Going to see Jessa’s race, he’d told his mom before taking off that last day, as an excuse. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t told her we’d broken up. Maybe he was using my name as an excuse. Meanwhile, where had he really been heading each time?
“Mia,” I say, leaning closer, but then I hear Eve call out for Mia as well, and she scrambles to the door, down the steps, and I’m left shaking in the middle of his room. There’s barely anything left. There’s his comforter. His sheets. His backpack, leaning against the empty wall. There wasn’t much inside, which I remember from when Max went looking for his money: just some notebooks, a few stray papers, and a pen, missing a cap.
His textbooks were never here. They weren’t in the closet on his shelf, on his desk, or in his locker. And I wonder if he ever purchased them at all this year.
The backpack is a dark green, with multiple pockets. Max had already tipped the bag over, emptying the main contents, when he went through this room, in his fury.
Now, all that remains in the bottom is the pen he would tuck behind his ear, or rest between his teeth, if he was concentrating. There’s an old test—a 91, circled in red—crumpled and forgotten at the base of his notebooks. In the side pocket is his student ID, the same image hanging above the petition outside the cafeteria. We all took the photos for them at the beginning of the year, and they always looked ghastly, overexposed by the printer settings and white background. But Caleb looks alive in his.
The second pocket has been unusable since last year—the zipper stuck permanently in the closed position.
It was me who got it stuck. Caleb was loading up the notebooks on top of his desk, getting ready to go study at the library. He swung it onto his back and called, “Ready?” over his shoulder
Halfway down the steps, I asked, “Do you have any gum?”
“Second pocket,” he said.
We were still moving, descending the steps, and after I took a piece of gum, I tried to pull the zipper shut—but it caught, and I pulled harder. But when I tried to tug it back to realign things, it wouldn’t move. “Oh, crap. I broke your backpack,” I said.
He stopped moving and dropped it to the ground at the base of the staircase, fidgeting with the zipper. “My gum is held hostage,” he said.
“Forgive me?” I said.
“Always,” he said.
Now, I think again, Forgive me, Caleb. Because I’m trying to unearth something he wanted to keep hidden. And I can feel how close I finally am.
The zipper, now, is pried open. It seems someone has taken scissors to the material around it, splitting it open, but also tearing the fabric in places. I wonder if it was just Max who tore into it, looking for the money stolen from him, and I didn’t notice.
Either way, someone has been through here, so sure there was something hidden.
That pack of gum is still inside, and I laugh for the moment, imagining this was all they uncovered. The pieces are brittle, snapping in my hand. I toss them in the garbage, but the scent of mint fills the empty room, until it is inescapable. It’s starting to rain, so I don’t open the window, but I take Caleb’s trash down the steps, outside.
—
I move quickly, through the drizzle. The garbage goes out tonight.
Peering inside, I see the placemats, the cookbooks. All dumped without care. It’s junk. It’s nothing. I tip Caleb’s garbage can over, watch the contents rain down over the rest of the trash.
I dislodge a cookbook in the process, and underneath, I see something iridescent. At first I think it’s one of Mia’s toys—the colors change when the light hits it. But as I move the other items aside, it comes into focus. It’s a spiral-bound notebook that I last saw less than a week ago, in the passenger seat of Eve’s car.
I had gone by her house three times, without being let in, after the accident. I walked up their front steps and stood at the door, and heard muffled noises behind. I knocked, and the noises went quiet. They didn’t come out. They didn’t move. I figured they knew it was me and decided they didn’t want to talk to me, and I tried to respect that.
I sent a card instead, a lame thing expressing condolences, which felt absolutely appalling in hindsight, but I couldn’t get inside otherwise. I mailed it across two towns, a few days before the service.
I felt invisible, the ghost of a person left behind, ignored as I drove by her house, or sat in the pew of the church, beside Hailey.
And then, suddenly, she saw me. The tables turned.
—
My house had been empty, my parents on the way to pick up Julian. And the silence was unbearable. In the silence, I could only hear wisps of Caleb: Just leave it, Jessa. Just say it. Mia, come say goodbye to Jessa—
I had been standing on the front porch, just to breathe, when I saw her car, like a ghost itself, parked at the corner of my street. It was dusk, everything cast in shadows, and for a moment I thought I had conjured it from my mind. The window was cracked, the car dark. But I saw a figure moving inside. I stepped closer, just to be sure it was real. I walked down my front steps, my arms crossed over my chest, and at first she didn’t notice. She was staring up at the big house behind me, and I was suddenly embarrassed by it. By the white pillars and the brick facade, the hedges all cut to the same height, the way it all felt suddenly so unnecessary. She narrowed her eyes at it—the lights on outside and inside, the curtained windows—and frowned when she saw me.
“Hi,” I said as she lowered the window some more. Her eyes were dry and cold, and I wondered if she was out here for some sort of revenge fantasy. As if she could see the river rising up under the base of my car in the driveway, sweeping me away.
I took a tentative step back, unsure of everything.
“Jessa,” she said, like she was confused to find me here—as if she weren’t the one parked in front of my house, waiting for me. “I was going to knock.”
