Songs for the Missing (37 page)

The Grateful Parents

In the end it took a stranger to save them. In the fall of 2008, nearly a year and a half after James Wade killed himself, Braden called Ed at work. They’d heard nothing for so long that for a second he didn’t believe it.

There was no mistake. The FBI had confirmed the ID.

A woman in Mentor, a civilian searching with her own dog and a GPS. She was known to the local cops, a sparky, always phoning in complaints and tips on cases. A lonely older lady. Apparently she’d made it her crusade. They’d gotten lucky. Sometimes that’s how it went with these cases.

“But I’ll let you go,” Braden said. “You probably want to call your wife.”

“They’re sure?” Fran asked, worried, as if this good news could be taken away.

He told her they were.

“It’s a miracle,” she said.

The word seemed too strong to him, but he didn’t contradict her. “It sounds like this woman was obsessed.”

“Thank God she was,” Fran said.

She would meet him at home. She was leaving right now. “I knew we’d find her,” she said. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he said, though once he’d signed off, he felt let down. The news had drained him, too sudden and strange, too final. It registered, he just needed some time to accept it. They’d lived so long with the prospect of never finding Kim that he’d almost convinced himself it didn’t matter. Fran was happy, that’s what was important. He thought he should be too, though essentially, he couldn’t help but remind himself, nothing had changed. He was glad this phase was over, that was all.

At home, once they’d told Lindsay and his mother, Fran kicked into her old spokesperson role. She took the calendar off the fridge, grabbed a yellow pad and started a list. They needed to book Lindsay’s flight right now. Did he want her to order a wreath in his mother’s name? What should it say? Should they go with the long or the short service? They’d have to find out when Father John was available, because they definitely wanted him. She was thinking they could do the reception here; it would be less expensive and more intimate. She could do the baking herself. She had to run every detail of her plans by him, as if he might object. He hadn’t seen her like this in a long time, totally energized, and wished he felt the same. In the face of all these arrangements, his mind was shutting down, along with his body. He tried to help, but she was moving too fast for him. All he wanted to do was sleep.

Technically the reward was still in effect. At last count it was fifty thousand. Fran wanted to meet the woman and present her with a check. It was the least they could do. He agreed, though the idea of standing in front of the cameras again depressed him.

The feeling stayed with him through the busy days that followed. When friends stopped in, he fielded their congratulations with a feigned relief, while Fran gushed. He didn’t know how to explain it, this disconnect. Everyone was happy for them. As Fran said, it was the best news they could have hoped for. Ed knew this to be true—how many times had he wished for some unexpected deliverance—yet now that it had actually happened, he felt as helpless as he did at the beginning, at the mercy, once again, of unseen forces. All along it had seemed wrong to him that his fate was out of his control. This was just further proof. He didn’t see it as something to celebrate.

Part of his resistance was selfish. With Lindsay gone, their life had been quiet. All summer Fran had worried that they would drive each other crazy, cooped up in the empty house. Instead they discovered—as if it were a surprise—that they liked each other’s company. They spent more time together, bringing almost formal attention to their conversations. They had wine every night, and ate off the good china. It was like a courtship, or a honeymoon, and he was heartened to find that if she was all he had, finally, that was enough. He had come to rely on their quiet evenings, their weekends a cocoon the two of them shared, separate from the rest of the world. They still grieved, but privately, without headlines or reporters peeking in the windows.

Now not only were they no longer invisible, their story had become this crazy woman’s. Her name was Mimi Knapp, and the press was fascinated with her. The idea that she’d taken on this impossible quest and succeeded was irresistible. She was a regular visitor to the website, one of their many armchair detectives, except she’d gone far beyond that. She’d left messages in the guestbook from one mother to another, pledging to find Kim, and plastered a room of her rental place with topographic maps. Like Wade, she lived alone, a mystery to her neighbors. She was a cashier at a Bi-Lo; in every picture she was in uniform, as if they were the only clothes she owned. She had a Dutchboy haircut, though she was easily in her sixties. Her German shepherd’s name was Ollie. In retrospect, her son joked about her dedication to the search. They fought about it constantly. Many times he’d pleaded with her to stop. He’d seriously thought she was disturbed.

