“He thought he was being tracked by the government and he took a knife . . .” Robert touched his neck and then shook his head, his hand dropping back to the desk. “Luckily we were there. Your mother and I. We were able to get him help, but things were never the same after that. He lost himself that day. He lost himself, and I lost my brother.”
Robert frowned at the eagle statue before continuing, “The doctors diagnosed him as paranoid schizophrenic. He took medication for a while, but only when he was forced to, and then one day he just disappeared. Well, I guess ‘disappeared’ isn’t quite the right word. He left. He moved to Alaska, to some cabin out in the middle of nowhere. He wasn’t able to handle the reality of day-to-day life. He couldn’t fit in with the rest of normal society, so he took himself to someplace where he could be alone. Where he felt safe.”
Robert opened his hands over the desk and then clasped them together again, punctuating the end of his sentence. Lucy waited for him to continue, but he said nothing else and it seemed he’d said all he wanted to say, but she needed more.
“And that’s what you think happened to Nolan too?” she asked. “He ran away to someplace where he felt safe?”
He winced a little and when he spoke again, his words were heavier than before, weighted with resignation or regret or both. “Your uncle sends me letters. The rest of the world can go to hell for all he cares, but he maintains contact with me. He sends me letters every month. Sometimes postcards. But every month without fail, he lets me know that he’s still alive, still in Alaska, that he’s okay and I shouldn’t worry about him. I just got one in the mail yesterday.”
He reached into the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a postcard. On the front was a picture of a dogsled team, chasing through a snowy, wooded wilderness. On the back were a few brief sentences.
Hi brother, Snow is up to my neck now. May have found work on a boat for next month. Nights last forever, but I’ve got enough wood and enough candles to keep me warm and bright through June. Love to your clan. —T
Lucy returned the postcard to her father. Her cheeks were beginning to tingle and go numb. “So you think Nolan’s . . .” She struggled to say it out loud. “You’re saying he’s . . . dead?”
The word left a bitter, hot taste on her tongue.
“It’s been ten years, Lucy,” Robert said, and she hated the tone of his voice, how matter-of-fact he sounded, like he was trying to talk her into something. “Ten years and no one’s heard from him.”
Lucy swallowed a sob that was threatening to betray her. Of course she’d thought about this before, the possibility of Nolan being dead, but hearing her father say it, having the words thrust into the open, this was so much worse.
“So that’s it, then?” Her voice was hoarse. “You’re giving up on him?”
“No one’s giving up, Lucy. I’m, just, I’m being realistic, that’s all. And I urge you to do the same.”
Lucy laughed, an angry sound. For all the ways her mother let her down, at least Sandra was trying to find answers. At least she was doing something.
“So, realistically then . . .” She did nothing to hide the fury in her voice. “How do you think it happened? How did he die?”
“The details aren’t important.”
“Yes, they are.” The details were everything. They were the only way she could know for sure. “Suicide? Is that what you think? He went out in the desert that night to kill himself?”
Robert sighed impatiently. “He wasn’t himself, Lucy. You have to remember that.”
“How would you know what he was like? You weren’t even there. You hardly ever talked to him. So how would you know anything about the kind of person Nolan was?”
“I saw enough, Lucy,” Robert said. “I saw enough to know he was going through something much more complicated than a rebellious phase.”
“And yet you did nothing to help him.”
“That’s not true,” he argued. “I voiced my concerns to your mother. I told her to call me if things got out of hand.”
“She did call you. She called and still you did nothing.” She remembered when Sandra told her that Nolan was going to live with their father, how relieved Lucy was, how she thought things would start to get better.
“What was I supposed to do, Lucy?” Robert asked. “What would you have had me do?”
“You should have been there. You should have come right away. You should have stayed with us, I don’t know, something, you should have done something.” She wasn’t sure Nolan would have even listened to anything their father said, but he could have at least tried.
