Once Was Lost (12 page)

All I can do is nod. He touches my hair. I look at him. Considering everything, he might actually be doing his best. I’m disappointed but also know that if I really thought about it, I could probably come up with at least as many times he’s kept his word as times he hasn’t. Most of all I want to believe—in him, in God, in our family—the way I used to. It used to be that there was always one of them I could count on. If Dad was lost in his work, Mom and I had each other, even if it wasn’t perfect. If Mom was lost in her drinking, Dad would pull us together and get us back on track. And I was always sure God hovered around there among us, somehow.

Right now it’s like we’re three islands, and nothing but oceans between us.

Moving into another family’s house, even temporarily, is just one more thing to separate us.

“Let me help you take your things in,” he says.

“I got it.”

I lean over and give him a kiss, collect my stuff from the back seat, and close the door.

He drives off before I’m even halfway up the walk.

I drop my duffel bag and pillow onto the porch before petting Daisy hello and wedging in next to Vanessa.

“Hey,” she says, scooting over.

“Hi.”

We sway back and forth for a little while, and even though I didn’t want to come here, I’m starting to relax. “It’s kind of nice out,” I say.

“I know. For a change I’m not roasting like a Thanksgiving turkey out here.”

There’s a blue ribbon around the Hathaways’ mailbox. When we’re sitting out here two weeks from now, in a month, in a year, will the ribbons still be up? I wonder how you’re supposed to know the exact moment when there’s no more hope.

“How did it go at Nick’s last night?” Vanessa asks.

“Okay. I mean, sad, but okay.” I don’t really want to share any of the personal stuff Nick and I talked about, or even that he gave me a ride.

“Did he seem… normal? Or, like, weird about Jody? Or anything?”

“He seemed sad, like I said.”

She’s quiet after that. Too quiet, for Vanessa.

I look at her. “What?”

She looks back, touches her neck. “I know you don’t go on the Internet, but you’ll probably hear about it anyway eventually.”

“What?” I repeat.

“There’s this whole big theory about Nick. Being… a suspect.”

Without missing a beat, I say, “That’s stupid.” I can tell from her face and the tone of her voice that some part of her believes it could be true.

“I heard that the police confiscated his laptop,” she says, as if that’s evidence.

“They took
all
the computers in the house. I heard about it on the news, too. They just wanted to see if Jody had been talking to anyone online or whatever.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Nick didn’t do anything.” I get up off the hammock, throwing Vanessa off balance so that she has to steady herself with her hands and move back to the center. Daisy gets up, too, and stands between us, tail wagging slowly. I pick up my duffel bag, ready to go inside.

“Well
I
don’t think so, either,” Vanessa says, “but they keep saying it’s usually someone in the family and think how many times you’ve heard stuff like that on the news—how the person who does something horrible is the last you’d suspect.”

“It wasn’t Nick.”

“Okay,” Vanessa says guiltily. Then, with a burst of insistence, says, “But we don’t really
know
him, do we? I was thinking about it and we see him at church on Sundays and sometimes at youth group stuff and around school but do we
know
him?”

“We’ve known him as long as we’ve known anybody. You might as well say it’s Daniel, or my dad.”

“That’s not the same.”

“It is, though. If you say it could be Nick, it could be anybody.”

She stares up at me, eyes watery, and says, “That’s what I mean, Sam. It could be anybody.”

And I know what she means, what she’s trying to get across. That a thing like this changes the way you think about everything and everyone, and you can never go back.

Mrs. Hathaway drives us to Daniel’s in the afternoon to swim in his pool. Robby begs to go with us, but Mrs. Hathaway saves the day by offering to take him and any two friends he wants to the water park on Saturday instead.

We lay out in our suits, baking in the three thirty sun. Vanessa and I spent most of the day so far looking at all the Jody news on her dad’s laptop, and now my head is cluttered with the rumors. And they aren’t just about Nick. They’re about Jody’s dad, her uncle, her teachers, some random guy in Ohio. There are people all over the country who think they’ve seen her in their town. Someone in the boonies of Alaska says they saw her, and someone in Chicago says
they
saw her, on the same day. Already there are all these blogs and websites and message boards filled with theories and guesses and people just trying to figure this out. Finally I told Vanessa, “I don’t want to look at this stuff anymore. It’s crazy.”

