Afterward

by Jennifer Mathieu

  The reporters, some of them from as far away as England, were pretty interested in us, but Ethan Jorgenson got most of the attention. To be gone four years and found just over an hour away? And to have apparently had the chance to leave and not have left? That’s what everyone was talking about under their breaths.

  The police kept our two families mostly separated in the aftermath. I didn’t see Ethan during the interviews at the police station. Or the examinations at the hospital. I’m not sure why. But we were all hustled into the gym together for the news conferences, and I caught a glimpse of him through the crowd of reporters. Tall. Dark hair. A bunch of piercings in his left ear. Not bad looking, to tell you the truth, but skinnier than I remembered him. Maybe that bastard who took him and Dylan didn’t feed him much, I don’t know. He looked so different, but of course that makes sense since he’d been gone for so long, and a lot happens to you between eleven and fifteen. I mean, at eleven I could wear clothes from the boy’s department, but by fifteen my boobs were as big as my mother’s.

  Ethan had been a year behind me in school, but Dove Lake is tiny enough that it was easy to recall how he always played basketball at recess during elementary school and whacked away at the drums in the school band. I still remember his lopsided smile staring out at us from the MISSING posters taped to the front doors of the Tom Thumb and the Walgreens and the Wal-Mart and the Dairy Queen and the waiting room at his dad’s office. Dr. Jorgenson is my dentist just like he’s the dentist for every kid in town because he’s the only dentist in town, and for years, even after everyone was pretty much sure that Ethan Jorgenson was a skeleton at the bottom of a lake somewhere, even after all the other flyers had been taken down because it was just too sad to keep them up, Ethan’s smile stared at me from the bulletin board in the waiting room when I went in for a cleaning every six months. And when Dr. Jorgenson would come in during my checkups and nod and examine my teeth and ask me about how school was going, I would think about Ethan Jorgenson and his crooked smile and I’d feel so sorry for Dr. Jorgenson. I don’t know how he even managed to get up each day, much less stare into the mouths of squirming preschoolers and pimply teenagers who probably reminded him of his son every second of every hour. He and Mrs. Jorgenson didn’t have any other kids. They just had Ethan.

  And then one awful day they didn’t anymore.

  Ethan and his parents got booked on the Carlotta King show a few days after he and Dylan were found. The reporters were done asking my family questions, but the Carlotta King interview aired nationally on a Wednesday night, and there were promos running for it every hour on the hour in the days leading up to it. My parents didn’t want to watch it. Let’s leave well enough alone. Dylan is back. He’s safe. He’s unharmed. We don’t need to watch that, Caroline. We don’t need to get ourselves all worked up.

  But of course I recorded it and after everyone was asleep—well, after Dylan fell asleep crying in my mother’s arms and my mother passed out on the floor next to his bed because it was the only way he’d drift off and my father acted the whole time like nothing was going on by shutting himself inside his bedroom, after all of that—I crept into the family room and watched it. I watched as Carlotta King tilted her head, furrowed her brow, and parted her lip-glossed pink lips just so before asking another probing question. She had this way about her, Carlotta King did, of making you feel like you were just sitting at the bus stop with her having a chat. It seemed like talking to her would be like talking to your favorite teacher from elementary school, the one who gave generous hugs and smiled sweetly when you accidentally called her Mom. No wonder Carlotta King scored all the big deal interviews with politicians who’d cheated on their wives and celebrities who’d gotten arrested drunk driving.

  Phillip and Megan, you moved here to Dove Lake from Austin when Ethan was a preschooler in the hopes that you’d be raising your son in a safe, almost idyllic environment. Small Town, USA. And then this tragedy happens. How do you settle that in your minds?

  Ethan, this question is delicate, but can you tell me how you got through these past four years? What was your day-to-day life like?

  So what’s next for the Jorgenson family? Will you be continuing with the foundation you’ve started? You’ve done such wonderful work for the families of other missing kids across this country.

  I texted Emma, This is so freaking weird.

