“So you did?”
“We can’t very well keep Toad hidden much longer.”
“No, but we don’t need to advertise him either.” Sia was edgy.
Richard nodded. “Do you think he’s ready to go?”
“I guess so,” Sia said. “Who’s to know?”
“He hasn’t said anything?”
“Hasn’t made a sound.”
“Did he eat this morning?”
“Yeah, he’s still ravenous. An hour ago he cleaned a plate of four eggs, two muffins, a slab of bacon, and some cold leftover potatoes. When he finished, I fixed him a second plate and he cleaned that, too. It’s like he hasn’t eaten for weeks.”
“Hollow leg, huh?”
“Hollow body,” she said. She stood and walked to the kitchen. “He’s in here.”
Toad was sitting in the kitchen in the chair by the window where she’d left him. Gumper sat in front of him, leaning on his legs and probably squashing his feet. Toad didn’t look up when Richard came in, just continued to sit perfectly still with that empty look on his face. His suit was rumpled and chalky, and his hair, thick with salt, poked out at all angles.
“No shower?”
“I offered it to him. He chose not to, I guess. I didn’t want to push. Or participate.”
“We’ll clean him up at the station.”
“Are you ready, Toad?” Sia asked.
Before anyone could get him moving, Jillian threw open the door and pranced in. “Who’s the rookie?” she said, throwing a hand back toward the car outside.
“You’re early,” Sia said.
Jillian grinned. “After I heard the commotion at Starbucks, I figured Richard would get here sooner than he’d planned. I didn’t want to miss him.” She grabbed Richard’s hand and pulled him into a chair. Then she plopped down across from him. “Isn’t this the craziest thing?” she said.
He laughed and stared at Jilly’s tiny hand in his big paw. His eyes were all wet and soppy; his face mushy. Oh, for God’s sake, Sia thought, how much more obvious can a guy be?
“It’s definitely a bit out of the ordinary,” he said. “Good morning, Jillian.”
“Oh, come on, out of the ordinary? It’s crazy. Usually when a person turns up out of the blue, it’s pretty clear someone’s been looking for them, right? There are missing-person reports. Newspaper articles. Spots on the evening news. Right? Aren’t I right?”
Richard cleared his throat. “Yes, often, but sometimes it takes a few days to figure things out.”
Jillian slipped her hand out of his, leaned back in her chair, and smiled. “And do you, Officer Richard, think we are going to figure things out?” She was talking fast now, hands flying in the air.
“Actually, I do, Jillian. I think we’ll find the answers we’re looking for.”
“Really? Really?” She gestured to Toad. “I mean, because this is much more than your normal everyday missing-person situation. It’s much more than that, simply because”—she turned to Sia—“Sia found him.”
Richard looked at Sia.
Sia looked at Jilly.
“And,” Jilly continued, oblivious to the threat, “I know no one wants to say it. We’re all doing our best to avoid the obvious around here. But someone has to, don’t they? We can only dance around the hot-pink elephant in the room for so long.”
Sia and Richard looked at each other. Both knew what was coming.
“Like it or not,” she said, “this feels a lot like what happened with Jackson. Except in the opposite. You know what I mean. Sia loses someone. Sia finds someone. How is that possible?”
If Sia had dared to speak, move, or even breathe in that moment, she would have shot straight up through the skylight and floated off into the galaxy. Never to return. Instead she gripped the arms of the chair, stared at the floor, and prayed for the feeling to pass.
Jilly stood up and bounced in place, waiting for someone to respond. When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she looked at Sia. “What if this turns out to be as great a mystery as Jackson’s disappearance? What are the chances of someone losing and finding someone in such magnificent ways in one lifetime?”
Sia shook her head. “Enough, Jilly. Clearly you’ve had too much coffee this morning.” Then she walked out of the room.
“Jillian?” Richard said.
“Someone had to say it, Richard.”
“Maybe not quite like that,” he said, then followed Sia. “Sorry about that.”
Sia shrugged him off. “It’s okay. No need to apologize for Jillian. She’ll stumble over herself enough doing that in an hour or so after all the hoopla has died down and her caffeine buzz has worn off.”
“Let’s move on, then. Everything go okay last night?”
“Yes, fine.”
“I had a car drive by several times, just in case.”
“I noticed,” Sia said. “But despite how exhausted he was, Toad didn’t sleep. He didn’t change out of that suit or get into bed.”
“Really?”
“Nope. I got up this morning and everything in the guest room was as I left it. I half expected him to be gone when I came downstairs, but there he was, sitting in that chair.”
“Okay. Let’s get him out of here and to the station. Maybe we can figure out who he is today.”
• • •
A few moments later, Sia caught Richard watching Jilly, who was admiring Toad. “She only likes to look, you know,” she said.
Richard smiled. “Oh, come on, Sia. We both know that’s not true.”
“Okay, so she likes to play, but only because she hasn’t settled on the right guy.”
“She’s so . . .” Richard paused.
Good gracious, Sia thought, the man is actually breathy. “So what, Richard?”
“Beautiful, crazy, loud, funny, fearless . . .”
“Ask her out.”
