Half-Past Dawn (6 page)

The two girls had awoken, sleep dripping from their eyes until they saw their dad. They had leaped into his arms, holding tight so he couldn’t escape.

“Daddy,” Sara had said, “it’s the middle of the night.”

And Jack had held out the bears. They had snatched them up, hugging them close, but soon returned to hugging their father.

“Thank you,” Hope had said.

“I just want you to know I love you.”

“Is that what the bear’s for?”

Jack had nodded.

With a warm smile, he had picked them up, carried them downstairs, pulled out a box of Oreos, and poured three glasses of milk. They had headed into the den, cuddled up under a blanket, and watched
Willy Wonka
until four in the morning, when they all finally fell asleep. Needless to say, Mia hadn’t been happy when she found them at 6:15 but soon forgave them, allowing them to sleep, everybody taking the day off and spending it together.

And now, as Jack stared at the bear, the wellspring of his subconcious reopened, flooding his mind with images, thoughts, and sounds. But it was last night, early this morning … all of the pain, all of his emotions from twelve hours ago, building up. His life shattered, the rage and anger and fury filling him as Mia was torn away into the night; the wound in his shoulder once again sharp with pain; he was keenly aware of the cut above his eye. He felt the pounding of the rain on his face, his body soaked through and bloodied.

Then he finally burst through it, all of the pain gone, his mind clear, as if he had to travel through hell to venture into the recesses of his mind.

• • •

F
IVE DAYS AGO
. Sunday’s drive out to his parents’ house was suddenly as clear as if it was five minutes ago. They had dropped the girls off for the week. He and Mia needed alone time, time to talk, to reconnect, time for Jack to explain some things that were happening in his life and career.

Jack could still hear Mia’s voice as she calmed the girls, standing in his parents’ driveway, wiping the tears from Hope’s and Sara’s eyes as they cried about leaving behind their pillows, their stuffed animals, and how much they would miss them.

“Honey.” crouching down, she took each of them into her embrace, “both of you, give me your hands.”

The two girls held out their right hands, which Mia gently grasped. She warmly kissed their palms and then closed their small fingers around the kiss so it wouldn’t escape.

“Do you know what that is?”

The girls shook their heads in unison.

“That’s a kissing hand. Whenever you miss me, need me, or are scared, you place it against your cheek.” Mia placed her palm against her cheek in demonstration; both the girls followed her lead. “Do you feel it?”

The girls smiled and nodded.

“I do,” Hope said.

“You both hold on to those.” She pulled them close and whispered in their ears, “They last forever.”

With the girls now smiling and their eyes focused on the beach, Jack and Mia handed them and their bags to his mom and were back on the road. They loved their children more than life but realized that they had sacrificed so much of themselves to the point of forgetting about each other.

All of their money went into their house, their government salaries not affording them the luxury of vacations. And so they embraced
those moments of slowing down, turning their lives around, modifying their day to make it a vacation of the mind.

Their conversation on the way home had nothing to do with play dates, juice boxes, or Fineas and Ferb. It was about each other, catching up on things missed as a result of work and children.

After walking through the door of their home, they reveled in the silence. It was like the peace of walking into a hotel after a long journey, dropping the bags onto the floor, and collapsing on the bed. They read the paper, walked around in their underwear without care, talked for hours, and fell silent for long spells, taking pleasure from simply being in each other’s company. There were things Jack wanted to talk about, things about life and the future, but in the recaptured feeling when one first falls in love, Jack decided that things could wait, that some secrets could hold for a few more days.

Mia made garlic mashed potatoes and green beans while Jack seared the steak. They made love on the sofa like teenagers whose parents were out for the evening, watched movies, and lost themselves in the moment. At eight o’clock, they piled a sea of pillows and comforters on the floor of the sunroom and fell sound asleep in each other’s arms.

Besides the night before, it was the last full memory of the week he could form. He looked again at the blue bear, leaned down and picked up the brown one. He knew where he would take them.

F
RANK DROVE THEM
up the Merritt Parkway, heading north, the glare of the early-morning sun filling his Jeep.

