If You're Gone (7 page)

“Mom!” I threw my hands in the air. “Two minutes ago you were convinced Brad ran away to become a drug dealer or something. Now you’re telling me I can’t even walk down my own street because he is missing?”

“Our street is exactly where he went missing
from
, Lillian,” she said as she returned to the living room. “You need to consider your own safety.”

“Wait. Are you saying you believe that something happened to him and he didn’t just run away?” I asked. “Do you believe me?”

It took her a moment to answer. “I don’t know, Lillian,” she sighed. “I just don’t know.”

In the kitchen, I could hear Eliza relaying the details of craft time in that morning’s Sunday school class to Dad and Graham. Mom looked towards the door with a long face.

“Just be careful,” she finally said. “Take your phone.”

“I will.”

“I’ll save you some casserole.”

“Thanks, Mom.” I nodded, not wanting to start another argument by telling her I had lost all traces of an appetite since Brad had disappeared.

Mom pulled me in for a long hug and stroked the back of my head as she held me. I had grown a few inches taller than her over the summer before eighth grade, but in that moment, I felt so small in her arms.

1. Unasked Questions Go Unanswered
   

The sun was bright and the warm breeze made the green leaves on the trees around our house dance as if celebrating the first Sunday of summer. It was a beautiful day; too beautiful for the occasion. It was the type of day Brad and I would have loved to spend at the lake with Anna and Thomas, swimming and laughing until the moon was high in the sky. But instead I was alone; walking down the street Brad vanished from as the police, my parents, and assumedly the rest of the town, were dragging his name through the mud.

The stretch of road that divided Anna’s property line from mine was enveloped by dense rows of trees, their branches stretching high across the roadway and providing me with shade as I walked. Somewhere in this tunnel of foliage, Brad disappeared. He could have met with any fate that night that would have gone unseen by anyone on the other side of the trees. I knew the search groups had combed the area the night before, but I couldn’t help but bring out my inner CSI. I looked for tire tracks, scraps of clothing, or broken branches that might signify some sort of accident or struggle.
If he was struck by a car, possibly a drunk driver leaving one of the local parties, he may have been tossed off the road into the ditch. The driver could have panicked and decided to force Brad into their vehicle and hold him somewhere to cover their tracks. Or…

I tried to shake off the grimmer possibilities and think back to Friday night.
Did any cars drive by after Brad left?
If so, I hadn’t bothered to notice. I had lain there thinking about Brad until I dozed off.
Who knows what could have been happening to Brad just a few hundred yards from my window while I was fast asleep.
The Lees had asked Anna whether she had seen anything that night since her house sat only a quarter mile from mine and past the wall of trees. But she had been at Thomas’s until after eleven and then slept over at Tess’ house across town. Anna’s mom and stepdad claimed to have been asleep since just after nine o’clock, exhausted from the work week. The walls of Anna’s house were potential witnesses, but of course, they wouldn’t be talking.

I studied the ground next to the road, letting my eyes cover only a few square inches at a time. Grass, dirt, leaves, weeds, a scattering of small broken branches and twigs; nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Where were the size eleven footprints, ripped pieces of Brad's t-shirt, DNA covered cigarette butts, trace amounts of blood spatter? There wasn’t so much as a crumpled beer can to be found. It just didn’t make sense.
Where are you, Brad?

A rustling sound came from behind the trees, causing the hair on my arms to stand on end. I stopped in my tracks and slowly turned my head around, thinking back to my mom’s words of caution and safety.

“Hello?” I whimpered.

There was no answer, yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching me. I stood in the middle of the road, frozen, as I waited.

“Hello,” I said again, more assertive this time. “Brad?”

I thought I heard a branch snap to my left but knew my mind was good at playing tricks on me.
Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t imagine him again.
I couldn’t decide if I was imagining it was him, or someone-or something-else.
Or am I imagining it at all
? I took a few light steps toward the sound and waited again, holding my breath. I jumped as another rustling noise came from the same direction.

“Who’s there?”

I considered parting the thick branches with my arms and attempting to see through to the other side, but I was afraid of what I might find. I made myself take one more step towards the tree line as the rustling became frantic and the sound moved quickly in the other direction, running away from where I stood. I wasn't sure what I wanted it to be.
A deer? A large rabbit? A barn cat? A bum living in the woods who is responsible for Brad’s disappearance?
Or Brad himself… running from me because he knew I had learned his secrets.

Although I told myself it had been nothing but a small woodland creature, I took off in a sprint towards my house. I no longer felt safe on my quiet street in my small town with Brad gone. This place where I had grown up and made so many memories was now a potential crime scene. And the person who was supposed to protect me was gone without a trace.

****

Once I was safely inside my bedroom, I called the Lees and we spoke at length regarding what to do next. I didn’t ask about Brad’s criminal history, although I wasn’t sure if it was because I didn’t want to upset them by bringing it up or because I didn’t want to know the truth. Mrs. Lee invited me over to their house and I borrowed Mom’s SUV instead of attempting another walk down the dismal roadway.

I had imagined that I would see reporters camped out on their front lawn, waiting with microphones at bay like guns in a Wild West duel. But instead, the house was quiet, eerily so. Brad’s silver two-door truck that I had grown to love was parked in the driveway in its usual spot, with splatters of mud around the wheel well. On Saturday mornings, he would always hose off any debris from the week prior, yet today was Sunday and the brown residue was baking in the sun.
He would never leave his truck like this on purpose.

As I waited on the front steps for an answer to my timid knocking, I glanced at my surroundings. There were no undercover cops sitting in dark cars staking out the premises, no colorful ribbons tied around trees. Everything appeared to be normal, even though just inside the brick and mortar of the Lee residence a family was hurting, missing an intricate piece of their puzzle.

