Casey walks to the living room entryway from the kitchen, holding the phone to her ear and waving the band parent list at me.
I nod, and try to pry Mallory off of me long enough for me to take off my coat.
“Don’t panic yet. He’s probably just cutting school.”
The more I’ve said this today, the less I believe it.
“Bullshit,” Mallory spits, now pacing like a caged predator. “Dylan is a good kid, he doesn’t pull stuff like this. He wouldn’t make me worry.”
Casey comes to the doorway. “I just talked to the music teacher, who asked his friends at EXA. No one has seen him at all. They all assumed he was home sick today. I also called the friends from his old school. Nothing. And for some reason, Jacob isn’t talking to him anymore at all.”
Mallory had stopped in the center of the room, but she resumed pacing. “Something terrible has happened. I know it. I know it in my heart.”
Casey’s cell phone buzzes, and we all stop to stare at her while she looks at the screen. She shakes her head and puts her phone back away without answering.
“What could have happened?” I mutter.
“How could you lose him!” Mallory shouts, and I’ve started to defend myself when I notice she’s shouting at Casey.
“Hey, I’m the one who drove him to school. And I’m telling you, he walked right in the building.”
“But something is going on, isn’t it? You live with him every day. Don’t you know what’s on his mind?”
I step between them as Casey hugs her sweater around herself, shrinking against the archway to the kitchen. “If anyone would know, it would be me. Don’t put this on her.” I put my arm around Casey’s shoulders. Her body feels tight and hard, like wire on a spool.
Mallory tosses her head. “Of course, I guess I shouldn’t expect that of your girlfriend. It’s not like she knows anything about raising kids.”
Casey shouts from the archway, shrugging off my arm, “You’re his mother, and you don’t know!”
“He doesn’t live with me every day. I’m only allowed to have him two weekends a month.” Mallory turns away, her voice cracking over the words. “I can’t believe this girl is allowed to see my son more than I am.”
I want to yell that she agreed to that, and in fact if she hadn’t pulled that stunt with Jewel in the car she would probably still have custody. And that this girl is the one holding her kids’ hair back when they vomit in the middle of the night.
But the house phone rings, and I run across the room to seize it.
“Angel, honey, calm down.”
“They’re all saying Dylan is missing, that he’s dead or something.”
It’s 2:40. She’s between school and play practice. I can hear the chaos of kids shouting to be heard in the halls, lockers slammed.
“Who’s saying such crazy things?”
“The kids. His old band friends. They say no one can find him, and Casey said he didn’t show up to class, and—”
“They’re just kids passing hysterical rumors. Casey was calling the band kids to see if anyone had seen him, or if one of his friends was also skipping school.”
“He won’t answer his phone.”
“I know, we’ve been trying, too. Has he said anything to you lately? Anything that might help us?”
“I want to come home.”
“Are you sure, sweetie? I’m sure he’ll turn up soon. All there is to do here is sit around and worry.”
Mallory has appeared at my elbow. “Of course she can come home if she wants.” She grabs for the phone, and I shrug her off.
“Mom’s there?”
“Yeah, she’s worried, too.”
“And you’re home from work. I wanna come, too. I don’t want to listen to all these kids talk about Dylan.”
“Okay. Meet me by the auditorium then. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
I hang up and pull my coat back on.
“I could go get her,” Casey quickly offers.
Mallory, hand on hip, interjects, “She wants her parents right now.”
Mallory can’t get her because she doesn’t have a license anymore. She must have taken a cab to the house.
“I’ll be back soon.” I cast a look at Casey. She seems washed out and wan. I give her a small smile, the same “chin up” look Kate gave me at the office.
I start up my car again and think of Dylan, only his face in my mind’s eye has regressed from a teenager to the mop-haired boy honking notes into his first saxophone, to the first-grader missing a tooth, to the chubby toddler covered in spaghetti.
I press down hard on the gas, wondering if it’s time to call the police.
Chapter 5
Casey
Mallory perches on the barstool at the kitchen counter, drumming her nails, which are broken, jagged.
“How can you wash dishes at a time like this?” she asks.
“We’re just waiting. The dishes are dirty.”
She doesn’t have to be on top of me. She has a whole house to hang out in. I’m under surveillance.
She points at the cupboard above and to my right. “That’s a better place to keep the glasses. Close to the sink.”
“We moved them to where Jewel can reach. So she can get a drink herself.”
“Oh, we did, huh? Isn’t that cozy.”
I scrub the dish harder, though it’s already clean.
She continues, “I thought you’d want your own house. One that didn’t used to be mine.”
My breathing is shallow so I have to will myself to take in enough oxygen, lest I pass out right here. “Less disruptive for the kids.”
“Hmmm.” Mallory gazes out the window. “No sense in moving yet, since you’re not married or anything. Of course, Mike can’t really afford to move anyway, seeing how the good Dr. Henry owns the place and rents it to him for a song.” Mallory hops down off the barstool and comes close to me. I can smell her lunch from here. Something with onions.
“So, Dylan hasn’t given you any clues to what’s going on? Any at all?”
