Three Days Missing

by Kimberly Belle

  Ethan’s mouth screws up all over again. “I’m going to have to think about that one.”

  I smile and run a hand over his head, feeling the soft curls slip between my fingers. “You take all the time you need.”

  If there’s one thing we have now, it’s time.

  * * *

  It’s only at the hospital that Ethan fills in the missing pieces.

  About how the fire drove everyone outside and into a panic, including Miss Emma, who was so busy helping Avery put out the fire that she didn’t notice when somebody clapped a hand over Ethan’s mouth, pressed a blade to his ribs and dragged him into the woods.

  About how Charlie forced him, gagged and barefoot and at knifepoint, through the forest and into a car, a black Ford Explorer with tinted windows and a dented fender and an Alabama license plate that read 40A62K3, all descriptors Ethan cataloged in his multiple messages to Lucas.

  About her trailer and the pile of expensive toys, including an Xbox fresh out of the box, all meant to indulge an overindulged child while she waited for Sammy’s parents to respond to her demands. About Charlie’s dog, a vicious Rottweiler mix named Rufus that prowled around the double-wide, barking and snapping his teeth whenever Ethan would press his face to the window. About how Charlie kept calling Ethan Sammy, and how Ethan let her.

  “Why did you do that?” I say. We are gathered around Ethan’s bed—Andrew and Lucas and Mac and me, a circle of admirers hanging on his every word.

  Ethan shrugs. “Because by then we were already in the car, and I didn’t know what she’d do to me. I figured it was better to play along, see if I could get her to like me some.”

  “And your backpack? Why did you have it with you?”

  “Because I didn’t want the compass to burn up in the fire.” He looks at me, and his lip quivers, but his eyes stay dry, his body too parched to produce tears. “I don’t have it. It must have fallen out of my backpack somehow.”

  Three days ago, his words would have crushed me. Today I feel a pang, then nothing.

  “I’ll go back up to the camp,” Lucas says. The offer is both for me and for Ethan, a balm over his guilt. “The compass must be somewhere near where I found the pouch. I’ll find it.”

  “It’s fine.” I mean it, too. I drape a hand over Ethan’s thigh. I can live without the compass.

  “Can you tell us about Charlie?” Mac says, eager to move things along. His notebook is balanced on a thigh along with his cell, set to Record. “Whatever you can remember is fine.”

  Ethan gives him a look, one that means I remember everything. “Brown hair, hazel eyes, five foot six, a hundred and sixty pounds. Really strong Southern accent. Born February 20, 1962.”

  “She told you her birth date?” Mac says.

  “No, I saw her driver’s license. It said a hundred and forty pounds but she was lying. Georgia number 0377564948.”

  Andrew looks ready to burst with pride.

  “She wasn’t very nice,” Ethan says, “and neither was her dog. She said if I stepped one foot out the front door, Rufus would eat me.”

  Mac’s voice is slow and careful. “Will you be okay if I show you a picture? We need an ID, but we don’t have to do this now if you don’t want. We can wait for whenever you’re ready.”

  He’s being overly cautious, and he’s not the only one. As much as the doctors have assured us Ethan is fine, not every wound is physical. So far he hasn’t said a word about the terror he felt when Charlie held a knife to his throat, the deep and silent sorrow at being held against his will, any residual resentment that it took us three days—fifty-nine eternal hours—to find him. Maybe these are all things that bubble up later, like a coffeemaker on a delay setting, but for now, with all of us hovering around him, Ethan seems the opposite of distressed.

  Ethan looks at me, then back to Mac. “I’m ready now.”

  The picture Mac pulls up on his phone is of a woman, that much I know, but for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you the color of her hair, the shape of her lips, if she was thin or had three chins. The only thing I see are her eyes, mean marbles pushed into a doughy face.

  “That’s her.” Ethan’s body creeps deeper into the pillows. “That’s Charlie. What’s going to happen to her?”

  Mac slips his phone into a pocket. “She’s going to jail for a very long time. Her brother, too. We arrested him, as well.”

  “What about Rufus?”

