Justin was listening, fingering the hem of his new shorts.
“Some nights I think he’d just go off and cry. He’d come home, putting on a hopeful face, but his eyes would be swollen. A lot of times he slept in his clothes. His boots, too. He was too wrung out to change, but I think he also wanted to be ready if a call came to pick you up.”
Justin nodded. It meant she should keep talking. He wanted to hear what she had to say.
“I don’t think he really believes you’re home,” Laura said. “Probably none of us do.”
“The yard and barbecue don’t matter to me. I don’t want him to think he has to do that stuff,” he said.
“Just give him some time. He’ll come around. And if there’s anything you want to talk about, he’s there to listen. So am I.”
“It’s cool that you kept getting presents for me. And that you kept my mail. Thank you,” he said.
“Honey, you never have to thank me.”
“I’ve been going through my mail at night and opening the presents. I wanted to tell you that.”
“I probably won’t remember buying any of it,” she said. “And I like your hair.”
She thought she misheard him. “What? You what?”
“Your hair’s pretty when it’s long,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to tell you that, too.”
“Thank you,” she said, drunk on love.
THAT NIGHT, SHE COULDN’T SLEEP. SHE LAY IN BED, EYES CLOSED, and breathed the air, which seemed sweetened. There was a potted azalea on her vanity, a vase of lilies of the valley on the dresser. Eric dreamed beside her, his legs occasionally twitching. Eventually, she realized her eyes were open and she was staring at the dark acoustic ceiling he and Cecil had blown in years ago. It reminded her of moonscape, and for a while she whimsically tried to imagine an inverted world, a world without gravity, where she was floating above the ceiling and looking down on the pebbled surface. The illusion never took hold, though, and finally she was more awake than before.
Two weeks ago, Laura would’ve cast off the thin sheets and sneaked out of the house and ridden the ferry back and forth across the ship channel. She would have searched the sky for the nine stars that constituted Delphinus, staying out until the sun rose and brassed the fog as the shrimping fleets went out. How heavy the salted air had been on her skin; how satisfying to feel the ferry push through the choppy water. Even now, sleepless beside Eric, she had the feeling of being lifted and dropped. And, like that, she was awash in time. The past and present were parting around her like currents, drawing her in the same direction, and the heavy cloth that had draped everything before was brazenly cast off. She remembered the first time Griff went to a sleepover party after Justin disappeared, a year after, how after days of deliberation, she and Eric had both consented, and how furious their agreeing had made her, how she’d been banking on one of them saying, No, I’m sorry, and how she’d desperately wanted it to be him. How Justin had called fried chicken legs “handles,” and how he’d called carbonation “sparkles,” and how Griff had, too, and how he’d stopped. How she could hardly remember a day since this began when she hadn’t considered getting in her car and driving until she reached some place where she could assume a different name, a landlocked place with no memory of her so that her own memory might be bleached clean. How, once your son vanishes, you can’t ignore how easy it would be to follow him into nothingness. How when she was clutching Justin in that cinder-block room at the police station, she wished she’d worn something prettier for him, wished she’d done her makeup, how she should have, every morning for four years, been dressed as if she were expecting him to return home that afternoon. How people avoided her in grocery store aisles. How she both resented and understood them not wanting to look at her, not wanting to see the hurt on her. How she hardly glanced at herself in the mirror anymore. How every afternoon of the school year she saw the kids walking home after class and their reliable presence mocked her. How Griff had called them from the sleepover and said he was sick and needed to be picked up, and how only just this moment, as she fell into sleep, as Eric rolled onto his back and the air conditioner cycled on, only now did she understand that Griff had been lying. He’d come home to spare them the shock of waking up to another son missing.
