount his own bike, pedals away, dreaming of a coming day when he’ll have his driver’s license and never have to ride a bike again. He does not turn to see if Davy is following him, but he does keep an ear out for the sound of Davy’s tires coming up behind him, his legs pumping, his lungs burning from the exertion it takes to catch up to his big brother. At the thought of Davy catching up to him, TJ pedals even faster, keen to put as much distance between them as possible.
Only later, after he gets to the field, does he realize he never said goodbye to Larkin. He tries not to think about her standing there on the porch with nothing to do but watch him go.