A Place For Us

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  He pulled out his cell phone and saw that his mom had called him three times since late afternoon. His fingers were so cold he had to blow on them before he could delete her messages. There was no way that he could stand to listen to them now. Instead, he scrolled down to Phoebe’s number. He decided to call her, rather than text. He needed to hear her voice.

  It rang only once before it was picked up.

  “Who’s this?” the man asked.

  “Sorry. I think I must’ve—”

  “That you, Liam?”

  Liam just sat there, phone pressed to his ear, wishing he could start all over again. Not just with the phone call, but with every single stupid fucking thing he’d ever done. But he knew that was just wishful thinking. And that, along with any hope he had of connecting with the one person who could comfort him, was behind him now.

  “Don’t you ever contact my daughter again. Don’t call her. Don’t text her. Don’t even think about her, do you understand me?”

  Ahead was the snow-shrouded night—and loneliness. And, after he swiped the “end” icon on his cell phone, silence.

  26

  It was impossible for Brook to concentrate on the updated income and expense estimates that Alice had e-mailed her for the Huntsford Foundation gala. Rental fee, invitation printing, per-person dinner cost, photographer—the columns blurred together on Brook’s computer screen. Alice was projecting a shortfall of nearly eight thousand dollars and was looking for ideas from Brook about where they could save on the expense end.

  Should I call the caterer and see if we can renegotiate the price? Alice had e-mailed her. Maybe they can help us come up with some less expensive menu options. Take a look, and let me know what you think.

  Outside the snow was still falling. It was ten in the morning, and eight inches had accumulated since the late March storm blew in the day before. The latest weather report predicted as many as fifteen inches by evening, when it was supposed to begin to taper off. With all that heavy snow weighing down tree branches, the whole area faced power outages.

  Tilly’s school had been called off. Brook watched her daughter making snowballs in the kitchen garden and throwing them for Puff Daddy—who was barking and chasing his tail in excitement—to catch and retrieve. The poor dog would race to the spot where the snowball had landed and sniff around confusedly for a while, before bounding back to Tilly to try again. If Brook hadn’t been so worried, she probably would have laughed at these antics. But there was really only one thing on her mind.

  Where was Liam?

  When he didn’t make his regular Sunday afternoon call the day before, Brook had asked Michael if he thought they should phone him.

  “I think we agreed that he shouldn’t feel that he has to call us, right? And we don’t want him thinking that we’re monitoring his every move. Probably best to give him some more time.”

  Though Brook tried her son surreptitiously on her cell a few times over the course of the afternoon, it wasn’t until six that evening that Michael finally said, “Okay, you’re right. It’s unlike him not to call.”

  Brook knew it was silly of her to hold out hope that Michael would somehow be able to reach Liam when she couldn’t. When he hung up the receiver in the kitchen after leaving a message on Liam’s cell, Brook’s anxiety level really began to spike.

  “Should we call his dorm prefect?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Michael said, not meeting her worried gaze.

  “All right,” Brook said. “But if we don’t hear back from him by nine tonight—we’re calling. I don’t care what happens.”

  When they phoned the dorm prefect later that evening, however, he seemed calm and unconcerned.

  “I know the Warriors had a special practice session this evening and most of the team went out for pizza in town afterward. That’s probably where he is, but I’ll check around. One of us will get back to you.”

  But the call from the housemaster a half hour later was far less reassuring. Liam had not been at the special practice or out for pizza.

  “Any chance he went to Hartford with Carey at the last minute?” the housemaster asked.

  “Shouldn’t you have that information there?” Brook replied, her voice rising with concern. “Don’t they need to get passes from you? Aren’t you supposed to be keeping track of what these boys are doing?”

  “Yes, of course we are, Mrs. Bostock. So if he did go, it was without official permission. Carey’s due back within the hour, and we’ll see what he might know.”

  But Carey knew nothing about Liam’s whereabouts. It was the headmaster himself who called them with this information just past midnight.

  “We’ve searched all the dorms,” Foster Norwood told them, “and we’re talking to the students. The last time anyone remembers seeing him was Saturday afternoon at the Warriors’ home game. He was apparently pretty upset when they lost. We all were.”

  Michael, who was on the upstairs extension, said, “Don’t you have room checks at night? Can it really be that you have no idea where Liam’s been from Saturday afternoon until now? And if we hadn’t called, how long would he have gone missing?”

  “Yes, of course we check. I’m looking into where and how our system might have failed here. In the meantime we have campus security combing the buildings and grounds. And the town police are doing a street-by-street search. The snow isn’t helping matters, but we’re on this. If he’s still at Moorehouse, we’ll find him. Don’t worry. We’ll call you the moment we have anything to report.”

  The question that remained unanswered—and that haunted Brook and Michael throughout their sleepless night—was, what if Liam was no longer at Moorehouse? What if he’d left for some reason in the middle of the snowstorm? But why would he have done so? And where in the world would he have gone? They kept trying his cell phone every hour or so, but the calls clicked over into his mailbox, which soon filled with their increasingly alarmed messages.

