Boy, 9, Missing

by Nic Joseph

  “Francis? Francis, is that you?”

  I’d looked up, and she’d been peering down into my face, her forehead wrinkled. Short brown hair tucked behind her ears, large brown eyes that took up a sizable amount of her face. Pretty. Smart looking, whatever that means. Her face had been familiar, but it had taken me a second to place it.

  “Cam Merchant?”

  “Wow, how’s it going?”

  We’d caught up during the fifteen-minute train ride about all of the important stuff that had happened since we’d left Marshall Middle School. She: married once a long time ago, no kids, now the editor of the paper our parents read when we were growing up. Me: still married, one preteen daughter, currently “between jobs.” I’d left out the part about Reba and me tiptoeing around the conversation of divorce. Cam was attractive enough that it might have sounded like a come-on, and to be honest, it might have been one.

  “Well, if you and your wife are interested in moving back home, I have an opening at the paper,” Cam had said as we’d approached her stop and she’d let go of the bar. “Every last reporter I had—or good reporter, I should say—has jumped ship. Apparently, journalism is the new prelaw.”

  I had taken her information with no real intent of actually following through.

  Six months later, I followed through. I called Cam from the front seat of my car, double-parked on a busy street on the Upper West Side, the divorce papers in my lap.

  “Is that job still available?”

  “The reporter job? Yes and no. I filled the position I had told you about, but we could still use some more help. What changed your mind?” she asked.

  “Circumstances.”

  “That’s…vague, but all right. I’m not asking, but I need to know that—”

  “I’m getting a divorce.”

  After nine years of marriage and eight years of divorce threats on both of our parts, Reba and I had finally pulled the plug. Or, I should say, she’d yanked the fuck out of it, and I’d slid down the drain. I probably would have spent the rest of my life ignoring that we were slowly killing each other, saying, “That’s just marriage; we’re trying to make it work.”

  Cam didn’t say anything for a moment. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Thanks. My daughter, Amy, is thirteen. She’ll be staying with my wife for another year or so, but then Reba’s going abroad for a project.”

  “A project?”

  “She’s a photographer. Something about documenting the human experience in Italy.”

  “What’s wrong with New York’s human experience?”

  I leaned forward and rested my forehead against the steering wheel. “I don’t know.”

  “And Amy?”

  “She’ll stay with me when Reba leaves. At least, until she finishes high school.”

  “Here?” I could hear the hesitation in Cam’s voice. “In Lansing?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I need something steady. Nobody’s biting out here.” Seven interviews in the past month, but I figured she didn’t need details.

  “Okay…” she said. “And after high school?”

  “She’s moving to Europe with her mother. She’s going to take some time off before college. You know, to see the world. It’ll be good for her.”

  “Yeah, it will. Look, Francis, like I was gonna say before, I just need to know that if you take the job, you’ll stick around.”

  “I will. There’s just one more thing.” She waited without saying anything. “I’ve changed my name. It’s Francis Clarke now.”

  Cam had barely missed a beat. “If you can file at least four stories a week, the job is yours. I don’t give a damn what your byline says.”

  As I stepped into her office a year and a half later, Cam held up a piece of paper. “Thanks for this,” she said, resting both elbows on her neatly organized desk while toying with the paper in her hands. “It was a rough one.” She was holding a printout of the article I’d turned in the previous day—a story about a car accident involving two nineteen-year-old parents and their two-year-old.

  I nodded.

  Cam leaned forward, putting the paper down. “Tomorrow’s the big day.”

  “Yep.”

  “What time does Amy get in?”

  “Early afternoon, I think.”

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  I shook my head. “Thanks, though.”

  “Is her room all set up?”

  “Uh, I guess so. There’s a bed.”

  “What about food? Did you stock the fridge?”

  “There’s stuff in there.”

  “No, new food. Good food. Nothing you have to smell twice before ingesting. Go to the grocery store, Francis.”

  “Okay.”

  “Tonight.”

  “Is that all you needed?” I asked, standing up.

  She smirked, sitting back in her chair and crossing her arms in front of her chest. Cam’s attractiveness was one of those things I tended to ignore for the most part, given our working relationship. But the smirk always got me.

  “Has Reba left New York yet?” she asked.

  I paused with one hand on the back of the chair. “She leaves next week.”

  “Damn. Not wasting any time.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Francis…” Cam stared at me, her lips parted, and I could sense that she was having a hard time figuring out exactly what she wanted to say. It was odd, because Cameron Merchant rarely, if ever, bothered to mince her words. Not in the brash “keeping it real” way, but in the sort of endearing “Grandpa can’t help but say whatever comes to his mind” way. I knew I should feel special that she was taking such care. She bit her lip. “You do know that you’re going to have to talk to Amy at some point. It’s not going to just…go away.”

  “I know, Cam.”

  “She’s going to run into someone, somewhere, and they’re going to tell her about you. About her grandparents. About your brother.”

  I sighed. Besides being my boss, Cam was the closest thing I had to a friend, and I knew she was right. Reba and I had never gotten to have the conversation with Amy about my past, the trial, or my family. Amy had asked once, when she was very young, about why she had only one set of grandparents. I’d instinctively told her that they’d “gone away.”

