“But—” Colleen did the calculation—a few hundred thousand dollars was no compensation for the years ahead that the boy wouldn’t be able to earn. She didn’t know what to say. She settled for, “I’m very sorry for your friend’s boyfriend.” It hardly seemed adequate.
“Mrs. Mitchell, can I ask you something?”
“Yes, of course.”
Jennie took a breath and looked down. “Did your son have some sort of like . . . problems?”
Colleen froze. The habit of years, the defensiveness, surged up instantly. He’s just an active boy, just like all the other boys—the old chant, the one she recited in her mind like a mantra since preschool, echoed in her brain. This was it, the thing they spent all the money on, making sure he could pass for just like everyone else. Money and a raft of tutors and coaches were what allowed him to get into the college prep track and then—miracle of miracles—Syracuse. His success was proof it had worked. No teacher had sent home notes with the names of specialists in the last few years; Paul hadn’t returned home despondent over teasing since before puberty. But paradoxically, the more successful the ruse became, the more insistent the voice: Please just make him like all the other kids, don’t let them notice.
“Can you be more specific?” she asked faintly, stalling for time, trying to figure out where the greater betrayal lay—telling his secrets or letting even the tiniest sliver of a clue slip through her fingers.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean anything by it, but did he like to gamble? Like did he have a gambling problem?”
“What? Oh, Lord, no,” Colleen said, her relief so great she lost her composure. “I mean, he’s never gambled, that I know of. Maybe a few slots in the Las Vegas airport.”
“Oh. Because why I ask is, there’s been a few guys that get hooked on the casino up on the reservation. It sounds crazy, but they’ll go up there and run through their whole check and keep going. I just thought, I don’t know. If he’d got in trouble that way. Him or Fly.”
“Fly?”
“I mean Taylor. Sorry. It’s these nicknames they give each other.” She smiled sheepishly and shrugged.
“Jennie, why did they call my son Whale?”
“Well, because of those shirts,” Jennie said with what seemed like fondness. “With the little whale on them? Nobody had ever seen those before. Especially that one he had? It was yellow and blue, I think.”
Colleen got it. The shirts she bought at the preppy little shop downtown, the one that the local kids were so crazy about. They were way too expensive, seventy-five dollars for a polo shirt, but Colleen had always felt it was well worth it to buy the trappings that would help Paul fit in. The yellow and blue—well, yes, she could see why that one wouldn’t play well here, color-blocked and turned-up-collared and looking like a parody of a Ralph Lauren ad. But Paul had never cared about his clothes—he wore what Colleen bought him and, that night when he’d lit out for North Dakota the first time, he would have simply taken the bags he’d already packed for Syracuse, the suitcase full of preppy clothes.
“Does he still wear those?” she asked softly.
“Oh, no, ma’am, not after the first couple of weeks.”
Oh, Paul. Colleen felt regret for her error, longing to go back and do it right. If only she’d known that she couldn’t keep him from Lawton, she would have found out what they wore up here and made sure that her boy had it, that he had everything he would need to get by. Suddenly she understood why Paul had refused Andy’s offer, over the holidays, to take the Cayenne since Andy was getting a new car. Paul was bound and determined to buy a truck when he got back to Lawton. A truck! It had struck her as so outlandish, when they were offering him a vehicle that could handle the weather, and all he had to do was drive it out there.
But now she got it. Everyone else had trucks. So Paul would have wanted a truck.
Jennie dug her phone out of her pocket and checked the time. “I’m sorry, I just have to make sure I’m back in time so they don’t wonder where I got to. But we have a few more minutes.”
“Jennie, listen. Ms. Capparelli says that the boys’ things might have been saved. Their belongings, from the rooms.”
“Well, what I heard, the police are supposed to pick up F—Taylor’s stuff, only they haven’t come by yet. And ma’am, there wasn’t anything in your son’s room.”
She looked away when she said it, embarrassed or reluctant to add to Colleen’s pain.