“We already went out. It didn’t work.”
“Try again.”
• • •
By the time Sia and Richard returned to the kitchen, Jillian was repentant and Toad had fallen asleep. He was stretched out long and lean, and his bare feet stuck out awkwardly from his pant legs.
“He’s a little stronger today,” Sia said. “Not quite as wobbly. Even though he didn’t sleep, I think the rest helped him. All the food, too.”
“That’s good,” Richard said. “He’s probably in better shape for what will go on at the station than he would have been yesterday.”
Sia nodded. Jillian sat in the corner sipping a glass of water and keeping her mouth shut.
“Did you notice anything else last night?” Richard asked.
“His hands are really beaten up. Cuts and bruises. And he’s got a nasty slice on his cheek and a fresh wound behind his left ear.”
As Richard leaned closer to take a look, Toad opened his eyes. He woke calmly and quietly, seemingly unperturbed at the fact that he was in a stranger’s house or that some man in a uniform was leaning over him.
When Sia touched his elbow, he rose and followed, but when they stopped at the door, she became acutely aware of his bare feet and panicked about their nakedness. A part of her wanted to offer an old pair of Jackson’s sneakers or sandals, but shoes were much more intimate than new pajamas or a freshly made bed. The shape of a man’s feet was unique, and each corn or callus told a story about the man’s journey. She was nowhere near allowing Toad or any other man to slip into a pair of Jackson’s shoes. “His feet . . .” she said.
Richard smiled. “Don’t worry, Odyssia. We’ll find him a pair at the station.”
Sia nodded. She wondered if Toad knew what was happening right then, if he knew he was being passed from one person to another and that he would probably never return to this little house on the beach.
“Richard,�
� she said, “you’ll take good care of him, won’t you?”
“Of course.”
“And you’ll let me know what’s going on?”
“I will. Relax. I’ll call you later today when we have a better idea what’s happening here.”
“Thanks. I don’t want anything bad to happen to him.”
Richard stepped out the front door. Toad followed, and as he neared the vehicle, the rookie leapt out of the car. The rookie’s eyes skated from Toad to Sia and back again. So this was the mystery man and the woman who’d found him. Sia imagined him at the bar, swilling back a beer and regaling his buddies with the Paul Bunyan version of the story.
“See,” Jillian whispered in Sia’s ear, “the rookie’s thinking alien, too.”
“Jilly, hush up,” Sia said.
As Richard closed the car door behind Toad, Gumper whined and sat down on Sia’s feet. It was the first time he’d sat there since Toad’s arrival. He looked up at her and pushed on her hip with his head.
“Sorry, bud,” she said, rubbing his ears, “we have to let him go. He’s not ours to keep.”
• • •
Later, Sia wondered what was theirs to keep.
Health?
Nope.
Money?
Nope.
Land?
Not really.
When she married Jackson, she thought for sure he was hers to keep. That was what marriage was, right? For keeps. She had stood on the beach outside their house and told the minister, “Yes, yes, I take this man as my husband.” She’d wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him longer than was appropriate. She’d kissed until M had tapped her on the shoulder and suggested they move it to the backseat of Jackson’s Jeep. Then she’d laughed. And Jackson had laughed. And they’d kissed one more time.
After they married, she was surprised that there was still so much to discover about him. She thought she knew it all, but marriage proved to be an archaeological dig into the deepest caverns of her husband’s psyche, and back in the dark, moist caves, she discovered all kinds of things she’d never expected—secrets and desires that over the years had gotten buried under lodes of stone and lichen. When he disappeared, the two of them were just beginning to uncover each other’s pasts with cuspate picks and axes. She wondered about the raw spots, the jagged edges, and the tender crevices. Jackson had been determined and almost unbearably adept at uncovering her person, digging into the depths, pulling from her honesty she wasn’t sure she had in her. He was organized and meaningful in his approach, while she came to his innards as she came to most things, by accident, by losing things and finding others.
• • •
To get to the police station, the Dogcatcher hurried along the park that skirted the Merrimack River. When she hit the boardwalk, she saw the gaggle of beach-walking women heading toward her, their hands clenched into white fists, their slender hips popping out left and right, left and right. Their arms?
Pump-pump-pump. Pump-pump-pump. I think I can. I think I can. Pump-pump-pump. I know I can. I know I can. Pump-pump-pump.
When they saw the Dogcatcher, the women immediately began to execute their well-practiced avoidance maneuver. Like a swarm of bees, they shifted to the opposite side of the boardwalk, tightened their ranks, and lowered their heads.
As the space between them closed, the Dogcatcher hummed the Jet song from West Side Story. Then she lowered her head, pumped her arms, popped her scrawny hips left and right, left and right, and cruised on past them.
CHAPTER 41
The hoopla surrounding the publication of Sia’s second novel was expected, but the hoopla surrounding the publication of Bolt had been a shock.
“Who is she?” book reviewers had asked. “Where’s she been?”
Sia hadn’t written much short stuff, and any that she had written had gone unnoticed.
“This is what we wait for,” one reviewer said. “A crack of lightning from the heavens.”
