by Barry Lyga
She leaned in to kiss him again. She meant it to be a quick peck, but apparently her mouth had other ideas, and soon they were glued to each other, eventually breaking apart for the cruel necessity of air.
“Should we…”
And she stopped. She’d been about to say, Should we go into your room? She ached for him, a very real pulse and throb at her core. The conversation in the car at the factory parking lot seemed like a million years ago. She was ready. She was ready right now. Mind, body, and soul.
As if he could read her mind, Liam’s eyes flicked to the darkened hall that led from the living room to the bedrooms. “Oh,” he said, and ran a hand through his hair. “It’s just… I didn’t make my bed this morning,” he stammered. “And, uh, there’s stuff all over the floor. Damn.”
He exhaled a short, rueful chuckle. “All those times Pop told me to clean up because you never know when someone will come over. He was right all along, huh?”
And her phone chirped for her attention.
Because of course it did.
Don’t answer it don’t answer it don’t answer it, she told herself. But she’d put on Do Not Disturb when coming over to Liam’s, so only people on her VIP list could break through. That meant Liam, her parents, Marcie, Jorja…
And Indira.
“Who is it?” Liam asked, craning his neck to peer over her shoulder.
Elayah skimmed Indira’s text, then stared at her phone until the screen locked and went black.
“Let me see,” Liam complained.
It didn’t make any sense.
She thumbed open the phone again and twisted away from Liam so that she could do more than simply skim this time. With her tongue jutting out between her teeth, she bore down on each word, accepting and assimilating them, not merely reading them. Surely she’d read too fast before. Surely a deeper meaning had eluded her.
But her initial, superficial perception had been accurate.
“It just…” She groped blindly for his hand, found it, clenched it hard enough that he drew in a sharp breath. “It doesn’t make any sense. Indira says the DNA on the stamp doesn’t match my dad’s DNA.”
Liam’s eyes lost focus for a moment as he deliberated. “Isn’t… isn’t that a good thing?” He nodded, realizing. “Or, wait. Does that mean your dad is still Marcus, but Antoine cut him? Or—”
“No, no. That’s not it. The DNA analysis shows that…” She consulted the phone so that she could read the exact quotation Indira had included from the report. “‘Subject’s geographic origin fifty-six percent eastern European, forty percent western European. Detailed analysis to come.’ Don’t you get it?” she demanded when he only stared at her blankly. For the first time since knowing him, she was suddenly enormously frustrated that Liam was not as smart as she was. “No African ancestry. Or a really small percentage. The stamp wasn’t licked by my dad or Antoine.”
Liam’s lips worked, but his throat produced only a dull, wordless groan, comprehension leavened with confusion.
“Who the hell licked that stamp and sent the postcard that my uncle was supposed to have sent, Liam?” A hot flash of anger scorched her insides, from where and directed at whom she could not say. As suddenly as it ignited, the rage burned itself out, abandoning her as an empty husk. Tears streamed down her face.
“Why, Liam? Why is it every time we learn something new, things make less sense, not more?”
THE PRESENT: LIAM
The four of them agreed: It was time to go to the police. They’d gone as far as they could on their own.
El, being El, sat up late one night, compiling everything they knew into a dossier. She wanted to leave nothing to chance. There was no way she would let Liam’s dad use some accidental omission to dismiss everything they’d learned.
So her dossier included their individual perceptions, notes of the discussions they’d had both in person and online with their parents and Kathleen Rourke. As well, she enclosed copies of her text conversations with Indira and the PDFs of the reports Indira had procured for them. She confined the scope to the knife, conveniently leaving out Lisa De Nardo and Peter McKenzie and the kidnapping. So far nothing but radio silence from the De Nardo/McKenzie end of things. No point rattling that particular cage.
When she showed the final product to Liam—printed and compiled in a dark green binder, one copy for each of them and one for Dad—he struggled to find something funny to say, then something sincere, then something deep. Ultimately, he settled for the only words that his brain formed in that moment.
