Missing at 17

by Christine Conradt

  That was one of the things she liked about Toby. None of that petty high school stuff mattered to him. He had bigger things to worry about than who dumped who, how quickly they’d moved on, and whether or not someone was adopted. He had real worries—adult worries. He had his cousin to deal with, rent to pay, a business to run. He was above all the bullshit.

  She looked over at Toby, who was counting cash out on the coffee table. He looked so serious. Damn, he looks good when he’s focused like that, she thought. But he also looked a little menacing. She wondered what he’d be like if he ever got really angry. There was something in Toby that made her think he could be violent if someone set him off. She saw it in Keenan as well. Being bounced around from place to place, beaten unconscious by your stepfather . . . that had to have an effect. It had to turn someone hard. And yet he had this amazing capacity to be gentle and sweet and even vulnerable with her. That dichotomy made her feel closer to him. It made her feel safe. She knew he’d never unleash on her physically, but if someone ever hurt her, she was sure he’d go after them.

  “So what happens if people don’t pay you back the money they borrow?” she asked, curious.

  He ignored her at first, trying to keep count. Then he glanced sideways at her with a grin. “Why? You thinkin’ of stiffing me on the grand you owe?” He was teasing.

  “No,” she said dramatically. “I was just wondering. I wanna understand what you do a little better.” This peer-to-peer lending stuff didn’t make a whole lot of sense to her. There had to be a reason why people would choose to borrow money from someone like Toby instead of going to a bank or just getting a new credit card like her mom did when the dishwasher broke and she needed money for a new one.

  Toby avoided eye contact with her and started to count again. His silence bothered her.

  “You don’t break their legs or something, do you?” she said, making it seem like a joke even though the thought had crossed her mind.

  “Have you ever broken your leg?” he asked flatly.

  “No.”

  “It’s not as big of a deal as you think.”

  Candace gasped. Toby smiled, liking her reaction.

  “I’m kidding!” he said, giving her a little push. “Relax. Stop with the silly questions so I can count here.”

  Candace laughed, but deep down she felt like there was something Toby wasn’t telling her. Whenever she asked him a serious question about what he did, or how he made money, he turned it into a joke. It worried her that he felt he couldn’t be completely honest about that part of his life when he’d been so honest about the other parts. But she didn’t want to make the mistake her mother made and nag and press and obsess over it. No. She knew how it felt to be on the other end of that. She would just be cool and in time, he’d trust her enough to let her in on all the details. Before she could say anything else, her cell phone rang. She looked at the display, instantly excited when she saw it was Mike Foster calling.

  “It’s that detective guy!” she said, and answered the phone.

  “Well?” Toby asked as Candace hung up the phone. He knew it had to be good news because Candace could barely contain her excitement. “Did he find her?”

  “He wouldn’t say. He just says he has good news and he wants us to come to his office.” Candace leaped off the sofa and threw her arms around Toby. “I can’t believe this!”

  Toby wanted to share in her enthusiasm but was skeptical. “Why couldn’t he tell you on the phone? That’s weird to me.” The mere thought of this guy exploiting Candace’s need to find her biological mother and screwing her over pissed him off.

  “I don’t know!” Candace said. From the look on her face, he could tell she was scrambling to come up with a reason. “Maybe she wants to meet me in person and it’s going to be a surprise! He said it was good news! Oh my god,” she said as she sat back down. “I can’t believe this. Is this even real? Am I going to meet my real mom?”

  Toby smiled, letting go of his suspicions. He was glad to see her so happy. “Well, let’s head over to his office.” In a frenzy, Candace grabbed her purse, threw on her hoodie, and was out the door.

  Toby did the same. There was no way she was going without him.

  Less than an hour later, Candace and Toby sat in Mike’s office, waiting for the man who was about to deliver on the promise of finding her mother. She felt sick to her stomach, nervous and excited and worried all at once. This is it, she thought. Today is the day I get to find out who I really am.

  She knew the information she was about to receive was going to change her life forever. Everything was going to be different from this point forward. She squeezed Toby’s hand.

  “You okay?” he whispered. She nodded, even though she felt far from okay.

  Mike returned and dropped a file onto his desk as he sat down. “All right,” he sighed. “First off, you had an open adoption.”

  “What does that mean?” Candace asked, thinking it sounded better than whatever the alternative was.

  “Your natural mother had the option to contact you, but she apparently didn’t. Her name is Callie Tressor.”

  “Callie Tressor,” Candace repeated, as if she needed to say the name herself to make it real. Callie Tressor. She repeated it again in her head as she looked over at Toby. A million questions were rushing into her brain. She had no idea where to start so she blurted out the first one she could actually get a grasp on.

  “Does she live in LA?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t find an address for her. She evidently got evicted from her apartment in Eagle Rock several months ago.” Eagle Rock? That was part of Los Angeles. Only about twenty miles from where Candace had been living. Had she been so close for all these years?

  “I don’t get it,” Toby said. “How is this good news? I mean, it’s good to have a name and all that, but Candy wants to actually meet her.”

