Pieces (8 page)

VIII

July

T
HE NAOMI’S HOPE FOUNDATION WAS
something Naomi had to get used to. The first time her mother took her to the building downtown, she found it hard to look at the sign with her name on it. Weird. It was even weirder talking to parents and boyfriends and girlfriends and wives and children who had all lost hope of finding their loved ones again. Many of them, when they found out she was
the
Naomi Jensen, looked at her with confident expressions, as if she could single-handedly bring back the person they couldn’t find. She had been found and saved. She represented hope and grace and whatever else they needed to go on.

Today, as Naomi walked into the building with her mother, she braced herself for the pressure that came with comforting others on the brink of despair. Everyone who worked in the center was a volunteer. Some of them were private investigators gathering needed information. There were also financial advisors, sponsors who helped pay for continuing searches, and some were like her, victims who had a happy ending and were there for moral support. Mostly, she helped organize paperwork, which was what she hoped for today. She didn’t feel like talking to anyone.

“Thanks for coming today,” her mother said as Naomi walked beside her into the main lobby. “I always appreciate it.”

“No problem, Mom. I know what this means to you. I want to help.”

Naomi headed straight for the office once they were inside. She turned on the computer and looked at the calendar on the desk. There was nothing special coming up, and today seemed calm enough with few people in the lobby. She could see them through the blinds on the door’s window. There were two sets of parents she recognized from last summer. Her mother hugged each of them as she said hello. Both couples had lost older children in their teens—considered runaways, if she remembered correctly. She guessed everyone had thought she was a runaway at first. How easy it was to misjudge the facts.

She looked away from the window and pulled out a list of things that needed to be done on the computer. An hour later, her mother came in with an exhausted expression. She sat across the room on a tattered sofa next to a water cooler.

“Next week is training week for parents and schools. Do you think you can help out with that too?”

Naomi nodded. “Yeah, I don’t see why not.”

“Good, because I had four volunteers cancel on me.” She glanced at the door she had closed behind her, and then leaned forward and put her head in her hands. “Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing, Naomi. This seemed like a good idea at the time, when you were missing. It was therapeutic. I was doing good in the community, helping parents, teaching everyone about safety and caution and the importance of being there for loved ones. But it’s ... it’s so much sometimes. Most of them will never be found. There are so few happy endings.” She looked up, her eyes bloodshot. “Happy endings like yours.”

Trying not to wince, Naomi looked away. Her ending was far from happy yet, at least the way she saw it. She focused on a pad of paper where her mother had doodled a picture of a zebra. The stripes were haphazard, as if she had been busy talking on the phone when she was coloring them in. Still, it was a good sketch. Naomi hadn’t known her could mother could draw. “There’s a lot you don’t see,” she said, thinking about how to respond. “Like when we do the trainings, maybe we have prevented something from happening. You never know.”

Her mother sighed. “Yes, yes, you’re right.”

Staring at the zebra again, Naomi asked, “Did you start the foundation to find me?” When she looked up after a few moments of silence, her mother’s bottom lip was trembling.

“I never thought I’d find you,” she answered. She stood and pulled a paper cup from the dispenser by the water cooler. “I started all of this to make myself feel better. There, now you know. It wasn’t some noble feat like everyone thinks. Still, when I organize and show up to our annual awareness walk, I feel good about what your father and I have started. I feel good about putting a lot of money toward something so charitable. I feel good seeing you here, helping, especially when you sit down to talk to someone who is hurting so much.” She held the paper cup in her hands, her back to the cooler as Naomi looked up at her. “Because I know
you
are hurting, and yet you still talk to them. You must feel obligated because your name is a part of this. I’m sorry if you do. I’m sorry—”

“Mom, don’t.” Naomi stood and walked across the room. She noticed the crumpled paper cup in her mother’s hand. She wanted to take it from her and throw it away, but it was as if a wall of insecurity was stacked up between them and she couldn’t step forward any farther.

“Don’t what?” her mother asked. “Feel sorry? Naomi, you don’t understand what I mean when I say that.”

Naomi opened her mouth to say she was sorry too, but the door opened and her father walked in carrying a box. He smiled at both of them.

“I had the flyers printed for the Petersen boy.” He took a deep breath. “This is the third set. I don’t even think the last set has been taken down yet.”

“No, they want those ones”—her mother nodded to the box in his arms—“sent to Arizona. That’s where he was last spotted, and they have a church there willing to distribute them.” She waved her hand at the desk. “Put the box over there. We’ll get them ready to go out today.”

Her father nodded and then looked at Naomi, the smile spreading across his face so genuine she couldn’t help but smile back. He crossed the room and kissed her on the cheek. “Hi, sweetie.”

“Hi, Dad.” For a moment, she felt happy. Then she looked back at the crumpled cup in her mother’s hand.

IX

August

H
ER FLIGHT BACK TO MASSACHUSETTS
couldn’t come fast enough. She had been in such a rush to get home once the semester was over, and now all she wanted to do was return to her old habits and schedule of being alone. No judging from her mother. No more stressful foundation and sad people. No more knowing Jesse was only two hours away.

She and Finn had texted back and forth over the past few weeks, but she was still worried a phone call might seem too awkward—at least on her end. She wanted to see him face-to-face and tell him how she felt about staying friends. She kept asking herself if it was possible to stay friends with a guy and not fall for him when he was as hot and nice as Finn. She had known from the very beginning what might happen if she allowed her relationship with him to go anywhere beyond friendly café chit-chat, but how could she possibly call it all off? She would have to be as open with him as she could about what she felt for Jesse.

