Also by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Ask Him Why
Worthy
The Language of Hoofbeats
Pay It Forward: Young Readers’ Edition
Take Me With You
Paw It Forward
365 Days of Gratitude: Photos from a Beautiful World
Where We Belong
Subway Dancer and Other Stories
Walk Me Home
Always Chloe and Other Stories
The Long, Steep Path: Everyday Inspiration from the Author of Pay It Forward
How to Be a Writer in the E-Age: A Self-Help Guide
When You Were Older
Don’t Let Me Go
Jumpstart the World
Second Hand Heart
When I Found You
Diary of a Witness
The Day I Killed James
Chasing Windmills
The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance
Love in the Present Tense
Becoming Chloe
Walter’s Purple Heart
Electric God/The Hardest Part of Love
Pay It Forward
Earthquake Weather and Other Stories
Funerals for Horses
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2016 by Catherine Ryan Hyde
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503934467
ISBN-10: 1503934462
Cover design by Shasti O’Leary-Soudant / SOS CREATIVE LLC
Contents
Late in the Worst Night of Ethan’s Life
Chapter One: Tremble
Five Days Before That Worst Night
Chapter Two: Catch
Earlier in the Worst Night of Ethan’s Life
Chapter Three: This is Embarrassing
Chapter Four: Far
Chapter Five: Blythe River
Chapter Six: Horses
Chapter Seven: Snark
Chapter Eight: Alone
Chapter Nine: Search
Chapter Ten: Help
Chapter Eleven: Huff
Chapter Twelve: Not Forgiving
Chapter Thirteen: The Peacemaker
Chapter Fourteen: Designer Fleece
Chapter Fifteen: Legs
Chapter Sixteen: Out of Control
Chapter Seventeen: Smart
Chapter Eighteen: I Give Up
Chapter Nineteen: Just the Thing
Epilogue
About the Author
Late in the Worst Night of Ethan’s Life
Chapter One: Tremble
Three months before his father disappeared
Ethan remembers the shaking most clearly. Probably because it was the first moment of the shaking. That most familiar of things making an initial appearance.
When he thinks back on that night, it’s that bone-deep trembling—the out-of-control shivering, the chattering teeth—that still feels vivid. He tried to stop it, to calm it. But he was powerless. In more ways than one.
Ethan tries not to look back on that night. At least, as much as human nature allows. But it’s a funny thing about your darkest moments. They have a life of their own. They come around because they’ve got you pinned. Because they can. The harder you try to push them back into the shadows, the stronger they grow. They draw power from your resistance.
If it had been cold in that police station the trembling wouldn’t have been so humiliating. But an ancient furnace bellowed heat right onto Ethan’s side. He hunched over himself on that hard wooden bench and felt sweat break out on his forehead, run down his back. It was overheated in that place.
But still Ethan trembled.
He looked up to see a uniformed officer looming over his bench. He jumped, startled, enough that he knew the officer could see, would know. The cop was obviously no threat to him, which made his reaction humiliating. But when you’re already swimming in a sea of humiliation deep enough to drown you, it doesn’t matter much if somebody throws in another bucketful. It’s not worth it to stop and pay attention to that when you need to keep paddling.
“Ethan Underwood?”
Ethan tried to answer. A simple yes would have sufficed. But his voice failed him. It seemed he no longer owned one. A strange feeling, to reach for something so basic and find it missing.
He nodded.
“You want to come with me, please?”
Ethan followed him into a tiny cubicle with one tiny window. The officer sat behind the desk. Behind his head, the blackness of the city night threatened. Even though it was out there and Ethan was in here, still it threatened. Ethan perched on the edge of a chair in front of the desk and held his own arms against his sides to try to ease the trembling. It did no good.
“You cold?” the cop asked.
Ethan shook his head.
“Didn’t think so. It’s like an oven in here. You okay?”
Ethan only shrugged. It wasn’t the easiest question in the world to answer.
“You talk?”
So that was it. He would have to reach inside and find his voice again. He would have to force it out of hiding.
“Yes, sir,” he said. But it didn’t sound anything like the voice he’d lost. It was a whisper that seemed to creak, as if it had rusted and needed a good oiling—another bucket of humiliation that Ethan barely had time to process.
“I get it that you’ve been through a scary experience,” the cop said. He had greasy hair and a long chin. Ethan couldn’t stop looking at that chin, even though nothing could have mattered less. “But most people’ve usually stopped shaking by this time.”
A sarcastic response ran through Ethan’s head. Gosh, I’m sorry if I’m not doing this right. It didn’t make it out of his mouth.
He knew then why his voice had abandoned him. Because it takes courage to talk to people. A cop you’ve never met before, on the worst night of your life. Even your own family. Hell, especially your own family, sometimes. He’d always had that much courage before. He’d never been anything like courageous, not even close, but he’d owned enough strength to work his own voice.