She closed the laptop and said, “I know. Every day I promise myself I’m not going to look, but then I do and I can’t stop.”

My dad not wanting me to be alone with Nick makes a little more sense, considering everything I saw online. Not that I think there’s even a remote chance it could be him, but I can see how easy it is to get paranoid.

Now Daniel and Vanessa are theorizing some more. “Maybe she did run away,” he says. “Or maybe at first she was taken but now she has that thing. That syndrome.”

“Stockholm,” Vanessa says. “Stockholm syndrome.”

“Yeah, that. And now she’s like in a cult and we should leave her alone.”

“I don’t think you can get that so quick.” Vanessa props herself up on her elbow. “And if she’s in a cult, we should definitely not leave her alone. Cults are bad, remember? As a future pastor I’d think you’d know that.”

He groans. “I wish I’d kept my fat mouth shut about the pastor thing.”

I get up and slip into the pool, letting the water close over me. It’s not as cool as I wish it were, but at least it’s quiet, surrounding me with the white noise of the pool filter. I try to clear my head so it’s as quiet as the pool, using an image of how I want our garden to look as a way to silence everything else. Then I hear a muffled splash and re-emerge. Daniel swims toward me, making a shark fin out of his hands, palms pressed together on the top of his submerged head. It’s very sixth grade.

I paddle away from him for a few yards, then we both stop. He comes up out of the water, shaking his head, droplets of water staying on his pale skin—the skin of someone who spends more time with his computer than in the outdoors. “You okay?” he asks.

“No,” I say, tiptoeing backward on the rough bottom of the pool, toward deeper water.

“Me, neither.”

“Do you really wish you hadn’t said anything about what happened to you in Mexico?” I tread water, letting the smooth, warmish waves of it churn over and around my arms.

“I don’t know. I just know I want to do something… meaningful. I want to do what God wants me to do. And I thought it was that.” He pulls a green pool noodle over and drapes his arms on it. “I didn’t know there’d be all this extra stuff, whatever it is, when I tell people. They either look at me like I’m insane or start asking me deep theological questions about the meaning of life.”

I wonder if that’s how it feels to my dad, still. That everyone thinks he’s crazy, or that he has all the answers. I just want him to have
some
of the answers. “Remember what my dad said. You could be God’s Chosen Waiter.”

“Yeah, well, your dad makes everything sound meaningful, and easy.”

“It’s an act.” I dive under the water and come back up near the edge, intentionally splashing Vanessa. She squeals and sits up. “I think I’m starting to burn,” I say. “Let’s call your mom to pick us up.”

KPXU

LIVE @ FIVE

The mood here in Pineview has turned somber as the fifth day of the search for Jody Shaw comes to a close. Several leads in the case have evaporated as quickly as they came and investigators are no closer to finding the thirteen-year-old, missing since Sunday. Police have said that no one, including family members, has been eliminated as a suspect but emphasize that the family has been cooperative. Regional FBI agents are working with local authorities; attempts to link Jody’s case to those of two girls missing in southern Oregon have failed. Sympathy for the Shaw family was palpable at Library Square today as volunteers waited in line and local companies donated food and drinks to searchers. A tip line has been set up for those with any information about the case. The numbers are at the bottom of your screen.

Pineview Community Church will hold a prayer vigil tomorrow night at seven
PM
; people of all faiths are welcome.

This is Melinda Ford, reporting live from the KPXU studio.

“Mom,” Vanessa says from her beanbag chair in front of the TV. “We have to go to that.” She looks at me. “You want to, right?”

“Yeah,” I say, even though really, I’m not sure.

“Of course,” Mrs. Hathaway says. “We’ll all go.”

* * *

After dinner we sack out in a pile of pillows in the basement, eating ice cream while Robby plays video games. I’ve kept my cell phone close all day in case Mom calls. Or Dad. Or anyone. When we got back from Daniel’s I called my own phone from the Hathaways’, just to make sure it works. It does.

“This reminds me of the old days,” Vanessa says.

“The ‘old days,’ like, last year?”

