They Never Came Home

by Lois Duncan

  “Who? Where?”

  “You’re David Carter,” Larry had told him, drawing the name at random because of the initials. “I’m your brother, Lance. We’re from New York. You’ve been sick. Now lie back and get some sleep.”

  How simple it had been! How gloriously simple! And it had worked out better than he had ever dared hope. Once here in California, it was Dan who had found a job with which to support them both. For Larry it had been like one long vacation, with no school, no pressures, no one telling him what to do and how to do it. Then, recently, he had met those guys at one of the surfing parties. He had let them know in a subtle way that, regardless of his appearance, he wasn’t an innocent baby. He had been involved in some big business back where he came from, and out here on the Coast it was even bigger. A guy could make as much money as he wanted, depending upon the risks he was willing to take, particularly a guy who looked like Larry, with an innocent, childlike face, big eyes, a heart-wrenching smile.

  Luckily, one of the friends he made at the party was in the business of making fake I.D.s. Those had been necessities for several reasons, not the least of which was that it made it possible for Dan – or “Dave” as he was in this reincarnation – to obtain a job. Larry knew he wouldn’t need Dan’s income for long. He soon would find far better resources. But, for now, it was a convenience to have his roommate bringing in a paycheck, and also staying off his back throughout the entire work day.

  And beyond that—who knew what life might hold! This was just the beginning! There would be bigger, more exciting games always to come!

  The thing was that Dan could not be a part of them. Dan must not be allowed to remember more than he already did. He had almost laughed aloud when Dan had asked him about his own family. They were nothing to him; they never had been. What did he have in common with people like that? In some freak way he had found himself among them, like an eagle being born into a cuckoo’s nest.

  There was only one person in the world that Larry Drayfus was concerned about, and that was Larry Drayfus. Or Lance Carter. Or whoever it was that it was convenient to be at the moment.

  “Dan?”

  Across the room from him, the older guy looked up. There was a hint of suspicion in his eyes.

  “What is it?”

  Larry got up slowly and walked over to the French doors, unsealed now, leading onto the balcony.

  “Come over here a minute, will you?” he said. “I want to point something out to you.”

  “Daniel Cotwell.” The girl in the white waitress uniform repeated the name carefully. She stared at Anne, recognition dawning in her eyes. “You were here the other night, weren’t you? You’re the girl who called out to Dave?”

  “Dave?” Joan caught at the name. “Who is Dave? Is that the name of the boy you were with?”

  “David Carter. He’s the boy I’ve been dating.”

  The girl transferred her attention from Anne to Joan, studying her with wide gray eyes. She had a familiarity about her, Joan thought in surprise—the shape of the face, the way the eyes were spaced, the wide mouth with even teeth.

  Have I seen her someplace before, she asked herself. No, I can’t have, of course. Then why does she seem so familiar? Perhaps she looks like someone.

  The thought was disturbing. If this strange girl, whom she knew she could not possibly have set eyes on before, could call forth such a strong feeling of recognition, might not a boy built like Dan, with features like his and his walk, and smile, have drawn this same response from Anne?

  “Can you tell us anything about this David?” she asked.

  The girl, Peggy, said, “Why? What is it exactly that you want to know, and why? I can’t just tell you things without knowing why you want to hear them.”

  “There was a boy,” Joan said, “a friend of ours named Dan Cotwell. Four months ago he went on a camping trip in the Mogollon Mountains. He never came back. The other night, here at the Green Cove, Anne thought she saw him. It was the boy who was with you, the one you call Dave. Of course, she could very well be wrong.”

  “Where are the Mogollon Mountains?” Peggy asked.

  “In New Mexico, outside of Las Cruces.”

  “Dave is from New York. At least he said he was.” She paused. “He wouldn’t lie. I can’t imagine his lying. Even last weekend when I got so mad at him, he didn’t try to tell me things that weren’t so just to smooth things over.”

  “You had a fight last weekend?” Anne asked. “Was this after I spoke to him?”

  “Yes. It was strange—he acted so peculiar. Everything had been fine, and then, just as we were getting ready to leave, you said something to him, and he grabbed hold of me and practically yanked me out the door. He was very upset about something. I tried to ask him about it and he told me he didn’t know himself what was wrong. Then he stopped walking and he … he …”

  She let the sentence fall away.

  “Yes?” Joan prodded eagerly.

  “He—he called me by somebody else’s name. Joan. He called me Joan.”

  They were all silent a moment. Peggy’s eyes were dark with remembered pain. She raised them slowly with a look of dawning understanding.

  “You’re Joan,” she said softly, “aren’t you?”

  Silently, Joan nodded.

  “He lives at the Royal Palm Apartments,” Peggy told her. “I—I’d go over with you, but I can’t leave work right now. I’ll give you the address though.”

  “We’ll find it,” Joan said. “Thank you. Thank you so very much!”

  “Tell him something for me, will you?” Peggy said. “Tell him I have a date tomorrow night to the homecoming dance.”

  She turned away quickly, her head bent forward so that her face was hidden. She held her body carefully erect.