  “You just told her they’re dead!” Reba had hissed. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I didn’t say they were dead,” I’d said, and I should have stopped myself before the next words came out. “But if that’s what she thinks, maybe it’s for the best.”

  “You’re the fucking worst.”

  “Really? The worst?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Of all the things, of all the people, I am the worst of them?”

  “Yes,” she’d said again, because if there was one very reliable thing about Reba, it was that she never backed down.

  In reality, my parents had gone on to live separate lives, to the betterment of absolutely every person involved. Alex, my father, retired from the Lansing Police Department a few years before I moved back to town. This had followed a decade of desk work that he’d done after a very extended leave of absence following Lucas’s death. My father was a self-proclaimed “recovering-recovering alcoholic,” which is exactly what it sounded like.

  “Do you know how messed up recovering alcoholics are?” he had asked one of the last times I had seen him. “Why would I want to be one of those?” I remembered the way he asked this question, the glass of brandy dangling from his fingertips, his eyes bright from his excitement about this seemingly novel rationale. “Recovering alcoholic… I’m recovering from that bullshit.”

  My mother, Kate, was living with a man who I had graduated high school with, and that’s pretty much all that needs to be said about that. I tried to visit her onc
e after he started living there, and it had gone about as well as could be expected.

  “Are you guys even going to try to talk?” my mother had asked.

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know. Anything. The weather. Squirrels. What we’re eating, high school. Or not high school. But anything else, since we’re all here, and we’re all trying. Right? What’s the point of sitting in silence?”

  Those were the only words said before I left.

  I haven’t spoken to either of them in years, and as far as Amy knows, I’m Francis Clarke, her parentless, journalist dad who was, at most, getting by. It was who I’d always been to her, and who, with any luck, I would always be.

  All things equal, I was moving on.

  I’d left it all behind me, and I was okay.

  Better than my parents, just as they knew I’d be when they’d left me alone the night my little brother drowned. Not good by any means, but okay.

  • • •

  Yet, it was generally then—when things are moving on and you think you’ve been through all the hardest bits and you’re trying to just go on and live some sort of simple, menial life that you’ve manufactured for yourself, making less than thirty grand but, thank God, therapy free—that something comes along to ruin the tiny bit of decency you’ve tried to build back up.

  That something is usually the game changer.

  The big twist.

  The “you are the father.”

  For me, that something came the next morning while I was in the shower, just hours before Amy was set to arrive, when someone broke into my apartment.

  Chapter Three

  Saturday, 6:10 a.m.

  “Hello?”

  “Dad. It’s me.”

  “Ames?” I said, sitting up in the bed, my mouth cottony, my feet cold because the comforter had spun a full ninety degrees during the night, leaving the bottom half of my body exposed. “Where are you?”

  “At home, waiting for the cab. You told me to call you when I was leaving. I didn’t know if you meant leaving home or leaving JFK.”

  I pushed myself up farther and squinted at the clock, but it was just a haze of fuzzy, glowing red shapes. I pulled my cell phone away from my face and squinted at it, the bright light hurting my eyes.

  “No, now is good,” I said, clearing my throat. “Thanks. You all set?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What time do you land?”

  “Ten thirty. Chicago time.”

  “Okay.” I gripped the phone tighter. “I can’t wait to see you.”

  “Yeah,” she said quickly. “Me too.”

  “All of your boxes arrived. I set most of it up in your room.”

  “Yeah, Mom told me,” she said, and then, maybe as an afterthought, “Thanks.”

  I pushed back the covers and dropped my feet to the floor, the phone still pressed to my ear. Five years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to get a word in edgewise during a phone call with Amy. Now, she spoke only in short, quiet, conversation-ending bursts.

  “Well, have a safe trip, and call me when you land, okay?”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  We hung up, and I pushed myself out of bed, stumbling blindly toward the bathroom. I flipped on the shower before turning to the toilet. As ridiculous as it was, I was nervous. Nervous that Amy would hate the bedspread I’d bought her or think my apartment was too small or that she’d be bored out of her mind or think I was trying too hard. It wasn’t a question of whether she’d hate living in Lansing, but how much she’d hate it. The town is only a half-hour drive from downtown Chicago, but you’d never know it, based on the number of Olive Gardens and Applebees around every corner.

  I flushed the toilet and stepped into the shower.

  To be fair, Amy had taken it all surprisingly well. “I could just stay here,” she’d said when Reba and I had first sat down to tell her about the divorce and her eventual move back to Illinois with me. “Kaitlyn’s parents would probably be cool with me staying with them. It’s only a couple of years.”

  Reba had looked at me, and I’d known she was actually considering it, but she had shaken her head when she’d seen my face. We’d agreed to back each other up on this, if nothing else. “No, honey, it’s best if you live with your father,” she’d said. “I know it’s going to be hard to leave your friends, but it’s…it’s just our reality right now, okay?”

  I’d expected a little more pushback from Amy, a final plea, but she’d nodded once and stood up from our living room couch.