Now even that tiny measure of bravery was gone.
The cop was still staring at him. Not particularly coldly. Not particularly helpfully. Just staring.
“I’d stop if I could,” Ethan said, with barely enough volume to travel across the desk.
“It wasn’t exactly a criticism. I was just wondering if you needed some kind of help.”
The word surrounded Ethan like a salve. Pressed against him like a hot-water bottle. Help. It even stopped his trembling, but only for a split second. One tremble was skipped, the way one heartbeat had seemed to drop out of the pattern earlier that night. Then the trembling returned, stronger if anything. Because it was only the word help. It was not as though any meaningful help had actually arrived.
“Like what?” he croaked.
“Now that’s a very good question. Some kind of counseling, I guess. There are counselors for trauma. But I guess that’s more something to talk about later, when your parents get here.”
My mother, he thought. When my mother gets here. They sure as hell weren’t going to come togethe
r. Not tonight of all nights. And the idea that his father might come to get him, well . . . he’d be just as happy to see his mugger walk through that door to pick him up.
And there was no way Ethan was getting any kind of therapy. Unless his parents split, moved apart, which seemed likely now. If he went with his mother, there might be a slim chance. But his father didn’t believe in therapy. Not the mental kind, anyway. He was an athlete, Ethan’s father. An ultramarathon runner, a triathlete, no stranger to sports injuries. Physical therapy was well within his comfort zone. But what’s on the inside . . . his father believed you take care of that on your own.
The officer picked up a clipboard and began scanning what Ethan could only assume was the form Ethan and another cop had completed earlier. A moment later he looked up and narrowed his eyes.
“What?” Ethan managed.
“Looking at what you put down for your date of birth.”
“I’m seventeen.”
“Right . . .”
“I know I don’t look it. I get that. But it’s the truth.”
“Got some ID? Oh, wait. That would have been in your wallet. And that got stolen, right?”
“No. I never had it with me. It’s in my carry-on bag. Long story. It’s at home.”
“Okay, well, your parents can bring it later.”
“Am I the suspect here?”
Before asking that question, Ethan had been pleased by the gradual return of his voice. It had made him feel a tiny bit more optimistic, as though lost belongings could be relocated. But now it had gotten him in over his head.
The cop sat back in his chair. “No. Of course not. And I didn’t mean to make you feel that way. Just . . . sometimes it’s a little bit of a red flag when somebody lies on the reports.”
“I didn’t lie. I’m seventeen.”
“Okay. Well. We’ll just put a pin in that for now. I’ve read the report of the incident. And I just have one question. What were you doing out on the street by yourself at two thirty in the morning?”
Ethan looked down at his own jeans and said nothing.
“I mean, it’s not illegal or anything. Maybe I wouldn’t even ask if you looked seventeen. But however old you are, you must know you look like a kid. I would have made you for twelve or thirteen. It just seems strange that you’d be wandering around all alone at night in the city. You know? I just thought there might be a story around that.”
Ethan said nothing for what felt like a long time. He just sat and trembled, and hoped this unexpected line of questioning would go away.
When it seemed clear it wouldn’t, he asked, “Do I have to answer that?”
“Was it a drug thing?”
“No! It wasn’t anything like that. It was just some stuff in my family. There was just this stuff going on. That I had to get away from.”
“This ‘stuff’ . . . is it anything you need to report?”
“No, sir.”
“You getting hit at home?”
“No, sir.”
“Anybody getting hit at your house?”
“No, sir.”
“Because, you know. It was enough to drive you out onto the street at two thirty in the morning. And you don’t seem like the bravest little guy on the planet. No offense. Just, you have to have some confidence to walk around Manhattan at that hour. I’d just want you to tell me if you feel like your safety is in danger at home.”
Ethan sat trembling for a moment, not knowing what to say. Not knowing how to say, “It’s the kind of stuff where you’re getting hurt on the inside. And people don’t get arrested for that. Even though maybe they should.”
“It’s not that kind of stuff,” he said.
“Okay, fine.” The officer seemed to wrap up his concerns just that easily. He could just finish up and move on. Ethan wished he knew how such a thing was done. “You got a good look at the guy, right?”
The room swam again, too brightly, as the man’s image came clearly into Ethan’s head, his unshaven face just inches away.
Bye. Bye. The words kept playing on a loop in Ethan’s brain.
“Yes, sir,” he said in a trembly whisper.
“Okay, then. We’re going to have you look at some mug shots.”
It was five thirty in the morning when Ethan looked up to see his father standing over his chair. He squeezed his eyes shut and looked away.
They were in a very bright room with mug books on the table. Ethan had seen many horrible faces over the last couple of hours—and a few pleasant-enough ones, and others that just looked sad—but he had not seen the horrible face that had loomed so close to his own.
Bye. Bye.
