Once Was Lost (22 page)

He didn’t call. I worried that they’d put him in jail. I worried that all this is my fault, and it kind of is—he was just a friend giving me a ride.

I made one call in the night. To the police tip line, and all I said was, “You should talk to Cal at the hardware store.”

The only call I got was this morning, from Vanessa. She started right in, sounding confused and hurt more than angry. “I didn’t even know you and Nick were friends like that.”

“How do you know what happened?” I asked.

“I heard my mom telling my dad. I didn’t mean to but I was going to the bathroom in the middle of the night and they were talking in the kitchen and I kind of… stopped to listen.”

“How did
they
know?”

“Your dad? The Internet? Who knows.”

She asked me a bunch of questions and I answered with as little detail as I possibly could without making her hate me.

Now, Dad comes over and helps fix a corner of the sheeting that’s blown up even though I told him I don’t need help. “I made a couple of calls,” he says, “following up on yesterday’s meeting. Hopefully we’ll hear something soon about tuition assistance. Lord, honey, your legs.”

They look bad, but they don’t hurt too much. It’s my palms that still sting, and my elbow is sore from sort of landing on it when I fell. I take the sheeting from him. It might be easier to take his lies if they didn’t roll off his tongue so easily.

“It’s kind of getting too late, Dad. School starts next week.”

“We’ll hope for the best but plan for the worst, okay?”

I say nothing, and brush off my shorts, ready to go in.

Dad lowers himself into a lawn chair. “Sit with me here a minute, Sammy.”

I shake my head, and keep my face turned away from him. He wants to talk about yesterday, I know, talk about Mom, talk about everything and then give me orders about how I should spend my time today, which will no doubt involve being dumped off at Vanessa’s so he’s free to do whatever it is he does.

As I pass him on the way inside, he gently takes my wrist. “Sit,” he says, not meanly, but firm. I do.

“Tell me what the sudden urge to see your mom was about, honey.”

For the last twenty-four hours, in my imagination, I’ve been confronting my dad about Erin. Asking him directly, accusing him, listing the evidence, demanding an explanation. Now that I have the chance, I can’t. He’s my dad. What I’d be asking is so personal. I’m not even sure I have the right to know, or if I want to know.

“I just had to,” I say.

He takes in breath and opens his mouth, to say that’s not an answer or to ask again, but something makes him change his mind and all he does is look down at his coffee. “I’m sorry if you think I’ve been overprotective. The world feels very different than it did, before.”

“I know. For me, too.”

“Everyone thinks I have answers about why this happened, but it’s not like God has called me up on the special pastor’s hotline and told me.”

“Do you think she’s dead?” I ask, and hold my breath as I watch him think.

What he wants to say is yes. Yes is all over his face. But he’s a coward, and won’t do it. The best he can do is, “I don’t know.”

I stand up and this time he lets me go in. Before I close the sliding door, I look back at him. “Dad?”

“Yeah, Sammy?”

“I don’t want Erin to bring us dinner anymore.”

The look on his face tells me everything that I thought I wanted to know.

I was right about Dad dumping me at Vanessa’s. “It won’t be for long,” he says. “I just have to run to the office and to the Shaws’ to help them prepare for the press conference, then I’ll come right back for you.”

“Whatever you want.”

“If you want to come with me, you can.” Neither of us have said anything else about Mom or Erin, but I feel like he’s trying to prove to me that he’s not going to do anything wrong, anymore, ever again.

“It’s okay.” I don’t want to be in charge of him, monitor him, any more than I ever wanted to be monitoring Mom.

When I get to Vanessa’s, Daniel is there, too. We hang out in the basement, watching TV and not talking much.

“Jeez, Sam, seriously,” Daniel said when he first saw my legs.

“I’m fine.”

Vanessa kept her eyes on the TV, where they have remained fixed for an hour now. When she goes upstairs to ask her mom about lunch, Daniel looks at me. “I’m supposed to be the buffer. How am I doing?”

“Great.”

“So,” he says, “what’s your version?”

“Of why Vanessa is mad at me? Or of yesterday?”

“She’s not mad at you. She just feels like she doesn’t understand you anymore. That’s what she told me, anyway.”