I nodded. Waiting. She was the adult, but it seemed like she was checking out of the conversation, leaving it to me. My breath escaped in a short burst of fog. The words I’m sorry hovering between us. But I didn’t know what I was apologizing for.
“We’re moving,” she finally said.
The shock of it knocked me back a step. “Oh. Where?”
But she brushed the question aside. “I need to pack up his room.”
It’s then that I saw the question, heard it lingering between the spoken lines. She licked her lips. “This isn’t something a mother should ever have to do.” And then, “The room is full of you, Jessa.” It was both an invitation and a request, and I seized it.
“Okay,” I said.
“We’ll be ready for you this weekend.” Then she started the car, with one look back at my house.
She looked so small, with me standing over her on the curb, and the childlike notebook in the passenger seat, which must’ve been Mia’s.
My parents were due back with Julian at any moment. Memories of Caleb circled in the silence again. I was never so grateful for the headlights coming down the road, and Julian crammed in the backseat, like an oversized kid.
I was already walking toward the driveway when he exited the car.
“If I knew you’d be waiting on the curb, I would’ve caught an earlier train,” he joked. He tucked my head under his chin and said, “Good to see you, kid.”
I patted him twice on the back, thrown by the sudden display of affection. My parents averted their gaze, and I knew: they had spoken to him, warned him that I was a fragile thing that must now be handled with care.
Like a glass figurine in the box.
—
Now I see the notebook in the trash can, under the placemats and utensils and cookbooks, nothing else of Mia’s on top or underneath.
I open the cover, expecting to see Mia’s writing. But instead it looks like a ledger. Row after row of times, dates, locations. I flip the page, and it keeps going. A diary. A file. Propping it on the edge of the garbage can lid, I try to read the words in the fading light. I
cup my hand around the pages, to protect it from the steady drizzle.
There is a list. An annotated schedule. I’m confused at first. It says things like: school, home, school, with predictable times, in an unwavering pattern of regularity.
The dates don’t make sense, because Caleb wasn’t there. These are more recent.
Then there are a few diversions. Walk, 10 p.m. Another: Run. Out for 1 hr. And another: Girl shows up. Leaves after 10 min. And then an address follows.
I look again. I know that address. It belongs to my best friend. To Hailey. I don’t understand why Eve would be following Hailey. What Hailey has to do with anything at all.
I look at the dates again. This is the day after the service, and I realize where Hailey had been for those ten minutes on that day. Where Eve must’ve followed her from.
It was my house. She was at my house, trying to talk me out of the darkness, and I sent her away.
I see the dates again. The walks I took at night, when everyone else was sleeping. Running in the dark, where I could hear a steady rumbling, like a river.
But no, not a river. A car engine in the distance, following me.
My hands shake, and the paper trembles faintly in my grip. These are my movements. This is my path. She’s been following me.
—
“Jessa?” Eve calls from the back door. “Is that you?”
I look up to Caleb’s window, then down at my feet again. I start to slowly ease the garbage can aside, but his mother stands at the back door, watching me, frowning.
“Can I help you with something?” she asks.
I drop the notebook into the container, wipe the rain residue from my face. “I was emptying his garbage,” I say, holding the can up to her. A proclamation of innocence. I didn’t see. I want to force the words into her mind. I didn’t see.
“It’s getting late,” she says. “Bring that back up, and we’ll call it a day.”
But I suddenly don’t want to be alone in the house with her. Not up on the third floor, with no exit, trapped behind crooked stairs.
“I need to go home,” I say, taking a step back. I didn’t see. I didn’t see. I didn’t see.
I realize I’m holding my breath, and I make myself exhale slowly. My bag is upstairs, with my car keys. I can’t just take off. But I don’t like the way she’s looking at me, like she suspects something.
She doesn’t answer, just tips her head to the side, looking between me and the garbage can.
Now I’m wondering why she asked me here in the first place. That day I saw her car—had she been about to knock, as she claimed? Or was she watching me, as she had been in the weeks after Caleb disappeared? And if she was watching me, what was she hoping to find?
—
I’m saved by Max coming through the swinging gate. He must see something on my face, because he switches to an indifferent smile toward Eve. “Saw you guys out here,” he says. “Can I help with any lifting?”
Her lips purse together. “No, honey. I’ve got movers coming tomorrow to take some things down to the dump or to consignment. Then we’ll list it.”
“Where are you going?” I ask.
She cuts her eyes to me. “I’m not going anywhere yet.”
I slip back inside, race up to the room to grab my bag. I peer out his window, where Max is standing, talking to Eve. And as if she can sense me, she tips her head slowly back, looking straight up at me.
I back away. I leave out the front door without saying goodbye to either of them.
I call Max once I get home, let him know I think Eve has been following me. That I found a notebook in the trash can, detailing my every move.
He doesn’t speak at first, and I wonder if maybe he thinks I’m cracking up—if maybe I really am. When eventually he says, “She has to know, right? I mean, if something happened to Sean, she has to know. She had that pocket watch.”
And now I have it instead. Oh God. I slide it out of the top drawer, the metal chain faintly chiming in the silence.
Why would she keep this if it’s a piece of evidence? Proof of something she’s been hiding, too?