“I know I’m the last person you want to see,” his father’s familiar voice said. “I know you were hoping for your mom. But I don’t exactly know where she is. She left right after you did. So you got me.”
Ethan looked up. Just to see if he looked as familiar as he sounded.
Ethan’s father was tall. Over six feet. Which seemed flat-out unfair when Ethan was so tiny. Well, he knew why. He took after his mother is all. But it still seemed unfair. His father, Noah, was lanky and athletic, too. And notably handsome, with a long, chiseled face and a strong jawline. And a terrific head of thick sandy hair that apparently had no plans ever to thin.
His dad looked the way he always had. Recent events hadn’t changed him. At least, not on the outside. Then again, Ethan thought, maybe that was the problem. Maybe Noah Underwood hadn’t changed at all. Maybe he was what he had always been.
Noah opened his mouth to say more. Ethan held up one hand, a stop sign, to say, Don’t. Just don’t.
A movement caught his eye. It was a uniformed cop, a different one, who moved into the room behind his father.
Ethan wanted to ask, “Why did it take you so long to get here?” But his voice had run out on him again.
As if he could read minds, his father said, “I got here just a few minutes after they called. I’ve been waiting to get in to see you.” He turned his head toward the cop. “Is he done here? Can I take him home?”
“Yeah,” the cop said. “I think that’s enough for one night.”
“He’s looked at all your pictures?”
“No. He couldn’t very well do that. They’re sort of . . . infinite. But sometimes enough for one session is enough.”
“Does that mean he’ll have to come back?”
“If we bring in a suspect, we’ll want him to come in for a lineup.”
The words hit Ethan like a bat. And the trembling set up again. Ethan realized he hadn’t noticed it had ever stopped.
The cop apparently saw his alarm. Because he said, directly to Ethan, “Don’t worry. We almost never catch ’em.”
“Lovely,” Ethan’s father said. “That’s very encouraging. Come on, Ethan. We’re going home.”
Ethan followed him out of the room.
Through the bright, hot police station.
Out the doors into the cold, still-dark morning, where a cab waited. Ethan’s brain got stuck on what it would cost to keep a cab waiting so long.
His father held the door open, and Ethan got in. Sank onto the vinyl upholstery of the cab’s backseat. His brain plunged so suddenly into whether his mother would still be there when they got home that he forgot to look at the meter to answer his own question about costs.
His father dropped heavily onto the seat next to him, slammed the door, and gave the cabdriver their address.
Then they were moving. And then the experience of that night was over, except to the extent that it never would be.
Ethan was afraid his father would talk to him on the way home. Try to explain. Want to pull it out onto the table for examination. Or maybe he would light into Ethan for being stupid enough to run out into the city night.
He made up his mind that whatever he was asked, or told, or no matter how he was chastised, he would remain silent. He owed his father nothing. And he had no intention of paying the man more than he was owed.
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Ethan had worried for no reason. They rode home in silence. Utter, crushing silence.
Still, Ethan trembled.
Five Days Before That Worst Night
Chapter Two: Catch
Three months and five days before his father disappeared
Ethan dragged Glen down the hall to his room by the sleeve of his friend’s hoodie.
“Seriously, dude,” Glen said, for the second time, “what’s in the bag? You’re starting to freak me out. Is this like a drug thing?”
Ethan only snorted at the joke. Glen knew it was not a drug thing because he’d gotten Ethan high a grand total of once. And Ethan had hated every minute of it. Vocally, insistently hated it.
He pulled Glen into his bedroom and closed the door behind them.
“Please tell me it’s not a sex thing,” Glen said.
“Not with you it isn’t.”
“Thank you. That’s what I needed to hear.” He flopped onto the end of Ethan’s bed. “I’m totally curious now.”
Glen had been Ethan’s friend since grade school. In other words, since long before Glen had grown five inches taller than Ethan, found a hidden talent for athletics, and sprouted fairly serious facial hair. But Glen had never lorded any of those developments over Ethan, so the friendship continued in spite of a measure of inevitable jealousy on Ethan’s part. Ethan had grown into a straight-A student without even trying hard, while Glen only managed Cs with a lot of study and Ethan’s tutelage. But that didn’t help much, because girls don’t ask to see your report card.
“It won’t live up to the hype in your head,” Ethan said.
Ethan set the small brown paper bag on his dresser and unrolled its top. He reached in and pulled out one of the three lollipops he had bought at the drugstore. The ball-shaped kind with the caramel fudge in the middle and the wrapper that twisted at the base of the stick.
“Unless that’s laced with something,” Glen said, “you’re right.”
“Here,” Ethan said. “Catch.”
He tossed it in Glen’s direction by its stick. Glen reached up and snagged it out of the air. Effortlessly, it seemed.
“How do you make that look so easy? How does everybody make that look so easy?”
Leaving Blythe River: A Novel Page 1
