Once Was Lost (14 page)

“O Joy that seekest me through pain, I cannot close my heart to thee,” the choir sings, sounding perfect, and a lot of people are sniffling and shaking now and I wonder how there could possibly be joy in this kind of pain. Vanessa is starting to cry, too, bent over with her face in her hands. But I don’t feel anything. Just… numb. And suddenly I can’t stand to sit here another three seconds in the stifling sanctuary with all these people who believe in this God, who’s taken Jody, who’s taken everything.

I get up, and try to stay bent low so that I’m not a distraction.

It’s hard to get out. The church is thick with people standing in the back and they aren’t quick to move out of my way. As I press my way through, I pass the small stained glass windows of Jesus’s life, flickering kind of eerily in the candlelight. And I know it’s the crowd and the heat and my imagination, but when I pass Lazarus I swear I feel his undead eyes on me.

Nick told me to find him after, so I wait. I stay half-hidden, sitting on the stone bench by the peace garden the youth group planted last spring on the side of the church. I can see people as they pour out the front doors but they can’t really see me.

They come in waves—the strangers first, stopping to talk to the reporters that wait in the lot. Then the people who live here in Pineview but don’t go to our church, like Cal from the hardware store, who pauses outside the doors and puts his hands in the pockets of his khaki pants, glancing around before descending the steps and going off to his car. Last to emerge are the members, lingering out front and hugging each other. The Hathaways come out and I can tell they’re looking for me so I start to get up, but then I see Mr. and Mrs. Shaw, along with my dad, who’s holding his hand out to the reporters that scurry toward them.

Next out is Erin. She’s pretty, in a simple cotton dress that’s kind of fifties style. I keep my eyes on her, trying to see if she’s looking at my dad and if she is, what kind of look it might be.

Then I stop watching Erin because Nick comes out. He’s with Dorrie Clark, and they’re holding hands, and Dorrie’s hair is beautifully strawberry blond and hanging over one eye in a way that makes her seem not like a teen girl but like a woman. I watch how she tucks a strand of it behind her ear and leans in close to Nick. I watch how he ducks his head to hear what she says. How he puts one arm around her protectively.

“There you are!” Vanessa sits next to me on the bench. I quickly take my eyes off Nick and Dorrie and anything in their vicinity. “Are you okay?”

“I think so. I just needed air.”

“Your dad was looking for you.”

“He was?” I stretch to see the church steps again, but the Shaws and my dad are gone now.

“Yeah, but then he kind of got mobbed by everyone, and we didn’t know where you were, so…”

“It’s okay,” I say, standing up. “If he really wanted to find me, he could.”

She spots her parents and waves to them. “My dad’s going to bring the car around. Let’s go.”

KPXU

10:00 NEWS

It was a scene seldom witnessed in Pineview, hundreds of people—neighbors and strangers alike—united in hope at tonight’s vigil for Jody Shaw, the local teen missing nearly a week. Despite six days of fruitless searching, the Shaw family has not given up hope that Jody will come home. Expressing her thanks to the community, Trish Shaw told the crowd that it’s her faith that’s keeping her strong during this difficult time. Frustrated investigators say that this is not the time to grow complacent, and urge the community to continue its vigilance. Here at KPXU we’ve had an unconfirmed report that several members of Jody’s family, and two unidentified Pineview residents, have agreed to take polygraphs over the coming days. We’ll keep you updated as we know more.

Troy? Any sign of this heat wave breaking?

Vanessa and I are in her room, in the dark. She’s in her bed, and I’m on an air mattress, which is made of rubber, and even with two sheets it’s making my back hot and sweaty.

I’m trying to not think about Nick and Dorrie by thinking about my dad, and how to get him to let me come home, but then I start to worry about Erin again and think of what I want to do with the yard instead—I need more rocks—then go back to thinking about Nick and Dorrie, and how perfect they looked together on the church steps.

“Are you awake?” Vanessa asks.

After a second, I say, “Yeah.”

“I want to ask you something. And be honest.”

“Okay.”

“You know what Jody’s mom said tonight? About how she knows Jody’s still alive? Do
you
think she’s still alive?”