Fran called her colorful, as if her bizarreness was fun. Ed just thought she was odd. The first time they spoke on the phone, she put the dog on so they could say hello to it. “He’s the real hero,” she said, “Ollie-Ollie Olson Free-o.”

Ed thanked her and then sat there while she and Fran chatted like old friends.

She said she couldn’t accept the money, that’s not why she did it. “If my baby was missing, I’d want everyone out there looking.” When Fran insisted, she said she’d donate it to the Humane Society, if that was all right.

They set a date for the one gap in their schedule—late Thursday morning, so they could make the noon news. When Fran said they were looking forward to meeting her, she responded that Ollie was looking forward to meeting Cooper.

“She is different,” Fran admitted.

For some reason, Ed wasn’t amused. He knew he was being ungracious, possibly even jealous, but it bothered him that Fran would let an outsider intrude on them when they had so much to do. They were making this into a production, and while they’d done the big check thing a hundred times in the past, every time he thought of posing with the woman, he felt queasy and short of breath, as if he couldn’t do it.

Strangely, he was more at ease dealing with the funeral home. Choosing Kim’s coffin and vault should have upset him, but there, at least, the mood was properly somber. He and Fran were subdued as they followed Mason Radkoff through the showroom, calmed by the stately vases of white lilies and cream walls with their tasteful sconces, nodding as he gently went over the benefits of each model. While Ed knew his pitch was false, he could agree with the pretense of comfort and eternal rest. He tried not to think of the expense. This ceremony was necessary, and dignified, and right.

“I never want to do that again,” Fran said in the lot, as if she’d forgotten his mother.

The preparations were endless, ridiculous. He wished they could skip straight to the funeral, but even that was turning into a circus, with the reception afterward. Fran had enlisted Connie and Jocelyn. They’d taken over the dining room table, papering it with guest lists and recipes. Ed steered clear of them, hiding out in his office with Cooper, flinching whenever Fran laughed at something. He knew he should be glad for her. Instead he tried to imagine himself laughing, and couldn’t.

What puzzled him most was that just last week he’d been happy, or happier than this. Since the news, the world had turned sour. He wasn’t able to concentrate, and gave up before he could form his thoughts. Nothing seemed worthwhile, not even old reliables like the Indians. It was all noise, pointless. The one thing he was looking forward to was seeing Lindsay, and she’d only be there for the weekend, and would probably spend most of it with her friends.

For the event on Thursday, Jocelyn wanted to use the backyard, thinking of the dogs, and the space they’d need for all the media. Connie thought it would be neat if they made dog biscuits for Ollie. Fran sent him to the Foodland for cookie cutters and a five-pound bag of whole wheat flour, and Wednesday night they filled the kitchen with smoke. Cooper was their official taster, leaving Ed to watch TV by himself. The Indians were fighting for home advantage in the playoffs, but the game didn’t hold his attention. He kept picturing tomorrow, the reporters lined up on the sidewalk, and his thoughts started to circle on him. When he tried to swallow, his throat caught, a web of saliva stuck halfway. His gut was rumbling, and though it was only ten o’clock, he told Fran he was going up to bed.

“Take some Gaviscon, that’ll help.”

It didn’t, as he knew it wouldn’t, just as he knew he would feel the same way in the morning.

He was resigned to the invasion, yet even at his most dour he hadn’t foreseen the scope of it. At dawn Lakewood was an unbroken wall of satellite trucks. Fran said she expected some of them were national. He shaved and showered and tied his tie, his head spinning as if he were hungover.

He stayed inside, watching from the living room as Jocelyn took charge, lining up the media in the drive, checking their credentials before letting them into the backyard. A dozen techs paid out cables along the gutters, duct-taping them across the sidewalk. It was like they were making a movie. By nine there was a bank of lights and tripods aimed at the back deck like a firing line.

Out front a crowd gathered, some neighbors, some people he’d never seen before, many of them children, though it was a school day. A police car rolled up. With a twinge, he realized the patrolman waving them off the street was Perry.

