A Morning Like This (24 page)

That tinge of guilt again, as he listened for the whereabouts of his wife. “No. She’s in our—”
She’s in our room, where I used to sleep, too, until she found out about you
.

“She prayed for me, David. She prayed for me and Sam both. Did you know that?”

“Who?”

“Abigail. Your wife.”

“Abby? Abby prayed for you?”

“Yes. And I can’t help thinking maybe it helped. I just… maybe Sam’s going to be okay because of it.”

How can she be living in her faith like that, after everything I’ve done to us? How can Abby be living in her faith like that,
after everything she’s said to me?

Long after Susan had hung up the telephone, David sat in his chair, helpless, thinking about how uncalled for it was. Abby
wouldn’t forgive him, but she was praying for Susan?

This thing he’d found out about Abby. It rocked him. One more thing to think about as he laid awake nights feeling every lump
and loose spring in the cushions, his soul like an empty mine cavern, ready to cave in.

For the past twenty-four hours, law enforcement agencies all the way from Lincoln County, Oregon, to Teton County, Wyoming,
had done everything they knew to do. Calls went out as far north as Canada, as far south as McAllen, Texas, as far west as
Washington State, and as far east as Quoddy Head, Maine.

Everybody was looking for the little girl with the long brown hair flying over her shoulders and the little-girl grin as broad
and open as the Powder River Pass.

On July Fourth morning, Samantha Roche’s mother sat by the telephone in her home near Siletz Bay, gazing out over a gray mirror
of backwater, billows of marsh grasses, and tiny birds leaving fanlike feather etchings where they’d taken off from the sand.

On July Fourth morning, Samantha Roche’s father, who had just returned from a trip to pick up posters at the airport, gazed
out at a mountain he’d set his feet upon as it stripped mightily toward the sky. As the sun rose higher, it mantled the Grand
Teton in pink light, draping lower and broader over the pinnacles and snow-fields as it spread toward the trees. David sipped
hot chocolate with Brewster flopped beside his feet. The giant lab’s ears flopped over his paws. He wasn’t asleep; his eyes
stayed halfway open to keep watch. He didn’t quite relax as his master scratched his neck, because dogs know when their households
are unsettled.

In front of them Braden Treasure, armed with the packet of billposters, laid them out meticulously in rows on the floor. “The
earlier we can get these out, the better, don’t you think? Jake can take this many,” he said to his dad. “Wheezer said he’d
put one up at the START Bus stops on the square. Chase said he’d ride his bike to the stores in town. And Charlie’s putting
these up over by the skateboard park.”

“Tell everybody I said thanks,” came David’s muttered reply. “It means a lot, you getting your friends involved. Maybe these
will help.”

“Missing,” the posters said a hundred times, spread out the way they were on the floor. “Samantha Linda Roche, Age: 8, Eye-color:
Brown, Height: 4’4”, Weight: 68 pounds. Disappeared from camp July First or Second. May be heading to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.”
Across the bottom of the notice, in blaring forty-eight-point Times-New-Roman type, the words read:
NEEDS MEDICAL ATTENTION. NOTIFY PHYSICIAN IMMEDIATELY
.

Who can say if Braden would have noticed if not for a hundred identical placards laying in order on the floor? Who can say
if Braden would have seen it if not for a hundred reproductions of her very precious, very familiar, grin?

He stood over the stacks of posters, his baseball cap screwed in the direction of his left ear, small blond brows furrowed,
small fists knotted at his sides.

“Dad?” he asked after long minutes of studying. “Is this the girl you wanted me to help?”

“Yes,” David said.

“She has a dimple on her cheek, the same place as yours.”

David said nothing.

“Do you see it, Dad? It’s really funny. Look.”

David bent forward in the chair as if he hadn’t really looked at the picture before, his adrenaline surging and stinging,
making him dizzy. A meeting of gazes. A scant rush of breath.

“Dad? How come she looks like you?”

Brewster raised his head from his gigantic paws and looked at them both with liquid amber eyes.

David’s attention dropped to his left thumbnail. He surveyed the quick of it, the small lavender half-moon, without turning
toward his son.

Braden waited for his answer. The air held an almost theatrical silence until David broke it by moving to his chair and patting
his knee. “Braden. Come over here.”

David set his mug on a tile trivet with the word “
DAD
” printed in green marker. Braden had made it when he’d been in kindergarten. Beside it stood a pottery alligator Braden had
formed long ago with his own tiny hands, each of the six pointed teeth almost as big as the tail. For a breath, one refined
moment after Braden climbed on his knee, David refrained from hugging him. Then, as completely and wholly as armor would encircle
a warrior, as if to protect him from something he couldn’t be protected from, David curled his shoulders over Braden’s. No
more lies, Lord. I can’t do it. No more.

David spoke the words quietly, as simply as he dared. “She looks like me, Brade, because I’m her father. She’s your sister.”

