Eric tousled his son’s shaggy hair.
“Dad,” Justin said, smiling, “you’re staring.”
“It’s really you?”
“It’s me,” he said.
Garcia poured himself a cup of coffee from a pot on a counter, and then he was stepping into an empty conference room and opening a folder onto a table and waving Eric in. Eric’s impulse was to usher Laura and Justin in ahead of him, but then he sensed he shouldn’t. Instead, he motioned for them to wait. Laura nodded, an almost conspiratorial gesture. She held Justin’s hand, and a uniformed officer Eric hadn’t previously noticed led them to an empty cubicle that faced the conference room.
The deputy shut the door behind Eric, then started to close the blinds in the window looking out into the cubicles, but Garcia said, “Not necessary, Mike. I’m sure Mr. Campbell will enjoy his view.”
Eric could smell Garcia’s cologne. Woodsy, musky. He knew that the scent would, for the rest of his life, recall this moment for him; already it was tattooed on his consciousness. The deputy offered Eric a desk chair. He sat and swiveled to look through the window. Laura had chosen to sit on the floor with her back against the desk, her legs extended and ankles crossed. Justin was lying with his head in his mother’s lap. She stroked his shaggy hair.
“This is a good day in South Texas,” Garcia said. “These things don’t usually end this way, as I know you know.”
“It’s the best day of my life,” Eric said.
“That boy of yours feels the same way. Your wife does, too.”
“Thank you,” Eric said.
“Mike,” Garcia said, “is someone bringing up whatever Justin had with him?”
“Yvonne is, I believe.”
“Beautiful.” Garcia passed his eyes over a piece of paper in the folder, then another. He dragged his palm over his face. He raised his coffee cup, blew on it, sipped loudly. He lowered the cup to the table while reading something Eric couldn’t see. Then he said, “We’ll get you out of here shortly. Let you get home and start feeling like a family again.”
“Thank you,” Eric said. It seemed the only thing he knew how to say.
“We’ll need to coordinate a press conference, but I want to hold off until tomorrow.”
“Whatever you need.”
Garcia closed the folder and watched Justin and Laura. Despite how much Justin had grown, to Eric he almost seemed younger than when he’d last seen him. Laura noticed the men looking at them and smiled. Eric waved, which felt juvenile and ridiculous, but he couldn’t stop himself.
Garcia shook his head disbelievingly—I’ll be damned—and turned back to Eric. He said, “What I need is for you and your wife to brace yourself. Justin’s home, that’s the bottom line, and I don’t mind saying it’s a goddamn miracle, but we’re just starting to scratch the surface.”
“We’ve been bracing for years,” Eric said.
“I’d bet the farm on that. What I’m saying is we’re not out of the muck yet.”
“Okay,” Eric said. “Sure, okay, absolutely.”
“What I can say right now is we’re interviewing a subject, okay? A person of interest, okay? We’ll know soon if charges need to be filed.”
“Is it Ronnie?”
“Who?”
“Ronnie Dawes. He’s slow, mentally challenged. He lives across the street.”
“No. Our man’s name is Buford. Dwight Buford,” Garcia said. “Single male. Caucasian, forty-one. He delivers newspapers in Corpus.”
Through the glass, Eric watched Justin sit up, then stand and glance around as if someone had called him. Laura stood also, and looked at Eric. She pointed down the hallway and mouthed “Bathroom.” Then they were out of his view.
Eric said, “He’s been in Corpus the whole time.”
“We’re checking into that.”
“Did he, did this Buford, did he hurt—” Eric said and stopped. He tried again. “Was Justin—” His stomach roiled and he felt like he’d vomit. He said, “I think I’m going to be sick.”
The deputy brought over a wastebasket, set it by Eric’s boots. He gagged, threw up. He swiveled away from the door in case Justin and Laura returned. His eyes watered. Through the exterior window, he could see the arc of the Harbor Bridge; it looked like a diving whale. He threw up again. For the first time in decades, he recalled how nauseated his mother had been in the last year of her life. She’d started carrying a green Tupperware bowl from room to room, in case she couldn’t make it to the toilet. His father, Eric knew, still used the bowl.
Eric wiped his mouth, apologized. He said, “I don’t know what to do.”