The woman was late, and it was almost time. Jocelyn had arranged for Fran to do an exclusive with Channel 12 from Erie, a reward for being the first station to cover them. Ed wasn’t needed, and he retreated to his office, closing the door. He sat sideways at his computer, swiveling in his chair and absently scratching Cooper’s ears. Cooper panted, confused by all the excitement. Ed closed his eyes and tried to control his own breathing, but it was no use. He smoothed Cooper’s fur, fingering the hard lumps under his skin—fatty deposits or tumors, the vets weren’t sure. He wouldn’t be with them much longer, and Ed would miss him. Soon he would lose his mother too, a fact he could barely grasp.

“Yes,” he said, leaning in close to his nose, “you’re a good boy.”

From the front came a wave of cheering, making Cooper turn toward the door. A minute later, Fran looked in.

“You ready, Freddy?”

She had the check under one arm like a prop, and she was smiling. Her face had been made up for her interview so she looked younger, almost rosy, like the teenager she’d been, and he thought that though he might never reconcile himself with Kim’s death, he could not deprive her of this.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he said, and, taking her hand, went out to face his public.

When the moment came, he stood beside her. Mimi Knapp was a character, wearing a beat-up jean jacket and a black POW/MIA hat. Her dog’s bandana was an American flag. She was taller than he’d expected, and overwrought, tearily holding on to Fran, then clinging to him as if they’d been reunited. She’d found Kim, that was the only reason she was here. He’d wanted to be the one, as if that mattered. As he held her, he thought that the unforgivable thing, ultimately, wasn’t the randomness of the discovery, but that she’d kept looking long after he’d stopped.

The presentation was staged. Jocelyn set them on their marks and stood back.

“Okay, everybody,” she said, raising her arms wide like a conductor. “Big smile.”

There’s No Place Like Home

At the check-in she had to prove who she was. To get the discount, she needed to give the ticket agent the name and address of the funeral home. She could submit a copy of the death certificate on her way back. To Lindsay it seemed like too much just to save a hundred bucks, but she wasn’t paying for it. Her father had e-mailed her with the information as soon as they knew, then called again last night to remind her, as if she might forget to bring it. Like her mother, she organized her important papers in a folder so they’d be handy.

“What relation are you?” the woman asked gently.

“I’m her sister.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you,” Lindsay said, equally soft, and slid the folder into her backpack.

“Just the one bag?”

At school it had taken her a while to shed the feeling of being singled out. Now it returned, an intimation of what was to come. Until then she’d been enjoying her anonymity, listening to Holly Golightly on her iPod as she moved with the swarm of passengers across the tram platform and up the escalators to the noisy concourse and into the shuffling, switchbacked lines. It was the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question: What airport is the busiest in the U. S.? The chaos was intimidating and thrilling. Tonight, on a weeknight, there were more people here, she estimated—and more interesting people—than in all of Kingsville.

The irony was that this was her first time flying by herself. She literally couldn’t have done it without Kim.

Security was another crush of people, and once she’d unzipped her laptop and ducked through the metal detector and put her shoes on again, she had to navigate a maze of food courts and flashy retail galleries until she found the correct terminal. She stood on the moving walkway, passing gates with more enticing destinations. She imagined joining the line filing into the jetway for San Francisco and calling her father from the plane, saying she’d made a mistake. It’s okay, she’d say, you can go ahead without me.

The few people waiting for her flight looked like they came from Erie, and were being sent back. A woman her grandmother’s age wore a black and gold letter jacket listing all of the Steelers’ Super Bowl wins. A badly tattooed guy wore a flannel, baggy acid-washed jeans and Timberlands. Lindsay took a seat by the floor-to-ceiling windows and listened to Cat Power, gazing out at the Tron-like landscape—nothing but darkness and the sapphire runway lights. The emptiness made her think of space, and whether there was a heaven. She was nineteen, older than Kim had ever been, yet she would always be her baby sister. Little Larsen. How long had it been since anyone called her that? She’d outgrown it, like everything else.