“Hi, Lillian,” young Montana said as she greeted me at the front door.

“Hi, sweetie,” I said as I gave her a quick hug. “How are you?”

“I’m all right I guess,” she said with a shrug. “Everyone is pretty sad around here.”

“I know. It’s sad at my house too.”

Mrs. Lee, or Janice as she had asked me to call her, came into the entryway and offered me a tired smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Come on in, Lillian. Thanks for coming.”

She tussled Montana’s hair. “Why don’t you go see if Daddy needs help with the posters, okay sweetheart?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Montana nodded and headed towards the kitchen. “Bye, Lillian,” she said over her shoulder.

“I’ll see you later.”

Janice owned an interior design business, and the home reflected her work. Perfectly placed accent furniture hugged the cream-colored walls in the foyer. I let my fingertips drag the wooden railing as she led me upstairs and through a dim hallway that led to Brad’s bedroom.

“I thought this might help,” she said as we climbed the carpeted steps.

The door was closed as if his room had been quarantined off from the rest of the house. She grabbed the handle and swung it open as a burst of cool, fresh air escaped from inside. I had been in this room dozens of times yet without Brad in it, it seemed unfamiliar. The deep blue walls were covered in generic posters and paintings that were dispersed evenly around the room. I had never noticed how impersonal the décor was-it was almost as though the Lees had purchased the floor model of a teenage boy’s bedroom.

Brad’s bed was made, although the checkered comforter was crooked and crumpled in the corners like it had been quickly tossed over the mattress. The backpack he had carried with him to school every day, and sometimes to our picnics in the park, was propped neatly against his desk instead of strewn onto the floor as it typically would have been. The photo of us at prom rested in a brown frame that lay on its back on his nightstand, carelessly pushed over or shoved out of the way. My heart sank as I stared at the picture.

“The police went through his room yesterday, just to look for anything… suspicious,” Janice said as she noticed my eyes on the photo. She picked it up and stood it upright. “They tried to put everything back in place but I'm sure they just knocked this over.”

I nodded as I continued to examine the space. I had hoped I would be overcome with Brad’s presence, yet I couldn’t feel him in this room. His bedroom might as well have been a hotel room where he once stayed.
What else did the police touch?

“You’re welcome to spend as much time in here as you'd like.” Janice motioned towards the bed as she parked herself on the mattress next to the footboard. “I must have sat on his bed for an hour this morning. It’s just so hard not knowing what to do and where to look for him. Being in here was the only peace I could find.”

“Thanks.”

I pulled the rolling chair out from in front of Brad’s black desk and sat down gently. I couldn’t bring myself to sit on the bed next to his mom. It would have seemed like we were mourning him. We sat in silence for several minutes, both of us scanning the room and searching for obvious clues of Brad’s whereabouts. I thought back to the countless crime TV shows I watched in the afternoons. There weren’t any obvious trapdoors cut out in the wooden floor, no paintings with moving eyeballs or symbolic maps with push pins connected by string hanging on the walls. If Brad had intended to leave behind some kind of mystery for us to solve, it wasn’t evident in this room.

I bit my tongue for as long as I could but my curiosity was getting the best of me. “What was Brad arrested for?” I blurted.

Janice shook her head and sighed. “Oh, Lillian. I guess he didn’t tell you.”

“No.” I shrugged. “But the detective did.”

“He had quite a troubled childhood. He went through a lot-a lot more than any child should have to go through,” she said. “And after we moved here, when Brad was in sixth grade, he just seemed to fall into the wrong crowd.”

“With Lizard?”

“Well, yes, and Jones. And there were a few other odd-named kids who came and went. As he got older he started racking up a list of misdemeanors… vandalism, burglary, disturbing the peace, those types of crimes. He must have a served over a hundred community service hours by the time it was all said and done.”

“How is it possible I never heard about any of this when it happened?” I asked.
It seems like the whole town knows within minutes when someone gets a bad haircut, let alone arrested.

“There are certain laws that protect minors from being ex-ploited by the media, and Brad’s father’s friendship with Judge Hawthorn certainly helped. We’ve been working on getting his records expunged now that he is eighteen, so he can start college with a clean slate.”
“So it all goes away?”

She nodded. “In theory, yes. But certain crimes are really hanging over his head in this investigation. Although he pleaded not guilty, he was tried for drug possession and grand theft auto...”

“Wait, he stole a car?” My jaw dropped as I pictured Brad huddled under a steering wheel, frantically trying to cross wires like something out of an action movie. I tried to shake the image away.

“He claimed he was just
in
the car and was not the one who had stolen it, but who knows…” her voice trailed off.

I wanted to ask about the troubled childhood she had mentioned but stopped myself. I was afraid it would only make me seem like I knew even less about the guy I was claiming to be in love with.
Why didn’t he tell me all of this? What was he protecting me from? Or protecting
himself
from?

“The police have a theory that Brad has stolen a car and that is what he used to leave town,” Janice continued as she dug her fingers into her forehead.

“But if he wanted to leave, why wouldn’t he take his own truck that's parked in your driveway?”

“They say that would have been too easy for them to trace. If he is in a stolen vehicle they have a tougher time narrowing down the search.”

Suddenly my mind raced back to the night of graduation. We always took Brad’s truck when we went out, yet that night he had suggested I borrow my dad’s car.

“I can give you another lesson on driving a stick shift,”
he had said.

He let me drive to the lake, keeping his hand on mine on top of the shift and helping me navigate the grooves between gears. But on the way home he took the keys and sat in the driver’s seat without a word otherwise. I had been far too wrapped up in the mood of the evening to notice or care at the time, but now it seemed strange.
Why didn’t we just take the truck? What were you trying to tell me, Brad?