I roll over; my rubber mattress squeaks. All the statistics say that Jody’s probably not alive. Even after forty-eight hours, they said on the news that the chances go down to practically nothing. And now it’s been nearly a week. But I don’t want to say, or believe, that Jody is dead.

“If it were you that disappeared,” I say, “the way Jody did, just into thin air, it would be hard to believe… or accept… that you weren’t alive, somewhere. Unless I saw for myself that you weren’t.”

“Like a body,” Vanessa whispers.

“Yeah.”

“Even if there was a
probability
that I wasn’t?”

We’re on the slippery edge of hopelessness, and I don’t want to be the one to send us over. “I’d need proof. I’d need proof one way or the other.”

“But there’s a lot of stuff we believe in without proof.”

I roll over again, onto my back, and stare into the dark.

“Not this.”

Day 8

Saturday

At breakfast, Robby reminds Mrs. Hathaway about her
promise to take him to the water park. “How could I forget,” she says, transferring a pancake from the skillet onto Robby’s plate. “Eat up and we’ll get your stuff together. You girls sure you don’t want to come?”

Vanessa holds up her fork. “The water park on a boiling hot Saturday, crawling with germy kids, including Robby and his two friends, who we’ll probably get stuck with? Let me think.” She pretends to consider before sinking her fork back into her pancakes. “Thank you but no.”

“Great,” her mom says cheerily. “That means you can weed the vegetable garden and check on the tomatoes and maybe run a vacuum through the house.” She points her spatula at us. “And remember, don’t go anywhere unless you get Daddy’s permission. You stay here until he gets back from his golf game.”

“Yes, we know,” Vanessa says.

I’ve got my cell in the pocket of my pajama shorts while we eat, even though the Hathaways have a rule about no cell phones at the table. My mom has to get back to me today if we’re going to have brunch tomorrow, and I don’t want to miss her call. But by the time Vanessa’s mom and Robby leave, there still hasn’t been anything to miss.

After breakfast, we weed in our pajamas. We deadhead the flowers. We pick tomatoes and zucchini while Daisy walks up and down the rows, nose to the ground, getting in our way. And, we talk more about Jody’s case, trying to guess who the unidentified Pineview residents mentioned on the news could be. “I bet it’s people from church,” Vanessa says. “Who does Jody even
know
other than people from school and people from church? I bet your dad knows exactly who’s getting the lie detector test.”

“I think it was a stranger who took her.” I look at a tomato I’ve just picked and realize it’s still hard, not really ready.

“Sam, every five seconds the news is saying how rare stranger abductions are. How it’s like ninety-nine-point-nine percent likely that it’s someone she knows. And if it’s someone she knows, then it’s someone
we
know. That’s what creeps me out. How can I sit there at church knowing it could be someone over in the next pew?”

I don’t know. “If it does turn out to be someone from church,” I ask, “would you keep going?”

“Well, yeah.” She looks at me. “After they caught him.”

“I wouldn’t.” I step carefully through the garden and sit down in the shade.

She stops picking but stays where she is. “Why not? Whoever it is would be in jail.”

“That’s not the point.”

“You’d be scared there’s more people like that hanging around us?”

“No.” Daisy comes over to me and I run my hand through her fur. “I don’t know if I would believe in God anymore.” If I do now.

She’s still, and quiet, watching me. Then: “Your dad is always saying how there’s evil all around us. Like, in us. That the scary things in life aren’t the things out there…” She waves her hands around in the air. “… but the stuff in your own heart, and we all have it, so—”

“So, what?” I ask. “So that’s supposed to make us feel better? That it doesn’t matter if you go to church or not, or if you love your parents enough or not, or they love you and do their best? It’s supposed to make us feel better that it’s never enough? That no matter what, we’re still… screwed?”

Daisy doesn’t like the anger in my voice; she gets up and walks to the other side of the garden, closer to Vanessa.

“Isn’t that the point of everything we believe?” she says. “That we need help?”

I don’t feel like part of the “we” she’s talking about, not right now. I used to be able to wrap my head around all of it, and I know that half the stuff she’s saying is stuff I used to say to her when she was wondering aloud. This feeling that’s been building, this doubt, since way before my mom’s accident, has gotten bigger than me.

“I know we need help,” I say. “What I don’t know is why we’re not getting it.”