“Damn, girl,” he told her. “You’re amazing.”
Jorja paged through her copy, grunting in agreement. Marcie threw her arms around her best friend. “Nancy Drew’s got nothing on you.”
“Nancy Drew solves mysteries,” El said dourly.
Liam drove them to the sheriff’s office, where Dad was working his second shift in a row. The sun was going down over the Wantzler factory, salmon-pink clouds speckled with smoke on the horizon.
Dad sat behind his desk and listened very quietly, hands steepled before him, as El walked him through what they’d done, what they’d learned, what they still did not understand. The only time he moved or shifted his eyes from El was when she directed him to a specific page in the dossier. Then, dutifully, silently, almost respectfully, he would turn to the requisite page and stare at it as she spoke.
When she was finished, he said nothing, his face blank and inscrutable. Liam took El’s hand, squeezed, braced for impact.
“Elayah.” The word tumbled out of his father’s mouth like tears. Dad knuckled his eyes and sighed like a man who has just given up the love of his life.
“Elayah,” he said again, “I am so sorry you’ve been living with this. I wish you’d come to me sooner. I could have…” He groaned, softly, as though alone in a room with only his regrets for company. “I could have explained some of this, I’m sure. I could have at least helped you understand it.”
“You haven’t said anything.” Liam was surprised at the intensity and the venom in his own voice. But this was about El, so maybe it shouldn’t have come as a surprise at all. “You just keep your head down and work and don’t tell anyone what’s going on.”
Whether it was the presence of his friends or the fact that his accusation rang true, Liam couldn’t say, but the expected sharp rebuke never came. Instead, Dad said—with only the merest hint of pique—“Look, we haven’t announced anything because there’s nothing to announce. There’s an ongoing investigation. And it will conclude when it concludes based on the evidence. Not based on Twitter or a podcast.”
He tapped his copy of the dossier. “Or this.”
“We deserve to know what’s going on, sir,” Jorja said. “Respectfully.”
“This is about our parents,” Marcie added. “So it’s about us, too.”
El ran a finger along the purple, bruised incision that had almost ended her life. And said nothing.
Dad buried his face in his hands. “You kids are gonna kill me. We got the guy who cut you, El.”
“But he’s not the guy who broke into my garage,” El responded. “And he couldn’t have anything to do with the knife, because it wasn’t in the picture in the Loco. Which means there’s someone else out there, someone connected to the knife. And as best we can tell, it has to do with my uncle.”
“And a white person,” Jorja said significantly. “Which means one of our parents.”
Dad offered an indulgent smile. “I don’t know much about…” He quickly consulted El’s paperwork. “‘GenomiX Corp.’ But I can’t imagine their DNA workup is up to the same standards as a forensic-crime lab. These places take cheek swabs and blood samples in a medical environment and use them to analyze for congenital conditions and the like. It’s a far cry from collecting DNA off a thirty-five-year-old stamp, for God’s sake, in such a way that it’s usable or reliable. And even if the analysis is correct and Antoine didn’t lick this stamp, there are any number of
explanations for it. He could have handed the postcard to someone else and asked them to mail it for him, for example.”
“The handwriting analysis—” Liam started.
“Is amateur hour at best,” Dad said, willing to be curt with Liam if not with the others. “I don’t trust the results. Handwriting analysis is an inexact science under optimal circumstances, and all you kids had was a photo of a few words as one of your samples.” He shook his head as though in regret, as though he’d held out hope that they would crack it, that this quartet would come to him with the case solved.
Liam’s eyes burned. He was furious at his dad for shooting down everything they’d gathered, for pissing on all their achievements. But most of all, he was angry at himself because his dad was right. They had nothing. They’d worked themselves into a frenzy, and they had nothing to show for it.
Beside him, El touched his hand. He couldn’t read her, not her face, not her body language.