  She was tall.

  With a sudden flash, Joan realized where she had last seen Peggy Richards. She was gazing out at her from her own mirror.

  The girl on the sidewalk below the balcony was not Peggy. He had thought she was when he first saw her, but now he realized that it was someone quite different. She was looking down, pawing through her purse for change to tip the cab driver, but then she straightened and he knew her as completely as he had ever known anyone in his life.

  It was Joan Drayfus.

  For a long moment he stood staring. Then he turned to find Larry close behind him. Too close. When had he moved so close?

  “You’re a rotten little liar,” Dan said softly.

  Larry’s face was a mask of innocent surprise.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Those things you told me, they were lies, every one of them! I was never involved in narcotics smuggling! I didn’t hate my parents! I didn’t even have a sister! The things you were telling me about myself, they were true, all right, but not about me! It was you—you!”

  “You’re crazy,” Larry said. “You can’t remember everything just like that, when just a few minutes ago—”

  “I do remember,” Dan told him. He felt weak with the knowledge, the sudden surge of violent memory. The gates had opened; pictures were pouring in one great rush back into his brain.

  “I do remember, because Joan is here, right here in front of this building right now! It’s Joan—my girl! Your sister! I remember!”

  To have ever forgotten, that was the incredible thing! Not the return of memory, but the fact that he had ever been without it! Joan, her head tossed back, laughing at some silly joke he had made—Joan, bent over a geometry book, brow wrinkled in concentration—Joan, tall and stately, yet still with the endearing shyness of a little girl, raising a beaming face from the corsage he had given her for that Christmas formal, how long ago? Two years?

  It had been their first date. He had not known then what she would become to him. He had not even guessed. She was a casual date, a third-choice invitation because Anne was already dated up and the next girl he called was also. He had waited too long, so he had better get on the ball and call someone rig
ht away. Why not Joan Drayfus? She was a nice kid, popular with everyone but not glamorous. She didn’t date much; she would probably be free.

  “It’s beautiful,” she had said.

  It wasn’t really. It was a little on the wilted side, that carnation corsage, thrown together at the last moment by a harried florist who had already put together a hundred Christmas corsages. Most girls would have found it disappointing, but Joan’s eyes had been shining.

  “It’s beautiful, Dan!”

  She had lifted it to her face and suddenly, startlingly, she had been beautiful, so aglow with life and happiness that his heart had lifted in a quick rise of wonder.

  That he could have forgotten the dreams, the plans! They had both been planning on college, so there had not been anything definite. Not yet. But they had both known. Gloriously, unspokenly—there had been no doubt, ever, of what was between them and what would someday be.

  How could he have forgotten, even for an instant, much less for months! What was it now, October? The college year had already started! They had been here in California since spring! He had missed it all—exams—graduation—the prom! His parents—dear God, what about his family! Were they frantically searching for him? Or did they think he was dead? That newspaper clipping—how could they think anything else!

  “You—you—” He could not find a word strong enough.

  “I guess you do remember at that.” Larry was regarding him warily. “Well, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to tell them?”

  “Tell them? How can I not? Do you really think I’m going to stay here, lolling on the beach, now that I know who I am!”

  “No, of course not. You’ll go on back. You’ll tell them you had a crack on the head and got amnesia just like it happens in books. Everybody will cheer and throw confetti—high school football hero returns from the dead! But that doesn’t mean you have to tell them about me.”

  Larry’s voice was gentle and persuasive.

  “I’m not going back to New Mexico, Dan, not now or ever. Larry Drayfus doesn’t exist any longer, and I like it that way. I’m free to live my own life in my own way without having to answer to anyone. Why spoil it? Why mess it up? What is it going to gain you?”

  “Your folks—they must be crazy with grief!” Dan exclaimed. “Don’t you even care?”

  “They’ll be adjusted by now. They’ll have all kinds of sticky sweet memories about me. Are you going to yank those away from them? What are you going to tell them—that little Larry-boy is a monster of some kind? They won’t thank you for that, Dan, I can tell you. You won’t be doing them any favor. You’ll give my dad a heart attack. You might give Mother one too, who knows?”

  “You don’t care about them,” Dan said. “Why should that matter to you?”

  “It doesn’t. But it matters to you. You care.”

  “Not enough to let you get away with this!” Dan’s fury was so great that he could hardly choke out the words. “Not enough to leave you running loose in the world! If you’re like this at seventeen, what are you going to be when you’re twenty-seven! Or thirty-seven! Or fifty!”

  “Okay. Don’t say I didn’t give you a chance!”

  The boy shot toward him before he even saw what was happening. The hands were outstretched, the lean, wiry body had the speed of quicksilver, the smooth childlike face was twisted with a cold hard brightness. It was so sudden that his mind could not register and react, but his body could—for his body remembered. His body had lived this before!

  That shove in the mountains had carried him forward over the cliff’s edge, but he had been facing away, he had not been ready. Now the strong, well-trained body, so used to instant responses to football signals, threw itself sideways out of the way of the rushing figure. The boy went past him and struck the balcony railing and continued through it, out beyond it in a clean arc through the sweet blue air, silhouetted against the white breakers with their cargo of surfers, arms stretched wide like a thin brown bird.