  “Rufus will go to a shelter, where they’ll feed him and monitor him to see if he’s mean or just underfed. Dogs are like people that way. Bad behavior is typically the result of circumstance, not genetics. If Rufus can be rehabbed, the trainers at the shelter will know how to do it.”

  “He was okay to Charlie, so I guess he can’t be all that bad.”

  A nurse bustles over with a tray of food. American cheese on spongy white bread, mushy apple wedges that have gone slightly brown, the ubiquitous hospital Jell-O jiggling in a plastic cup. Food Ethan would normally turn his nose up at, but now he picks up a triangle of sandwich and stuffs the entire thing in his mouth.

  “I still don’t understand how you got online,” Lucas says. “Mac said the trailer didn’t have a working internet connection.”

  Ethan’s eyes go wide with excitement, and he speeds up the chewing, swallowing with an audible gulp. “Okay, so whenever Charlie went outside to take care of Rufus, I’d look through her stuff.”

  Mac holds up a palm. “If she left you alone, why didn’t you try to escape?”

  “Because she locked me inside and let Rufus off his chain. If I got out, he would have eaten me for sure.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  “Anyway, whenever Charlie was outside, I would look through her stuff. I knew she had a satellite on the roof, so when I found an old Yagi antenna and USB cord, I made them into a Wi-Fi antenna. I had to wait until she was out front with Rufus to climb out the back window and switch out the LNB for the antenna. Rufus came around the corner and he almost saw, but then he got distracted by a groundhog. He went after it and Charlie went after Rufus, and I quickly pointed the antenna all around until I found a signal.”

  There’s a long, stunned silence as everyone takes in the idea of an eight-year old jerry-rigging a nonexistent internet connection with a pile of old junk.

  Mac clears his throat. “Let me get this straight. You MacGyvered a Wi-Fi satellite and hijacked Mona’s signal?”

  “Duuude.” Lucas holds out a fist. Ethan grins and bumps it with his.

  “Somebody should tell her to secure her internet connection,” he says. “A WPA2 will give her the least amount of vulnerabilities.”

  “Which is why the ISP sent us there, busting down Mona’s door instead of Charlie’s.” Mac shakes his head, incredulous. “My colleagues at airport zone were there, too, accusing Mona of hacking into air traffic control. They thought she was a terrorist.”

  “I only pinged them a couple of times. I didn’t threaten to do anything bad. But I heard the planes so I knew we were close. I figured they’d get there the fastest.”

  “But just in case, you also hacked the 9-1-1 system and three fire stations.”

  “Four,” Ethan corrects him. “I was working on the police station next but then I got tired. When I woke up, you were there.”

  And thank God for that.

  Andrew must be thinking the same, because he reaches for Ethan and so do I, my hand moving as if by magnetic force. I wait for the spark of hostility, for the begrudging jealousy to bruise my skin, but the only thing I feel is gratitude and a bone-deep exhaustion. I’m tired of being angry all the time. Of lugging all my old resentments around like a backpack full of lead. Andrew and I made this creature—this beautiful, brave, brilliant creature—and yet we keep tugging at him like a wishbone at Thanksgiving dinner, never stopping to consider that the only way to win is to break the b
one in two.

  I wonder: what would happen if I stopped? Would Andrew win, or would we simply stop tugging?

  * * *

  Mac packs up and leaves, and so does Lucas, heading down to the cafeteria to fetch some food for both of us. Andrew is called away, too, by a nurse with a stack of papers three inches thick—paperwork and forms in need of a signature. After they’re gone, Ethan watches cartoons on the television on the far wall while I watch him—his short delicate fingers, his ribs rising and falling with breath. Was he always this bony, this thin?

  “Knock, knock.” I recognize the voice, look over as Stefanie Huntington pokes her head in the door. She gives me a shy smile. “Can we come in? I promise we won’t stay long.”

  I flip the TV to Mute and wave her inside.

  A reluctant Sammy trails her, dragging a cloud of balloons the size of a small car. He shoves his glasses higher on his nose with the back of a hand, taking in the room with wide eyes. They graze over the metal hospital bed, the row of medical equipment along the wall, the IV bag with a slow drip into one of Ethan’s left-hand veins. Sammy stops at the foot of the bed, the balloons bobbing against the paneled ceiling.

