by Karen White
One day I’d have to pack up her clothes and shoes and personal effects and decide what to save for Owen, and what to part with. But I couldn’t do that yet. It would almost seem like watching her die twice. I stood in the doorway, unwilling to go in, unwilling to admit that it was empty. My gaze fell on the bedside table, which was cleared of all pill bottles and rolls of antacid tablets. All it contained now was a small pink clock, a vase of wilted flowers, and Loralee’s pink journal. I’d somehow managed to forget about it, or to push it so far from my brain that I’d pretended to forget about it. The journal belonged to Owen, but Loralee had wanted me to read it, too.
I took a step forward to get it, but stopped. Reading her words, hearing her voice, would probably be more than I could take. I headed back toward my room, leaving the journal where it was. It would be there when we were ready for it.
I sat on top of my bed with Loralee’s papers as well as my notebook of ideas—something Loralee had suggested and labeled for me—and tried to think of practical things, like schools for Owen as well as plumbing and appliances and heating and air systems. And refinishing basements. I’d decided to turn the basement into a rec room for Owen and his friends, a fun boy retreat with a place for gaming (Gibbes’s idea) as well as a Ping-Pong table and something called Foosball (again, Gibbes’s idea; he apparently got all his ideas from his college fraternity days).
But I was too easily distracted by thoughts, the same ones that had kept me up most nights since Loralee’s death. They were a mixture of grief, and uncertainty about my ability to be a good enough mother to Owen, and my indecision as to what to do about the suitcase and the letter in the basement.
I yawned, realizing I was too tired to make any decisions about anything in my current state. I wasn’t usually a nap taker, but I figured it might be my only option, since I wasn’t able to keep my eyes open.
The thunder had been replaced by the steady beat of rain against the roof, as good as any lullaby. I picked up my phone to set an alarm for thirty minutes—assuming I could sleep that long—and saw the voice-mail sign on the screen. I touched the button, then listened to Gibbes’s message.
“Hey, it’s me again.” Pause. “If you want me to get lost, just tell me. But I’d really like to talk. I miss her, too, and maybe if we . . . I don’t know.” Another pause. “Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I’m going on a fishing trip with some friends of mine, and the cabin we usually stay in is pretty much off the grid, with no cell service. There’s a gas station about three miles away, though, where I can get a few bars. So if you need me, call and leave a message and I promise I’ll check in a couple of times a day. Tell Rocky I said hi.”
I listened to the message three times just to hear his voice, then hit the “end” button. I’d call him back later, if only to tell him that Rocky was back to being Owen. I dropped my phone on the bed beside me and lay back on my pillow, the sound of the rain the last thing I remembered hearing before I dropped off to sleep.
* * *
I woke up to evening sunlight from the window blasting me in the face just as a heavy roll of thunder shuddered around the house. I sat up, blinking my eyes and belatedly realizing that I’d neglected to set my alarm. Lightning pulsed outside, followed by another blast of thunder a few seconds later, the sun dimming only slightly. The devil’s beating his wife, I thought, hearing Loralee’s voice.
I searched for my phone, vaguely remembering dropping it on my bed before I’d passed out, finally finding it tucked under one of my legs. I was in the middle of a stretch when I looked at my screen and saw that it was after six o’clock, the realization dawning on me that I’d been asleep for almost five hours.
I leaped from the bed, then headed toward Owen’s bedroom, calling his name, wondering whether he was hungry and feeling bad, and if he hadn’t wanted to awaken me to let me know. Yes, he could probably make his own peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but he wasn’t supposed to. That’s what I was there for.
“Owen?” His door was cracked open, so I knocked and waited for a response. “Owen?” I tried again after a moment, pushing open the door slowly. His room looked like it belonged to a military cadet, with bedclothes tucked in at neat angles, all of his LEGOs in color-coded bins against the walls, his latest projects displayed on the bookshelf along with Cal’s.
“Owen?” I called again, louder this time, checking in his closet and under the bed just in case.