CHAPTER 42
The night before Jackson’s disappearance, six people in town dreamed of him. Three just a few hours after falling off to sleep and three just before waking.
Mimi Laslow, whose bedroom window overlooked the sea, dreamed that Jackson flew away. He climbed to the top of a mountain, spread an impressive pair of wings, and soared. “Like an eagle’s wings,” she told her husband the next morning before the dream disintegrated. Mimi couldn’t remember where Jackson was going or why, though she was sure she’d known in her sleep. “He didn’t soar aimlessly,” she told Joe, “but knew exactly where he was going, like a migrating goose with his compass set for south.” But when Mimi looked up for a reaction or a response from her husband, she realized he hadn’t heard a word. They’d been married many years and it had been almost as many since he’d stopped listening to her dreams. “So then,” she continued, “I stripped naked at the local market, shopped for milk and eggs, and stood in line with my great white rump leaning against the candy display.” But even that didn’t pull Joe’s attention from the sports page. By noon Mimi had forgotten the dream altogether.
Ted Stimson had a similar dream, but in his, Jackson’s wings were bloodred and the mountaintop was the roof of a very tall building. It was a man’s dream. A hard dream with edges and sharp points. Unfortunately Ted didn’t remember a thing about it the next morning, but even if he had, he wouldn’t have told a soul.
Three others (Lily Keith, Sandra Keold, and Mason Vireo) dreamed that Jackson simply faded away like twilight. Each was looking at him—the real flesh-and-bone Jackson—in a store or the library or the boatyard, watching him tip his baseball cap back on his head with one index finger the way he did whenever he stopped to talk to somebody. One minute he was laughing and chatting, and the next he was nothing more than a shadow. By the time each moved on to a different dream, there was nothing left of him.
Hannah Willow, the sixth person to dream about Jackson, was a short, blond kid . . . skinny as a nail . . . who was blind in her left eye and from birth had dragged her right foot behind her like a sack of bricks. The year before Jackson disappeared, she’d attended his “Back to Nature” summer camp and had become one of his favorites, though he’d fought hard not to show it. “She moves like a broken crab,” Jackson told Sia, “but, man, that girl can cast a line.”
That night, the one before Jackson was never seen again, Hannah dreamed that he knocked on the door of her house. It was late in the dream, after midnight, and Hannah’s parents and her sisters were asleep. Hannah wasn’t sure why her dog, Henry, didn’t bark like he always did when someone knocked at the door or why no one else got up to answer it. When she opened the door, she saw Jackson standing there in his swimsuit with a small backpack in his hand.
“Hi, Hannah-banana,” he said, the way he always did during camp or when he and Sia ran into her and her mom at the grocery store.
“Hi, Jack,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to say good-bye. I’m going away.”
“With Sia?”
“No. By myself.”
“How come?”
“Just gotta go. Got the calling.”
“Where are you going?”
“Not sure about that yet.”
“When are you coming back?”
“I’m not, Hannah-banana. I just needed to say good-bye.”
“Oh,” Hannah said. Behind Jackson, the moon was a slobbery orange . . . dreadfully illuminating.
“What about camp this year?” she asked.
“Don’t you worry about that now,” Jackson said.
“What about Sia?”
Jackson didn’t answer.
“Okay,” Hannah said.
“I want you to take care of yourself,” Jackson said.
“I want you to take care of yourself, too,” she said.
Before Jack
son disappeared the way people do in dreams, without walking or running, he reached out and took Hannah’s hand. It was at least twice as big as hers and very rough. Hannah thought it felt like the bottom side of her father’s boat. Then he was gone. A few minutes later Hannah heard a splash.
The next morning while she shoveled Cocoa Puffs into her mouth, Hannah told her mom about the dream.
“You must be worried about summer camp,” her mother said.
“I don’t feel worried,” Hannah said.
“Well, sometimes we don’t know we’re worried, so we dream to work things out.”
Hannah looked at her mom with the spoon jutting out of her mouth. “I don’t think so, Mom. I know when I’m worried.”
And then Hannah started thinking about the Red Sox game she was heading to later that day with her dad and her best friend, Violet Coo. Against the Yankees.
• • •
The day after the game, when her mom told her about Jackson’s disappearance, Hannah cried for nearly an hour.
“I dreamed it, Mom,” she said. “I dreamed that he disappeared.”
Her mom nodded and pulled her close.
CHAPTER 43
Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus)
Description: a small sand-colored shorebird approx. the size of a sparrow; nests and feeds along coastal sand and gravel beaches in North America; breeding adult has yellow-orange legs, a black band across the forehead from eye to eye, and a black ring around the neck; well camouflaged
History: protected by the Endangered Species Act since 1986
Movement: runs in short starts and stops (like Jilly)
Call: mournful bell-like whistles that you often hear before you see the bird; thus its name, piping plover
Feeding Habits: generally forages for food around the high-tide wrack zone and along the water’s edge; mainly eats insects, marine worms, and crustaceans
Nesting Habits: nests directly on the sand, leaving them and their eggs exposed to predators (skunks, foxes, Joe Laslow, other birds)
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