“I’m sorry it’s happened like this,” Dad went on, speaking slowly and calmly, the way he had when Liam was young and not able to understand why he couldn’t play in the fireplace or sleep on the kitchen floor or wear two different-colored shoes. “I’ve been trying to juggle my responsibilities as sheriff with my parenthood. And I’ve failed miserably.”
It was the first time Liam had heard his dad admit to such a human failing. The words themselves were almost meaningless; the very real pain in his father’s eyes spoke louder and more clearly than any words possibly could.
“Dad…”
He held up a hand. “Let me finish, Liam. There has to be a way to thread this needle. El, you need some closure. And all of you have questions that you should get answers to. So here’s what I’m going to do: I can’t tell you anything about the ongoing investigation, but I’ll get the old gang together and we’ll answer any questions you have. About what happened back then. About what we did. Prove to you that the knife thing is nothing and that in the end you’ll see: It will turn out to be nothing. Is that okay?”
The four of them passed a look back and forth. “I feel like it’s El’s call,” said Liam.
“Yeah,” said El. “That’s fine. Let’s do it.”
THE PRESENT: ELAYAH
They met at Liam’s house. The sheriff wore jeans and a polo shirt; folding chairs made a semicircle around the coffee table, where Wally had laid out crudités, homemade hummus with fresh-baked pita chips, and an impressive cheese board. When Elayah and her father arrived, Marcie was already there with both of her parents. Elayah couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen them in a room together.
Jorja and her dad arrived last, even though they were just ambling over from next door. A slightly frosty air hung between them, still.
Elayah kissed Liam lightly on the lips when he approached her, much to the surprise of the sheriff and the obvious delight of Wally.
“Uh, when did this start?” the sheriff asked.
Elayah’s dad shrugged out of his jacket. “You think she tells me things? C’mon, Dean. You know better.”
The sheriff cracked a grin at that and took Dad’s jacket, hanging it on a peg by the door. “Let’s get comfortable and get started,” he said.
Elayah sat on the sofa with Dad on one side of her, Liam on the other. The sheriff sat directly across from her. Wally lounged in the doorway to the kitchen, an observer to a past he’d never shared.
She took note of them all. The sheriff, who back then would have been just plain old Dean. Marcus, her dad, one half of Black Lightning. Marcie’s parents: K. T. and Brian. And Jorja’s dad, Peej, Patrick Jason Dearborn, who’d been called Jay back then. All of them in a room together.
Except for Antoine. The missing piece of the puzzle.
She suddenly realized that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen them all together in a room like this. It had been years since the backyard barbecues, the joint birthday parties. The kids had stayed close, but the parents had drifted apart. She’d always thought of them as friends, but the truth was, they were more like acquaintances.
The sheriff opened his mouth to speak, but Marcie’s mom uttered a stalling syllable and bent to retrieve something from the mammoth purse she’d tucked under her chair. “Before we start…”
She brandished her 1987 Canterstown High yearbook.
“What’s that for?” her ex-husband asked, overtones of weary exasperation ill-concealed.
Kim blushed ever so slightly as she scanned the gathering. “Oh. I thought we were all bringing them.”
“Mom!” Marcie groaned.
“Why would we need them?” Peej asked in a surprising tone of hauteur. Beyond his tone of voice, his posture and entire bearing were different around adults. He’d always seemed harmless and friendly to Elayah, but in this group, he clearly wanted to dominate.
“At least the rest of us have them,” Elayah’s dad said archly. Peej shut up.
“Why don’t you have a yearbook?” Jorja asked her father. “Shouldn’t you at least have one from 1988, when you went back to school after…”
She drifted off, clearly not wanting to say anything about the mental hospital, even though everyone knew.
With a dirty look sent toward Dad, Peej grumbled, but answered. “Because I never graduated. I dropped out when I got out of the hospital and got my GED, then went straight to college.”
“That’s why you’re Gone, But Not Forgotten,” El breathed.
“You didn’t drop out,” Kim snapped. “You were expelled. You had no choice.”
