Eve holds up the coffee carafe and Felicia nods. Then her gaze shifts.
“Not again,” Felicia says, and Eve sees that she’s looking at the television. It’s a reporter standing in front of Charlotte’s house, a man whom Eve had driven past just minutes before.
“Turn it up,” Charlotte says, but Felicia shakes her head. “It’s more of the same, honey. You don’t need to torture yourself by watching it.” She extends the remote and switches the television off.
“But there might be news,” Charlotte says.
“Then you’ll hear it directly from the police.” Felicia’s voice is firm, and Charlotte sits back. She takes the cup of coffee Eve’s poured for her. “I should go out and talk to them. I need to keep Amy in the news.”
“You need to be careful,” Felicia cautions. “They don’t care about you or Amy. They just want the ratings.”
“How about Trish Armstrong?” Eve finds herself saying. “She has that noon radio program. She’s always been so great about promoting the walkathon. I’m sure she’d be happy to help.” Eve’s sweating again, hot and cold with it. She wants to go home and be with her family. She wants to sweep the floor and think about what to make for dinner, hear her children call to her from another room.
“Fifty-seven hours,” Charlotte says. “Two and a half days.”
“It’s still early,” Felicia says.
It’s not early. It’s been an eternity. They’ve been trudging through each hour, one by one, the minutes grinding past, piling up at their feet. When will they say that it’s too late?
“I can’t stand this.” Charlotte shoves back her chair and paces. She rakes her hands through her hair. “What the hell is going on? Where is she? Why doesn’t she come home? I didn’t mean to make her run off. I can’t do this. I can’t.”
“You can, and you will,” Felicia says. “Eve and I and Mom are here. We’ll do this together.”
Charlotte stands by the window, her arms crossed. The dawn paints her face in shades of pink and orange. “It’s not knowing that’s the worst.”
“I know.”
But sometimes the worst part is knowing—having all the ugly, undeniable facts spread out in clear view and not being able to do a damned thing to change any of them.
“Fifty-seven hours.” Charlotte leans her forehead against the glass. “My God.”
“We’ll never stop looking,” Eve says. At last, a blinding truth.
DAVID
It’s a miracle Eve hasn’t been pulled over. David’s been meaning to attach the registration sticker to her license plate, but one thing or another had kept him from remembering. It’s been a month now, and maybe it’s the regular sight of the police cars on his street that nudges the item to the top of his to-do list. He crouches by the back of her car and presses the decal into place, rolls up the scrap paper and stands. Eve’s parked the car so far in that the fender’s touching the wall. The rakes in the corner have fallen and are leaning across the hood. He climbs in and starts the engine, backs the car up a few feet. The rakes slide with a clatter to the floor, and he gets back out to stand them up again. He goes around the car and stops in astonishment. When did that happen?
He finds Eve in the laundry room. She holds up a pair of Tyler’s jeans to the overhead light, checking for holes. She buys Tyler so much denim clothing that he’s told her they should invest in Levi’s stock. She slides her hand up through the leg and spreads apart her fingers.
“Look at this.” She’s found something, a hole, a place where the fabric’s worn. He knows she’s picturing Tyler suffering a burn, igniting skin cells below the surface that mutate and spread to other organs. “I can’t believe Tyler didn’t say anything.”
She’ll patch the fabric on both sides. She’ll iron them hard, then pull the material between her hands to make sure they stay put. She’ll enjoin Tyler to check his clothes for holes or tears before he puts them on, but it doesn’t matter what they do. They could move to Alaska, where the sun barely shines, and live in a cave in the middle of a forest, but eventually the disease would win. It always does. Every time Eve tells David about another XP child whose condition has worsened, a buzzing starts in his ears, blocking her out. He doesn’t know how she can do this, stand in front of the inferno and let it scorch her skin.
“I just saw your front bumper,” he says. “What on earth did you hit?”