“What do you mean, there wasn’t anything?”
“Like he packed up before he left? I didn’t see it but I talked to Marie, she’s the one who cleaned the rooms on their wing that Friday, the day after they went missing. They clean on Tuesdays and Fridays. And she said Paul’s room was done up neat, he made his bed and left the towels hung up off the floor and there wasn’t anything else in the room, not even in the trash.”
“Oh,” Colleen said. The news felt significant, but what did it mean? In a way, it was hopeful: her son had deliberately packed his things and taken them away. He’d planned to leave, in the middle of a hitch. But why? And why were Taylor’s things undisturbed?
A sharp twist in her stomach signaled a very specific terror, and she pushed back against it. No. No, she was not going to allow her mind to leap to fantastical conclusions, scenarios she had no business entertaining, given how little information she had.
She had to focus on what she could do, now. One step at a time. The past was done, and the future, if she could influence it at all, was going to require all her attention.
“Listen,” she said. “I don’t know how to say this to you, Jennie, and I know we just met and you have no reason to trust me. But I am going to ask a favor of you, and I just have to hope that you’ll understand I am asking you as a mother. You’re—you’re someone’s daughter, and I hope your mother loves you and would do anything to keep you safe. So. I know this is breaking rules, a lot of rules, and exposing you to risk—but could you give me Taylor’s things?”
Jennie’s lips parted in protest.
“Wait, wait, don’t say no yet. Hear me out. We’ve just been to see the police. Chief Weyant, he practically came out and told me they don’t have the resources to work on this case. You know they aren’t going to be happy to investigate what you just told me, the possibility that someone at Hunter-Cole is covering up safety issues. I mean, that doesn’t even sound like a police thing, that’s got to be federal or OSHA—or, I don’t know, but if the boys got tangled up in something like that, the Lawton police aren’t going to be any help at all. But Shay—she knows her son. Knows him the way only a mother can.”
She paused, trying to gauge the effect her words were having, desperately hoping Jennie’s mother wasn’t one of those women who turned their nearly grown children out into the world with indifference, who’d parented her with resentment or worse. “If there’s anything, any clue, to be found in his things, it’s Ms. Capparelli who will be able to figure it out, don’t you see? If there’s something out of the ordinary, something that showed he strayed from his habits or got into something new—if there’s names on his phone that she doesn’t recognize—things like that.”
“But . . .” Jennie wouldn’t look at her. “There could be DNA . . . all kinds of evidence. I don’t think you’re even supposed to touch stuff without gloves and, I don’t know. It’s supposed to be processed.”
Colleen nodded, wincing because the girl had a point. Maybe she was making a mistake here, risking destroying clues that could lead to the truth.
But Weyant had been very clear: no one was lighting a fire to process the things Taylor had left behind. Even if they had the lab, the equipment, they weren’t making an effort to examine a bunch of dirty laundry for clues. And they wouldn’t, unless the unthinkable happened . . . and then, what would it matter?
And the other, the terrible little voice inside her nagged. The other reason. The one she would not give credence to, that she would not entertain for one second, because it meant a breac
h of faith in her son so wide and deep that she wasn’t sure she could ever come back from it.
“Sweetheart, I think that’s mostly on TV,” Colleen said shakily. And then she told a lie which, since it was a point of some honor with her to be as truthful as she could, always—a core family value, so to speak—surprised her with the ease with which it tripped off her lips. “I saw a documentary where they were saying that eighty percent of what we see on those shows is either impossible or police departments aren’t equipped to handle it. In most cases evidence ends up in lockers and is never even looked at unless a case goes to court, and even then it gets lost or damaged way more often than you’d think. And I just can’t—Taylor’s mom and I can’t take the risk of that happening. You understand . . . don’t you?”
Jennie bit her lip, but she didn’t look away.