  “Sam sends his regards,” Stefanie says. “He would be here, but he’s at the police station, giving a statement. It was his chief of staff, Josh Murrill, who was behind Ethan’s kidnapping. He’s the one who called me Friday morning.”

  Josh, the man who accompanied her to the meeting at school.

  Ethan straightens against his pillow. “Murrill. That was Charlie’s last name.”

  “Charlie is Josh’s sister. The Huntington history is...complicated. An ancient family feud that festered into much more than it should have. I don’t know how we didn’t see it earlier.” Stefanie drapes a hand over Ethan’s ankle, a skinny lump under the thin polyester blanket. “I’m sorry you got caught up in our family’s drama, sweetie, but I’m so happy you’re okay.”

  Ethan gives her a faint smile. He’s smart enough to know that’s not what she came here to say.

  “Okay, buddy.” Stefanie reaches behind her for her son. “You’re up.”

  Sammy comes lurching forward, the balloons dancing above his head. His gaze sticks to the coil of tubes running from the IV into Ethan’s arm, the slow drips of clear liquid. “Is that medicine?”

  “It’s saline.” Ethan’s words are careful, watching Sammy like he’s waiting for him to pull a Super Soaker from behind his back or try to short sheet the hospital bed. “I was dehydrated when they found me, but I’m better now.”

  “Oh. That’s good, I guess.” Sammy shifts on his feet, thrusting the balloons at Ethan. “These are for you. I’m sorry that I took your sleeping bag. After we leave here, Mom’s taking me to the store, and she’s making me buy you a new one with my own money, so...” He shrugs.

  As apologies go, Sammy’s is pretty pathetic, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Ethan doesn’t move, doesn’t respond. Sammy stares at the floor.

  Stefanie stabs a knuckle between his shoulder blades, and he sighs, digging around in his pants pocket. That’s when I notice the lump jutting out from his upper leg, the way the weight of it pulls at his pants. He pulls the object out, and I know what it is before the glass catches the light.

  The compass.

  Behind his glasses, Sammy’s eyes bloom with tears. He settles the compass carefully on the blanket, his voice going halting and croaky. “I was never going to keep it, I swear. I only wanted to hide it from you, to make you think you’d lost it for a while. I was going to put it back, but then the fire happened and you disappeared and...”

  His face screws up, and his cheeks sprout splotchy pink spots. He looks so much like Ethan when he cries that I get why in the dark woods, Charlie might confuse the two.

  “I’m sorry!” Sammy wails. “I don’t know why I’m always so mean to you. Why you always make me so angry. I’m not that way with anybody else, and I don’t like being that way with you, but you’re just so smart. You know everything, and it makes me feel stupid.”

  Ethan blinks at him in surprise. “I don’t know everything.”

  “You do. You always know the answer, way before anybody else does. That’s why Miss Emma always sits with you at lunchtime. That’s why she likes you so much.”

  “No, she doesn’t. She sits with me because nobody else will. She doesn’t want me to eat alone.”

  Ethan’s words reach into my chest and squeeze my fragile heart. I think about the mummy bag in the middle of the cabin floor surrounded by all the others, the lone black bag at the far wall, all those times I was called in to the principal’s office, fuming at Sammy when I should have been fuming at the school. At Miss Emma and the other teachers. For not protecting my son, for not shielding him from his bullies. I think of Dr. Abernathy’s long litany of slides, her proud recitation of the Cambridge motto of diversity and decency and dignity, none of which they’ve ever offered my son. I should have known a little boy—mine, Stefanie’s—could not be the entire problem.

  I know something else, too, with sudden white-light clarity: Ethan will never go back there. He will not step one more toe on Cambridge Academy property, will not sit alone in the cafeteria or on an outside bench while all the other kids play. I think this, and the cord of muscle between my shoulder blades loosens, my breath coming light and easy for the first time in months. There’s a school out there for Ethan, but it’s for damn sure not Cambridge. I won’t put him through that again.