“Take your son home,” Garcia said. “Celebrate. Get some rest. Don’t ask Justin about what’s happened or about Mr. Buford, but if he offers up something, pay attention. Then call me.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“Otherwise, we’ll talk in the morning. We have a therapist—a real nice social worker with a master’s degree—who will want to meet with him. Probably with you and your wife, too.”
Eric almost thanked him again—he could’ve done it a thousand times—but he just concentrated on standing up. He felt frail and slow-witted, the way he had when stepping out of the shower at Tracy’s.
“We’ve got a hard road ahead, we surely do, but your boy’s home and we’re going to work like hell to do right by him.”
“I understand,” Eric said, though he didn’t. At that moment, he understood not one single thing.
“Do you need anything from me or my staff right now?”
“I need to call my father. He’s with my other son.”
“Sure thing,” Garcia said. “Mike, can you find Mr. Campbell an office with some privacy?”
The deputy nodded and stepped out of the room. As the door was closing behind him, a young woman knocked and then peeked inside. She was carrying a small white paper bag, pinching it with her fingers and holding it away from her body, as if it stank. Eric could smell only Garcia’s cologne, nothing else. She said, “I have Justin Campbell’s possessions.”
Hearing his son’s name that way, divorced from anything relating to his disappearance, temporarily centered him. “Thank you,” Eric said. “I’m his father.”
The woman handed him the bag and said, “I’m glad he’s back.”
“You’d better get used to hearing that,” Garcia said. He’d opened up his folder again and was squinting at a sheet of paper.
“I’ll never get used to it.”
“I don’t suppose you will,” he said, distractedly. “No, I don’t reckon that’ll be happening anytime too soon.”
CECIL WAS IN HIS GARAGE WITH GRIFF. THEY’D BEEN CLEANING for two hours, organizing scrap lumber and spare parts and tools he’d accumulated over decades. They sorted old screws into one mason jar, nails into another. They filled a metal garbage can with trash, then started piling more in the bed of Cecil’s truck; eventually, he’d have to drive to the landfill in Ingleside, but thinking of the future was currently beyond him.
He’d made bologna sandwiches and brought them out to the garage with glasses of iced tea that sat sweating on the workbench. While he’d been in the kitchen, he’d also checked for messages and slipped his cell phone into his shirt pocket. There was a landline in the garage, one he’d spliced from the house when Eric was still in grade school—Cecil, you’re going to go back to jail, Connie had said, smiling—but having the cell still seemed prudent. They worked in near silence. Griff was sullen, stewing over how he’d been pulled away from his girl, so Cecil let him be, hoping his disappointment would preoccupy him, distract him from the conspicuous thoroughness of the cleanup. It was too hot for such work, but he could think of no other way to pass the hours. The air was musty, smelling of old sawdust, the half-empty cans of paint that had occupied the same rusted shelf for years. A few cockroaches scurried, then disappeared into the long, jagged crack in the floor. Cecil swept, made little mounds of dirt and pushed them into his dustpan. Rainbow snortle
d around the corners of the garage, her wet nose picking up cobwebs, and then she grew bored and went to lie on her side in the cool grass. As evening came on, the shadows collected on the lawn like rising water.
When the phone on the wall started ringing—the noise as harsh as breaking glass—Cecil leaned his push broom against the wall. He walked slowly, watching Griff feed Rainbow the sandwich he hadn’t eaten, and he thought, Please. Please.
“Dad,” Eric said.
“I’m here.”
“Dad, I have someone here who’d like to say hello.”
LAURA HAD WANTED TO FOLLOW JUSTIN INTO THE MEN’S ROOM. The idea of being separated again, of allowing a door to close between them, seemed negligent. Sickeningly so. Justin must have noticed the panic in her eyes. He said, “If I’m not back in three years, alert the authorities.”
“If you’re not back in thirty seconds,” Laura said, “I’m coming in.”
Then he smiled, squeezed her hand, and disappeared again. Laura stood with her back to the door, ready to stop anyone who might try to enter. “It’s occupied,” she planned on saying. But no one came, and soon there was the whoosh of a urinal flushing, then a faucet being turned on. Her son, who practiced good hygiene. When he reappeared, she took his hand again. His fingers were cool and damp and perfect.
