Once Was Lost (23 page)

He looks at me for a long time. “Okay. Just be back by late afternoon. We’re taking the Hathaways out to the Lodge for an early dinner, to thank them for having you.”

“I will.”

“Then we’ll go up to see Mom.” I can tell he’s trying to sound upbeat, hopeful. “She invited us for a family counseling session.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“We have a few things to sort out before she comes home next week.”

My heart speeds up. “She’s coming home?”

He nods.

“Then what?” I step closer to him and see that his expression isn’t just sad and distracted, but afraid.

“Then… we’ll see.”

On one of the inside walls of Main Street Coffee there’s a mural of Pineview, painted by a community center art class a few years ago. I’ve been staring at it, over Nick’s shoulder, because so far we haven’t done a very good job of talking. It’s me, not him. All I can think about is my mom coming home, and the “we’ll see” part of whatever is about to happen. It’s not worry that I’m feeling. I just wonder.

And maybe it’s a little bit Nick, too. Ever since I got in the truck and he saw my legs and my elbow and the scratches still on my face, he’s been acting a little rattled. He said, “Holy crap,” under his breath, then, “I’m so sorry.” I told him it was okay, I’m fine, but I think it’s hard for him to see me right here in front of him like this.

Finally, I focus my eyes on Nick’s face and say again, to make sure he understands, “It’s okay.”

He nods and looks at his iced coffee. I change the subject: “Are you all packed and everything?”

“Sort of. I think I need different stuff than I thought. It turned out my parents can’t really afford the dorm double, so now I’m in a triple with different people… gotta work that out. One of them is from back east and a philosophy major. I forget where the other guy is from but I think he’s studying psychology, like me.”

“That’ll be good.”

He picks up a sugar packet from the ceramic bowl on the table, shakes it, then puts it back. “You know how I said yesterday that my parents want me to go so I’m not putting my life on hold, waiting for Jody? Well, also I think they want me gone.” He looks at me, his coppery hair curling onto his forehead in a way that makes me want to reach over and touch it, push it back a little, the way a mother would.

“I doubt it.”

“It’ll take a long time for people to forget that for a couple of hours there I was the number one suspect in my own sister’s… I mean, I think my folks think out of sight, out of mind is better for everyone.”

I don’t know what to say to that, because he’s probably right in at least some small way. If this is good-bye, I don’t want to say anything stupid and ruin forever the last time we talk. When I’ve let myself imagine us as a real couple—sitting together in church and holding hands and having dinner with each other’s families and visiting him in college—I argue myself back out of it, trying to be realistic. I want to tell him not to worry that I have expectations. “Nick,” I start, but he’s already talking.

“You know it was just a week ago last night that you brought the brownies?” He shakes his head. “And now I feel, I don’t know, closer to you than to anyone.”

Then again, maybe I’m wrong about what’s realistic.

“Me, too.”

The guy from behind the coffee counter comes over to straighten the newspapers on a nearby table, and asks us if we want anything else, a scone or sandwich or piece of cake. “No,” Nick says. “Thanks.”

The employee leaves to help someone at one of the outside tables.

“I never really thought it was you,” I say.

He shakes his head. “You should have. I mean, after the interrogation I got yesterday,
I
started to think for a minute it could be me. They laid out a good case. It messes with your head.” He bumps his foot against mine, on purpose. “But thank you.”

I bump back. “I’m sorry, though, for getting you in trouble.”

“Don’t be. When you called to ask me to come give you a ride to your mom’s, I was so glad to have somewhere to go, and glad you asked me, and glad I got to see you.”

I try, mentally and emotionally, to keep up with where this is going. To allow the growing feeling that mine and Nick’s stories are not going to diverge, after all.

He smiles a little, and gets suddenly shy, staring intently at his coffee. “When I’m at school, could I write to you once in a while? Would you write back?”

My face is warm. I put my hands on my glass. “Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if my dad is ever going to let me have my own e-mail address, but you can write me regular letters. You can call, too.”

And then he looks up, and right at me, and the smile settles in his eyes that are reflecting me back to myself in a way I’ve never been seen before. I feel lightheaded when Nick says, “Maybe we should get cake after all.”