  “Oh, no!” Dan whispered the words. He could not move, he could not think. He could only stand, staring at the shattered railing.

  In the street below people were screaming. Their voices rose shrilly against the pounding of his head.

  “A doctor,” somebody cried, and someone else: “Too late—nothing can be done.”

  Joan! He saw her again in his mind as he had seen her in fact only moments before, on the sidewalk beneath the balcony. Could she still be there? No—no—that would be too ironic, too impossibly cruel. Still, where would she have gone in such a short time! Could she be standing now, gazing down at her brother, or at whatever thing her brother now was!

  “Oh, please no!”

  He was across the room in three swift strides, throwing open the door, tearing down the hallway. He did not stop at the elevator but ran for the stairs, his feet hitting them with a crashing violence.

  She was there in the lobby. She had been looking at the names on the mailboxes. Anne was with her, and they both looked up at once and saw him, their eyes widening, their faces gone white.

  “Joan!” he cried, and reached her and caught her to him with a gasp that came out like a sob.

  “Dan, is it you? Is it really?”

  Her voice—he remembered her voice, the feel of her in his arms, the smell of her hair. She asked no questions. She merely clung to him as though there were no questions of importance that had not already been answered.

  He held her there, her face pressed against his shoulder, already conscious of the sounds of sirens in the distance.

  A man he didn’t recognize was babbling on a cellphone, “It was like something out of a horror flick!”

  “It’s that young kid from third floor A, Lance Curtis or something. He must have been out on the balcony leaning on the railing! Fool kid! Everybody in the building knows about those balconies! Repair work was scheduled to start on them next week.”

  “From the third floor!” Anne’s eyes were wide with horror. “Lance Curtis? Dan, was he someone you knew?”

  “No,” Dan said, “not really. I don’t think anybody in the world ever really knew him.”

  Keeping Joan held close against him, he put his arm around Anne as well, turning both girls from the lobby entranceway toward the side door.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said hoarsely. “Let’s go home.”

  A Biography of Lois Duncan

  Lois Duncan is the author of more than fifty books for young adults. Her stories of mystery and suspense have won dozens of awards, and many have been named Best Books for Young Adults by the American Library Association. Some of her novels have been adapted for film, including I Know What You Did Last Summer and Hotel for Dogs.

  Lois Duncan was born Lois Duncan Steinmetz in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on April 28, 1934. Her parents, Lois and Joseph Janney Steinmetz, were both professional photographers. Since her parents’ work required travel, Duncan and her brother often tagged along, and these trips supplied Duncan with ample writing material. Duncan began writing poetry and stories as soon as she could spell. By age ten she was submitting her work to magazines, and she had her first story published nationally when she was only thirteen years old.

  That same year the family moved to Sarasota, Florida. Duncan spent many hours daydreaming and writing near the family’s house on the beach. Through her teen years her work was frequently published by magazines such as Seventeen and the Saturday Evening Post.

  Duncan briefly attended Duke University, but left school after one year to marry and start a family. She didn’t abandon writing, however, and she published her first book, Debutante Hill (1957), after winning a contest conducted by Dodd, Mead & Company, a major publishing house that has since ceased operations. Her work helped support her family while her husband attended law school.

  Duncan had three children with her first husband. After they divorced, Duncan moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. There she taught journalism at the University of New Mexico and
finished her own college degree. She met and married Don Arquette, with whom she had two more children. Even while producing hundreds of articles for magazines such as Reader’s Digest and Ladies Home Journal, Duncan penned dozens of books.

  Duncan’s novels are often filled with suspense and a sense of the eerie and supernatural, with elements including mystic visions and ghostly presences. In books such as Gallows Hill (1997), her protagonists face unexplainable phenomena while being pressured by classmates or friends to fit in and ignore their instincts. Much of Duncan’s fiction, such as Ransom (1966), They Never Came Home (1968), and The Twisted Window (1987), hinges on missing children, abductions, and the terror of accidental separation.

  In 1989, Duncan suffered a great tragedy when her youngest daughter, Kaitlyn, was shot to death at age eighteen. The crime was never solved, and Duncan’s own investigation into the Albuquerque shooting became the basis of her 1992 nonfiction title Who Killed My Daughter? The book digs into the original murder investigation, and describes how Duncan’s daughter and members of the Albuquerque police force seem to have been caught in a complicated web of organized crime.

  Lois Duncan now lives with her husband in Florida, where she continues to write.

  Duncan was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on April 28, 1934. Her parents, Joseph Janney and Lois Foley Steinmetz, were professional photographers.

  Duncan’s parents enjoyed creating homemade Christmas cards. Because Duncan was named after her mother, her parents called her “Mimi,” and that nickname appears on some of those cards. Duncan insisted on switching to “Lois” when she started school.

  Duncan’s brother, Bill, was born in 1937. This was his first appearance in a family Christmas card.