I don’t understand me anymore, either, I want to say. Or anyone. We all keep saying how different the world is since Jody disappeared, but even if she comes back it will still be different. For us, for her. Maybe she’ll come home and her room will look unfamiliar, her parents will feel like strangers. Maybe she won’t even recognize herself, the way I don’t recognize myself, like I’m a stranger in my life and it’s all going on around me and I don’t know how to be, or who to be in it. I want to know where I am in this different world. Maybe I’m in the same place I always was, but I don’t realize it because I don’t recognize anything.

All I can tell Daniel is, “Nick didn’t do anything. He gave me a ride to see my mom and that’s all.”

“And you look like you rolled down a hill of broken glass because…?”

“That was my fault. The whole thing was my fault.” I pick up the remote and change from the music channel we’ve been watching to a cartoon. “How’s your calling coming along?”

“I don’t know.” He steals the remote from me and changes to a documentary about the history of pizza. “Now I’m thinking I’ll go into sales,” he jokes.

“Same thing.”

Then he looks at me and says, “No, it’s not. Don’t say that. I didn’t know you were so down on pastors and I kind of wish I hadn’t told you.”

It hurts me to know that. “I’m sorry. It’s just different than you think.”

“Well, let me find that out. Maybe you’re wrong.”

I nod. “Maybe.”

Vanessa calls from the top of the stairs, “Grilled cheese or tuna?”

“Tuna,” Daniel says, while I say, “Grilled cheese.”

There’s a pause, then Vanessa comes farther down. “Mom says she’s not a short-order cook and you have to pick one.”

“You decide,” I tell Daniel, and go into the downstairs bathroom to call Nick.

It rings four times then goes to voice mail. “Hi,” I say. “It’s Sam. I just wanted to see how you’re doing. So. Bye.” I wait in the bathroom a few minutes in case he calls right back. He doesn’t, and I fight the urge to call him again and leave another message, a longer one, with an apology.

Vanessa knocks on the door. “Sam? Did you fall in? Lunch is ready.”

“Coming.” I look in the mirror and study my face, searching for who I was, who I am, and who I might be after all this is over.

We’re eating tuna sandwiches at the kitchen table—me, Daniel, Vanessa, Robby, and Mrs. Hathaway—when the report from the press conference comes on the radio. Mrs. Hathaway has it tuned to the oldies station because she doesn’t want us obsessing over the news or scaring Robby, but right at the end of a Beatles song the DJ says:

“It looks like the best leads in the Jody Shaw case have gone nowhere fast. Is it my imagination, or has this case been one giant screwup since day one? Anyway, the hand found on the Ridgeline Trail—definitely not a match for Jody. Also, Jody’s brother Nick passed his
second
voluntary polygraph and after ‘intense interrogation’ the cops are saying he’s not a suspect anymore. Oops, sorry, Nick! Hope we didn’t permanently ruin your life! Our thoughts and prayers go out to Jody and Nick and the whole Shaw family, and we hope that between the police and the FBI and the Sheriff’s department and the media,
somebody
can figure this thing out. Meanwhile, if you’re missing a hand, give us a call at the station. If you can find someone to dial the phone for you. Okay, back to the music here at 97.9 rockin’ oldies…”

“Square one,” Daniel says.

I look at Vanessa. “I told you Nick didn’t do anything.”

She nods. “You did.”

Robby holds up one hand, staring at it. “Mom? How do you lose your hand?”

“Eat your lunch, Robby,” Mrs. Hathaway says, turning off the radio.

At dinner time, back at home, I consider Erin’s leftover lasagna then decide to make us a salad, which is one thing I know how to do. Dad and I eat in silence other than me saying, “I heard on the press conference Nick isn’t a suspect anymore. I told you.” And him replying, “I’m as happy as you are about that.”

The phone rings while we’re cleaning up. I answer; it’s Mom. I think it’s the first time she’s called us since going into New Beginnings, and her voice is good, strong, like it was when I saw her yesterday.

“In case I didn’t say it,” she says, “thanks for coming to see me. It was so good to see your lovely self.”

“You, too.” I have no idea if she knows anything about what happened after Nick and I left her.

“Margaret reminded me yesterday that I need to practice saying what I feel… just saying it right out. I haven’t been, and people in my life might be used to being forced to interpret everything and guess. I don’t want you to have to guess whether or not I love you.”