She stiffens, the denim stretched tight, her hand a claw. Then she’s rolling up the jeans and setting them aside. “It’s the stupidest thing.” Is her voice trembling? “I was pulling out of the Giant Eagle gas station and I bumped into the air pump.”
“Doesn’t look like you bumped it. Looks like you ran into it.”
A pause. “Why would I do that?” She reaches for another pair of jeans.
Obviously, that’s not what he meant, but what she’s saying makes no sense. “The air pump’s nowhere near the gas pumps. What happened? Did you swerve to avoid something? Was the ground wet?”
“I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”
But Eve always pays attention. She never exceeds the speed limit. She always comes to a full stop. “How can you not know? The fender’s barely hanging on.”
“I’ve had a lot on my mind.”
“I know, but you should have told me. I might have been able to take it to the body shop before I left town. When did this happen?” He’d have noticed it when she picked him up at the airport. So sometime afterward?
“Last night.”
He thinks. When had she been out?
“I’ll take it in.” She’s pushing laundry into the machine and slamming the door shut.
“Try the place on Sawmill. They’ll have to replace the entire fender. See if they can jury-rig something in the meantime.”
She stops, her hand on the bottle of detergent. There’s a line between her eyes. Her lips are pale, her warm beauty drained away. “They can’t fix it right away?”
“They’ll have to order parts. Could be a while. Ask if they can give you a loaner car.”
“I can’t do that.”
That’s Eve. She wouldn’t dream of driving a car without UV films on the glass, but she wouldn’t hesitate to drag a fender along the pavement.
“This is going to cost us a fortune. I don’t know where we’re going to find the money.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well, it’s not like you did it on purpose. You almost ready? I’ll go say good-bye to the kids.”
Melissa’s in the bathroom, the door closed. The clack of bottles being set on the counter, the muffled whir of a hair dryer. He raps and the dryer silences. “What?”
“I’m heading out,” he says. “I’ll see you Friday night.”
The bathroom door cracks open to reveal his daughter, her face flushed and her wet hair waved back from her forehead, a towel wrapped around her. “Swear?” she says. “Because I have my driver’s test Saturday morning.”
“Swear.”
She pushes past him, traipses down the hall. Just six months before, she’d have thrown her arms around him and held tight. She goes into her room and slams the door.
David knocks on Tyler’s door. “I’m heading out. Good luck tomorrow.”
“Okay.” Tyler’s voice comes muffled through the thick wood. “See you.”
Tomorrow his son starts high school. Melissa starts her junior year. In two short years, she’ll be going off to college. David has to leave for the airport, but how can he? Eve’s waiting in the kitchen, and they go out, closing the door behind them.
He’s backing the car out of the garage when a man appears by the window and bangs on the glass. Another reporter. “Great,” he mutters, braking and rolling down the window. “Sorry, but we’re not going to answer any questions about Amy.”
“I get that. I was hoping to talk to you about your son.”
Tyler?
The guy sticks out his hand. “I’m Jason Freed, with Seven TV. And you’re Mr.
Lattimore? Mrs. Lattimore?” Another man stands on the steps behind Freed, a heavy camera balanced on his shoulder. He’s bald and perspiring. He doesn’t look pleased to be out in this heat. Freed’s got an insincere smile on his face that makes David wary. “I understand Tyler’s fourteen now. How’s he doing?”
How does this stranger know anything about his son? David glances at Eve, who’s leaning against the door, her face shadowed. Then he remembers the interview Eve had done years before when Tyler was just a toddler. He turns back to Jason Freed. “Why?”
“I’d like to do a profile piece on him, maybe get people interested in his case. You and your wife have a foundation, right? These kinds of stories can really generate a lot of community support.”
It’s true. That first piece had brought in eleven thousand dollars, money that went directly to helping uninsured XP kids pay for treatment. It had been a drop in the bucket.
“How’s Tyler’s prognosis now?”
“The same. It’s an incurable disease.”