Jack dialed his cell phone. His mom had always been an early riser, so he felt no guilt about calling so early. He needed to hear that the girls were OK, needed to know they were safe. The phone rang.

He had given his mom a cell phone, taught her how to use it, insisted that she always carry it in case of emergency, but he knew she
had tucked it into the back of a drawer where the battery died and had forgotten all about it.

The phone rang again. And again. Four times now. No answer. He cursed her for not having an answering machine, for not keeping up with the times.

On the sixth ring, Jack began to panic, and Frank hit the accelerator.

F
RIDAY
, 7:45
A.M
.

J
ACK BURST THROUGH THE
side door of his childhood home, raced through the small New England foyer, and charged up the stairs. He tore open the door at the end of the hall and peered into the dark room.

The curtains were drawn; daylight had yet to arrive in his old bedroom. His eyes struggled to focus as he stepped in, careful not to trip on the scattered toys. And as his eyes finally adjusted, he sighed in relief. Hope and Sara lay sound asleep in his old queen-sized bed, their small bodies lost amid the sheets and pillows. He smiled to see Hope’s right palm resting on her cheek, her kissing hand protecting her as her mother had promised.

Jack headed back downstairs to search for his mother. Assuming that she was walking her dog, he stepped outside and took a breath of fresh sea air.

The white clapboard house sat on a two-acre parcel of land surrounded on three sides by a forty-acre preserve; on the fourth side, behind sea-grass-covered dunes, was the Atlantic Ocean. The roar of the early-morning waves rolling over the sandy hills instilled a temporary peace in Jack, one that he always felt at his childhood home.

With momentary relief, he stood on the dunes, staring out at the ocean, absorbing the serenity, hoping that it would help him focus and fill the holes that dotted his memory, where he knew that the answer to finding Mia lay.

His gaze was drawn to Trudeau Island, the spit of land two miles off the Connecticut shore, the private enclave where Marguerite Trudeau used to throw her lavish parties back in the ’30s for the New York high-society crowd. Jack and his friends spent too many summer nights to count riding Doug Reiberg’s boat out, beaching it on the southern shore, and throwing makeshift keg parties on the beach with bonfires, music, and girls.

The southern section of the island had become a potter’s field, donated by the Trudeaus in the 1940s to the city of New York for the unclaimed bodies of John and Jane Does, for orphaned children who died alone, for prisoners whose sentences of banishment from society would be extended into eternity. It was said that the hundred-acre southern section had been filled up by the ’50s and so they began doubling up the graves, burying the dead upon the dead. By the ’60s, the city had turned to cremation, and by the ’80s, the potter’s field was nothing more than a graveyard overgrown with trees, shrubbery, and weeds, erasing the memory of the forgotten.

It made for great stories around the beach bonfires, tales that grew more outlandish as the beer consumption increased, stories that would send the girls into the arms of their boyfriends. And while Jack never believed in ghosts, it always disturbed him that so many died alone, forgotten, with no one to speak of their lives.

The cries of the distant gulls startled him out of his thoughts, and he turned to see his mother emerge from the paths of the nature preserve. Theo, her golden Lab, fought to break free of his leash, howling with excitement at the sight of Jack. As her ninety-eight-pound body fought to hold him back, Jack’s mom nearly collapsed when she saw her son. Jack raced to her, and she clasped him as she did when he was child and stayed out past dark.

“The news said …” She gasped, her small body trembling.

“I know.”

“I tried to call …” Heidi Keeler said as she brushed her gray hair from her face. “Where’s Mia?”

Jack looked into his mother’s fragile blue eyes, seeing the fear in his answer. “I don’t know.”

M
ORNING SUN POURED
through the large picture window of the great room as Heidi Keeler busied herself cooking the way she always did when she was stressed. Eggs and bacon sizzled on the stove, English muffins toasted under the broiler, and the smell of fresh coffee filled the air.

With the blue and brown bears tucked under his arm, Jack raced around the great room, determined and without pause, reaching behind the media console to disconnect the TV and unplug the radio.