She couldn’t keep from touching him. She brushed hair from his eyes, pressed her palm to his neck and grazed her knuckles over his cheeks and touched her fingerprints to his, made steeples. Or her fingers were touching her own lips; her mouth wouldn’t stay closed. I’m in awe, she wanted to say, but worried it would embarrass him. She felt deferential and pure, in the presence of something holy that was, moment by moment, delivering her. He had bushy hair and soft, clean cheeks; either he was shaving now or he was still a year away from picking up his first razor. His stride was relaxed and loping, giving the impression that his hands were in his pockets even when they weren’t. Maybe he had a little limp—she couldn’t quite tell. His voice had deepened, but his intonation and the cadence of his sentences were comfortingly, amazingly, familiar. He nodded as she spoke—babbled—and he held the doors open for her. A gentleman, she thought. They found Eric in the police chief’s office, talking on his cell. He extended his arm like a wing, enfolded Justin and kissed his forehead, then gave him the phone. While Justin talked to his grandfather and brother, Laura stood with Eric in the doorway. She laced her fingers with his, brought his wrist to her lips and kissed it.
“We need to tell Griff not to ask anything about what’s happened,” he said in a hushed tone, watching Justin.
“I’m in awe,” she said. “I’m in absolute awe.”
“Garcia said we need to keep our guard up.”
“I can barely breathe,” she said.
And then they were driving home, shuttling over the Harbor Bridge with the moon lamping the dusk. They had a police escort, two unmarked cars. Laura knew Eric was disappointed that she was the one riding beside their son, but Justin was more comfortable with her in the middle; with the stick shift, his knees would have been wedged against the dash. He wore baggy shorts that hung to his calves; they were similar to some she’d bought Griff last summer. She’d also bought another pair for Justin. They were in his room. That the shorts might have come from the same store—a small surf shop at the mall in Corpus—knotted her throat. Justin shifted away from the passenger door, trying to get comfortable. The last time he’d ridden in the truck, he’d been small enough to sit with Griffin beside him and his parents on either side.
The small bag with the mice in it was on his lap. At home, she’d empty one of Justin’s mail bins and let them run around in it. Because the mice were with Justin when he was found, she wanted to reward them. She wanted to give them bread and cheese. She wanted to name them. (She’d asked the D.A. for the contact information of the pet vendor and the flea market security guard—she wanted to call them after Justin went to bed—but Garcia said he’d have to get back to her.) Justin was watching through the window as they passed over the slatey water, his eyes half-lidded. Laura held his hand. She wanted to say so many things, to ask so many questions, but she didn’t want to disturb any peace Justin was feeling. She didn’t want to smother him. There will be time, she thought, and felt giddy as a schoolgirl.
As they came off the bridge, her hair started whipping around again. They passed Marine Lab. Paul Perez’s truck was still in the parking lot. As was Laura’s car. She kept quiet. For miles, she now realized, she’d been worried that Eric would remember they needed to pick up the car, worried that she’d have to follow him home and Justin would have to choose who to ride with—and yes, she was worried he’d choose Eric—but Eric passed the exit for Marine Lab. Whether he was being kind or had just forgotten she didn’t know. She could feel her heart in her chest. At the police station, with his head in her lap, Justin had said, “Your clothes smell like chlorine.” She told him about volunteering with Alice. Listening to herself—she was just nervously blathering, the sentences as slippery as eels—it occurred to her that he might take offense at how she’d spent her time, and she felt compelled to make excuses. But Justin was excited about Marine Lab. He said, “Do they let kids go in?” That he still thought of himself as a child filled her every cell with breath. Now his head was on her shoulder. She nudged Eric with her knee, and he leaned forward to look. He regarded Justin with a deep tenderness, his eyes aglow with reverence. Then she understood what she was feeling: It was like bringing a newborn home.
And like those first days after they’d brought Justin home from the hospital, she also felt closer to Eric. She knew there were rough patches ahead. She knew that whatever Eric had learned in the conference room had made him sick—he’d admitted nothing, but she’d smelled vomit on his breath when she and Justin returned from the restroom—and yet she couldn’t ignore the sensation of being tethered to him again. For so long, she’d felt apart from the world. Each day was a wave that knocked her farther and farther adrift. There had seemed such awful and unbroachable distance between her and not just everything that mattered, but everything. Now the space was collapsing, imploding and dissolving with every mile they put between them and Corpus. When they passed the billboard with Justin’s picture on it, she thought, Speed up. And like that, Eric accelerated. She squeezed his hand. She thought: We’re parents again.
