The Real Michael Swann

by Bryan Reardon

  Julia stopped, suddenly. Could they be listening in on my cell phone? The thought tasted sour in the back of her throat.

  “Julia?” Evelyn said. “I don’t want to tell you this, but . . .”

  Julia felt so tired. “What?”

  “The press is everywhere out there. Knocking on everyone’s door. But I . . . I heard that Tara talked to them. That she told them about that night on your porch, when your husband and mine were joking about the election. She made it sound serious. I can’t believe she did that.”

  Julia could barely breathe. “Tara?”

  “Yeah. I’m so sorry. Look, anything you need, I’m here. I’d take the kids . . .” Evelyn paused. “But maybe we should wait until all these people are gone. I mean, then . . .”

  Julia said nothing. She let the quiet grow between them. Her friend would help, Julia thought, once no one could see her do it.

  “I have to go. I’ll call you, okay. It’ll be all right. I’m sure.”

  Julia still said nothing.

  “Jules, are you . . . ?”

  She heard none of the rest, for Julia simply put her phone facedown on the tile floor. Her body shook but no tears came. Instead, it was a different pain. One that made her question if there was a path forward. Was there any way that tomorrow could dawn? Was there a point?

  Her throat tightened. Suddenly, she had trouble pulling in a breath. Her chest heaved as she panted out of control. The very walls of the bathroom pressed in on her. Julia covered her mouth with her hands.

  Impossible.

  It was the one thought she couldn’t have. And it simply repeated itself over and over in her head. Her fingers pried at the skin of her face. She pulled her hair. Her body rattled and she threw her head back into the door. She hit it hard enough that a bright white light flashed and then she lost focus.

  * * *

  —

  “Mom?”

  The voice was soft, careful. It seemed to slip under the bathroom door and just barely touch her ears. Julia’s eyes opened and she wondered if she had even heard anything at all.

  “Mom?”

  A light tap followed. It was one of the boys. She was suddenly sure of that. Her head hurt, but she could not let him see her like that. So she stood. With her hand on her chest, Julia composed herself. When she opened the door, though, and saw Evan, his big brown eyes glistening with unshed tears, Julia broke.

  In that torturous minute, Julia forgot the past, forgot her mistake, and saw the future. She saw her family left raw and alone. She saw everyone slipping away. She saw the way people would look at them, at her kids. This would follow them. It would devour them, leaving them empty shells cast into the dark corner of society. It was already happening. Tara had already talked to the press. Evelyn was already pulling away. She would be the last. But the scourge that swallowed her family would be too much. And in a way, Julia wasn’t sure she could blame Evelyn. If the roles were reversed, would it be any different?

  Evan’s sharply lined face, so much like Michael’s, brought her back. Over the years his face had changed and matured. He tiptoed toward manhood with each passing day. But in that moment, she didn’t see twelve-year-old Evan; she saw Evan’s face when he was a baby. That face had not seen pain. It had not seen betrayal, or been lied to. Nor had it seen loss. Instead, with glowing bright eyes, it had taken in the world as it could be, not as it was. Those eyes had looked at them, at Julia and Michael, and had seen perfection. They saw goodness and strength and loyalty. They trusted without question, loved without condition, and needed them without guilt. She saw those eyes looking back at her and nothing more.

  The tears came. She had thought to hide them. To protect him. But that was no more possible than wishing everything away. She cried, sweeping him into a hug, pulling him to her and pressing him into her, like she might become the shield he would need every day going forward.

  For a second, he resisted. Then Evan gave himself over to her. He forgave her without uttering a word, the way only a child can. A slight weight lifted off of both of them in that moment, yet it couldn’t be enough. Evan broke down, becoming a twelve-year-old once again.

  “Baby, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

  He wouldn’t look up at her. He just cried.

  “Where’s Grandma?” she said through her tears.

  He still would not talk. But the crying suddenly stopped. So did the shakes. In her arms, his body, feeling bigger than it had any right to, stiffened.

  “Dad didn’t do what they said.”

  She’d never heard defiance like that from her boy. She’d never heard that grit. It shocked her. Julia pushed him away, gently, holding him at arm’s length. Evan still wouldn’t look at his mother. She let go with one hand and lovingly lifted his chin. His eyes shot closed.

  “Evan?”

  “No,” he shouted.

  His bright, young lips thinned. He grabbed his mother’s arm with unexpected strength.

  “He didn’t!” Evan said. “Daddy’s a good person!”

  His words cut through her like a sharpened blade. They pierced the noise, the heartbreak, and they touched something inside her that had been pushed so far down just a moment before. Her son’s words rekindled the very core of her, that part of Julia that burned white-hot, the part that had carried her through life, skyrocketed her through college and her career. Being home with the kids blanketed that part of her, but could never extinguish it. This part of her was action, strength, grit. It was Julia.

  What was it about Evan’s words that changed everything? Was it his claim? No. Julia still saw the eyes of the agents downstairs. They carried with them truth, as painful as it might be. It was not Evan’s words at all, in fact. Instead, it was the way he said them, the stiffness with which he stood. In that, Julia saw herself. She remembered who she was.