“You didn’t need to bring those bears. We have so many toys here—”

“No television, no radio today, Mom. Keep the girls out at the beach and away from phones.”

“OK,” his mom said. “Is your friend going to come into the house, or should I bring his breakfast out to the car?”

“He’s on the phone. We can’t stay long.”

“Then I’ll pack something up for him,” Heidi said as she pulled out the tin foil.

“Where’s your computer?”

“In the study on the—”

But Jack was already out of the room and in the adjacent study. It was paneled in a bleached oak; driftwood and shells were scattered on the shelves between the books on yachting, golf, fishing, and finance. He found his mother’s computer on the desk, lit with a screensaver of Hope and Sara, and turned to the all-in-one printer-scanner on the side table. He quickly rolled up his sleeve, lifted the scanner cover, and laid his tattooed left arm on the glass. After
closing the lid, he hit scan and watched as the bright light poured through the machine. Within a few seconds, the scan of his arm filled the computer screen, looking like some Maori appendage that one might see in a
Smithsonian
magazine article.

“What did you do to yourself?”

Jack turned to see his mom alternately staring at the computer and his arm. “Long story.”

“What’s going on, Jack?”

He took a seat at the computer and opened his mother’s e-mail. He attached a copy of the tattoo image to a document and hit send. “I have no idea and not much time. You don’t know any language experts, do you?”

His mother shook her head as she leaned in and studied the tattoo on his arm. “That thing is horrific.”

“Thanks.”

“Columbia.”

“What?” Jack’s BlackBerry beeped. He pulled it out and saw the incoming e-mail he had just sent himself.

“They have a huge language and sociology department.” Heidi looked closer at the tattoo. “And I’m pretty sure linguistics and anthropology. Jeez, Jack, that thing is ugly.”

“Remember what I said about the girls.” Jack kissed her cheek and ran from the room.

He headed back up the stairs and stepped into his old bedroom to see the girls still fast asleep. He stared at them, taking comfort in the knowledge that they were safe, that they had no idea what was going on; their young minds were still unblemished with the dangers and realities of life. He silently walked to the bed and tucked the two bears under the covers between them.

As he turned to leave, he nearly jumped out of his skin, for sitting there was the one man he didn’t expect to see. If Jack’s relationship with his father-in-law was bad, the one with his own father was far worse. They hadn’t spoken in months, and the conversations they did have over the years were few and far between. They would start
out cordial, with false smiles and handshakes, talking of the weather and the girls and maybe the Yankees, but after thirty seconds of niceties, David Keeler would only speak of himself, his world, his fishing and golf, how hard he worked. And the conversation would soon devolve into criticism and words of disappointment. His father was critical of his career choice, wasting his education on politics, living the life of an elected official; he never saw his son’s life as one of sacrifice, of protecting the people, of fighting crime. He would tell him he was wearing a white shirt in a blue-collar world.

He made Jack feel like a child, inadequate and small, with a diminished mind not worthy of a life.

But as Jack stared at his father, sitting calmly in his old wooden desk chair, his father looked back with eyes Jack hadn’t seen in years. They were filled with concern, with worry, so contrary to his usual expression of disappointment.

Jack stared at him for a long moment and walked out of the room without a word.

J
ACK

J
ACK
K
EELER COULD HARDLY
remember a time when he and his father didn’t disagree, didn’t fight, didn’t go for long spells without speaking.

Jack had grown up in a family of privilege, though not multimillionaires. His father’s successful career in finance left Jack wanting for nothing. He lived inside a bubble, his friends and family from similar backgrounds with similar morals and viewpoints. As far as Jack was concerned, life as it was in his town was the way the world was.

Jack had been the goalie on his high school hockey team and rode his talent to play Division III at Williams College in Massachusetts. While his father had pushed him to play Division I—the stepping stone to the pros—Jack was under no illusion of ever having the skill set to play in the NHL. He was happy having a good time and enjoying the sport for what it was. It had allowed him to attend a school that his grades couldn’t get him into, and it kept him the center of attention on campus for the first two seasons.