  No shit she wrote back. She had watched the interview earlier, and she wanted to know what I was thinking as I watched it. But pretty soon I was ignoring her texts, totally immersed in listening to my dentist and his wife and their son—a kid I used to pass by in the cafeteria at Dove Lake Primary—talk to the entire country about what had happened to them. They looked pretty put together considering. Ethan’s piercings had disappeared from his ear. Dr. Jorgenson was wearing a tie and a blazer, and Mrs. Jorgenson had on a swanky plum suit she must have found in the city or at least online. No store in Dove Lake would carry something so pricey.

  They talked like they’d gone over the questions ahead of time, and maybe they had. Ethan’s answers were short, and he kept glancing at his parents in between. I felt sorry for him, but a lot of people were saying the Jorgensons were doing this to get the media off their backs. One Carlotta King interview and then hopefully everyone would leave them alone.

  I waited for Carlotta King to ask Ethan why he didn’t try to run away, especially since reporters were finding out he’d been seen biking and hanging out outside the apartment complex in Houston all by himself while that bastard was at work. Some reports even said he’d made friends with other kids in the neighborhood. But she didn’t ask those questions.

  I waited for her to ask about Dylan, too. About how that bastard had managed to kidnap him from practically in front of our house. About what had happened to him while he’d been gone. But she never said a word about us. I guess she figured like everybody else that my little brother was only gone a few nights. That was nothing compared to what Ethan had been through. Never mind that on the evening I was watching Carlotta King and Ethan Jorgenson and his parents, I heard my little brother waking up in his bedroom down the hall, shrieking at the top of his lungs so loud that I couldn’t begin to make out the words my mother was using to try to calm him down.

  It’s been three months since that interview aired. Three months since I saw Ethan Jorgenson in the Dove Lake High School gym. Three months since Dylan came home. And he still wakes up screaming, and my mother still sleeps on his bedroom floor a lot of the time, and my dad still comes home later and later. As for me, I hide in the shadows of my house, my mind unable to stop wondering and worrying about what happened to my baby brother when he was taken from us.

  ETHAN—105 DAYS AFTERWARD

  When my mom drives me to Dr. Greenberg’s, we have to travel the same highway Marty used when he first took me, and this makes me anxious as hell. It takes an hour on the interstate to get to Dr. Greenberg’s. There aren’t any therapists for me in Dove Lake or even in the next town or two over. So twice a week I get in the front seat of my mom’s Volvo and she lets me pick out something to listen to (usually nothing, sometimes Green Day). We start the drive to Dr. Greenberg’s, and I fight the urge not to puke because I feel so bad. At first I thought about asking my mom if there was another way, but I know that if there is, it involves taking a million back roads and would take two hours instead of just one. So mostly I just squeeze my hands into fists and rub my thumbs over my knuckles until we get there. I imagine my thumbs are little mountain climbers and my knuckles are the mountains.

  Up down and up down and up down and up down …

  I used this trick when I was with Marty. It helps calm me down. Sometimes.

  At first I didn’t have to worry about all of this because Dr. Greenberg came to us, back when the media was still all crazy and reporters were literally camping out in our front yard. Dad’s old college friend who lives in New York and is some big brain doctor or something recommended Dr. Greenberg and put us
in touch and everything. Mom said he had a national reputation and lots of experience helping patients dealing with severe trauma. Those are the words she used. Severe trauma. Which made me feel more like someone with a broken leg than a kid who’d been kidnapped, but okay.

  When Dr. Greenberg first visited us, my initial thought was this guy looks really weird. I wasn’t sure how old he was, but he looked like a grandpa. He had a huge white beard and these bushy eyebrows that were so out of control I couldn’t even figure out how he managed to see. He basically looked like a skinny Santa Claus. He came out every single day and met with me alone, and with my parents alone, and with me and my parents together, and then with my parents’ therapist—this guy they started seeing while I was gone. That therapist met with my parents alone, and with Dr. Greenberg alone, and with my parents and Dr. Greenberg together, and then we were all sitting together and through all of it I offered one-word answers and grunts, basically feeling like curling up and disappearing or at least going to sleep. But of course I couldn’t sleep. So Dr. Greenberg prescribed these sleeping pills and something called an SSRI and something for anxiety plus this other stuff my mom keeps track of. She keeps the bottles in her bedroom, and she has her phone all set up to ding when she needs a reminder to give me my pills.

