But then I have to wonder:
If we’re going this way
and they’re going that way
and Jake is in trouble,
getting ready to run,
and my mom might have given them
a clue how to find him,
are we going light speed
in the wrong direction?
Or are they?
Or are they looking for someone else
and still not looking for Jake?
And will anybody find him
before he runs away?
Before something worse?
My finger hovers over the phone. All it will take is one small stroke to do what’s right. I’ve known it in my head all along, but it took my heart a while to catch up. Now that it’s up to my hands, somehow I can’t finish the job.
I grew up on the basketball court in the shadow of so many heroes, but none of them turned out to be who I needed them to be. And sure, we won the championship, but at what cost?
True integrity takes tremendous courage. Isn’t that what Coach B says? And in the end, isn’t Coach B the only person who has never let me down?
I don’t realize I’ve completed the call until I hear the soft ring in my palm. I put the phone to my ear before my fingers have a chance to hang up.
“Ashland Police Department. How may I direct your call?”
I take a breath. Close my eyes.
“I know who robbed the pharmacy. I know exactly where he is and exactly where you can find the pills.” I stop. Swallow. “I’m sorry. I should have called a long time ago. I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
“Let’s go,” Phoenix calls down the dark stairwell.
“I’m still packing” comes the reply.
“Packing what? All you brought was a backpack.”
He can hear the hesitation in Jake’s silence. Jake isn’t ready to leave, too afraid of what’s next.
Finally a reply. “I should probably shower. If we’re going to be in the truck for a while, you definitely want me to shower.”
“Fifteen minutes. This truck is leaving in fifteen minutes, and you’re going to be in it. Don’t make me bust out the handcuffs again.”
He wonders if it’s too soon to joke about it, but then he hears Jake’s laugh. “I’ll be there as soon as possible. Thirteen minutes, max.”
Phoenix hopes it’s soon enough. He’s seen the headlines. He knows the cops are narrowing down suspects in the burglary, knows there are too many trails that lead to him, whether he’s guilty or not.
It’s time to leave town anyway, and no better time to go than when they’re well supplied. The roll of cash in his pocket might be enough to make a fresh start, even farther from Ashland.
He takes one last look down the stairs, then walks through the small main floor: kitchen, bathroom, bedroom. More space than one person should need, but it still felt like a prison so much of the time.
But no. He stops himself. It wasn’t prison; he shouldn’t compare the two. He actually hates it when people do that, because a small house where you can come and go and eat what you want and close the door to take a crap is nothing, nothing like prison. The furniture is full of holes and smells, but it’s been his these last few months, here in the only furnished place he could afford.
Phoenix leaves a prayer behind for the next person who will call this place home, because anyone who would live here is already someplace dark and may be on their way down from there.
He’s wondered a hundred times whether this was all a mistake, but seeing Jake tonight—so hopeful, so clean—helps ease the guilt and doubt a little. When he steps onto the front porch and shuts the door behind him, he is determined not to look back, literally or otherwise.
But a car turns down the rutted drive, and as the front passenger comes into view, his past rushes toward him in a way he is not prepared for.
“Kolt.” The name falls from him, heavy but soft, like the breath has been knocked out of him.
In an instant, he is Kmart again. In an instant, he sees his little brother in all stages of his life: the baby who hid carrots in his diaper; the preschooler who tried to scam the tooth fairy by putting white pebbles under his pillow; the teenager who stood before him the day he returned from prison and shoved him, hands on chest, saying the same words with every push: I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. And his only response: I hate me too.
Kmart left town that very same day, and they haven’t stood face to face since. Of course, he has seen Kolt: as a red dot against the field when he watched football games from the hillside, and from the stands at the championship game, when he was feeling particularly reckless. He’d wanted to come closer so many times, to try to make things right in the place it had all gone wrong.
But if he came back, so would all the questions and stares and whispers. No denying the burden it would be on his family, and he has already been burden enough.
He knows too that he could never stay clean in that town. Environmental cues are one of the most common triggers for relapse. He’s recited it to himself—and now to Jake—so many times it feels like a mantra. Any place or person or smell or feeling that reminds you of when you were using can send you straight back, and that makes Ashland a minefield for them both.
Even now the sight of his brother so close reminds Kmart of where it all started: sneaking a Norco at the lake one day when Kolt was too little to notice, the sun warm on their skin and summer stretched out before them. That happy, floating feeling, even though they weren’t on the water yet. The drugs are tricky that way, calling up the one good memory in an ocean of bad.
Kolt jumps out as the car rolls to a stop, and he’s more than twice the size of the boy at the lake. Kmart is so stunned by it all—his brother, here, tonight—that he doesn’t have time to react or even brace himself as Kolt winds up and punches him in the face.
Kmart staggers back, cheek throbbing, nose bleeding. He deserves whatever Kolt throws at him. Even now he wants to pull his brother into his arms and apologize for a thousand things. But the anger in Kolt’s eyes makes him keep his distance as he tries to stanch the blood with the back of his wrist.
“Where is he?” Kolt demands, shaking out his fist and cradling it in his other hand. “Where’s Jake?”
He’s only here for Jake, then. Kmart is suddenly grateful Jake stalled and stayed inside. Jake isn’t ready for this. Kolt could easily be the trigger that takes him right back where he started.
“Not out here. And you shouldn’t be, either. Trust me, it’s better for everybody if you drive away.”
Kolt steps up into his brother’s face. “I’d be happy to leave and never see you again. It would make my freaking day. But we’re not leaving without Jake.”