Justin said, “It’s like when I got sick at camp and you had to come get me in the middle of the night.”
“Camp Bandera,” Eric said, as if he were on a game show. “We got lost coming and going.”
“You were covered in chiggers,” Laura said. “You found those arrowheads for Griff.”
He laughed a quick little laugh in the dark.
“What?” she said. Then Eric said it too: “What?” They were both smiling, eager and hungry for whatever piece of himself he’d offer.
“I bought them at the cantina. Three for a dollar. I told him I found them, but really I just had dimes I didn’t want to carry around.”
“It’s still sweet you thought of him,” Laura said. “He still has them. They’re in his rock collection.”
Justin sat up. Laura’s arm had fallen asleep under his weight, so when he moved, it felt needled. She wanted to ask about the postcard from California, when he’d stopped being afraid of snakes, whether or not he still collected his rocks. She wanted to ask if she’d been right in thinking he walked with a limp, and if so, what had happened. Justin yawned, then his father did, then finally she did. How to explain that this set a star of joy ablaze in her chest?
“I wondered if you’d still have the truck,” Justin said.
“Of course we still have it,” Eric said.
“Rainbow?”
“I can’t imagine what she’s going to do when you walk in.”
“Sometimes I’d see a dog and it would have gray fur around its mouth and nose, and I’d worry.”
“She’s doing mighty fine,” Eric said. “I’d watch your shoes, t
hough. She still pees when she gets excited.”
“Your room is just the way you left it,” Laura said.
“Really?” he said.
“We wouldn’t have changed it for the world.”
“Sick,” he said. “Awesome.”
They passed Alamo Fireworks, then a long row of lantana bushes and dense stands of live oak that resembled giant sleeping animals on the roadside. A few cars were heading toward Corpus, probably people who’d spent the late afternoon at the beach. Shortly, those drivers would pass the billboard with Justin’s face on it, and the knowledge dizzied Laura. She wondered when it would be taken down. Ahead, Southport was coming into view. The lights shimmered like buoys on the horizon. Justin’s face was reflected on the inside of the windshield. What Laura hoped to see in his reflection, she couldn’t say. A simple smile? His eyes lidded, his face peaceful and relaxed? Or maybe his gaze trained on the town ahead, his pupils lit with excitement now that he was finally coming home? In the coming weeks she would think of that moment in the truck and try to reconcile what she’d seen with everything that was yet to be learned, yet to happen. His face was just blank, expressionless in a way she thought he was allowing only because he believed no one would see. He was staring not at the road ahead but into his side mirror. He rode that way for miles, his attention focused on nothing except whatever lay behind them in the tight, whorling darkness.
7
SOME SAW IT ON TELEVISION. THE PRESS CONFERENCE BROKE in on each of the three network affiliates that came in from Corpus, interrupting regularly scheduled programming. “It’s a good day in South Texas,” the D.A. said into a bouquet of microphones. The news ran briefly on the CNN ticker. People watched with their mouths agape, with their hands over their mouths, with an abrupt and complete stillness in their bodies. Others heard the news on car radios. They rolled down their windows and hollered into the sun. They laid on their horns, they flashed headlights. Disc jockeys played “Mama, I’m Coming Home.” “Home Sweet Home.” “Amazing Grace.” Word spread through intercoms at H-E-B, Walmart, and McCoy’s lumber. Customers looked to one another in the aisles, dumbfounded. They asked strangers if they’d heard right. Found? That Campbell boy? Alive? Just over in Corpus? Then they cheered. They embraced. They closed their eyes and cried and thanked Jesus. They bought cake mix and congratulatory cards, white shoe polish to write messages on their windshields. Camera crews fanned out through the town and reporters taped interviews with jubilant, wet-eyed residents. They gathered footage of merchants ripping down the flyers in their shop windows, and of teenagers spray-painting FOUND over Justin’s face on the billboard outside town. Drinks were on the house at the Black Diamond Bar, and dessert came free at the Castaway Café. Emails were sent, copied, forwarded. Parents drove their children to the Alamo Fireworks stand outside the town limits and bought Roman candles to launch into the bay that night. Bonfires dotted Mustang Island. Plans had already begun for a celebration at the Shrimporee in September. The letters on the rusted arrow marquee outside Loan Star, instead of advertising window units, read HE’S BACK!
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