  That’s when she let the clues break through as well. She thought about what the agents had said. She thought about how they’d cleared the streets and moved their cars out of sight. She thought about the text they wanted her to send, pleading with Michael to come home. They were luring him to her. To a trap.

  She thought about their questions. About her father and about DuLac. About Michael losing his job. She realized that Michael was not the only suspect, just the only one that they didn’t have in their hands already.

  “I’m going to find him,” she said.

  Evan opened his eyes. She saw a prayer. She felt it. She needed to say something to him, to assure him but not give him the kind of false hope that would crush them all in the end.

  Everything will be okay.

  Daddy didn’t do it.

  He’ll be home soon.

  All the things that a mother would want to say, she couldn’t. But Julia knew not to fall into that trap again. Evan watched her, waiting. Julia put her hands on his cheeks. One thumb gently brushing away a tear.

  “Daddy is a good person,” she told Evan.

  And he nodded back at her.

  “And I’m going to find him.”

  * * *

  —

  “Mom?”

  Julia stood at the top of the stairs. Evan held her hand. She waited, but her mother didn’t answer.

  “I’ll get them,” Evan said.

  She wanted to say no. She didn’t want him near those agents. But he looked up at her with those eyes. Not the baby ones, but the ones that he’d own for the rest of his life, cool and blue. So she nodded and he ran down the stairs, returning a minute later with Thomas in tow. Julia’s mother was not far behind. Julia nodded toward her bedroom. The three of them followed her in and she closed the door.

  “I need you to take them to your house,” Julia said to her mother.

  “No, we want to stay,” Thomas said.

  It was Evan who quieted his little brother. Watching him, Julia smiled,
a thin thing filled with pride and hopeless resolve.

  “I’m going after him,” she said.

  And Evan nodded in agreement.

  NOT AS IT APPEARS

  Poison? Julia thought.

  Memory is a funny thing. So often, the present alters the past, fits it onto a more comfortable shelf. Not necessarily good, not necessarily bad. Just in a place with less uncertainty, fewer questions, and more dust. It nestles reality between books that have already been read, ones with no mystery left to them. Yet like those books, memories are often fiction.

  Everything that had happened, everything that Agent Bakhash had said, burrowed into her mind. She picked her life apart like she might try to dig a worm out of an apple. She had left the good on the counter, battered and forgotten.

  Evan’s words lifted the veil. She remembered the night before Michael traveled to New York in a new light. It was not pleasant, not at first. He did rage. Worse, Julia had seen the defeat in her husband’s eyes.

  “I tried,” Michael had whispered.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “To support us. I did.” He ran his hands through his hair. His voice trailed even lower when he said, “Maybe you should have . . .”

  “I can,” she said, moving to her husband. “I’ll call Susan tomorrow. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  His shoulders slumped by the time Julia reached him. Her hand touched him, lightly. But he didn’t look up.

  “I feel it, too, you know,” she said.

  The muscles of his back tensed. His head slowly turned.

  “I remember how happy you were,” she said. “And I know how it’s been since. The worst part is that I knew it then. I knew you wouldn’t like being a salesman. Not like this. And I knew how much you loved working for the team, how much you love baseball. And I . . . I took that from you.”

  Julia teared up. Her husband stood and took her into his arms. They wrapped around her, pressing her close, fending off everything outside their space. The sound of the boys downstairs faded. The light from the lamp by the door dimmed. The air went still. It was just Julia and Michael then. Nothing else.

  “You didn’t,” he said.

  “I did,” she said.

  In a relationship, moments of potential honesty flash by. They are fleetingly brief and hidden under the weight of life’s challenges. But they come and go, and so often they are missed. Yet that night, both Julia and Michael seized that moment. They pulled back the layers and exposed the raw truths that are usually weighed down by fear.

  “We did it together,” he said. “Not just you. And I thought I could do it. Better than I did, at least. But . . . every day, I do something that feels . . . wrong. I do something that has no other meaning than . . . money.”

  “We don’t need all this,” she said. “This house, the cars, all this stuff. It’s suffocating us, Michael. I’ve been feeling it for so long, but I didn’t know how to say it. I didn’t know how to put it into words.”

  “What about the kids?” he asked.

  She paused. “They love it here.”

  “I know. We can’t move them.”

  “We could.”

  He pulled back, looked into his wife’s eyes. Their entire relationship seemed open to them in that moment. Every up and every down. And in every one of those moments, he remembered the love he felt for her. And she for him.

  “No matter what,” she said, “it’ll work. We don’t have to move. Not right now. But maybe what we need to do is think about what will make us happy. I want . . .”

  “What?” he asked.

  “I want to go back to work,” she said.

  And the air thinned. The light returned, as did the sound of the boys. With it said, with it out there, everything might change. But at least that truth could no longer haunt her. With those words, the water flowed.

  “I need to,” she said. “I don’t even know who I am anymore. I love the kids so much. And I love spending time with them. But . . . being home, it . . . I don’t even know.” She laughed. “I mean, the other day, I was reading and out of the corner of my eye, someone walked by outside. I actually jumped off the couch to see who it was.