9
THURSDAY MORNING, THREE DAYS BEFORE THE FOURTH, THE pawnshop’s fluorescent bulbs sizzled as they brightened. The counters and floors were tacky with humidity. Eric had met his father at Loan Star to borrow the expensive grill someone had in pawn. While Cecil was in the back counting out money for the till, Eric went around the shop turning on the various fans. All of them had tinselly streamers that lifted and vibrated once the blades started whirling; it made the shop feel oddly crowded, though Eric was alone. The air conditioner kicked on, a heaving metallic lunge in the ceiling and then the first surges of air coming through the vents, not yet cool.
The shelves looked thin. A few nights before, eating leftover chili at the house, Eric’s father had told Justin that his return had been a boon for business. It had been something of a joke, Cecil’s way of communicating how glad he was, how relieved. Only now did Eric understand he’d been serious. Last week there had been a wall of televisions on display, but this morning he could count where four, maybe five, had sold. A compound bow was also gone, one or two of the expensive fishing reels from the shelf behind the register, and a window unit. (He wondered if Tracy had bought one for the sisters at Villa Del Sol. She’d left a couple of congratulatory messages on his cell, but he hadn’t spoken with her yet. He didn’t know when he would. She seemed part of a different life now, a long fugue marked by guilt and dread.) The jewelry case was barer than it had been, the same with the racks that housed chain saws and musical instruments. The barrenness felt like a compliment; it helped make everything real. Eric would describe the picked-over stock to Justin later that evening. Papaw owes you a commission, he’d say. You’re better than the day after Thanksgiving. Or maybe he’d wait until Monday when they were driving to the courthouse in Corpus so Justin could begin meeting with Garcia. Eric and Laura weren’t allowed to participate for the same reasons they’d been precluded from so many searches: They were a distraction, a hindrance. During Justin’s time with the D.A., they planned to take Griff to the mall, where he would help them pick out clothes and shoes for his brother. It was a surprise.
The glass case housing the pistols was so scratched that in places it appeared frosted. Eric had to lean forward to see the revolvers and semiautomatics through the cross-hatched counter. He couldn’t remember it having always been so scoured, though he also couldn’t remember ever having paid attention to the glass before. Even now, he wasn’t completely aware of having gravitated toward the guns. The search of Buford’s house had yielded a .38 and a 9mm, and Eric had wondered if he might find similar pistols in the case. He wanted to see them, to hold them and feel their heft. The sun came bright through Loan Star’s storefront, pooling and glinting in the grooves in the glass like amber.
“Not on your life,” his father said from behind him.
Eric turned from the guns. Cecil was pushing the stainless-steel grill from the back like a shopping cart. The wheels squeaked as he maneuvered around the counter. He was also carrying a set of bamboo tiki torches. He had them awkwardly trapped between his arms and his torso.
“Let me help,” Eric said.
“You’ve never been interested in pistols before.”
“I was looking at the glass,” he said, relieving his father of the torches. “It’s scratched to hell.”
“You think it’ll help your cause when someone sees Justin Campbell’s father contemplating firearms?”
“I was just looking. I would never—”
“Good,” his father cut in. “Now, open that door.”
Outside, Eric had to squint as he pushed ahead of Cecil to lower his truck’s tailgate. He slid the torches into the truck bed, then he and his father got a grip on the grill and, on the count
of three, hoisted it. Eric would have been comfortable driving with it pushed against the cab of the truck, but his father fished a coil of twine from his pocket and busied himself with tying the grill down. Before he tied each knot, he gave the twine a hearty pull that rocked the truck. It was how Cecil did everything—deliberate, thorough, with an air of inconvenience.
“I’ve got some men coming over from Corpus this afternoon to put down the sod,” Eric said.
His father met his eyes, then yanked on a piece of twine and tied it off. He was in a stew. A sedan passed on Station Street and honked. Cecil waved without looking at the driver. Maybe it was someone they knew, maybe not. People liked to honk when they saw the arrow marquee beside the road: HE’S BACK!
As Cecil went around the truck cutting off excess twine with his pocketknife, Eric said, “Dad, listen, I wasn’t—”
“Are you paying through the nose for the sod?”