  But that was in the beginning. I’m still on the pills, but about a month ago Dr. Greenberg said I could start coming to his office twice a week instead of him coming to us so much.

  “Mom,” I said to my mom when she told me this, “I really don’t think I need to go. I’m fine.” Part of this was because of the drive I didn’t want to do. And part of it was because the idea of having to talk about any of this made me want to disappear or melt or vaporize or something. I mean, if I’d spent all the time with Dr. Greenberg in my house not talking, I didn’t see how that was going to change by sitting in his office.

  “Sweetheart, this is an important part of your recovery. Your dad and I are still seeing Dr. Sugar.” Yeah, their therapist is called Dr. Sugar. Which is weird because my dad is a dentist, but I guess they like him a lot.

  “I know you’re still seeing Dr. Sugar,” I said. “That’s good. But…”

  Then I looked at my mom’s face and her teary eyes. I can’t say no to my mom. I can’t say no to my dad either. Not after everything I’ve put them through. Those first few days back my mom kept following me from room to room. She hugged me every five seconds and she still kind of does, which was okay at first, but lately her hugs make me push my shoulders up to my ears and hold my breath for a second, and then I feel bad again. When I first got back and I went to the bathroom, she would wait outside the door. And when I went to sleep, she slept on the floor next to my bed until my dad talked her out of it. Those first few nights I would wake up a million times and blink and try to figure out where I was, and then I would see her on the air mattress on the floor and I would be happy and then sad because I was such a messed up person.

  The bottom line is, I can’t do anything else to hurt her. I can’t put my parents through anything else. So I didn’t really fight going to Dr. Greenberg’s when my mom said I had to keep going. I just said, “Okay, I’ll go. It’s fine.”

  And that’s how I’m here, zipping along the freeway, trying to distract myself by reading the exit signs and people’s bumper stickers and running my thumbs up and down over my knuckles and trying not to throw up.

  “Get on the floor. This is a gun on your neck.”

  Just read the signs. Just focus on your hands.

  “Sorry, buddy. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  No, no, no, it’s not him. He’s gone now, Ethan.

  “Don’t cry. I don’t like crying.”

  I cough because sometimes that helps stop the feeling that I’m going to hurl.

  “Are you okay, Ethan?” my mother asks, glancing at me.

  “Yeah, I’m okay.” I cough again.

  Finally we get to Dr. Greenberg’s, and once the car stops I start to feel a little better. Dr. Greenberg has an office in his house on the north side of Houston. It’s a big, old-fashioned two-story house with a porch that goes all the way around. Sometimes his dog, Groovy, is on the porch taking a nap. Yeah, as if it wasn’t weird enough that my therapist looks like a skinny Santa, he has a dog named Groovy. I wonder if my dad’s college roommate really knew what he was talking about when he said this guy is some world-famous expert in severe trauma.

  “Hello there!” Dr. Greenberg says as he comes out the front door to meet us on the porch. Like we’re coming over for Thanksgiving dinner or something.

  “Hello, Dr. Greenberg,” my mother says, smiling. When she smiles she looks younger. One of the first things I noticed when I came back was how much older my mom looked. Like way more than just four years had gone by.

  “Ethan, how are you?” he asks, grinning at me like he just can’t wait to sit in a chair opposite me while I stare out the window of his office and give one-word answers. “How was the drive up here?”

  “Fine,” I say, nodding, and we head inside for our session.

  CAROLINE—109 DAYS AFTERWARD

  The truth is that Jackson Family Farm is not owned by the Jackson family but by the Saldana family. Only Enrique Saldana, my boss, told me once that “Saldana doesn’t sound as good as Jackson.” When I asked him what he meant, he said, “Saldana sounds too Mexican.” I reminded him that not only had he been born here, which made him as American as me, but that the people who drive the hour or so out here from the city don’t care if the farm they take their snotty kids to is run by Mexicans. I mean, they all drive hybrid cars with stickers for Democrats on them. But Enrique says he doesn’t want to take a chance. If anyone asks to speak to one of the Jacksons in charge, we have to tell them to talk to Enrique, and he says he’s just the manager.