I nod, because suddenly I can’t talk.

“Honey?”

“Yeah,” I manage. “That makes sense.”

“Oh, good. Sometimes I think Margaret is a nut case, shelling out crazy advice that can’t possibly work. I’m trying to just trust her.” She laughs. It’s the second time in two days I’ve heard her laugh. Then she stops, and says, “I need to speak with Dad, if he’s there.”

“Okay. I love you, too, Mom.”

I hold the phone out to Dad. He takes it, looking scared, and I go to my room to wait for him to come deliver the news, whatever it is, but after a long time he’s still talking to her, in a low voice, and I can’t make out the words. All of the possibilities run through my head, everything that could happen to our family. What I said yesterday to Nick, that I wished it was me and not Jody, I don’t feel that now. I don’t even know if I meant it, then, or where that came from. All I can say for sure is that, for a moment, that’s what I truly felt. But something had called me back from that feeling, and it wasn’t just Nick.

I lie on the bed while I wait for Dad, my mind drifting everywhere, until it lands on a prayer. I’m surprised, and resist it at first, but it keeps coming back. It’s not words, so much, just my mind going blank and thoughts reaching up up up, me wishing I could climb through the ceiling and over the stars until I can find God, really
see
God, and know once and for all that everything I’ve believed my whole life is true, and real. Or, not even everything. Not even half. Just the part about someone or something bigger than us who doesn’t lose track. I want to believe the stories, that there really is someone who would search the whole mountainside just to find that one lost thing that he loves, and bring it home.

And then, something happens.

These words move through me, but don’t come from me. Not a voice. Not a burning bush or a dove from heaven. Just a sense, a hint, of… presence. Of me knowing it’s going to be okay, and that I’m not alone. It fills my heart. And for a second I worry that I’m turning into one of those people who sees the Virgin Mary in a corn chip, or that all this has finally driven me completely crazy and I’m hearing voices. But then, why couldn’t a face on a corn chip be true, anyway? We believe in a lot of unbelievable stuff. How can we pick and choose which miracles make sense and which don’t? By definition, a miracle doesn’t make sense.

It’s a low hum. Like I’m not alone. It’s comfort, it’s words but not words, it’s a song, it’s warm hands around my heart. And even though Jody is gone and my mom isn’t cured and my dad isn’t here, even when he is… despite all that, I’m not scared. Whatever it is nestles down deep now, in a place where it can’t be dislodged, along with everything that happened between me and Nick yesterday, belonging only to me.

Day 13

Thursday

Nick called me back last night, while I was waiting in my
room for Dad to come in and talk to me after talking to Mom—he never did.

“Hey,” Nick said, sounding tired.

“How are you?”

“Fine. I mean, you know.”

“Yeah.”

There was a very long and very awkward silence and it occurred to me that Nick might worry that I think we’re boyfriend and girlfriend now or something.

“Sam,” he said, but I cut him off before he could say more.

“It’s okay, I know. It was a crazy day.”

“I’m leaving for school.” I figured he was trying to let me down gently, the unsaid “Therefore, there is no point in us really hanging out or anything” playing in my mind. Though that was sort of okay, too, after the moment I had, the prayer.

“Oh. That’s good. Right?”

“My parents told me last night that I have to, basically. They don’t want me to delay. Because if… if Jody never comes back then we’ll regret it. That’s what they said. Anyway,” Nick continued, “I thought we could get together. So I can say good-bye. Maybe tomorrow? If your dad will let you out, and let you see me.”

Nick, wanting to see me. And even though it’s for good-bye, that means everything. “He will,” I said. Maybe not willingly, but he won’t really have a choice.

“I can come get you, like, eleven?”

“See you then.”

So, this morning, by the time my dad gets up, I’m already at the breakfast counter having cereal, ready to build my case for getting to see Nick. He says good morning when he comes in, but nothing else, and makes his coffee then stands there with his coffee cup, staring out at the yard. After I rinse my bowl and put it in the dishwasher, I say, “Dad?”

“Hm?” He turns around, looking sad and distracted.

“I’m going to go out for coffee with Nick. He’s picking me up at eleven.”

“Sammy…”

“We’re just going over to Main Street Coffee. He wants to say good-bye.”