“I told you, I don’t know.” I turn to put the dish away, though there are plenty of other dishes left to wash, anything to give me a couple inches of space. “He didn’t give you any clues, either, right?”
“If I had him with me, I would know what’s going on.”
I let the next dish fall into the water. “Easy for you to say when you’re not at Ground Zero.”
During the silent moment that passes, Mallory matches my glare.
She’s won by goading me.
“Our differences aren’t important now.” She sighs, leaning one hip against the counter. “We’ll have to be mature about this.”
I feel a sneer creep across my face before I can stop it.
Mallory leans in again, crowding me so tightly against the kitchen counter that the edge pinches my back as I stretch away. “I know that might be hard for you, being so young and all.”
I pull myself away and toss the dishrag in the sink. Banging the back door open into the cold, I notice I’ve forgotten my coat. I don’t even need the cigarette, but I’m starting to think longingly of Jack Daniel’s. I can just picture Mallory inside, chuckling at how she needled me into reacting.
The wind kicks up, and it takes four tries to flick my lighter, cupping my hand around it.
Despite my protests to Mallory, a cold strand of guilt starts to thread its way through my gut. He has indeed been more quiet lately. And now I remember he’s been bringing in the mail every day, which at the time I thought was so thoughtful, but now I wonder what he was hoping to intercept.
Should I have grilled him?
Whatever bond I have with Dylan is built on respect. He tells me things in his own time, usually when I listen to him practice, between songs as he rearranges his sheet music. He’ll just volunteer something, and I grab it like a coin tossed into the dirt at my feet.
I close my eyes as the smoke loosens the tension in my shoulders, a
s my head feels lighter. I review our last practice sessions, which were a few weeks ago now. Trying to remember what he might have said.
Something about Jacob? Or that girl flute player he likes? What was it?
The kitchen door bangs open. Through the storm door Michael looks away quickly, like he’s caught me doing something embarrassing. Masturbating, or picking my nose. I throw down the cigarette, though now I really want to finish it.
“Angel’s back,” he says, looking at the ground. “She’s upset.”
“Kids are so dramatic.”
“Hey, her brother has been missing all day.”
“I meant the other kids. The ones spreading rumors.”
I go through the kitchen to find a tight knot of conversation on the living room couch. Angel is in the crook of Michael’s arm, chewing her thumbnail. Sitting on his other side is Mallory, her knees together, pressed close to Michael’s side. His arm is stretched out along the back of the couch.
Both Angel and Mallory have whitish-blond hair, bookending Michael’s darker complexion. They all have those same bright marble-blue eyes, reminding me of their unbreakable bond, which I can never share.
They seem to notice me all at once. Angel folds her arms and looks away. Michael’s eyes flit down to the floor. Only Mallory stares directly at me. “What?” she says.
“Nothing, I’m just . . . Back inside. What can I do to help?”
“Oh, because you’ve been so much help already.”
Michael looks between Mallory and me, his brow wrinkled up, eyes questioning. Angel glares in my direction, jumping the gun on angry.
Mallory continues, never breaking her stare. “Here I am, upset about my missing child, and she picks a fight at the sink and throws a dishcloth at me.” She gestures to her damp shirt. I must have splashed her.
“I didn’t throw it.” I know I should be cool about this, not hyper her up, as Michael says, but my anger leaches out in my words. “And not at her. I dropped it in the sink.”
Michael pinches the bridge of his nose. “Please. Not now.”
I don’t know which one of us he’s talking to.
Mallory points a long finger at me. “Threw, dropped, whatever. She’s behaving like a pouty kid. When our child’s life is at stake.”
Michael squeezes Angel’s shoulders as she gives a little gasp. “His life is not at stake, we just don’t know his exact location right this minute. Let’s not borrow trouble, here.”
“Yes, we’ve got plenty already,” Mallory says, her voice pitching higher. She aims a long finger at me. “The lady of the house is with Dylan all this time and never bothers to find out what’s going on in his head. She obviously doesn’t understand what it’s like to worry about your own children.”
I retort, “I’m worried, too! But Dylan values his privacy.”
“And so do you,” spits out Angel.
The skin on my neck prickles, but then I remember my journal is stowed at the bottom of my duffle bag, which I threw in the back of the closet.
Michael rubs his temple with his free hand. “Mallory, I’m his father. If anyone should have known, it would be me. And if he trusted us so much, he wouldn’t have disappeared without responding to our calls.”
“Unless he didn’t disappear of his own free will!” Mallory starts to shake in place, visibly. Her hands, in particular, seem like they have been struck by a palsy as she kneads her fingers.
Angel starts in again on her thumbnail. Michael squeezes her hand, then slowly stands up and crosses the room to Mallory. He holds her in his arms, and she falls onto his shoulder.
Trying not to react. I swear I can feel Angel watching me.
Michael says, but his voice sounds effortful, “He’s not a helpless little boy. He can’t be just . . . snatched off the street . . .”
Angel whimpers again, and Michael unwinds himself from Mallory, then pulls her along by the hand to the couch, where he tucks each of them in on either side of him.
“To me it’s clear he went willingly. He shut off his phone. Not to silent mode, like he usually does at school, but completely off. That’s deliberate.”