“Not too bad. A nursery in Corpus needed to get rid of its St. Augustine.”
This wasn’t true. He’d paid twice what he’d told Laura. She thought it was foolish and extravagant, and probably his father did too, but the idea of charcoal smoke and his family in lawn chairs with cool, fresh grass under their feet had become an oasis for Eric. Thinking of it could push the image of Dwight Buford and his orange jumpsuit and rangy beard out of his mind.
“Somebody just pawned the torches yesterday,” his father said. “I thought Laura might like them.”
“She will. She’s enjoying getting the house back in order.”
His father gazed toward the bay while a long line of cars passed. One honked, but Cecil didn’t wave. A gust of wind came up, and they turned their backs to it. When it abated, Eric’s skin felt filmy. He wiped his forehead on his wrist.
Cecil said, “He’s never going to see the light of day, son.”
“We don’t know that,” Eric said too quickly. Once the words were out of his mouth, he realized how long he’d been holding them in.
His father leaned against the truck, blotted his neck and face with his handkerchief. He looked like a man who’d already worked a full day, exhausted and short-tempered.
“Justin got to bed a little earlier last night,” Eric said. “He and Lobster filled two trash bags with weeds from the backyard, so they were worn out.”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to call him Lobster anymore.”
“We aren’t. I keep slipping.”
“It’s good to get them working. It helps to sweat,” his father said. He’d been saying it Eric’s whole life. “I hope so.”
“Don’t trip yourself running downhill.”
“Do what?” Eric said.
“Let Johnny Law do his job, and you start working on putting this behind you.”
“It feels too big. It feels like all there is.”
“Well,” his father said, “it isn’t.”
Eric looked down Station, saw another line of cars coming off the ferry from the island. He tried to affect distraction, ambivalence. It always surprised him how, at forty-four and given everything that had happened, he still needed his father’s guidance. He’d long believed you outgrew such things, but a piece of advice or a kind word from Cecil could still prop him up the way it had when he was a boy. Even that his father had been short with him earlier about the guns was bracing. It meant he thought Eric capable of retaliation; it meant Cecil saw something in his son that was hidden to Eric, a store of resilience and strength and violence.
A light wind blew around them. The sun had started to feel good on Eric’s skin, though he knew it wouldn’t last. Soon the heat would tighten and become unbearable.
Eric said, “Think we’ll break a record today?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“If it keeps up,” Eric said, remembering what the deputy had said moments before Justin stepped through his doorway, “we’ll have a busy storm season.”
“That wouldn’t be so bad,” Cecil said.
Then he rapped twice on the truck and started crossing the parking lot toward the pawnshop. He picked up a flattened beer can. Eric expected him to wing it into the weedy lot beside Loan Star, but his father just walked into the shop and locked the door behind him.
10
EVERYTHING ABOUT JUSTIN BEING HOME SURPRISED GRIFF. Their mother had stopped going to work and to Marine Lab, but started cleaning the house and cooking meals again. Gone were the days when they’d heat up canned ravioli for supper, or when she’d wear the same T-shirt she’d slept in to her job at the dry cleaner’s. Likewise the days when she had more hair on her calves than Griff did. (He realized—remembered—that his mother had been pretty, and he saw that she would be again; her eyes caught light in such a way that she looked young, mischievous.) Vacuum cleaner tracks in the carpet. Bathroom faucets gleaming so brightly he could see his reflection. His family started venturing into the backyard again, and there was a feeling of shared enterprise as they prepped for the barbecue. They spent evenings pulling weeds, cutting dead limbs from the trees, replacing split boards in the fence. While the workers laid the new sod, his father planted the small palm tree the governor had sent. Within hours, walking into the backyard felt like walking into a different life. Whether the life was new or old, Griff couldn’t tell. He only knew the one they’d been slogging through was gone.