Now at the airport, her mother pulled up to the unloading bay and popped the trunk as Naomi unfastened her seatbelt.

“Do you want me to help you get your bags checked in?”

Naomi laughed. “No, Mom, I think I can manage. I’ve done it how many times now?”

Her mother shrugged. “A few, I guess.” She leaned forward, as if to give Naomi a hug. “I’ll just—”

“You can help me get them out of the trunk.” Naomi opened her door and walked around to the rear of the car.

Her mother walked around a moment later, her face solemn. “I’m going to miss you, sweetheart.”

Naomi paused, her hand wrapped around the handle of her largest bag. Evelyn had always called her sweetheart. She wasn’t sure if it was a comfort or a burden to have her mother use the same term now.

Pulling on the bag, she thought about that day on the beach when she threw the shell into the waves, how smothered she had felt. Even now, she felt strangled as her mother helped her hoist the heavy bag out of the trunk. She wasn’t sure she should keep coming home for summer break, unless Jesse stayed in Berkeley, of course, and there was a possibility of seeing him. He hadn’t texted her since the two he had sent, and she hadn’t dared try to see him again. She was sure he would let her know when he was released.

She looked down at her purse hanging on her shoulder and thought about the passport tucked in her wallet. This was the first time she would be traveling with it. She had found it buried in her desk at home, squished between some art projects. She knew it wouldn’t be an easy choice to use it, if that time ever came.

“I’ll miss you too, Mom.” She set her bag down and hugged her mother, making sure to hold on a little longer than normal before letting go.

“Promise me you’ll let me know if you need anything,” her mother said, cupping Naomi’s face in her hands as if she were ten years old and boarding her first flight. “I remember how intense everything is as you get into the higher classes, even at the undergraduate level.”

“Yes, Mom, I will. I promise.”

“I’ll make sure your account gets steady installments.” She raised an eyebrow. “Although you spent very little last semester. You know it’s there to use, right?”

Naomi almost laughed. The money had added up over the past two years. She could buy a brand new car off the lot and shop every night for a year before it even started to dwindle. She shrugged and then realized the money meant everything to her parents. They worked hard to earn it, and to be able to give it to their daughter was obviously a big deal. “I appreciate it,” she said in earnest. “I’ll try to spend more. Or something.”

Her mother laughed. “You don’t have to spend it right away. I’m making sure you want me to keep sending you more.”

“I can always save it, yes.” For a moment, panic seized her as she thought about what might happen if she didn’t have that money, even though she didn’t spend much of it at the moment. Perhaps, subconsciously, that was why she didn’t spend it.

“That’s good,” her mother answered. “I spoke with your father about setting up a portfolio for you. When you come home next summer, we’ll get you in some classes so you can start learning how to invest.”

“Great, Mom.” They stared at each other in awkward silence until Naomi turned to grab her other bag and secured it to the top of the rolling luggage already out. “Bye. I love you. Tell Dad I love him too.”

“I will. He’s sorry he couldn’t come see you off. Big meeting this morning.”

“I understand.”

After another hug, Naomi rolled her luggage onto the main walkway and entered the airport. When she looked back, her mother was answering a call on her cell phone. Some things never changed.

B
ECCA WAS
home when Naomi walked through the door. The house smelled like salt and limes.

“What are you making?” Naomi called out, shutting the door with her foot.

Becca poked her head out from the kitchen. “Welcome home!” She looked over her shoulder. “It’s a new recipe I’m trying—margarita chicken. I hope it turns out. Derek hates chicken if it’s too dry, and I can never get it just right.”

Naomi licked her lips. “That sounds good. If you want, I can show you how to cook it moist.”

“You can?” Becca’s eyes widened as she wiped her hands on her apron. “How?”

“Let me get my bags to my room and I’ll show you.”

A few minutes later, she was in the kitchen placing raw chicken breasts between two pieces of plastic wrap. She opened a drawer and pulled out a meat pounder she hadn’t used in a long time. “The trick is to get it all the same thickness,” she explained, and whacked the center of one of the chicken breasts with the pounder.

Becca jumped. “Guess if you’re pissed off at someone, that’s a great way to let it out without killing them.”

“Hah, yeah.” Naomi continued to pound the four chicken breasts to get them a quarter-inch thick.

Folding her arms, Becca rested her hip against the counter and watched. “So where did you learn all this?” she asked over the
whack! whack! whack!
of Naomi’s pounding. “I swear, every time you cook it’s like some amazing gourmet thing. Did your mom teach you or something?”

Naomi stopped pounding. “My mom can chop vegetables, and that’s about it. I think she barely learned how to use the coffee maker, like, two years ago. She relies on the housekeeper most of the time. Or my dad. He likes to cook, but he never has time to show me anything. I’m pretty sure I know more than him.”

“Okay, so who taught you?” Becca leaned forward, waiting for an explanation. She hadn’t dyed her hair in a while, and her dark brown roots were starting to show against the raven black. Naomi noticed she wasn’t wearing her usual red lipstick.

“How’s Derek?” Naomi asked, wishing she hadn’t offered to help. In the two years she had lived with Becca, she had somehow managed to avoid telling her about the kidnapping.

“He’s fine.” Becca pinched her lips together. It was the face she usually pulled when Naomi got evasive about her past. Naomi knew Becca was only trying to get to know her better, but her approach was a little too courtroom. She always felt like she was being examined on the witness stand. Why she kept avoiding the subject, she wasn’t sure. This time it felt wrong. If she was going to keep living with Becca—her only friend outside of Finn and Jesse—she had to tell her the truth. She whacked each piece of chicken a few more times and then set the pounder in the sink as her mind filled with memories from the house.