“Maybe it’s like your dad says. We don’t see how, or when—”

I interrupt her, unable to hear my dad’s wisdom quoted one more time. “I
know
what he
says
, Vanessa.” I get up and go inside, leaving her out there in the garden.

I take a shower, setting my phone on the back of the toilet in case anyone calls, but it doesn’t make a peep. When I come out, dried off and dressed in shorts, T-shirt, and flip-flops, I can hear Vanessa vacuuming downstairs. I slip out and sit in the hammock to let my hair dry in the sun. A few dark clouds hang over the horizon like it might rain, or the clouds might do what they usually do: break up and disperse without giving us one drop. I call my dad’s cell. It rings and rings and rings and finally goes to voice mail. When he got that phone he gave me this big speech about how he would have it on all the time when we weren’t together, and I could call anytime, day or night, and no matter what he was doing he would absolutely, absolutely answer, if he possibly could. That was when I was in seventh grade and every day for a week my mom forgot to pick me up from school and I’d walk or get a ride with someone else and find her passed out in bed, dressed in her clothes like she
meant
to go out but got distracted.

And for a long time, Dad did always answer his phone. But not now. So he’s either doing something that can’t possibly be interrupted, or he’s seeing my name flash on his screen and deciding, choosing, that I’m less important than whatever else is going on. The same way Mom has my message—my messages—and chooses not to call me.

“Dad,” I say to his recorded voice, “can you call Mom about brunch? Maybe if she hears it from you it’ll… mean more.” Then I slide the phone shut and toss it in the hammock.

I don’t care how much Vanessa’s parents love me or how good a cook Mrs. Hathaway is. It’s not home. I stand up, peek in the window—now Vanessa is vacuuming the upstairs with an irritated frown. Mr. Hathaway isn’t home yet. The water park will take hours.

Vanessa’s bike is parked against the porch rail, unlocked.

I tie my damp hair up into a knot.

I lift the bike down the steps and ride away.

* * *

It’s been awhile since I rode a bike. Mine is collecting dust in our garage, alongside Mom’s. But like they say, you never forget. It’s not so easy with flip-flops on. I ride in a slow serpentine because I’m really not sure where I’m going. All I’d thought about was getting away.

I just keep moving forward.

Main Street is only a block away, and I think maybe I could go to the hardware store and look at more stuff for the yard, but I still don’t have money and now I owe Cal.

It feels good to just ride. I don’t know why I stopped. Well, I do know. I stopped because Mom stopped. We went through this biking phase, after Mom had a bad May. She was supposed to host a women’s tea, in honor of the wife of a pastor in town who was retiring. Only she forgot until Vanessa’s mom showed up in a flowered dress and a hat, with a plate of cucumber sandwiches. Mrs. Hathaway realized right away what was happening and took over so well that most people didn’t even know anything was wrong. But Mom and Dad fought about it later. Mom said Dad should have reminded her. Then he said he did. Then she said he shouldn’t have asked her to do it in the first place because he knew it was hard for her. And he said it’s just a tea, it’s just one afternoon, he thought she could handle it.

The next day Mom got me up early and we went to the Wal-Mart in Dillon’s Bluff and bought bikes. “This is it,” she told me. She’d put her hair back with a pink terry cloth headband and had on running pants and sneakers that were still nearly brand new from when she was going to take up running. “A new leaf.”

When she handed the credit card to the cashier she told him about an article she’d read on how exercise could cure you of depression, make you sleep better, make you nicer, and give you good skin. I can’t remember how many times we actually rode together. Maybe three.

But I didn’t care if we were on bikes or organizing the house or watching TV or playing a game, as long as I knew she was okay. And now, I don’t know if she’s okay. Obviously at rehab she won’t be drinking, but maybe she goes to sleep crying every night, or hates the people there, or the people there don’t understand her like I do. Because I do. I’m the only person who knows what she goes through being Mrs. Reverend Charlie Taylor. Everyone expecting you to be camera-ready, all the time, like she said. Everyone expecting your husband to be available twenty-four hours a day for
their
supposed needs. And if your husband looks unironed or underfed or overfed or too pale or too tan or too rich or too poor or is late for something or forgets it altogether, it reflects on you.