“Nolan was changing,” she continued. “He was acting so strange, and I was scared, and you and Mom, you were just pretending like nothing was happening, like if you ignored the problem long enough it would just go away. Guess what? It didn’t go away. It got worse. He got worse.”
“Your mother said she could handle it.”
“Nolan was your son, too. If you saw how bad he was getting, if you saw and you understood, if you thought he was a danger to himself, then why didn’t you try and help?”
“I did,” he insisted. “I did try.”
“Not hard enough.” But the fight was leaving her now because she didn’t know who she was really mad at: her parents or herself.
Any one of them could have stopped him, but no one had bothered. This happened because they let it happen. All of them were selfish, all of them at fault. Robert, who wasn’t a bad parent but who wasn’t a very good one either, who treated his children more like burdens, only doing the bare minimum—visits twice a year and only when pressed; child support checks; birthday and Christmas cards; the occasional phone calls filled with more silence than words—who seemed relieved after Nolan went missing, one less burden. One less nuisance taking up his time. And Sandra. Sandra, who filled her loneliness with long hours at work and extra glasses of wine, who let life’s losses overwhelm her, who sometimes forgot she had children to take care of, or remembered, but still couldn’t get up enough energy to care. Then Lucy, so self-absorbed in her own small life and petty problems—what shirt to wear; the cowlick in her bangs; how to get Patrick to kiss her—so focused on her own lonely heart, she failed to see how deeply immersed in fantasy Nolan had become, how dangerous the path he was headed down.
She’d been so embarrassed by him. Every word that came out of his mouth, every one of his stupid theories. The clothes he wore, how he cut his hair, the way he slouched down the halls at school muttering under his breath, the comics he drew, the way he scribbled in that stupid notebook of his. Everything about him humiliated her. Everything he did, she thought he did for attention. And back then, fourteen and so sure she knew what she wanted, back then Lucy would have given anything for Nolan to disappear. Now she would give anything to have him back.
Robert leaned slightly forward. The desk a dark continent between them. “Lucy, we all made mistakes. And we have to live with those. But he’s gone, and we’re still here. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She brushed at tears welling in her eyes.
“When you called me to come get you,” he said. “When you told me about the way your mother was behaving, how erratic and irrational she’d become, I knew I had to do it differently. I couldn’t let you end up like your brother. So I came and I got you and I took you out of that shit show and I tried, Lucy. I tried my best to give you as normal of a life as possible.”
She wished he’d tried like that for Nolan too.
“You should be thanking me,” he said, bitterly. “If your mother’d had her way, who knows what kind of mess you’d be in today. Stuck in some psychiatric hospital knitting scarves most likely.”
Lucy sat up straight and stiff. “What do you mean . . . ? If she’d ‘had her way’?”
“She didn’t want me to take you. She fought for custody.” He laughed, a grim sound. “Of course, she didn’t stand a chance after I told the judge about her drinking problem, how she got violent, h
ow she lost her job at the hospital.”
Lucy’s stomach tightened. She couldn’t reconcile her memories of her final days with Sandra with what Robert was telling her now. She was certain Sandra had been glad to see her go, had, in fact, pushed her out the front door.
“She fought for me?” Lucy’s voice was barely a whisper.
“She wouldn’t leave it be, either,” he said. “Even after the judge ordered you into my custody. She kept calling. Every day at first, and then when I told her I was going to take her back to court, once a month.”
“She called? To talk to me?”
“The first Sunday of the month. Without fail. Until your eighteenth birthday. She stopped after that, good riddance.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Lucy dug her nails so hard into her palms the skin started to burn. “Why didn’t you let me talk to her?”
“It was for your own good, Lucy,” he said. “She was an emotional train wreck. And you needed stability.”
She stood quickly, pushing the chair backward a few centimeters.
“Where are you going?” Robert stood too.
“Back to Bishop,” she said.
“There’s nothing for you there.”
Only now she knew there was. She moved toward the door.
