Afterward (22 page)

“No, Ethan,” she says. “No. No! That's not what this is about. I know you couldn't leave. I wish you could have, yes, but I know you couldn't. I do understand that. I really do.”

“I don't know how you could when I don't always,” I say. We're still holding hands. But it's not bugging me.

“Ethan, the doctors have explained it to us,” she says. “Your reaction was so common. It happens to victims of trauma—”

“It happened to me,” I interrupt. I'm not used to interrupting. But I do it now. “And I know what the doctors say, and sometimes I get it and sometimes I still don't understand. I don't know why this happened to us either. I went on that website for missing kids the other day—do you know something like a hundred kids a year in the United States are taken like I was? By a total stranger? And I was one of them? It's like being struck by lightning.”

My mom looks into my eyes and studies my face carefully, like she'll never get sick of looking at it. Because she never will.

“Did you know when your dad and I tried to have you, the doctors told us we had less than a 10 percent chance of getting pregnant?” she asks. “Did you know we did IVF three times?”

I shake my head no.

“So it's something with you and odds. Both good and bad, it seems.”

“So you're saying I should play the lottery and never get on a plane,” I try. She smiles and I smile, too. Careful, half smiles. Like we're testing them out just to see how they feel.

“It's a long road, isn't it, sweetheart?” she says, and her half smile is real even though her eyes are sad.

“Yeah, it really is,” I say, and I wonder what happens to kids like me that don't get to come home to moms like my mom and dads like my dad. My mind flashes on Dylan and the stories Caroline has told me about her family. I shut my eyes for a minute to try and lose the thought.

After one more squeeze of our hands, she takes the napkin she's already folded twice and starts folding it again, even more neatly this time.

“I'm trying to be better with all the hovering,” she says. “I'm really working on it.”

“I know,” I say.

“For example, have you noticed I don't come out to check on you and Caroline all the time anymore?” she asks. “I only came out last night because of Air Supply.”

“Yes, mom, I noticed. You get an A for effort there.”

Now her half smile turns into a full smile, and so does mine. Her eyes light up, too. We sit there in the kitchen, just smiling and breathing together, with the refrigerator humming and the ice maker plunk-plunking its ice. There's no rush to get up.

 

CAROLINE—288 DAYS AFTERWARD

Jesse and I are working the last shift at the frozen yogurt place on Thursday afternoon. He closes out the register, and I mop the floor. The mop is so in need of replacing that it's dark gray, not remotely white, and I don't think my mopping does much more than push dirty water around in circles, but finally I finish and dump out the filthy water in the mop sink, and Jesse comes out of the back office and says we can lock up.

Normally I bike home and Jesse drives, but today he's waiting for his mom to pick him up because the car he just bought from his cousin is in the shop getting new tires.

“Sorry I can't give you a lift,” I say, nodding at my handlebars. “This sweet ride only fits one.”

Jesse grins. “It's cool, Caroline. I can wait for my mom.”

I like how he says my name in his buttery voice. How he sounds like a radio deejay with some secret bad habit. Just the right mix of good boy and not-so-good boy. But I'm still not doing anything with Jesse. Anyway, I'm not sure he wants to do anything with me. Sometimes when we're working together and I say something funny he winks at me, and I think there's a chance. But really, I want to put the brakes on my romance life until I figure out exactly if I'm capable of having one without screwing it up.

It's only early March, but I can already sense a hint of summer heat in the air as I bike home. When I walk inside my house, I find my mom sitting in the family room drinking a beer, staring glumly at the wall in front of her. The television is on the local news with the volume turned way low, and I can barely hear the big-boobed news anchor talking about the upcoming city council meeting. Dylan is in the corner doing his line-up-the-blocks game.

My mom doesn't look at me. She just takes a sip from her beer.

And then, her voice even, she says, “Your father is having sex with someone else.”