“There’s one more thing,” Colleen said, reaching for her purse. “Now I know you’ll try to say no, because I can tell you were raised the way I raised my own son. You want to help just out of decency, but I also know you’re a young woman starting out, and it’s so hard these days, isn’t it? I am going to give this to you whether you decide to help me get Taylor’s things or not. It, well, it means something to me, more than you can imagine, that you remember Paul and that you—”
Her voice broke, and suddenly the line between lie and truth blurred, and she was speaking more deeply from her heart than she’d intended. “That you said he was a nice boy,” she finished in her broken voice. She took Jennie’s hand and pressed the folded bills into her palm, closing her fingers over the money and squeezing. It was three hundred dollars, everything she’d withdrawn from the ATM.
“Oh, ma’am . . . I couldn’t,” Jennie said.
“Yes. Yes, you can, sweetheart. Let me do this. Let me do a nice thing for you, it will help me, don’t you see? I need—I need to do something nice for someone today. To make a difference, even a little. If you like, you can use it to buy a nice gift for your friend’s baby,” she added with a smile.
For a moment their hands stayed clasped, and Colleen thought, This—this is enough, this knowing that she could be what a child needed.
But the young woman who tucked the bills into her jeans without looking to see how much, who stood up resolutely while digging the keys from her pocket, who paused with her hand on the door and turned to nod briefly at Colleen, was not a child at all.
“Stay here,” she said. “I’m going to get what you need.”
nine
SHAY HAD MANAGED not to smoke a second cigarette. Well, third, counting the one first thing in the morning. Just two, and it was almost noon. Half a day. Two in half a day, four in a whole day; if she could manage that, it was all right. Not perfect, not by a long shot, but under control.
She jumped when Colleen rapped on the passenger window. She turned the ignition on and leaned across to unlock the door, the automatic control having quit on her last year.
Colleen slid into the seat. In her hand was a large plastic Walmart bag.
“Is that the boys’ things?”
“Yes,” Colleen said tensely. “But can we go? I don’t want to look at them here.”
Shay headed up the road out of the camp and back through town. She focused on staying under the speed limit. Halfway back, Colleen spoke again. “It’s only Taylor’s. Paul’s was—there wasn’t anything in his room.”
“He took it all with him? Or someone cleaned it out?”
“Well, it wasn’t there, that’s all we know. Whether he took it or . . . or something else.”
There was something in her voice, some sharp splinter of fear, and Shay didn’t push. Instead, she thought about what it might mean. The boys disappeared the same day, as far as anyone knew . . . but the maid didn’t come until Friday. Could Paul have stayed back, for some reason? Or—it seemed impossible—could it be unrelated, some fantastic coincidence, the boys deciding separately—for their own different reasons—to leave? Maybe not even aware that the other—
But that was insane, wasn’t it? What was it Sherlock Holmes was supposed to have said—something about eliminating the impossible and whatever was left had to be the truth. Two boys, good friends, independently deciding to leave without a word, on the very same day—that was so unlikely as to be impossible.
But still. Events were splitting off into two directions. Differences were appearing. The two boys were not the same. Maybe they had made different choices. And even though Shay was no closer to knowing what had happened, she had to tread very carefully, never forgetting that the obvious could be a trick.
“I DON’T TRUST that bitch,” Shay said, lowering the dented miniblinds over the motor home’s long side window. Brenda’s car was in the driveway. She’d worked the three-to-eleven every day this week, and apparently she had the same shift again today. Unless it was her day off, in which case they’d have to deal with her staring out the window at them all night.
Colleen set the Walmart bag on the table. Shay slid into the seat across from her and reached for the bag. “Okay,” she said, dumping out its contents. Clothes—wadded and faintly smelling of body odor and Axe—tumbled out. A paperback copy of Game of Thrones that looked like it hadn’t been read. A baggie with two compact nuggets of weed, and a little glass pipe. Shay recognized that pipe—she’d threatened to throw it out over Christmas when she found it, to which Taylor had said, “Really, Mom?” with that amused lazy smile of his, the one that said she was taking herself too seriously. Besides, it was only a couple of years since Taylor had found her little stash one day when he was looking for Advil and they’d had the talk about being grown up and respecting each other’s choices and besides it was only very occasional and blah blah blah.