  For Tilly’s sake, Brook tried to appear calm that morning. She made a show of being pleased and excited about her daughter’s snow day, promising to let her help make brownies later. But Michael, after pacing around for an hour or so, finally went outside to chop wood and stack it in the woodpile under the kitchen overhang—an activity he claimed calmed his nerves. The loud report of axhead hitting hard wood, however, followed by the sound of the log splintering apart, had the opposite effect on Brook. Both of them were waiting so intently for the phone call from Moorehouse that when it finally came around ten thirty, Brook grabbed the receiver in the middle of the first ring—and Michael was back in the kitchen a second or two later. After a glance at Brook, he quickly climbed the stairs to get on their bedroom phone.

  “Norwood here. Moorehouse security and town police have worked together through the night. The search has been systematic and thorough. But I’m very sorry to have to tell you that there’s still no sign of your son. In the meantime, the administration has been talking to everyone who knows Liam—the Warriors, Carey, all the boys in his dorm, his classmates. We’ve been able to ferret out some information about what happened and where he was, at least up until Saturday night. I’m afraid none of this news is good.”

  “Go ahead,” Michael said when Brook found herself unable to respond.

  “Liam did something at the Warriors game that upset a lot of the players. It turns out that the team has this little ritual of rubbing Liam’s head—for good luck apparently—before hitting the ice. For whatever reason, your son wouldn’t let any of them touch him on Saturday. I know it sounds unreasonable, but a lot of the boys blame him for the team’s loss.”

  “Am I right in remembering that Brandon Cowley’s on that team?” Michael asked.

  “Yes, he’s co-captain, as a matter of fact. He was the one who filled us in on a lot of this. He’s very upset about what happened. Apparently, he tried his best to cheer Liam up after the game. He went around to your son’s room and asked him to join a group of the boys
at a get-together in town. We encourage the students to make friends with the local teenagers, so I was pleased to learn that Brandon had taken the initiative to do just that. Unfortunately, though, after the boys got to the house, it became clear that the party was unsupervised. And there was alcohol on the premises. Brandon tried to get everyone to leave, but Liam refused to go. Though Brandon wouldn’t admit it, I have to say that I got the definite impression from him that Liam had been drinking. He became unruly. Brandon tried to subdue him, but Liam fought him off. Both boys fell at one point—and Liam hit his head.”

  “How? How badly?” Brook demanded.

  “Just on the floor. Not seriously as far as Brandon could tell, but Liam refused to let Brandon help him get back to the campus. That’s the last time anyone saw him.”

  “Have you gone to the house where this party was held?” Michael asked.

  “Yes,” Norwood replied. “I’ve just come back from talking to the parents. They weren’t there when all this happened. They had no knowledge of the party—and were very upset to hear that there’d been drinking.”

  “We need to alert the state police,” Michael said. “I’ll do that right now. And then I’m coming down there and I’ll want to talk to everyone—”

  “There’s no point in you coming down,” Norwood said. “The roads are a mess. We’ve already—”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Michael replied, hanging up before the headmaster could say another word.

  • • •

  Brook usually looked forward to a good snowstorm. It was one of the things that drew her to the idea of moving up to Barnsbury after 9/11. She and Michael visited Michael’s widowed mom every year between Christmas and New Year’s, and Brook came to love the peaceful majesty of the snow-covered mountains and rolling fields. It seemed that there was nothing more calming than watching the rough edges of winter subdued and softened by a fresh blanket of white. But this late March blizzard terrified her. It had come on so fast and forcefully. And there was something ominous about it coinciding with Liam’s disappearance. Even now, though the wind had died down, the snow continued to pile up.

  After Michael called 911 and talked to Chief Henderson about contacting the state police immediately, he got ready to leave for Moorehouse. Brook begged him not to go.

  “You heard what Norwood said,” she told him. “The roads are terrible, and it’s still coming down hard. Why don’t you let—”

  “I don’t trust that man,” Michael said, zipping up his coat. “I’m not saying he’s lying, but there’s too much about what he said happened—or what Brandon told him—that just doesn’t ring true. This business of Brandon trying to ‘cheer him up’? If the Warriors really thought Liam was to blame for their loss, the last thing they’d want to do was make him feel better.”

  “I’m worried about this fight he had with Brandon,” Brook said. “What if he’s really hurt? What if he has a concussion and—”

  “Hey, don’t do this to yourself,” Michael said. “He’s fine. He’ll be fine.”

  “It’s weird, isn’t it, that the parents weren’t there and didn’t know their kids had been drinking? Just like us.”

  “Yeah,” Michael said. “And you know what my first thought was? ‘How the hell could they have let that happen?’”

  “I thought the same thing,” Brook said, looking up at him with tears in her eyes.

  “Listen,” Michael said, pulling Brook to him. She wrapped her arms around him. “I have to go down there. If I can talk to Brandon and maybe Carey, I just think I’ll have a much better chance of getting to the bottom of this.”

  “Okay, but please, please be careful,” Brook told him. “Go slow. Stick to the main roads. And call me. Let me know you’re okay.”