I wish she'd at least said he was having an affair, just to gross me out less. But I'm not surprised. This is exactly the type of thing my dad would do even though it makes him even more of a stereotype than I ever thought possible.

I let my backpack slide to the floor. I slump down on the couch next to my mother and look at her profile. At the tiny double chin that's come into form these past few years. At the scraggly ponytail she keeps permanently stuck to the back of her head. I remember the picture in the yearbook of my mother being crowned Prom Queen. She was the best kind of skinny, with curves just where they needed to be. Her eyes were alive like she knew she was special. Like her life wasn't going to be like everyone else's.

I guess that part was true.

“Mom, I'm sorry,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says, taking another sip of beer.

“Who is it?”

“The woman who answers phones at his work,” she says. “He finally admitted it this afternoon.”

“Is he here?” I ask.

“I kicked him out,” she says. “He's staying at his brother's, I think.”

I breathe a little easier now because I'd rather put up with sad, drinking mom than screaming mom and shouting dad. But the reality of the situation is already worming its way into my head. My mom hasn't worked in years, not since Dylan was born. Even though we needed the money, probably.

“What are we going to do?” I ask. I don't have to tell her I'm talking about the rent or the grocery money or the gas money.

“I don't know,” she says. “But I'll figure it out.”

I look over at Dylan moving his blocks into order. I will him to not make a mistake, to not freak out. That's the last thing we need right now.

“I never thought things would turn out like this,” my mom says, and it's weird how she's talking to me like a girlfriend or a sister. Like we're besties or something. I don't like it.

“I'm sorry,” I say because I'm not sure what else to say.

“Everything went to shit after Dylan was taken,” my mom says, and suddenly it occurs to me that this isn't her first beer. She hardly ever swears in front of us, and her cheeks are red and her eyes are glassy and I've been sitting next to her for a few minutes and she still hasn't made eye contact with me. “I mean, it was bad before,” she continues, “but it all really fell apart after that.”

I wait for her to say what she isn't saying but has to be thinking. The unsaid words hang over us like bad weather.

Why weren't you watching him?

It was something she'd asked me to do a million times. Something I'd learned to do with my eyes still on my phone or my ears still listening to my music. Where was Dylan going to go, anyway? He didn't know how to open the door. He didn't know how to unlatch the window.

I'd been on my bed, probably texting Jason about something stupid. Trying to make myself sound the right mix of sexy cute. And Dylan had been wandering around my room, messing with my fifth grade rock collection that I kept on top of my dresser. The one that I'd always been meaning to throw out. The one I didn't even give a shit about. He was pounding the rocks on the dresser and humming to himself and in general distracting me from whatever important thing I thought I was doing.

Dill Pickle, give me a second, okay? Can you let me finish something? Go play somewhere else, okay?

And he'd disappeared somewhere down the hall, and I hadn't thought much of it. I'd had the hazy feeling that he was somewhere just beyond my line of sight. Maybe in the family room. Maybe in the kitchen. The sound of my dad mowing the lawn rumbled through the house. In the distance, I heard a neighbor's dog barking.

Caroline, wasn't Dylan in here with you? Weren't you watching him?

And then my mom and me are running through the house and we can't find him and my mom is running out the back door into the backyard yelling at my dad to turn off the mower, and I am in the front room of the house and the door is open so wide I can see all of the street in front of us and the Mackenzie's dying lawn across the road and my heart is thumping and my knees are almost certainly about to give out. A breeze comes and the door swings open even wider, like it's laughing at me.

And then my mom and my dad and I are running, my mom and I in bare feet, circling the house, chasing each other in a hide-and-seek game where no one can win because the one we're looking for isn't there to be found.

And the whole time my mind is on fire.

It's your fault, Caroline. It's your fault. It's your fault. It's your fault.

And here, right now, is the end result. Dylan is messed up and my parents are splitting up. It's still my fault.

My mom finishes her beer and gets up to open another one.

“Has Dylan eaten yet?” I ask.