“You have to move on with your life at some point, Lucy.” He followed her into the entryway. “You can’t keep chasing fantasies. You’re better than that.”
Marnie came from the kitchen carrying a tray with a pot of freshly brewed coffee, cups, sugar, and cream. She stopped in the doorway as Lucy brushed past her.
“Lucy, please wait.” Robert chased after her. He grabbed her elbow as she reached the front door. “Traffic’s terrible right now, and it’s going to get dark soon. Stay the night. We’ll get the guest room ready for you, and we can order Chinese food from that place down the street you like. Okay? Just, sleep on it for now, and if you still want to go in the morning, fine, but at least give yourself some time to think about what you’re doing.”
The past ten years she’d done nothing but think. She jerked her arm free. “I know what I’m doing.”
Robert pinched the bridge of his nose and then sighed and dug into his pocket. He pulled several twenty-dollar bills from his wallet. “Take this.”
She hesitated, no longer wanting anything from him, especially his charity. But he pressed the bills into her hand anyway, saying, “I’m trying to help.”
She took the money and stuffed it into her purse.
“Call if you need more,” Robert said.
Walking back to her car, hands shaking, Lucy texted Wyatt. I need to talk to my mother. ASAP.
A few minutes later he texted back. She’s at Paiute Palace until midnight.
CASEBOOK ENTRY #5
STRANGE HAPPENING:
Shadows
DATE: November 9, 1999
LONGITUDE/LATITUDE: 37.3635 W, 118.3951 N
SYNOPSIS: I’m being followed. Most likely government agents, the Department of Defense, military—some covert, black-ops, leave-no-paper-trail kind of group. Maybe the same ones who have been calling the house and hanging up. I noticed it first on the way back from camping. An SUV tailed us the whole way down the mountain and all the way to Skyline Road. Later that night, I saw a black sedan parked outside the house, engine running, someone sitting inside. I went out to confront them, but they drove off as soon as they saw me.
OBJECT DESCRIPTION: Black vehicles with tinted windows. So far I have seen an SUV and a sedan, but make and model of both were impossible to determine, and there may be others I have not seen. No license plates visible.
OTHER WITNESS STATEMENTS: I asked Lucy if she saw the black sedan parked outside the house; she said she did, and then asked if it was the FBI coming to take me away. She was mocking me, not understanding the seriousness of the situation, but I am certain now that at least this was not a hallucination.
WEATHER INFORMATION: Dry roads. No wind. Clear skies.
LOCATION DESCRIPTION: Skyline Road is a residential cul-de-sac. All houses have driveways. It is unusual to see cars parked along the curb unless one of the neighbors is having a party, and based on the intel I’ve gathered, none of my neighbors had parties this weekend. Streetlamps provide ample illumination to distinguish shapes in the dark.
PHYSICAL EVIDENCE: Cigarette butts discarded at the bottom of my driveway. Have secured evidence in plastic bags for possible DNA or fingerprint tests.
CONCLUSION: I need to speak to Star Being. If she’s being followed too, then it may already be too late for us.
Technically, Nolan was grounded until midnight on Tuesday, but he managed to convince his mom to shorten his sentence by a few hours so he could attend the Bishop Union versus Kern Valley basketball game. She seemed relieved that he was showing interest in something other than aliens, and gave him twenty dollars for the concession stand. “Why don’t you see if your sister wants to go with you?” she suggested, and Nolan smiled and said he would. But Lucy wasn’t home. He had no idea where she was, and he wasn’t going to look for her. As soon as Sandra left for work, Nolan put on his shoes, grabbed a jacket and keys, and drove to Gabriella’s house where he was surprised to find Wyatt’s car parked alongside the curb. He parked directly behind it and stared at the vanity license plate: STRGZR. Wyatt had returned—yesterday, today, Nolan didn’t know when—but he’d come here first, to Celeste instead of Nolan.