I ran down the stairs, calling his name, pausing only long enough to hear him reply. But I heard only silence. I looked into all the downstairs rooms before heading toward the kitchen and then into the garden, where all the blooms and leaves bowed their heads from the weight of the raindrops, seeming to me as if they were in mourning, too.
“Owen?” I called, hearing my own rising sense of panic.
I moved quickly through the house again, calling his name, then out the front door and to the side of the house. “Owen—please! Answer me!” I used the gate to cut through the garden, moving rapidly toward the basement door, feeling the emptiness of the room before I’d hit the last step. The suitcase and plane model seemed to mock me, using Cal’s voice: Coward. I backed up, then quickly retraced my steps.
I ran upstairs, checking in the attic and the bathroom this time, calling Owen’s name again and again. I felt the rising panic begin to bubble over into my reasoning, and I found myself questioning Loralee’s decision not to get Owen a phone yet because he was only ten.
I was about to run downstairs again when I backtracked to Loralee’s room. I hadn’t checked in there, knowing Owen’s reluctance to enter it was as strong as my own. I stood on the threshold. “Owen? Are you in here?”
I waited, hearing the sound of the rain against the window and the soft ticking of the pink alarm clock by the side of the bed. I was about to turn away when I noticed that the journal was missing. I entered the room and got down on my hands and knees to look behind the nightstand and under the bed and came up empty.
Where could he have gone? Wherever Owen was, I had to assume the journal was with him. In desperation I called Maris’s mother, although in my heart I knew she would never have brought Owen to her house without speaking with me first. The whole family had come to Loralee’s funeral, and I knew their offer to call them for anything had been sincere.
Tracy hadn’t seen or heard from Owen, and neither had Maris, but she promised to let me know if they did, and asked me to let her know if I needed her to go out and start driving around looking for him.
I thanked her, not ready for my thoughts to go in that direction yet, not wanting to think of a lost Owen wandering the streets of Beaufort in the rain, his mother’s journal tucked against his chest. I started to call Gibbes, but stopped, remembering that he wasn’t available, and suddenly felt completely helpless and alone.
I closed my eyes. Think. The cemetery. I’d check the cemetery first, and if I didn’t find him there, I was calling the police. He wasn’t a runaway. He wasn’t a troubled child. He was simply . . . gone.
I grabbed my purse and headed toward the detached garage with the sagging roof. It was big enough for my car and our new bikes, keeping them out of the heat of the sun and the elements. I slid into the driver’s side, my gaze scanning the walls of the garage, which were mostly coated with layers of cobwebs, except where Gibbes had cleared them off to make room for the two bikes and two hooks for our helmets. I stopped. Owen’s helmet and bike were gone. He was somewhere on his bike, in the rain.
Terrified now, I backed out of the garage and sped over gravel to the street and headed toward Saint Helena’s churchyard. I was looking for his bike now, which might make him easier to spot, and found myself saying prayers I hadn’t said since I was a little girl.
The sun was on its final descent, and although the rain had stopped, heavy clouds hung dark and threatening as I parked my car along the street outside the church and raced in through the gates. Raindrops clung to the junipers, sycamores, and sculpted myrtle br
anches that hovered over the graves, a storm-scented wind shaking them loose until they fell like tears onto the stones and sodden earth.
The last rays of sun escaped through the winding paths between graves as I found my way to the mound of dirt marking the interment site. It was still covered with wreaths and bouquets, the ground raw and fragrant like the suitcase had been when Gibbes had pulled it from the hole.
No bike, no tracks, no sign whatsoever that Owen had been there. The full panic that I’d managed to hold at bay so far threatened to engulf me, to take me back to the helpless woman I’d been while married to Cal.
Think. Think. Loralee would have known what to do. But Loralee isn’t here. I stumbled blindly out of the cemetery, watching as dark clouds obliterated what was left of the sunset and everything turned to gray.