  Brook forced herself to keep moving after Michael left, but she knew she was operating on autopilot. She responded to Alice’s e-mail, endorsing her ideas but also suggesting they ask the Huntsford Foundation board members to make personal calls to major donors who’d yet to RSVP. She made Tilly’s favorite grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches for lunch and then made good on her promise of baking brownies. They worked quietly side by side in the spacious, warmly lit kitchen as the snow continued to fall outside.

  And then it occurred to Brook that the room was too quiet. That her usually talkative daughter hadn’t said more than a word or two all morning. In fact, Tilly had been going through the paces—measuring out the baking soda, buttering the baking pan—as mechanically as Brook. Of course, Brook realized, Tilly had just been playing along for her mother’s sake. She must have known since the day before—when the eagerly awaited call from her older brother never came—that Liam was in some sort of trouble again. After they put the brownies in the oven, Brook turned to Tilly and said:

  “Listen, sweetie, I think you should know that we called Liam’s school when we didn’t hear from him yesterday—and he seems to be missing. Daddy’s gone down there to try to find him.”

  “You think he left Moorehouse?”

  “We’re not sure, but it looks that way.”

  “Good! I told him to. I told him to at Christmas. I told him to come home. He never should have gone to that place.”

  “But it’s a really good school. All your male Pendleton cousins have gone there. It kind of gives you a leg up in the world.”

  “Maybe for them, but not Liam. He needs to be here with us.”

  • • •

  It was a moment of painful clarity for Brook. As the afternoon settled into evening, Brook moved restlessly around the downstairs waiting for Michael to call. She stood at the French windows in the great room as the snow tick-tick-ticked against the glass. Liam was out there somewhere, frightened and alone. Please let him be okay, she pleaded with the darkening world, just let him come home safely!

  How was it that she needed her ten-year-old daughter to tell her something every mother should instinctively know? You don’t send a troubled teenager away—you do whatever possible to bring him closer. Out of fear and insecurity, she’d put everything she truly cared about in jeopardy. A terrible lack of judgment on her part had brought her family to this precipice. But she knew now that she would never make a mistake like that again. Something had shifted inside of her. Something fundamental had changed. Whatever happened, Brook understood that she was standing on her own two feet at last. She only hoped it wasn’t too late.

  27

  The visitors’ parking area near the Moorehouse administration building seemed to be the only lot that had been plowed, so Michael pulled in there and called Brook to let her know he’d arrived safely. He wasn’t about to tell her how treacherous the trip had actually been. Even on the highway, the snowplows had been unable to keep up with the steady accumulation. There’d been spinouts and accidents the whole way down. But he would have made the trip no matter what the conditions. And now that he’d arrived, he felt the knot between his shoulders start to ease a little. He was determined to get the answers he needed.

  The pathways through the campus grounds had disappeared under the snow, and Michael found himself slogging through knee-high drifts on his way to Foster Norwood’s home down the hill from the dormitories and faculty housing. The lighted windows of the stately white clapboarded colonial beckoned to Michael across the snow-covered yard. He had to knock several times before the front door was opened by a young girl.

  “Who is it, Stephanie?” Michael could hear Norwood’s voice call down the hall.

  “A man,” the girl said, looking Michael over solemnly.

  “I’m sorry, but we’re about to sit down—,” Norwood was saying as he came up to the door. When he saw who it was, he patted his daughter on the head and said: “Tell Mommy I’ll be there shortly. Now scoot.”

  Norwood showed Michael into his office and closed the door.

  “Listen,” he said as he crossed the room to his desk. “I told you there was no point in you coming down here. We’ve already done everything we possibl
y could.”

  “I know,” Michael said, working to control his temper. His son was missing and this man was about to sit down to dinner. “I just want to talk to Brandon and the other boys who saw Liam last.”

  “You’ve contacted the state police?”

  “Yes, right after we spoke. But at this point Liam could be anywhere. I know we could find him a lot faster if we knew why he left—and where he might be headed. So, please, could I just talk to Brandon?”

  “Sorry, but no.”

  “What?”

  “It’s school policy. I can’t let you interrogate Brandon or any of the others. Parents’ access to the student body is limited to their own children. Period. These boys are under my protection.”

  “Is that so?” Michael said, trying hard to keep his voice steady. He forced himself to unclench his fists. “Then what about my son? What sort of protection did you offer him?”

  “Listen, we do our best to keep an eye on the students, but we can’t prevent them from leaving the school if they decide to. All we can do is try to instill in them a sense of responsibility and an understanding that their actions result in consequences. It appears that Liam left the campus of his own free will. Though, frankly, if what I heard turns out to be true, he would have been expelled from Moorehouse anyway.”

  “So you’re washing your hands of him?”

  “We spent the past eighteen hours turning this place upside down trying to find him. I’d hardly say that was shirking our duties. I’m sorry. I know you’re upset, but there’s really not a great deal more I can do for you. I’ve already told you everything we learned from talking with the boys. I tried to tell you on the phone that coming down here was a waste of your time. As far as I’m concerned, this is a police matter now.”