  I can barely put him through it now. He glares at Sammy, seething and defiant, clearly not ready to forgive. Honestly, neither am I.

  “He’s been such a mess, carrying this around for days.” Stefanie pulls Sammy against her, and he buries his face in her middle. “And I don’t mean the compass, but the guilt. It was his idea to come here today, you know. He really is sorry.”

  I nod, because I believe her. What I don’t know, what I can’t yet decide, is if sorry is enough.

  And yet he apologized, which is more than I can say of Andrew.

  All these months I’ve been waiting for words of regret for what he did, but then what? Will I be unable to forgive him, just like I don’t want to forgive Sammy now? And if so, what good is an apology?

  “Thank you, Sammy,” I say, trying not to choke on the words. “It couldn’t have been easy for you to come here and say all that you did, so thank you for being brave.”

  Sammy sucks a hitching breath, swiping at his cheeks with the back of a hand. “You’re not mad?”

  I look at him, and I don’t know what I’m expecting. A revelation? Absolution for all his past sins? He’s the same kid I’ve been looking at for the past two years, as much of a brat to me as ever. He may be a hero now, but he’s a terrible one. The bully and the liberator, a horrid little hellion in shining armor. I hate him and I love him for what he did.

  Ethan will be okay. He’ll bounce back from this, I’ll see to it. But it’s up to me to point him the way.

  “Oh, I’m still mad. But if you hadn’t told somebody about the Xbox game, Ethan would still be with Charlie, and we’d still be searching. In the end, the good you did outweighs the bad. I’m going to do my best to remember that.”

  Stefanie gives me a grateful smile, but the weight of Ethan’s silence becomes too much for Sammy. He screws up his face and cries his heart out, the tears streaming down his cheeks, past his chin, rolling over his neck and into his shirt collar. His sobbing is loud and intense, overwhelming his little body with convulsive gasps. He’s like one of those red-faced kids you see at Walmart, having a meltdown in the middle of the aisle—all wails and tears and snot. Ethan cups his elbows and taps his skin—the tic that means he has something to say but no plans to say it—watching Sammy’s tantrum with wide, dry eyes.

  There’s commotion at the door, Andrew coming into the room. I watch his long legs, his thick hair with tha
t cowlick he hates so much, the familiar bump in his step, and my mother’s words rise in my mind, powerful and clear, the day she placed her grandfather’s compass in my palm. This thing can help you find your way, but first you have to know where you are. Don’t ever forget where you are, sweetness. Don’t ever lose sight of your true north.

  For the longest time, I thought it was him. Andrew was my true north. Maybe that’s why it felt so unforgivable to me when he tumbled from his pedestal, because it left me feeling lost. Rudderless.

  And now that I think about it, maybe that’s why when Ethan disappeared, I was so quick to blame. Why I pointed my finger at Andrew and allowed myself to assume the worst. All those resentments I’d been holding on to so tightly these past six months, they seeped into my opinion of Andrew as a person, as a father, and I let them. I’m not the only one here who deserves an apology.

  Somewhere deep inside, where I’ve been clutching my anger in a hot, tight fist, I feel something releasing, relaxing its hold.

  “Okay, well, we’re going to go,” Stefanie says, jerking me out of my thoughts. She gathers a still-sobbing Sammy against her side, holding him close and leans over to give Ethan’s leg a squeeze. “So relieved you’re safe, sweetie. Take care of yourself, all right?”

  Andrew steps back to let them pass, but he doesn’t smooth his scowl. He knows who Sammy is, too, knows he’s been terrorizing Ethan.

  “He came to apologize.” I gesture to the compass, still nestled in the blanket folds by Ethan’s leg. “And to return the compass. He took it from Ethan’s backpack.”

  Andrew’s chest puffs with indignation. Not for me, for the piece of my mother I almost lost, but that someone would dare steal something from his son. I feel his anger in the air, his eagerness to chase them down the hall. Andrew has never been the type to walk away from a fight. “What’d you say?”

  “I said thank you.”

  “What for?” he says, frowning, not the answer he was expecting. And why wouldn’t he? I’ve fought him on everything else.