  Mike opened the folder and slid it to Candace. She looked down at a series of photos of an attractive guy with black hair and a gym body as he retrieved mail from a mailbox. They looked like creepy surveillance photos and clearly, Gym Guy had no idea they were being taken.

  “Who’s this?” she asked.

  “Vance Tressor,” Mike said. “Your brother. And I do have his home address.”

  The afternoon sun had just begun its descent when Candace pulled up in front of the address Mike Foster had given her. It was a small house, well kept, but old. An older-model sedan sat in the driveway. Candace remained in her car, trying to calm the butterflies in her stomach. Rubbing the palms of her hands together, she exhaled slowly. What if her mother screamed at her to leave? What if they pretended not to know who she was when she introduced herself? What if, by now, her mother was dead? She looked back down at the photos of Vance. He didn’t look mean or anything, she concluded. He looked just like a normal guy getting his mail. Still, she had no idea how he’d react. Did he even know he had a sister? Would he want one?

  Candace thought about a saying her father often repeated: You can’t put the meow back in the cat. There are certain things that, once they’re said or done, there’s no taking them back. It applied here as well. If I go up to that door and make my existence known, there’s no going back.

  She thought about what she’d said to Toby after he asked if she wanted him to come along.

  “I can wait in the car if you want,” he’d offered. Candace was pleased he’d asked, but in her gut she knew this was something she had to do alone. Toby exuded toughness. She’d seen the way he’d eyed Mike Foster suspiciously when he told them he couldn’t find her mother’s address. Toby was just protective of her, she knew that, but she was afraid his attitude might put Vance off. Her brother might be more likely to talk to her if she went alone.

  Reminding herself that she’d come too far to turn around now, she threw open her car door. With resolve, she marched up to the front door and rang the bell as the butterflies fluttered into her throat. After a few moments, the door opened and V
ance stood before her. He was the guy in the photos and she knew the second she saw him that he was, indeed, her brother. She could just feel it. There was a connection. A tinge of excitement shot through her.

  “Yes?” he asked politely, as if she were selling Girl Scout cookies or something. He obviously had no idea who she was.

  “Hi,” she said nervously. “My name is Candace and . . .” She couldn’t get the rest to come out. Dammit, I should’ve practiced this in the car, she scolded herself as he stared at her, confused. “God, this is so much more awkward than I thought it would be,” she muttered under her breath. “I’m Candace and . . . I’m pretty sure I’m your sister.”

  As soon as the words left her mouth, a look of surprise and recognition came over Vance.

  “Wow,” he said. “Uh, yeah. Uh, come on in.” She could tell from his smile that he’d been waiting for this day to come. He opened the door wider, inviting her in. Candace followed her brother inside.

  Fourteen

  An Unexpected Reception

  Candace sat across from Vance on an old sofa that looked like it had worn out years ago. The room was clean but barely decorated; in addition to the sofa, there were two chairs that didn’t match, a coffee table, a wide-screen TV mounted on the wall with a new Bose sound system, and a bookcase. Vance just stared at her with a smile on his face. It helped assuage the tension Candace was feeling.

  “I wondered if you’d ever come looking,” he finally said.

  “I would’ve come sooner,” Candace said, scratching at the label on the bottle of soda Vance had given her. “But . . . no one told me. I didn’t know I was adopted.” Her voice oozed with resentment.

  He just nodded. “Wow,” he said. “This is surreal. I remember when you were born. I was there. At the hospital.”

  “You were?” she asked, surprised. This is incredible, she thought, feeling like she’d found a piece that finally fit into the crazy puzzle that was her life. For seventeen years, she’d assumed her mother and father were there for her birth. But they weren’t. Vance was. Vance remembered the day she came into the world.

  “I was five years old. Living with our grandmother at the time. Our mom’s mom, not our dad’s.”

  Our dad, he’d said. That must mean they shared the same father. “So are you and I full—?” she asked, hopeful.

  He nodded. No way!

  “How many others . . . ?” Candace asked, imagining that maybe she had some sisters, too. Would they look like her? Would they have her big brown eyes and long hair? She’d always wondered what it would be like to have a lot of sisters and brothers.

  “Just the two of us,” he responded. Then Vance stood abruptly. “Hang on a sec,” he said, and hurried out of the room. Candace sat there, looking around, feeling increasingly more comfortable by the moment. I have a brother, she thought. A big brother. Not a half-, or a step-, or an adopted brother. A full brother, and he’s excited to see me.

  Vance returned with a tattered photo album and a handful of loose pictures. He set the book down on the coffee table and handed her the photos. They depicted a man with dark hair like Vance’s and dark eyes like hers. He had handsome features under his beard and he resembled Vance.

  “That’s our dad,” Vance said, and pulled a photo from the stack of the man leaning against a motorcycle, holding a helmet under his arm. “This is the last photo taken of him before he died.”

  “He’s dead?” she asked, her voice cracking. Candace felt a mix of emotion. She was looking into the face of a man she was too late to meet in person. Someone should have told me sooner. Their lies cheated me out of the chance to see what he was really like.

  “When did he . . . ?” She turned one of the photos over. There was a name and a date scribbled on the back: Marty, May 2000.