“I was going to drop out anyway,” Peej said hotly. “Look, it was a tough time, okay? My mom died, and then the school and police came down on me.… My dad was in a bind. He… he put me in that place. It was only supposed to be for a little while.” Peej stared down at his hands, clenched together in his lap.
“You don’t have to say any more,” Dad said, a note of apology in his voice.
“That’s how he got the charges dropped,” Peej went on. “And then they… I ended up staying longer than it was supposed to be. I…”
He couldn’t finish. He just shook his head and brought his forehead down to his joined hands. No one spoke for a while.
“Anyway…” Kim shrugged and handed the yearbook to Marcie, who flipped through it desultorily before handing it over to her dad. Brian didn’t even open it; he just passed it along to Elayah’s dad, who took a moment to page through.
“Check out your old man’s hair back then,” Mr. Laird said, leaning over to show Liam.
“Jesus, Marcus…” The sheriff groaned, running a hand through his thinning hair.
Elayah cracked a grin along with Liam as they looked at the book open across their laps. The sheriff gazed eagerly out of the photo, his hair shellacked into place with what had to have been a metric ton of hair product.
“You’re an insult to gay people everywhere, Dad,” Liam quipped. “I’m surprised they let you in the club.”
“Me too.” Kim said it. Quietly. Under her breath. Elayah wondered if anyone else heard it, if anyone else picked up on the injury and the insult in the tone. Thirty-five years later, Kim T. was still hurt.
It was so odd, looking in Kim’s yearbook. It was the exact same book as her mom’s—same pictures, same text—but altogether different at the same time. Different scrawls, different signatures, different in-jokes…
She went to pass it along to Jorja’s dad, but Liam held it close, staring down at the picture of his young father. She relented and folded her hands in her lap. “Should we start?” she asked.
The sheriff shrugged as he bit into a carrot stick. “Sure.”
Previously, the four of them had agreed to let Jorja start off. “First question: Who put the knife in the time capsule?”
Jorja’s dad barked laughter. Liam’s dad shrugged.
“It wasn’t me,” said Kim.
“Or me,” said her ex-husband. They flanked Marcie, who seemed ill at ease between them.
“
Right to the point, eh?” Liam’s dad said. “Okay, let’s settle this: Does anyone remember doing it?” He peered around the group. “Maybe right at the end, when we were throwing stuff in there? Brian, it was in your garage—was it maybe lying around and it got scooped up—”
“Not mine,” Brian said immediately. “Hell, I know that for a fact. I had a knife like that, sure, but I lost it a year later on a camping trip. My dad was pissed.”
“And that wouldn’t explain the note with it anyway,” Elayah piped up.
Jorja couldn’t hide her exasperation. “So no one will cop to putting the knife in—”
“None of us did it!” her father exploded. “No one’s hiding anything. The lock on Brian’s garage door was busted for years. People knew.”
Brian shrugged. “Yeah, it’s true. My parents just never worried about it. Not back then. So anyone could have—”
“Okay, okay.” The sheriff held up his hands, admitting defeat. “We’ll move on. What about the envelope, the love letter from Lisa McKenzie?”
No one spoke. The sheriff cleared his throat and gazed significantly at Peej. “If you don’t tell them, I will.”
Peej grunted, shaking off his melancholy. “Oh, fine. That was me. I stole it from Chisholm’s desk one night when Dean and I went into the school.”
“Why’d you put it in the time capsule?” Kim asked.
“I don’t know.” Peej’s expression and tone both exuded disgust, but it seemed self-directed. “I was stupid and angry at the world, and I really hated that guy.” Here he paused. “I’m sort of the hero of this whole thing, really. He’d probably be on his way to the state senate if not for me.”
A series of groans echoed around the gathering as Peej squeaked, “What? What?”
Elayah spoke up. “I want to be clear. None of you will admit to putting the knife in the time capsule. Or the note that was with it.”
“We can’t admit to what we haven’t done,” Liam’s dad said gently.