The front door opened, and Wyatt stepped onto the front porch. Celeste stood in the doorway behind him. She didn’t look happy at all. Her eyes were red like she’d been crying, and she had both arms wrapped around her middle, like she was trying to keep herself from falling apart. Wyatt said something to her, and she shook her head forcefully.
“I’m not ever going back,” she said, her voice loud enough to be heard through the pickup’s closed windows.
She stepped back into the house, then, and shut the door in Wyatt’s face. Wyatt hesitated on the porch. He made as if to knock again, but then changed his mind and turned away from the door. In one hand he clutched a large manila envelope that appeared to be stuffed full with papers. The other hand he lifted to shade his eyes from the sun sinking low to the horizon. His expression did not change when he saw Nolan getting out of the pickup. He lowered his arm and walked down the driveway to meet him.
“What are you doing here?” Wyatt asked.
“I could ask you the same question.” Nolan folded his arms across his chest, trying to look more confident than he actually felt.
Wyatt glanced over his shoulder at the closed front door. “I had to talk to Celeste. There were some loose ends that needed tying up.”
“And?” His insides were trembling, anxious to get this over with and go comfort Celeste, wanting to hear what Wyatt had discovered, and yet afraid of the answers, too, afraid they would conflict with what he’d come to believe so absolutely over the past few days.
“Maybe we should go somewhere else to talk about this?” Wyatt kept sneaking glances at the house.
“This is fine.” Nolan didn’t like the idea of leaving Celeste alone and unguarded, not until he figured out exactly what Wyatt had been doing these past two months. “What took you so long?” he asked. “Where have you been?”
“It was all quite a bit more complicated than I expected,” he said. “On account of her being a minor and a ward of the state. I had to pull a few strings, call in a few favors. I found most of what I needed in Pennsylvania, but ended up taking a few detours as well, just to double-check everything. Florida, New York. It’s all right here, though.” He tapped the manila folder. “Birth certificate, school records, family history, news articles, court records, foster care information.”
“Wait, slow down.” Nolan was having trouble following him. “Is she? Or isn’t she?”
Wyatt smiled patiently and then shook his head. “It was a good theory, Nolan. An interesting one to say the least, but I’m afraid it didn’t pan out. She’s no more al
ien life-form than you or I.”
“She’s terrestrial,” Nolan said, just to be clear.
“As human as they come.”
A curtain inside Gabriella’s house fluttered. A hand retreated.
“How can you be so sure?” Nolan asked.
Wyatt held out the envelope. “Look for yourself.”
Nolan took it, but didn’t remove any of the papers. “What did they promise you in exchange?” he asked. “Money? Power? What is she worth to them?”
“What are you talking about?” He seemed genuinely confused, but Nolan knew a liar when he saw one.
He’d never seen Wyatt wearing such nice clothes before. A collared shirt, khaki pants, leather shoes freshly shined, expensive cuff links winking in the sunlight.
“When did you start working for them?” Nolan asked. “Are they holding something over your head? Is that it? Threatening you?”
“I’m not working for anyone.” He tugged on his shirt.
“Are they listening to us right now?” Nolan leaned closer, trying to catch a glimpse of the wire he was most certainly wearing.
“Who?” Wyatt took a step back. “Who is it you think I’m working for, exactly?”
“The government,” Nolan said. “The Department of Defense. The FBI. The Air Force. Whoever’s in charge of extraterrestrial operations.”
“No one’s in charge . . .” Wyatt shook his head. “That’s not even a thing, you know that. The US government stopped investigating UFOs and shut down all their programs years ago. The only aliens our government cares about these days are the ones coming across the border from Mexico.”
“That’s what they want us to believe anyway. What they told you to tell me.” The realizations came fast now, torpedoing from his mouth in a rapid-fire fury, “You’re trying to convince me that she’s not special, and then when I’m not paying attention, when my guard’s down, you’ll swoop in and take her to some underground bunker where she’ll be locked in a windowless room and experimented on, dissected, torn to pieces.”
Everything We Lost Page 26