“He had some frozen pizza,” she says.

I cajole Dylan into putting his blocks away, and I wipe down his face and his hands. I skip brushing his teeth because I just don't have it in me. I get him to use the bathroom and I help him with his pajamas and then after he crawls into bed and I turn on all three of his nightlights, I sit with him on his bed. I make sure he has his pink horsie blanket and his three stuffed dogs. I try to sing to him, but the only song I can think of is the stupid Air Supply song Ethan and I played the other night. So I hum that for a little while, and I watch as he finally drifts off.

I thank the God I'm pretty sure I don't believe in that at least Dylan had an easy night.

I'm not hungry, so I go hide in my bedroom. I want to practice guitar, but I know it'll make too much noise. I've been getting better about finishing my homework lately, but there's no way in hell I'll tackle that tonight. I could go out and see how my beer-drinking mother is doing, but I can't see that being anything but crazy depressing.

I pull out my phone and turn it over in my hands. I want to text Ethan. I want to think things aren't so fragile between us after the last time we hung out. But what if he thinks I'm too much?

I don't care. I text him anyway.

So big news my dad is having an affair and I'm pretty sure my parents are splitting up

He doesn't respond for almost half an hour, but finally my phone dings.

Sorry eating dinner with my parents … shit I'm really sorry Caroline

I'm envious that he gets to eat dinner with his mom and dad. Me. Jealous of Ethan. That's pretty screwed up. I text back.

It's my fault. Everything was awful before but after Dylan got taken it just got worse, and I should have been watching Dylan that day. He got taken because of ME

My stomach knots up just typing that. I probably shouldn't bring up Dylan with Ethan but right now I don't care. I see a bubble pop up as Ethan is texting me back, but it goes away and comes back like five times before he finally replies.

I'm really sorry … maybe they could work it out?

His response annoys me. Then again, I'm not sure how I would respond to me if I were him.

I'm hoping they don't get back together because it's hell when they fight

Pause.

Yeah I can only imagine

Yeah, he can only imagine. Because he doesn't have parents who scream and fight even though their son was gone for four years. Because he has a nice house and a new drum kit and a fancy, expensive therapist.

I'm being a brat, and I don't care.

I search around in my closet for the bag of weed I got from Jason all those months ago. There's only enough for the tiniest joint in the world, but I think it's enough. I smoke with the window open and by the time Ethan texts me again asking me if I want to come over the next night to play, I ignore him. I don't feel like doing anything but blanking out my brain and closing my eyes and imagining myself floating away somewhere into the stratosphere like a satellite that's slipped out of its orbit. Like a star burning up in the sky.

 

ETHAN—289 DAYS AFTERWARD

My mother and I are driving through the streets of Dr. Greenberg's neighborhood. It's a bright Friday morning, and I'm feeling pretty good. I even made it on the freeway okay. Maybe it's because Dr. Greenberg and I have tried his counting thing a few more times, I'm not sure. But as we turn the corner onto Dr. Greenberg's street, really, I'm feeling pretty good.

Suddenly, we spot a woman on the sidewalk, yelling. She's tiny, dressed all in black. When she sees our Volvo approaching, she waves her hands in the air like she's saying hello, but her expression is anxious.

“I wonder if she needs some help,” my mother says, and she pulls the car over to the side of the road.

The way the car lurches to the side. The way my body presses against the door, following the car's movement. The way there's a person there, outside on the sidewalk, just next to the car.

Suddenly, my heart starts to pound.

The automatic window slides down easily, with barely a whisper. “Are you okay?” my mother says to the lady.

I can hear my mom's voice, but it's muffled and strange. My heart hurts it's thumping so hard.

“I'm just looking for my dog,” the lady says.

I blink and try to focus on her face, but my vision is blurry and I can only hear her voice, soft and worried. She keeps talking. “She's a black lab. Her name is Princess if you see her. She's very friendly. My electrician left the gate open, and she got out.”