“But if you keep Tyler out of the sun …?”
“By the time he was diagnosed, the damage had already been done. It’s true for all XP kids.”
“I’m sorry. So what’s a typical day like for Tyler?”
“David.” Eve speaks quietly, her hand on his arm. “We need to go.”
David looks at her. “You want to schedule something later?”
“No.”
He’s surprised. Eve’s always willing to talk to anyone in an effort to raise charitable interest in their cause.
Freed leans closer, raises his voice. “Let me talk to Tyler, Mrs. Lattimore. The camera’s safe. We won’t use a flash.”
Eve’s fingers dig into David’s arm. “Please,” she whispers.
“Sorry,” David says, and Freed steps back.
Traffic’s heavy on the highway, families returning from a long weekend or going home from one. He flips on the turn signal and glances over at Eve. She’s looking out the window. This is the way she is, physically present but mentally lost in her own musings. He’d be telling her about something or other, and she’d turn to him and say, I read an interesting article about vitamin D, or, What if we wrote our congressman again? and he’d realize that she hadn’t been listening at all, had been wandering down the twisted, turning paths of saving Tyler.
He wants to reach across this yawning space between them and pull her back. “How does your week look?”
“Charlotte’s taking a polygraph tomorrow.”
“You’re going with her?”
“I would, but it’s Tyler’s first day.”
“He’ll be all right.” Safe in his room, door locked. “Charlotte needs you, you know. She must be going out of her mind.”
A pause, and then she says, “I meant to ask, could you talk to Owen about Scott? Charlotte thinks he’s stopped taking his medication.”
“Why doesn’t she talk to him?”
“She’s tried, but he won’t talk to her. He says this is all her fault.”
“Can you really blame him?” She looks at him, and he lifts his hands from the wheel. “I know that’s not fair. Sorry. But I don’t want to get in the middle of this.” He’d made that mistake before after Owen initiated divorce proceedings. David had met the man for a drink, broached the subject of not abandoning his marriage, and Owen had shaken his head and pushed himself away from the bar. Thought you’d see my side of things, he’d said before walking away. At the time, David had. Things had been very clear to him. Charlotte had broken the rules. Owen was the victim. Now he sees the grays, the blurry lines. He understands how loneliness might drive a person to make terrible choices.
Eve looks away.
Another mile passes. They’ll reach the airport within minutes. He feels desperate, caught in this hopeless cycle. He doesn’t know his wife. He doesn’t know his children. “Eve,” he says, and she glances at him. “We need to talk about this.”
She frowns. “About what?”
“This.” He lifts his hands from the wheel, drops them back down. “Us. It’s like we’re not even married. It’s like we’re business partners.”
“That’s horrible! How can you say that?”
She has to feel it, too. “Look, I know you’re upset about Amy. We both are. But we need to fix this.”
“You’re the one who took the job in DC.”
“I had no choice and you know it. It was either that or go on unemployment. Is that what you want me to do, quit?”
“Of course not.”
She saves everything he makes. She wants to be able to afford the latest experimental treatment, to be able to fly Tyler to wherever a possible cure might arise, no matter what corner of the world it’s in. Every penny has to be stored away in case a miracle happens. And miracles cost money.
“Something has to give, Eve. I can’t do this anymore, live hundreds of miles away. Melissa will be leaving for college soon. And Tyler—”
“Don’t.”
He feels a rising tide of frustration, and, yes, anger. “Don’t what, Eve? Throw your own words back at you?” What if that was Tyler’s last birthday? “You’re letting fear paralyze you. It’s destroying our marriage.” It’s made her shrill. It’s made her impossible to be with.
“I don’t want to fight, David. We have to work this out. The kids need us.”
That’s what it always comes down to: what’s best for Tyler, what’s best for Melissa. Nothing about how she wants this for herself, too. He understands now that that dark thick line that once encircled them has wavered, repositioned itself, and left him standing on one side and Eve on the other.