  “At the end of the school year, I spent hours . . . literally hours writing and rewriting an email asking all the moms if they wanted to contribute to an end-of-the-year gift for the boys’ bus driver.” She shook her head. “I’ve already planned out how I’m going to try to get Thomas in Dr. Swisher’s class next year. And it’s July!”

  Michael laughed with her. They looked into each other’s eyes.

  “And you know what,” she continued, “I am freaking sick of going to the gym . . . and walk-jogging. And wearing these freaking yoga pants!”

  “Whoa,” he said. “Isn’t that going a little far?”

  She smacked him on the arm. “But seriously. What kind of mother am I? I mean, I can’t believe I said that. I can’t believe I feel it.”

  “But you do,” he said. “And that’s okay. I feel like at some point, we took a turn and jumped into someone else’s life.”

  “Me, too.” She paused. “But we can fix it. We can!”

  “We can . . .” He smiled. “I think we can.”

  “I love you, Michael Swann.”

  “I love you, Julia Swann.”

  Laughing, they kissed. Their bodies moved like years shed away with every passing second. They felt young and alive as his hands moved along the slick fabric of her athletic wear. Julia still giggled as she pulled off Michael’s T-shirt. He kicked the bedroom door closed. And just as husband and wife were about to make love on the bedroom floor, footsteps pounded up the stairs.

  “Mom?” Thomas called out. “Dad?”

  Red-faced and wide-eyed, they struggled back into their clothes as their son knocked on the door. With a final kiss and the widest smile she’d had in quite some time, Julia opened the door.

  “Were you exercising?” Thomas asked.

  And they couldn’t help but burst into laughter again.

  15

  Bakhash called up from the foyer. “Mrs. Swann?”

  With a quick look to Evan as he led Thomas toward their bedrooms, Julia grabbed her mother by the forearm. She pulled her into the bathroom, flicking on the ceiling fan.

  “What are you . . . ?”

  Julia cut her mother off, speaking softly but quickly. “They’re trying to lure him here. It’s a trap.”

  “What?”

  Julia blinked. “You think he did it, don’t you?”

  Her mother didn’t respond.

  “They asked me about Dad.”

  Her mother’s eyes widened in shock. “What?”

  “They’re not on our side, Mom. And they’re calling all the shots. I need to change that.”

  “Julia,” she said. “You—”

  “I have to, Mom.”

  They stared at each other for a moment. Then her mother nodded.

  “They won’t let you leave,” her mother said.

  At the same moment, she heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

  Julia shook her head. “No, they won’t. But I have a plan.”

  * * *

  —

  Julia met Bakhash at the top of the stairs and whisked past him. He spun, following her back toward the kitchen. As she passed the living room, she paused at the window again. When she pulled back the curtain, all she saw was darkness. She stood, staring. On any other night, it would have been expected, the normal tranquility of a suburban evening. That night, however, the stillness carried with it a foreboding that only Julia could understand. A pressure built behind her breastbone, and she had to touch the wall before her legs gave way beneath her. The trap was set. And her body tingled with the danger.

  “Mrs. Swann?”

  She turne
d and found Bakhash beside her. His eyes met hers and took Julia’s measure. For an instant, she thought to hide her true thoughts from him. But something told her that such a decision would be futile. He would see right through her. So, instead, she let her emotions out, let them show, and just hoped he wouldn’t see the reality behind it all.

  “He’s closer?” she asked, her voice crackling with emotion.

  “We hope so,” he said. “It’s the only way. If they find him out there, something awful might happen. You need to understand that.”

  “I do,” she whispered.

  “Will you text him?”

  She nodded. “Can I have my mother take the kids to her house first? I don’t want them here for this. I can’t.”

  He nodded, slowly. “I understand.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  * * *

  —

  Julia walked her mother and the boys out to the garage. She hugged them. Thomas cried, but Evan was there for his brother. Julia hugged them both and then turned to find Bakhash watching her. As she closed the door, tears came, more from nerves than anything else. But she let him think otherwise.

  “I need a second,” she said, her voice breaking.

  Julia hurried through the kitchen and up to her bedroom. Once again, she shut the door to the master bath but this time she didn’t crumble to the floor. Instead, she acted with purpose. Slipping on her shoes, she moved to the toilet and flushed it. As the water ran, she opened the window between the two sinks and pulled the screen into the house. A stubby roof sat just below, a cutout for the breakfast nook in the kitchen. She swung one leg out, then the other. Holding on to the sill, she lowered herself onto the shingles.

  She moved as quietly but as quickly as she could. Agent Bakhash could be directly below her. He could hear her at any second. So she slipped through the night like a cat, reaching the edge of the roofline and lowering herself to the railing of their back deck.

  In her mind, when she planned her escape, she moved like some mystical ninja. In reality, lowering herself from a roof was not so easy. As she dangled, her foot swinging as she reached for the ground, the gutter tore away from the fascia. She dropped, hitting the wood hard. At the same time, the gutter swung inward, grazing the window before clattering off the side of the deck.