“She is?”

“Yes.” An encouragement, a nod.

Braden only waited. After a long time he said, “Wow.”

There would be more questions later. Later, Braden would ask, “So she’s your kid, too?”

And David would answer, “Yes.”

“Does Mom know about her?”

“Yes.”

“If she’s my sister, why doesn’t she live in our house?”

“Because she has another mom.”

“How can she have another mom? Did you get divorced from somebody or something?”

“No, sport. I’ve never been married to anybody except your mother.”

Later they would discuss those uncomfortable things. And even in the eyes of his son, David might have to suffer an excruciating
fall from honor. But for now they sat together in solemn quiet, with Braden absorbing this mysterious, unusual thought.

A sister. He had a sister.

Reactions came rushing out almost too fast for him to sort. His whole body went quivery, and the ceiling got misty in the
middle from the tears in his eyes. He didn’t understand exactly why he was crying.

“Is she like me?”

“I think so, sport.”

“Do you think we’ll find her, Dad?”

“I hope so, son. I really do.”

There weren’t many other questions Braden could ask that couldn’t be answered by the papers on the floor. There lay the pictures
of her grinning up at them, with a listing of vital statistics everyone needed to know. Samantha Linda Roche’s face. Height.
Weight. Eight-years-old. Brown eyes.
NEEDS MEDICAL ATTENTION
.

Braden slid out of his father’s chair and gathered the posters into his backpack. “So, you’re really a dad to two people,
not just me?”

“How do you feel about that, sport? What are you thinking?”

Braden stooped and gave Brewster a deep scratch between the ears. “That’s why I’m the one who can help her, isn’t it? That’s
why I’m the one who can do that bone thing you were talking about.”

“Yes, that’s what we were thinking.”

“Who was thinking it? You and Mom?”

“Well, no. Me. I was thinking it. And Samantha’s mother. Somebody you don’t know. But she knows all about you.”

Braden asked, “If they need one of my bones to help her, which one are they going to take?”

“Oh, son. It isn’t—”

“If they take one of my bones for her, Dad, can I still play baseball?”

Oh, Father. Father. He puts me to shame. After all of my fighting, and look what he’d be willing to give
.

“It isn’t a whole bone, Brade. It’s some stuff inside your bones. Like blood. Only thicker.”

“Hmmm.”

“You’ll still be able to play baseball.”

“Okay.”

“You might need to think about this some, huh?”

“Yeah. I need to think about it a lot.”

Even though it was early morning, Braden left his father alone and went in search of his skateboard. He took a running start
and slammed it with a clatter on the ramp his dad had built him, never intending to ride it all the way up. He backed off
and flipped it again and again and again, the metal wheels grating and pounding the hollow plywood.

What would it be like to have his dad be a dad to another person?

What if his dad didn’t love him as much, now that he had somebody else to love, too?

What would it feel like, having his dad divided?

Braden didn’t know if he wanted to share.

B
y the time the sun had risen high, Samantha Roche didn’t feel good.

Along the way, she had tried not to touch anything that didn’t belong to her. But after all those hours, her stomach felt
like it might turn in on itself. She gave in to her empty belly and grabbed the first food she could find in the latched cabinet—a
jumbo bag of Oreos. She’d planned to put most of them back. She was only going to eat a few. Only they tasted so good. She
couldn’t help pushing whole cookies into her mouth and, before she knew it, the entire package of them had disappeared.

They had to be in the mountains now, driving on meandering roads. Every time the trailer took a corner, the green-sprigged
curtains flailed sideways toward the opposite side. The stainless-steel measuring cups that hung over the sink on intricate
hooks swung out and clapped back against the wall like little hollow bells. The camper pitched first one direction around
a curve, then the opposite direction around another.

Sam wasn’t supposed to be eating sugar stuff. And, after all this, she just felt so
tired
. She couldn’t be sure whether the roiling in her stomach was from the winding roads or the entire package of cream-filled
Oreos or from the choking fear that had lodged itself in her throat.

Now that she’d gotten this close to Wyoming, she couldn’t help thinking about things she hadn’t considered before.

What if her father had changed his mind? What if he didn’t want to see her? What if he didn’t care anymore about what happened
to her? Or what if he met her and he was disappointed?

Inside the rolling trailer, Sam closed her eyes. She had no idea how many more hours it would take them to get to where they
were going. Her belly hurt, just thinking about it.

She burrowed down in the pillows on the bunk again, anticipation keeping her awake. The letter, which she’d kept safely in
the folds of her sweatshirt next to her heart, had now been tucked away inside her Camp Plentycoos backpack for safekeeping.

She kept herself satisfied with this thought: even if her father didn’t like what he saw in her, she could have his words
written on that page.

That much, at least, would belong to her.

“David?”

“Hello, Susan.”

“Did you get the posters?”

“I did. I’ve already been to the Delta counter to pick them up.”