Justin looked almost exactly how Griff had expected. In the four years he’d been gone, the police had generated age-progressed photographs, but the images always looked warped and bulbous. It wasn’t until Justin had stepped out of their father’s truck that first night that Griff realized he too had been picturing how his brother would age. Justin was taller and his hair had grown out; he’d put on enough weight to dull his features, which made Griff feel as if he were constantly seeing him from far away. He asked for second helpings at almost every meal. He could beat elaborate videogames in two hours, usually without sacrificing any of his extra lives. (“Most kidnap victims are videogame wizards,” he’d joked. “We’re also really good at channel surfing and eating ramen.”) His sleeping pattern was completely reversed. He limped a little sometimes, though no one seemed to comment on it, so Griff thought he might be imagining it. He’d developed a habit of cracking his neck and reading the newspaper. There was a capaciousness in him, an alluring air of knowingness, like a new student who’d transferred to Southport from a school in a bigger city. A glow, Griff thought. Justin was infinitely watchable; he sometimes seemed to glimmer, or the air around him rippled, the way it did over baking asphalt. Griff had long felt a secret significance as Justin’s brother and now, with him home, the feeling was evolving, deepening. He often caught himself wanting to hug Justin, but not knowing if he should, and he’d again endure the awkward sensation of having a crush on him.
“Do I look that different?” Justin asked one afternoon. He was eating cereal from the box, watching ESPN.
“What?”
“You’re staring again. Like you don’t recognize me.”
“Oh,” Griff said. “Sorry.”
“So do I?”
“No. I recognize you.”
“Liar,” Justin said.
ON THE EVENING AFTER THE NEW SOD HAD BEEN LAID, GRIFF suggested they go skate at the Teepee, but Justin wanted to practice before seeing anyone. They took their boards onto the back patio. Their parents were in the kitchen, cleaning up after supper. At first, Justin rode his old board. It had been under his bed for three years, his name graffitied onto the grip tape with paint pen—that had been the trend before he went missing. “This brings some things back,” Justin said, and Griff wondered if his parents could hear. But the board’s shape was cumbersome compared to newer models, and with all of the time passed, the deck had gone soft and lost its pop, so they took turns on Griff’s. The yard smelled ripe in the humidity. Damp, turned earth. Griff had been looking forward to skating with his brother since he’d been found, though he realized it only now. He understood that every trick he’d learne
d had been to impress Justin.
And he’d learned a lot of tricks. Before, Justin seemed to ride away from a new trick every day. When Griff was just learning to ollie, Justin was clearing the six stairs behind the junior high’s gymnasium; he’d even done boardslides down the handrail at the marina. Before Griff had become the Little Brother of the Kid Who’d Been Kidnapped, he’d been the Little Brother of the Kid Who’d Done the Marina Rail. Now Justin was awkward on the board. His weight was off, his timing delayed. Griff had been expecting Justin to dazzle him with new tricks, an expectation that embarrassed him as he watched Justin grow frustrated. It was disappointing, and being disappointed felt cruel. When Griff’s turns came, he intentionally botched his tricks.
Justin was stuck trying kickflips, a basic trick where the board spirals once under your feet. He used to goof around with them, do them with his eyes closed or while taking a swig of Coke. Now he struggled. After a while, he landed one, but he was leaning too far back and the board shot out from under him and he fell backward, hitting the patio hard.
“This fucking sucks,” Justin said.
“You’re just rusty,” Griff said. He couldn’t remember having ever used that expression before. “And you need a new board. We can get Mom and Dad to buy you one.”
Justin twisted to look at his elbow; blood was pilling from where he’d hit the concrete. He said, “Maybe.”
Griff retrieved his board and spun the wheels, pretending to test the bearings. They sounded like rain. Again he wondered if his parents were listening. If not, he wondered if what Justin was saying was something he should relay to them later. When they had come home that first night, his father took Griff aside and made him promise not to ask Justin about what had happened when he was gone, but he’d also told him to listen for anything his brother offered. “Be a detective,” his father had said, not sounding like himself. “You’re on the case.”
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