Shay glanced at Colleen, gauging her reaction. “Is that—” Colleen asked, then blushed. “I mean, I don’t mean to judge. I don’t—I know that—”
“Yes, it’s what you think. It’s marijuana. I knew he had it.” She set it aside, picking up a smaller Walmart bag, the top twisted and knotted, its contents clanking. Tearing the bag open, she felt a tendril of dread, but inside were only the things she would have expected—a toothbrush, toothpaste, dandruff shampoo, body wash, deodorant, condoms, ChapStick. She laid these things out in a row and the two women examined them together.
“Paul used that same body wash,” Colleen said. “That Axe brand. I always thought it smelled so nice. I was surprised, you know? That a . . . well, a drugstore brand could smell that good.”
“Seriously?” Shay poked her fingers into the corners of the plastic bag, turning it inside out. Nothing, not even leaked soap. “You don’t buy your husband’s soap at the drugstore?”
“I mean—yes, sure, it’s just Kiehl’s makes this really nice one—”
“What’s missing?” Shay interrupted, a little more sharply than necessary. “His wallet. His keys. Sunglasses, except I think he always kept those in his truck. What else? What else do boys carry around with them?”
They were both silent for a moment. “Paul has a bottle-opener key chain,” Colleen said. “He got it when he was a freshman. But it would be with his keys.”
“Taylor has these flip-flops with the bottle opener built into the sole. But they’re back home. He left all his summer stuff there. I kept his room just the way he left it. I mean, he’s pretty neat, he wouldn’t want me moving things around anyway.”
“Wow, not Paul. He’s so careless with things. I wish— I should have made him do more. But we always had the cleaning ladies, and I never minded doing laundry. I kind of liked it, actually.” She looked so forlorn that Shay forgave her the cleaning lady comment. “Maybe that’s from just having the one. Every stage, every birthday, you’re always thinking how he’s that much closer to leaving.”
Shay barked a laugh. “Hell, not me. I made Brittany learn to do her own laundry when she was eight. Taylor would have been four, and he used to help her. I had two jobs back then, and Frank, that was Taylor’s father, he wasn’t arou
nd much.”
“See,” Colleen said. “That was so good. They learned because they had to learn. With Paul, I never had the opportunity to teach him that kind of self-reliance. Everything was always done for him; he never really learned to look out for himself.”
“It wasn’t that hard,” Shay said. “If they wanted to eat, they had to figure out how to make the macaroni and cheese. Don’t you think I would have rather been home doing it all for them?” She shook her head at the memory. “I was supposed to take six weeks after Taylor was born, but my boss called me after three and paid me time and a half to come back early. We couldn’t say no to that, not back then.” She dug back into the pile of Taylor’s things. “Oh, this was his favorite shirt,” she exclaimed, holding it up. It was soft from being washed over and over again, a faded green cotton T-shirt he got from working at the Y sports camp. On the back was his name, Capparelli, spelled out in block letters.
She kept going through the clothes. There was the belt Brittany gave him for Christmas. A pair of shorts. Socks paired and rolled, which made her smile—at home he just dumped them into his drawer, but here, so far from home, he’d adopted her habits.
She came across a shirt she didn’t recognize, a silky collared shirt with a stripe of pale green against a navy background. She held it up to her face, but it smelled only of detergent. Had he bought it for going out? To show off for a girl? She closed her eyes and touched the soft fabric to her cheek, trying to conjure an image of the girl who’d caught his eye, who was special enough to warrant this kind of purchase.
She put it back on top of the other things, then put them all carefully back into the Walmart bag. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing out of the ordinary, anyway. I guess that was a bust.”
The Missing Place Page 8