I smile back, hoping my eyes are showing him who he is, too. “Okay.”

Later, in the truck on the ride home, Nick gives me a refresher course on the gear shifting, and this time he doesn’t let go of my hand until we pull up to my house. “Well,” he says, sounding reluctant to be letting me go. “I’ll see you soon.”

“See you soon.”

And he gives me a long hug and a short kiss and I manage not to cry until I see his truck disappear around the corner.

On our way to the Lodge, I roll down the window to let the air on my face. Pine trees whip by and a hawk soars and it feels good to be alive. With my head still half-hanging out the window, I ask my dad, “Does God ever talk to you?”

He doesn’t answer, and at first I think he hasn’t heard. I bring my head fully into the car. “Dad? Does God ever talk to you?”

“I’m thinking.”

I roll up the window partway to cut down on the noise, and wait.

Finally, he says in his pastory voice, “I believe God talks to everyone, through the Bible and through—”

“No. I know all that. I’m asking does God ever
talk
to you. To
you
. Do you hear God’s voice? Not in your ear, but inside you, somewhere?”

“I don’t know, Sam. Sometimes I think so. But honestly, I don’t know for sure.” He half laughs, half sighs. “Right now is probably not a good time to ask, since I’m questioning every decision I’ve ever made since and including going into seminary.”

I look at him to see if he’s serious. “You can quit. Or take a break.”

“And do what? I’m probably not employable in the real world.” We pull into the parking lot of the Lodge. “Speaking of which, order something under ten dollars, okay?”

“Okay.”

The hostess takes us to where Vanessa and her family are already waiting on the deck, and tells us if we keep our eyes peeled we might catch sight of some young moose that have been grazing the meadow between the Lodge and the foothills at dawn and dusk lately.

I sit by Vanessa. “Hey.”

“Hi.”

“Keep your eye out for critters, Robby,” Mr. Hathaway says. “You’ll be our official watchman.”

Dad and Mr. and Mrs. Hathaway make small talk about work, and church, and a little bit about the Shaws, and how fast the summer has gone by. There’s a feeling in the conversation like already we’re putting this summer in the past, it’s time to look forward. Mr. Hathaway asks me, “Ready for school to start up?”

“Yeah, except…” I look at Vanessa. “I’m not going back to Amberton Heights.”

“What?” She lets her menu drop.

“Well,” Dad says, “we’re not totally sure about that. Something could change.”

“Dad, nothing’s going to change. It’s okay.”

He gives me a look that’s a mix of surprise and relief, like he thought I was going to totally fall apart if Amberton didn’t work out. But I’m not. I mean it, it will be hard at first but okay.

I say to Vanessa, “Maybe I’ll be back later, but not this year.”

“Thanks for telling me like one week before school starts.”

“Vanessa, honey,” Mrs. Hathaway says.

“Sorry,” Vanessa mutters, picking her menu back up. “I just wish—”

“There’s a moose!” Robby points excitedly to a beige dot coming out of the woods in the distance. Everyone at the table looks.

“I don’t know, bud,” Mr. Hathaway says, squinting. “I think it’s your imagination.”

We go back to our menus and Vanessa’s eyes over the top of hers are apologetic, looking at me. “I just wish everything weren’t changing.”

“I know.”

“What’s the skinny on this assistant pastor deal?” Mr. Hathaway asks my dad. “Got a call from Roger Wilkins about that last night. Kind of out of the blue.”

I look at my dad, curious.

“I can’t work seventy hours a week anymore,” he says. “The church can have me for forty, including Sunday mornings, no more. The money is in the budget. We should use it.”

“Maybe it’s not a moose,” Robby says, “but it’s moving.” His small hands grip the back of his chair as he stares intently out at the meadow. I turn to see what he’s looking at. The beige dot is more distinct now, not so much beige as a mix of colors that had been blending into the dry scrub behind it.

A mix of colors, including orange. An orange T-shirt.

I stand up and walk to the deck railing, my mouth suddenly parched. I wet my lips. “That’s a person.”

Blue shorts.

Red-brown hair. Like Nick’s.