And now it’s hidden inside my bedroom.
I’ll bring it to the police, I decide. I’ll drive to the station. Act like I don’t know what it is. I’ll hand it to them, sealed in plastic, and say I found it when I was packing up Caleb’s room. I’ll wash my hands of it.
But then I think of Caleb. What do I owe him? What do I really know of him? I owe him at least the truth. I need to know it, before I turn this in. If he ran, I need to know why. Whether it was because of Sean, or something else.
If his mother was watching me, I need to understand what she was after.
—
I spend the night looking through photos, trying to make sense of the different angles to the same events. I’ve plugged Caleb’s name into the search bar of the Internet program, but the only thing that comes up is the details of his memorial service, and a mention in the local paper, the named victim of the bridge flood.
I don’t know his father’s name. He never told me. Based on the letter opener with the initials, I know his grandfather’s first name begins with a D. Is that really all I know? The closest I can come to Caleb Evers?
I search for his last name, plus Eve. Last name plus accident. Last name plus obituary. But the last name is too common, the search absolutely fruitless. I could ask his mother, but I don’t trust anything about her. She makes me nervous, always watching, always following. She makes me want to lock the doors, and ask my parents to stay home with me.
But I can’t do any of that.
I feel, for the moment, that Caleb is in danger again. In a car, tipping over the bridge, the current raging. I picture myself standing on the road, screaming his name. Run! he screams. Run while you can!
I picture him again in his doorway, barring me from his life. Go.
Leave.
Don’t look back.
His words so cutting, so final.
The necklace in his jeans pocket, left on his floor, left behind.
Please hold this for me. Please be careful.
And I know what I must do.
By the time the alarm goes off in the morning, I haven’t slept at all. I hear my dad leave for work in the morning, before dawn. By then, it’s too late to try anymore.
“I don’t feel good,” I tell my mother in the morning, in the kitchen, as she’s draining the last of the orange juice from her cup. I don’t even have to fake it. My stomach churns, and I catch sight of my reflection—pale in the window.
She places a hand to my forehead. “Do you want me to make a doctor’s appointment?”
I shake my head. “Feels like the stomach bug,” I say. Feels like betrayal. Like lies. Like disorientation.
She looks from me to the clock, as if she’s debating staying home with me as well. I hold my breath until she swings her purse over her shoulder and grabs her keys. “Call me if you need anything, okay?”
I nod, and she pauses at the doorway, as if she senses something. But in the end, she doesn’t press, and she waves once, shutting the door behind her.
Immediately, I lock the door. There’s a piece Caleb left for me. A memory he shared. The house he grew up in. If I had the address, I could check back through the public records, to see who owned it when he was younger. I can barely remember the town name. I have to pull up the map program, trying to remember where Max’s game was—but the names all blend together. I remember there was a toll. We veered off course. I think I could find it if I retraced our route, imagining Caleb beside me as we drove.
—
I take a shower to wake up, then pull together the directions and head to my car.
I’m halfway down the driveway when I see Max, walking up the path. He freezes, midstride. “You weren’t at school,” he says.
He showed up, like I did for him. My eyes shift down the road, making sure I don’t see Eve watching.
He eyes my bag, the
keys in my hand. “Where are you going?” he asks.
“To find the house where Caleb grew up. He took me to it, once. On the way to one of your games. There was some sort of accident there, a fire or something. But I figure if I can get the address, I can get the names, and then some answers.”
He stands farther away, an adequate distance to keep. His words travel the expanse between us. “Want some company?” he asks.
“I could use some help with the directions,” I say. “I don’t know exactly where I’m going.”
“Which game was it?” he asks.
“Playoffs. The other team wore black. You won by one run. You beat the throw to home.”
He raises an eyebrow, and I remember our last conversation about baseball, on the subway, where I told him I didn’t pay attention anymore. Except I obviously was.
“I remember,” he says with a grin. “I know the way.”
We drive down the same highway, and I start rummaging through my purse. I have the coins out just as Max sees the sign for the toll and says, “Crap, toll.”
I can’t help the smile, the echo of the moment. I hold my hand out to him with exact change. “I remember this part,” I say. But that’s the last thing I remember well. I remember we veered off at a diamond-shaped sign, and Max and I take a few wrong turns before looping back to the exit and trying again, on a different route. “There,” I say as we pass the cornfield, the thickening forest. “Take a right.”
Then I’m directing by gut, by my memory of the landscape, how it led to someplace less occupied, abandoned, forgotten. There’s the dirt road, I’m sure of it. I direct Max to turn, and then I see it: a little sharper than the last time.
The eave hanging off the porch. The singed steps, splintered edges. The grass that looked scorched from the sun, or more. Boarded-up windows and an overgrown driveway, with no mailbox to designate the address.
—
I walk as if in a dream into the house. The numbers are gone, once nailed into the post beside the door. But the shadow remains, whiter than all the rest, aged with time. 734. I have the start of an address. Max opens the map program and reads off the street name. “Briar Rock Road,” he says, and it feels so fitting, as if the road name came after the house, and all that happened here.
Fragments of the Lost Page 21