I made it back behind the steering wheel before the sky opened up and rain pelted down, thudding against the metal roof and windshield. My hands were shaking as I picked up the phone and hit “redial” to call Gibbes’s number. It wasn’t until his voice mail picked up and I heard his voice that I remembered he wasn’t there. That he was “off the grid” and would be checking in only a couple of times a day.
I threw my phone onto the passenger seat, then pressed my forehead against the steering wheel hard enough that it hurt. Think. Think. Lightning flashed, illuminating the world for a brief second, the limbs of the oak trees lining the road stark against the angry sky.
I thought of Owen, out in the storm by himself somewhere. Missing his mother. Maybe wondering where I was and why I wasn’t coming to get him.
“Owen!” I yelled inside my car as the sky went black again. And that was when I knew where he was. I saw him so clearly, standing on the dock watching the dolphin sluice through the water, feeling the ripples beneath my feet. And I heard Owen’s voice. We should always find a happy place—kind of like “base” in a game of tag, where you can go and all of your problems and worries can’t touch you.
I immediately turned the car around and headed toward Bay Street. I’d been to Gibbes’s house only twice, but each time I’d spent so much time studying the road that I was sure I could find it again. It was only a few turns, and then a long dirt drive to his house. And a bridge. My foot nearly slipped from the accelerator, but I moved it back again, gently pressing on it as I neared the bridge, which was lit up clearly against the night sky.
What if it’s open to let boats go through and I have to stop in the middle? I pushed the thought away, telling myself I’d think about it later, feeling a little like Scarlett O’Hara.
I thought of calling Gibbes again, and then as quickly as I dismissed that idea, I thought of Deborah. Deborah would come immediately; I knew that. But Owen was my brother, and he needed me now.
I flicked on my signal to turn right onto the bridge, hesitating long enough that the person behind me felt compelled to tap his horn. Slowly I moved forward onto the foot of the bridge, my hands gripping the wheel so tightly that I could barely feel them. My body shook while bile rose in the back of my throat. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
The rain had abated slightly, but the wipers continued at high speed, my hand refusing to let go of the steering wheel long enough to change the setting. Thump, thump, thump. I hated the sound, hated the way it reminded me of the sound a car made as it slid against the side of a bridge, the sound it made right before the car plunged over the side into icy cold water.
Breathe. Breathe. I was almost at the midpoint of the bridge, and it was closed, so I didn’t have to stop. Because if I had to, I wasn’t sure whether I could go forward again. There was a lot of traffic on the bridge, moving slowly, but as I approached the second half I wanted to get off now. Move, I said in my head to the white SUV in front of me. “Move,” I said out loud, my voice trembling, my forehead drenched in sweat.
You are so much stronger and braver than you think you are. The sob broke from my throat unexpectedly, my tears hot and sudden on my skin. “Move,” I whispered to the car in front, my foot slipping from the accelerator again and then punching on the brake. The vehicle behind me honked and I wanted to stop then. To park my car and get out and run back the way I’d come.
You are strong at the broken places. I blinked quickly, clearing my vision, and remembered Loralee saying that to me, remembered how I’d wanted to argue with her. “Move,” I said again to the back of the SUV, but with less conviction this time, my wipers beating back and forth, back and forth. Courage is doing the one thing you think you cannot do. The words came to me in a rush, not as if they’d been spoken, but almost as if they’d taken up residence somewhere in my brain.
My breathing slowed, my hands loosening on the steering wheel. I neared the end of the bridge, aware of the lights along either side of me but still not daring to look away from the road directly in front. The traffic surged forward and I went with it, following the cars until we’d left the bridge and were back on solid ground again.
Blood pounded in my ears, and I thought for a moment that I should pull over to catch my breath, to make sure I wasn’t going to do what Loralee had feared and give myself a heart attack. If the muscles in my face hadn’t been so frozen, I probably would have smiled at hearing myself say those words in my head with a soft Alabama accent. But I couldn’t stop. Owen was out there in the dark night, alone and maybe lost, and I was going to find him.