  Jackson Family Farm is one of those places where city families come to have a country experience without actually having to live in the country. These people show up dressed in overalls that they bought especially for the occasion, and their kids have names like Asher and Henry and Amelia and Josephine. They spend their time posing by the corn maze (in the fall) and the strawberry patch (in the summer), and then they pay way too much for homemade jerky and summer sausage, and by the time they leave they’ve posted pictures of their day all over the Internet. I sound rude, but I don’t mean to be. This is just how these people are. To be honest, I’m thankful for them because they’re the reason I can earn my own money in a town without a lot of part-time jobs, so I don’t have to bug my parents for extra cash I know they don’t have.

  Enrique hired me last summer, just before tenth grade. I tried to get Emma to get a job here with me, but she said the thought of being around that much hay made her break out in hives. Among my many duties, I run the cash register, hand out the white plastic buckets for collecting strawberries, and point out where we keep the porta-potties. The name of the porta-potty company is Doodie Calls. That always gets a laugh from the guests, but once you’ve seen the name fifty million times, it isn’t even funny anymore. It’s just another part of working at Jackson (actually Saldana) Family Farm.

  There are two other Dove Lake High kids who work here. One is Milagro Saldana, Enrique’s daughter, who’s a freshman and super quiet.

  The other is Jason McGinty. He’s a junior, like me.

  Jason McGinty is a lazy stoner and not the sharpest tool in the shed, but what I like about him the most is that when he kisses me he makes me feel like a head without a body. Actually, to be honest, just lips without even a head. And sometimes, if I’m lucky, he brings a joint to work and we go smoke by the back fence line after hours.

  Which is how I find myself on Saturday night, sitting on the split rail fence, trying not to cough from inhaling too deep.

  “Oh, hell, I know you need to cough, so cough,” Jason says. Which of course makes me only want to not cough even more. He smirks at me, and I give up.

  The burning sensation passes
, and I wait for the pleasant feeling of being high to begin. The pot Jason gets is pretty good, but I never ask him where he gets it. It’s just one of the many things we don’t discuss. Usually we just come back here and get high and fool around.

  But tonight Jason feels like talking. And as soon as he starts, I wish he hadn’t.

  “So, is shit basically back to normal with your brother? You haven’t brought him around lately.”

  I used to bring Dylan to the farm when I wasn’t working. I mean, before everything happened. Enrique let him spend hours touching all the grooves on the wheels of the tractor that doesn’t work but that the city kids climb on to get their pictures taken. But I haven’t brought Dylan by in months, and now Jason McGinty wants to talk about it.

  “Everything’s fine,” I say, reaching out my fingers for the joint so he knows I want another hit. Jason is holding in a big swallow of pot and air, and even in the last remaining bits of daylight I can see his face turning just a little red. Finally, he exhales.

  “Yeah, but isn’t it also, like, a little weird? Like, when you think about what might have happened to him while he was with that dude?”

  Oh, Jesus, Jason McGinty. Not now.

  “Yeah, I guess,” I answer. I squeeze my eyes shut and think about this morning when my mother was trying to give Dylan a bath. I think about his high-pitched shrieks and the thud of his feet kicking the sides of the tub and the splashing of water and my mother starting to cry. I think about my dad getting into his truck to go on a job that suddenly, magically appeared out of nowhere.

  A swimmy fuzziness starts to come over me, which is good, but my heart is beating fast, which sometimes happens when I smoke. I don’t like that part so much.

  “And Ethan,” Jason keeps going, like I’m not even there on the fence next to him, like he’s talking to himself, “I still don’t get it. The neighbors saw that dude hanging out alone all the time, and he never tried to leave? Or call his parents? That makes zero sense. Shit, even if he liked it there for some weird reason, you would have thought he would have at least called the cops for your brother.”