“Maybe it’s out of power,” I say, struck by this sudden thought. Or he’s not the one who shut it off. This part I’m smart enough to keep to myself.
Michael soldiers on. “It was on this morning, at breakfast, remember? Look, no one dragged an unwilling teenager from a small, crowded school without anyone noticing. So, as I said, he left the school on his own. He’s not old enough to drive, and none of his friends have seen him who might have driven him someplace. So he’s hiding out somewhere, for some reason. That’s bad and upsetting, but it doesn’t mean anything like what those kids have been saying at school, Angel.”
He could have hitchhiked, it occurs to me. If he wanted to leave, he could have stuck out his thumb, and a trucker could have picked him up. With going on seven hours since this morning, he could be two states away by now.
I have a desperate urge to be valuable in this moment, to show Michael that I matter. “I remembered this: he’s been religiously getting the mail every day. Maybe he was waiting for something.”
Mallory leaps to a standing position, fists clenched. “And you didn’t pursue that, did you?” She arranges her face in a parody of an empty-headed ninny. “You just went la-di-da, about your business being the happy homemaker.” Back to sneering now, she advances on me. “I can’t believe you would let this happen to my son!”
She seizes my arms, and her force surprises me so much that I don’t realize for a moment or two that she’s wheeling me backward, my feet scrambling under me.
Michael wrenches her away, yelling her name, yelling to stop. My shoulders sting from the dented impressions of her fingers and ragged nails. From the corner of my eye, Angel is balled up on the couch now, face hidden under a curtain of hair.
“Ouch!” Mallory cries, stroking her forearm where Michael must have grabbed her, but he’s walking with me out of the room now, shouting something at her I don’t quite hear.
Chapter 6
Michael
I guide Casey into the bedroom and sit her down on the edge of the unmade bed. She’s massaging her right shoulder but seems otherwise intact.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, which seems wholly inadequate for having to pull my ex-wife off of her. I push a strand of hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear, tracing her jaw with my fingers. “I’m sorry,” I say, a little louder, because I really am sorry for so much.
She shrugs, not looking at me.
For years, married to Mallory, I apologized for her. So sorry, she had a bit too much eggnog, or I know, Mrs. Martin, she didn’t need to scream obscenities at you over the phone because your daughter pulled Jewel’s hair, and No, my wife isn’t coming to parent-teacher night, she has a headache.
I thought when I divorced her, I’d get to stop doing that.
Casey is short, and perched on the edge of the bed, her feet don’t quite touch the floor. She swings them slightly, like a kid waiting for a scolding. With her ponytail and blue jeans she looks very small and young indeed.
“It’s not your fault.”
She shrugs. “Small comfort, if . . .”
She doesn’t finish the sentence, but I hear her anyway. If we don’t find him at all.
“I think we should call the police.”
Casey jerks to attention. “What about all those reassuring things you just said out there?”
“I’m trying to keep Angel from panicking. Mallory will panic if she wants to, I can’t stop that, never could. But I’m telling you the truth now. My son has been missing for hours, and . . . I’m about a hair away from calling the police, but before I do that, I want to be able to tell them something useful. Can you get into his e-mail?”
Casey wrinkles her face. “I hate to pry.”
“I know, but Case—”
She nods, cutting me off with a wave. “I’m not a magician, though, okay? I’m just
a programmer, not a hacker or a spy.” She rubs her arm where Mallory grabbed her, her gaze on the floor again, unfocused. “He’s going to be mad about the snooping.”
“I’m mad at him! He could get himself hurt doing God knows what with . . . who knows? What if he’s on drugs? What if he’s been . . .”
I trail off, unable to speak it aloud.
It’s hereditary, so I’ve read. Mental illness. Not that Mallory has been officially diagnosed. I couldn’t get her to attend therapy with any regularity. And anyway, she laughed in the face of the first shrink I dragged her to, after milking her for a Valium prescription.
My father once called her “a case study in crazy.”
He said that the day after I found her white and groaning on the bathroom floor, her stomach full of Tylenol, after a particularly vicious fight. For months after that I laid awake debating if it was an attention-getting stunt or a suicide attempt, however halfhearted. Maybe both. Mallory herself likely wouldn’t know.
That was the first time I left, packing the kids off to my parents’ house in East Grand Rapids, just a few miles as the crow flies but a whole other world with its brick and ivy and leather furniture.
Dylan has always seemed to be on an even keel. Old before his time. But he is his mother’s son, too.
Casey has remained silent, but now I can feel her watching me. She puts her hand on my knee and squeezes, her trademark gesture, started as a secret I love you under the table when we were still trying to be coy about our feelings in front of the kids.
I put my hand over hers, my secret gesture back.
“So how do we get Mallory out of here?” Casey asks.
I swallow hard at this. “Well . . .”
Casey stands up. “She attacked me just now! If you hadn’t pulled her off me, she’d have yanked out my hair or God knows what! You’re going to let her stay?”
“It’s not that simple. She’s Dylan’s mother, and she’s worried.”
“Oh my God. You’re not going to ask her to leave. What would she have to do, Michael? Break my nose? Send me to the hospital?”
“Don’t you get hysterical, too.”
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