  “Okay. Well, thanks for letting me know.” She hadn’t asked again or shown any emotion about the move since that afternoon nearly two years ago. Whenever I’d asked her about it, she’d just shrugged and echoed her mother.

  “It’s fine. It’s our reality.”

  I poured a glob of shampoo into my hand and raked it quickly through my hair before it could slither onto the floor of the tub. As I massaged it into my scalp, I thought back to my conversation with Cam. She was right, of course; I’d have to tell Amy about her grandparents at some point. But with everything going on—the move, her saying good-bye to her mother, the new school—I hoped I could put it off for at least a few days.

  Or weeks.

  A few months, tops.

  I was reaching to put the shampoo back when I heard the first noise.

  It wasn’t that loud, but it was distinct—the sound of glass breaking somewhere close by, very close, too close. I froze, droplets of water stinging my eyes. The shampoo bottle slipped from my paralyzed fingers, and the steam from the shower suddenly seemed to increase, blinding me. Trapping me. As I gasped for breath, the water beating down, it occurred to me that I needed to act.

  Right away.

  I pushed the shower curtain back quietly. The bathroom door was not locked, but it was closed, thanks to an irresponsibly placed smoke detector right outside of it. My contacts were in the vanity, and unlike most people who casually exaggerate, I’m nearly blind without them. I floundered for a moment, wiping the water out of my eyes and wishing I hadn’t left my glasses on my nightstand.

  As I stepped out of the tub, my wet feet hit the cold tile floor, and water dripped down my face and body. I glanced momentarily at the empty towel bar on the other side of the small bathroom and cursed. Like most mornings, the towel was on the floor at the foot of my bed, where I’d left it the previous day. I’d gotten used to walking naked through the apartment each day to find it. Today it was, just maybe, the worst thing in the world.

  Think!

  It couldn’t be Amy, right? No, that didn’t make any sense. She’d barely left for JFK. I took a step toward the door and listened, picturing the rooms outside. There was a small hallway that, on one side, led to my bedroom and the spare room I’d prepared for Amy. On the other end, the hallway led to the living and dining areas and the kitchen, which was stocked with the groceries I’d purchased the night before.

  The passageway outside of the bathroom contained exactly three things: a small table from IKEA, a lamp, and an ornately framed mirror I’d gotten with Reba from a secondhand store in Queens. I took another step closer to the bathroom door and pushed my ear against it, listening for any signs of life, imagining the disappointment that an intruder might feel upon realizing what little a washed-up journalist for a washed-up newspaper had to steal. With my hand on the doorknob, I tried to count the number of steps it would take for me to get to my bedroom and to my phone on the nightstand.

  I cracked open the door and peeked out. And then it occurred to me that the sound of the water must have gotten louder as the door opened, alerting the intruder that I was coming out.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  I could see nothing, hear nothing, and I wondered which would be the better option—running ass-naked toward the front door, which posed its own problems, or heading toward the
bedroom and barricading myself inside. I blinked, using the backs of my hands to wipe the remaining water out of my eyes. Without my contacts, I could barely see five feet in front of me. Gripping the bathroom doorframe, I forced myself to move slowly out into the hallway.

  Maybe it was nothing. Maybe I would find that I was a fool once I saw what had made the noise. I moved forward, the rug tickling my feet, the sound of traffic from three floors below shaking my entire body. I was completely naked, an element I hadn’t missed, even in my fear. As I moved through the hallway, I reached out and grabbed the only weapon-like object I could see: the tall lamp. As my fingers curved around the long, black stem and my wet hands brushed against the plug, I imagined myself getting electrocuted.

  Maybe that would be a better way to go.

  I crept through the hallway, the lamp lifted up at ear level as I listened, but there was nothing. No sound, nobody. I moved slowly, inch by inch, my gaze darting around every corner, the lamp trembling in my hands. As I turned into my small dining room, my heartbeat began an impossible increase, sending even more blood shooting through my veins. For a second, I thought I would pass out, fear taking hold of me, the briny taste on my tongue making my stomach flip over with nausea. I raised the lamp higher, up above my head, and I stepped forward again, wondering what I could have done differently to avoid this.

  One: always keep glasses and cell phone in the bathroom while showering, no matter what.

  Two—

  I heard a thump—this noise softer, but somehow more real than the one I’d been able to hear from the shower—and I stopped in my tracks. My pulse quickened even more, as all doubt about whether there was someone in my apartment disappeared.

  “Who’s there?” I called out in a voice that sounded much more confident than I felt. The words flew out of me, and I trudged on, hoping a robber would be reasonable enough to respond, identify him- or herself, and apologize for bothering me on a cold Saturday morning.

  “Who the fuck is there?” I called out again. Still no response, and I felt like an idiot, a terrified idiot, calling out to someone who obviously didn’t have any plans to respond. I tried to make out the fuzzy shapes in front of me as I inched around my small dining room table toward the living room. I bumped into one of the chairs, and the noise was deafening, but still, nothing. As I turned the corner into the living room, a cold blast of air hit me, and I could see that my patio door was open. I squinted at it, shivering uncontrollably, the heavy lamp shaking in my hand.