  “He, uh, he died in prison . . . of a heart attack. Before you were born,” Vance said slowly, as if remembering that she had never heard any of these details before.

  At least it was before I was born, she thought. Even if she hadn’t been given up, she never would have known him anyway. “What was he in prison for?”

  “Manslaughter. He got into a brawl in a bar and . . . a guy ended up dead. I don’t know all the details.”

  Candace looked back down at the photo, taking in the news.

  “He wasn’t a bad guy,” Vance assured her. “He just . . . He didn’t always make good decisions. Especially when he drank. Mom said the guy he got into the fight with hit his head on the ground and . . . he never intended for him to get that hurt, I guess.” Candace studied Vance as he continued to talk. As he went on, she realized there were a lot of gaps in his stories. Things he didn’t know about their father either.

  “But you remember him?” she asked.

  He nodded. “A little bit. Like I remember that day.” Vance pointed to the photo in her hand. “It was taken at a Memorial Day barbeque. The whole neighborhood was there and one of the people had a swimming pool in their backyard. Dad swam with me.” It sounded odd to hear him refer to this man as “Dad.” That word had only ever been used to refer to Kurt.

  “Do you have any of our mom?”

  Vance forced a smile and opened the scrapbook. He pointed to a photo of their mother, Callie. In the picture, she was holding a martini glass and smiling with her arm around another woman. Candace studied her slight, thin figure and long, light brown hair, trying to find a resemblance. There wasn’t much of one, really, at least not in this picture.

  “She was about twenty-five there. It would’ve been right before she got pregnant with you.” Vance stood. “I may have some that are more recent that never got put into an album. Let me check.”

  As he walked down the hall, Candace sat back and looked around the room. She felt overwhelmed by it all. If she hadn’t been adopted, this might’ve been her home too. She pictured herself sitting on the sofa doing homework and watching television with Vance. Life would’ve been so different, she thought. Better? Worse? She had no idea yet. She was still piecing it all together, forming new scenarios in her mind of what it would have been like. She was glad she felt so at ease with her older brother, but she was still concerned about her mother. Vance hadn’t said much about her since she arrived.

  “What’s she like? Our mother?” Candace asked as Vance returned with a more recent picture of their mother.

  Vance sighed. “I don’t know what you’re imagining, but she’s not, you know, exactly what you might expect. She never finished high school. She moved around a lot, job to job.”

  Candace shook her head and studied the photo of her mother standing by a Harley Davidson chopper. Now there’s a connection, Candace thought, tracing the motorcycle with her finger. She guessed maybe her mother liked bad boys too. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care about that kind of stuff.” Candace let go of the grandiose images she’d had of her natural mother’s life. Callie Tressor wasn’t some Beverly Hills celebrity or high-powered international CEO. Who cared? Callie Tressor was a regular person who’d had two children, gave one up for adoption, and had been married to a guy named Marty who died. Candace wasn’t disappointed that her mother was who she was. In fact, being with a real person was preferable to all the appearances Shannon was so determined to keep up. Especially after the divorce. Appearances, Candace had learned, was just another word for lies. Lies about how they were all fine and happy even when they weren’t.

  Candace wouldn’t live like that. And now, standing in front of her biological brother, for the first time in her life, Candace felt rooted. She was no longer floating haplessly through a cloud of discontentment. She was anchored and strong and part of something bigger than herself.

  “I was about to make dinner,” Vance said. “Do you want to stay?”

  “Depends on what you’re having,” Candace teased. Vance’s smile showed that he liked her sense of humor.

  “Steak and lobster. We eat it every night,” he quipped back.

  “Then, yeah. I’ll take mine medium-rare
.”

  Vance chuckled and handed her a package of pasta he had retrieved from the pantry. As Candace opened the package, she thought about how while the conversation was heavy, the mood definitely was not. They were honestly having fun. It felt, for Candace, like they’d grown up together as brother and sister. There was a comfortable familiarity that seemed to just exist without effort, like they’d been making dinner together their entire lives.

  “So how long was she pregnant with me before he died?” Candace asked, wondering about their father.

  Vance thought for a moment as he set up the cutting board and began to chop tomatoes. “Only a few months, I guess. Dad passed away in . . . I think it was November. . . .”

  “So she was six months along.” Candace did the math as she filled a pot to the brim with water and set it on the stove.

  “What the hell is that?” Vance asked, chuckling.

  “This is what we call water,” she responded, feeling perfectly at ease being a smart-ass. “What does it look like?”

  Vance grinned. “It’s gonna boil over in half a second. Haven’t you ever cooked before?”

  The truth was, she hadn’t. Her mom always did the cooking and all Candace had ever made using the stove were grilled cheese sandwiches and French toast. Smirking, she took the pot back to the sink and dumped some of the water out. “You’re kind of a know-it-all . . .” she said under her breath, but loud enough for him to hear. He laughed.

  “I’ve been cooking my entire life. I should know it all by now. I’m actually really good at it.”

  “Oh yeah?” she said, teasing. “Let me know when your episode of Top Chef airs.”