He looks straight ahead. “You have to stop blaming yourself.” This silences her. And into that silence he says, “We both made Tyler. It’s on both of us.”
They hadn’t known they were carriers. They hadn’t had any symptoms; they’d never even heard of XP. So they let sunlight filter into the nursery; they took Tyler for walks in his stroller; they played with him on the playground. They did all the normal things parents did with their children, and in that innocent first year, they signed their son’s death warrant. Both of them—equally. Together, they’ve created a doomed child. Together, they’ve created this unhappy life.
THE BOATHOUSE
The sky’s bright pink behind the houses. There’s enough light left to see that the grass really is green, the flowers really are pink. It’s been a nice day. Tyler feels the truth of that against his face, the backs of his hands, the air there soft and warm. Everything looks relaxed, the leaves hanging from the branches. Sliding the spatula beneath the foil packets of fish, he lifts them up and sets them on the platter. They smell good, buttery and garlicky. He wishes salmon tasted as good as it smelled. His mom makes him eat salmon every week. It’s packed with antioxidants, she tells him, which is supposed to be a good thing.
The door opens behind him, and he hastily tilts the telescope up. His mom comes out, bringing a basket of bread. “Remember when you had an imaginary friend, and I had to set a place for him every night?”
She’s been doing that a lot lately, talking about stuff from when Tyler was a kid. He wishes she would stop. “No.” He’s not lying. He really doesn’t remember.
They sit around the glass table. Fat candles flicker between them, making them look like spooks. His dad’s gone, so it’s just the three of them. “Hey,” his mom says to Melissa. “I see you’ve gone through your clothes. You sure you want to get rid of so many?”
Melissa doesn’t even look up. “Yes.”
“But you just bought a lot of them.”
“Exactly. So it’s my money and I get to decide.”
“All right,” his mom says slowly. “I’ll drop them off the next time I go.”
“Good.”
His mom sighs and looks at him. “I wanted to tell you that I’m going with Charlotte to the police station tomorrow morning. I won’t be long.”
Which means he’ll be home alone. He knows t
he rules. No opening his door to anyone. Keep his phone charged and beside him if he needs her. Call 911 if he smells smoke. Make sure his mask is on his nightstand. She always gives him a heads-up before she leaves, and she always answers him the second he texts her, even when he’s saying things like, We need chocolate milk and Can I rent a movie?
He likes the idea of being old enough to be trusted with such a big responsibility, but he worries. What if there is a fire? What if a stranger forces his way inside and surprises him alone in his room? The lock on his door isn’t that strong. It’s not meant to keep out burglars. But Zach’s been allowed to stay home by himself ever since he was eight. “Why do you have to go to the police station?” He wonders which one it is. He’s been on Google Earth, zeroed in on a few buildings, but there’s nothing to see. Just rooftops and parking lots.
“Oh, it’s nothing. Charlotte’s taking a polygraph.”
He knows what a polygraph is. People are always getting into trouble when they take one on TV. “How come?”
His mom hesitates, which tells him he should pay attention to what she’s not saying. “They always have to rule out the parents in cases like this.”
They think Charlotte did something to Amy? “That’s stupid. Moms don’t hurt their kids.”
Melissa snorts. “Oh, that never happens.”
“Melissa,” his mom warns, but Tyler doesn’t want her to make Melissa stop. “On purpose or by accident?” he demands, and his mother looks sad.
“It depends,” she says, which is really no answer at all.
For as long as he can remember, his mom’s warned him about the path that leads down to the river. She always makes sure to walk between him and where the ground falls off steeply on one side. What if he falls and breaks a bone? Emergency rooms have lots of lights. He’d had to go to one once when he was little and had a high fever. He’d had to wear his facemask and long sleeves and jeans, and he kept trying to rip them off, he was so hot. It had taken two nurses and his mom to hold him down. The doctor had sent him home with a tube in his arm and a nurse had to come to remove it the next day.
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