She looks at me. “No. I mean like the old days. Like when you used to be here every weekend. When your mom and dad would come for dinner, and you’d stay to sleep over, and we’d sit down here while they were up there.”

And her dad would play his guitar, old songs from when they were all in high school, and they’d try to remember the words, and laugh so much.

“It wasn’t
that
long ago,” I say.

She puts her spoon down. “Yeah, Sam, it was. It was forever ago. And then you, like, disappeared. I mean, where did you go?”

I stare into my bowl, pushing the melting ice cream around. Vanessa is remembering our childhood, basically. And I understand why, I do. But like so many things, it’s gone. “I don’t know. Nowhere.”

“You could have talked to me about your mom.”

I glance at Robby, whose thumbs are working like mad on his game controller. “She didn’t want people to know.”

“It’s not like I would have told anyone.”

“I know.” It’s just hard, I want to say. The things that happen in your house, with your family, are personal. How do you talk about finding the spaghetti sauce lid in your dinner or the ice cube trays full of water in the towel closet? How do you talk about helping your mom put on her lipstick, so carefully, because her hands are shaking, so that it looks as perfect as she needs it to look before she can face the world?

All I can say to Vanessa is, “I’m sorry. Now you know. Now everyone knows.”

She goes back to scraping her spoon in the bowl. “She’ll come back and be a lot better. You’ll have a fresh start.”

I know the place is called New Beginnings, but I don’t think it works quite like that. You can’t just erase everything that came before.

Vanessa’s mom calls down the stairs. “Robby, come on up and brush your teeth and get your pj’s on.”

He puts down the controller and switches off the game without protest. Such an easy kid. He gets to the bottom of the staircase before turning to me and saying, “Night, Sam. Your mom’ll get better.”

Of all the things people have said and not said to me over the last couple of days, this is the one that makes me want to cry. It’s so unexpected, and Robby sounds so sure, the way only a seven-year-old can. I barely manage to get out a “Thanks, Robby,” without my voice cracking.

Then, my cell rings; I lunge for it. I don’t recognize the number, but I’m sure it’s New Beginnings. “Hello?”

“Hey.”

It’s Nick.

“Oh,” I say, surprised. “Hi.”

Vanessa is watching me. “One sec,” I say to Nick, then stand and tell Vanessa, “Be right back,” before going upstairs and slipping into the guest bathroom at the end of the hall. “Hi.”

“So, how are you?” Nick asks.

“Okay. How are you?”

“Um, you know. Bad.” Then he kind of laughs, and it dawns on me that of course he’d know, too, all the stuff it says about him online. “Am I interrupting anything?”

“No. I’m just at Vanessa’s.”

“I can call you back later if you’re busy.”

I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror. There’s a nice, soft light in here that makes my skin look good and my hair shiny. I wonder how Nick sees me. Just someone who can use his “big brother skills”? Or as a real friend?

“Actually,” I say, watching the way my mouth looks when I talk. “I kind of moved in. Temporarily.”

“Really? Why?”

“My dad thinks it’s bad for me to be alone so much. And he’s busy with… everything.”

“Yeah. He’s helping my parents a lot. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” I turn away from the mirror, still waiting for the reason he called.

“He and Erin just left here after working out stuff for the vigil thing,” Nick says, “and I was just thinking about you. So I thought I’d call and say hi. How’s your mom?”

“I don’t know. I’ve left a couple of messages for her and she hasn’t called me back.” It’s the first time I’ve said that out loud, and even though the truth of it feels bad, it’s a relief to say.

“Oh. That’s kinda… that sucks.”

“She doesn’t have to be there that much longer.” Emphasis on the
have to
. She could stay longer, if she wants. “Maybe she’s just trying to get through it.”

“Maybe. But she should call you back. You’re her daughter.”

I gnaw on one of my knuckles. My stomach feels shaky. All I can say is, “Uh-huh.” Because now my mind is stuck on what he said about how my dad and Erin just left his house, together. And I’m here. And our house is sitting there, empty.

“Sorry, you probably don’t want to talk about it. I guess it’s nice for me to talk about someone else’s problems for a change but if you don’t want to…”