The rain had lessened to a light drizzle, and I finally pried my fingers from the steering wheel and switched the wipers to intermittent. On the back roads of Lady’s Island the dark wedged itself between the trees like a fist, obliterating all light and making it difficult to navigate by landmarks. I flipped on my high beams, allowing my headlights to illuminate a wider path. I tried not to dwell on the occasional pair of yellow eyes in the underbrush by the side of the road as I looked not only for landmarks, but for a blue bike and a red helmet and a little boy who was too far from home. My only hope was that Owen had managed to make it to Gibbes’s house before nightfall, and that he’d thought to find shelter on the porch.
I came up to a road on my right, recognizing a seventies-style ranch house with brightly colored Christmas lights hanging from the sagging front porch. I turned, knowing I was headed in the right direction. I pushed the accelerator down, unaware of my speed, just needing to get where I was going. The long drive at the front of Gibbes’s property loomed ahead, and I pulled in at the metal mailbox I remembered, the relief spreading through my joints and expanding my lungs.
Dirt, gravel, and mud flew from the back tires as I tore down the road, afraid to slow down just in case my car got mired in the muck. A single porch light glowed in the distance and I began to get worried all over again. What if he isn’t here?
I skidded to a stop in the drive and threw the car in park. Leaving the keys in the ignition and the headlights bright, I ran from the car to the front porch. “Owen? Owen—it’s me, Merritt. Are you here?”
But the porch was empty, the rocking chairs still. Not here. The dock. I jumped off the porch, feeling my shoes squish in the mud, then ran toward the dock. “Owen? Owen? Are you here?”
“Merritt?”
Did I imagine that? I stumbled over something, nearly tripping in the mud, but managed to catch myself. It was Owen’s bike. “Owen?”
“I’m over here. On the dock.”
I turned toward the dock to where the whole creek was illuminated by the soft glow of Beaufort’s lights reflecting off low clouds. I saw Owen then, at least the outline of him, wearing the yellow rain slicker his mother had bought for him, the same one that he’d told me in confidence nobody—especially no boys—wore past second grade.
“Owen!” I cried, running down the dock, then catching him in my arms as he grabbed mine and squeezing him as tightly as I could until I heard him struggling for breath. I pulled away from him, but neither one of us wanted to let go. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?” I went from being relieved to angry to worried, then back again, unable to settle on a
single emotion.
“I’m fine,” he said, his voice choked with tears. “I just . . .”
“You needed to touch base. I get it; I do. But I was so scared. . . .” I crushed him against me again, unable to finish my sentence, afraid the fear would return. I knelt in front of him. “Don’t you ever leave without telling me where you’re going; do you understand? Never. I was so worried.”
“I’m sorry, Merritt,” he said, wiping his sleeve across his nose. “I didn’t want to wake you up, and I thought Dr. Heyward would be here and he could call you. When I got here it wasn’t dark yet, but then it was and I was too afraid to go to the porch because I couldn’t see anything. I was just feeling so sad. . . .”
I brushed his soaking hair off his forehead. “I know. Me, too. But we’ve got to look out for each other. It’s you and me, right? Like Thing One and Thing Two?” I’d been studying up on Dr. Seuss, and hoped I’d made the right reference.
“Yeah,” he said, and I felt him smile.
“Promise me you’ll never do that again.”
“I promise.”
Something dropped from his jacket onto the dock and I leaned forward to pick it up. It was a book wrapped inside a plastic bag. “Your mother’s journal.”
He nodded. “I started to read it, but it began to rain and I didn’t want it to get wet. It made me feel better, though. Like she was sitting right here, talking to me.”
I reached up and straightened his glasses. “She’ll always be a part of you, you know. And I know I’ll never replace her, but I promise to do the best I can.”
“I know.” He tugged on my arm, turning around to face the water, and it wasn’t so frightening anymore. Courage is doing the one thing you think you cannot do. “You were right about something,” he said.
“About what?” I stood, but held his hand, afraid to let go.
He pointed across the water toward Beaufort, and the glowing lights that softened the darkness on the dock where we stood. “About how it’s never really dark. How there’s always light somewhere if you look hard enough.”