And the person comes closer. Others start to stand up from their tables, napkins dropping on the deck, and I can feel the realization of it ripple through the whole place like a wave, like an earthquake, until someone—a waiter, holding a coffeepot—says, “Is that…?”

No one wants to say it, in case they’re wrong and later on feel dumb and disappointed, like the hikers who’d found the hand. No one has the faith to say her name.

Except me, and I shout it. Shout it as loud as I can, and soon everyone is saying it, calling it out, frantically running down the wooden staircase that leads to the restaurant’s herb garden, which has a gate that opens onto the meadow.

The person stops and looks behind her, as if for a second not sure if she should keep going or return to wherever it is she came from. Then, she breaks into a sort of limping jog toward us, all of us, running to meet her, a lot of us crying and saying things like:

“Slow down, you’ll scare her!”

“Call 911!”

But all I can say is her name, over and over, thinking how I’ll tell Nick about it later, and how he should be here to see.

“Jody!”

“Jody!”

“Jody!”

Day 14

Friday

KPXU

BREAKING NEWS

… To recap what we know so far: Jody Shaw has been found alive and relatively unhurt. In a scene that has the whole country talking, an astonished crowd at the Lodge restaurant just outside of Pineview witnessed the thirteen-year-old emerge from the woods where she’d been held at the cabin of forty-seven-year-old Gerald Ladew, a friend of the family and director of the Pineview Community Church choir, of which Jody was a member. Ladew’s body was found shortly thereafter, dead of what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. No note was found.

After being taken to the hospital for examination and observation, Jody was released to her family last night. The family has asked for privacy at this time, but spokesperson Charlie Taylor will be making a statement on their behalf later this afternoon.

Authorities say that Ladew was on a long list of possible suspects and was scheduled to be interviewed this week. We’ll be back after the break to talk with Police Chief Marty Spencer about where the investigation went wrong, and how Ladew managed to slip under the radar for nearly two weeks—a question I’m sure we’ll all be asking for months as the facts come to light.

But for today, an entire community celebrates a happy ending to this story, and the safe return of one of Pine-view’s own.

Day 16

Sunday

There are only a couple of us at youth group.The twins
are visiting grandparents and Paul has strep and who knows where everyone else is—maybe sitting at home, glued to the TV. It’s me and Daniel and Vanessa, and Allie. And Erin.

“So,” Erin says, balancing her Bible on her knees after having just read one of the Psalms. “What a week.”

“Um, yeah,” Daniel says.

The energy in the room, around church, is strange. Everyone’s happy about Jody, obviously, but bewildered about Gerald. Soon they’ll be chattering about my mom and dad, too, making guesses about why the church has to hire an assistant pastor, and why my mom is home but not coming to church. That’s one of the things we talked about in counseling. After everything on Friday we rescheduled for Saturday and it finally happened. Mom doesn’t want to come to church. Not yet. She doesn’t want to be “the pastor’s wife.” And then Dad said, well, maybe I shouldn’t be “the pastor,” and Mom said no, that’s who you are, and Margaret said we should take all of that very slow.

Erin closes her Bible now and drops it on the empty couch cushion next to her. “I have to tell you guys something.” She looks around the room with her earnest face, eyes landing for a second on each of us. “I’m… I got another job. I mean a different job. A really good one at a big church in Colorado. Pastor Charlie wrote me a recommendation and”—she glances at me—“I got it.”

Vanessa cries out, “No! Why?” Daniel and Allie join in the protests.

“I’ll be here a couple more weeks, then I’m going to move and start getting their fall programs in place.” Erin brushes a tear off her face. “God is calling me to this other place and I want to go. It feels right.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Daniel says. “It feels like crap.”

Vanessa looks at me like I should say something but I stay quiet. It’s not like I’m happy. It’s sad. It didn’t have to be this way, or turn out like this, but it did. And I’m the only other one in the room besides Erin who knows it’s for the best.

“I’m sorry, you guys,” Erin says. “I know it seems like I’m leaving
you
. But it’s more like I’m going to
them
.” She manages a smile. “Can you do me a favor? Can you guys pray for me?” Her eyes lock on to me. “Even if you kind of hate me right now?”