Daphne steps between them. “Please. We just want to talk to him. We want him to know that this doesn’t have to be the end.”
“I’ll be sure to pass along the message,” Kmart says. “If I see him.”
Then the back door of the car opens, and the kid climbs out too.
No, no, no. This isn’t good. The kid can’t be here. Jake could be coming up any minute now, and Kmart knows too well how it tears your heart in half to walk away from family.
Kmart studies the kid. He’s not afraid. Not now, not in his house yesterday.
The kid studies him back. “Did you give him the notebook?”
Truth be told, Kmart keeps forgetting to give Jake the notebook—he thinks he may have put it in Jake’s backpack. He was too busy counting the cash that came with it. He searches for a line that will satisfy the kid enough to leave. “It’s with him right now,” he says. True enough—Jake and the notebook are probably both in the basement. He might have found it while he was packing up. He might be reading it this very minute.
T
hen the slam of the screen door. Four heads snap toward the noise as the beam of the porch light cuts through the dusk.
Kmart swears. How can he be done already?
Even in the failing light, they all see the moment when Jake sees them. He steps to the edge but not down off the porch, so his face is sharp lines of light and shadow under the single bulb. At first he’s frozen, but then he steps back and kicks the metal frame of the screen door, just once—hard enough that they can hear it, even from down the drive.
Then the tears come, and Jake’s body shakes with sobs.
Not one of them dares step forward. The yard falls silent—hell, the whole world falls silent—until the old wooden steps creak and crunch on the gravel drive under Jake’s sneakers, their soles worn smooth on hardwood.
“You’re alive,” Kolt says.
But it doesn’t take long before being alive isn’t enough.
Kolt barrels toward Jake, and it’s Kmart who catches him and holds him back.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Kolt spits the words at Jake. “Texting us to say it’s all over and please forgive you. Who does that?”
Kmart tightens his grip as Kolt strains forward. “You sent that, Foster? When? Holy crap, no wonder they tracked us down.”
Jake protests. “They didn’t have to track us down. I left a note. I told my family exactly what I was doing and why.”
Kolt shrugs his brother off. “Luke,” he barks at the kid, who’s still standing behind the open car door like it’s a shield. “Did Jake leave a note?”
Luke shakes his head, hard. “The paper was blank. He didn’t leave us anything.”
Jake steps toward him, and he flinches.
“We thought,” the kid says, choking on a sob, “we thought it was almost over. Like you were maybe dying.”
“I’m not,” Jake says. “Luke, I’m not. I’m okay. I just…” He sputters, stalls. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about all of this.”
It’s a start, but Kmart knows better than anybody that it will take a lot more than that to make things right.
Jake will be apologizing for the rest of his life.
All this time, Jake has been a ghost to me, and now that he’s standing in front of me, I’m still not sure that’s changed. The smile, the swagger—everything that made him Jake—have been stripped away, replaced by this pale, hollowed-out shell of the Jake I loved.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t see it,” I say. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me.” My words are soft; they need to be after the way Kolt went after him. “But I’m here now. We all are. We want to help.”
I approach gently, still unsure how to interpret Jake’s text.
Maybe when this is all over…
“What did you mean in your text?” I ask, aware that Luke is listening to every word. “Maybe when what is all over? Are you…leaving?”
Jake nods, slow and solemn. “We have to go away for a while. Hopefully not forever.”
“Go where?” Kolt demands, but when I raise a hand, he backs off.
They’re going away.
He’s not going to hurt himself, then.
Relief rushes through me, but reality’s right behind. Jake still needs help, and running away won’t lead to any lasting solution. I wish I could tell him it’s all okay, that whatever he’s done, it’s already forgiven.
But it’s not. It can’t be. I stare at him, knowing I can’t turn him in for the burglary, but I have to.
I can’t.
But I have to.
Right is right. The words are Dad’s, but they’re mine now too, even if the edges are still a little softer for me.
I reach for my phone. “If you make a deal, they’ll go easy on you. Especially since it’s your first offense.”
I don’t look at Kmart when I say this. We both know he’s already used all his chances.
Jake shakes his head. “Daph, we’re getting out of here. We have to.”
“You can’t run from this,” I plead. “Please let me make the call.”
He comes to me, takes the phone. Just when I’m about to protest, he slides it into my coat pocket.
“I’m not running away. I promise. But I can’t be here anymore.”
It takes everything in me not to pull my phone back out. To trust Jake again.
Kolt steps up beside me. “So this has nothing to do with trying to ditch the cops?”
Jake lets out a short bark of a laugh. “What? No.”
“And you’re not on painkillers anymore?”
Jake shakes his head, serious this time.
I want to trust him, and I almost do—but I have to be sure. “You haven’t stolen any pills since I saw you last?”
“Just my mom’s blood-pressure meds.” He looks at Kmart, like he’s realized something. “Is that what you were shoving down my throat in the beginning?”
Kmart nods. “It helps with the withdrawal,” he says, and the knot in my chest loosens a little.
Neither one of them robbed the pharmacy.
They have been out here getting Jake clean.
The same feelings rush through me again: relief, then reality.
I turn to Kmart. “What the hell?”
He looks almost amused, which makes me want to punch him.
“I mean, I know you were trying to help, but seriously. What. The. Hell? Sketchy detox in the middle of nowhere with somebody else’s blood-pressure meds? You could have killed him.”
He takes a step back, hands up. Smile gone. “If I didn’t do something, he was going to kill himself. So I helped him the only way I knew how. The way somebody helped me once. And it worked, okay? It worked.”
“It worked?” Kolt looks like he wants to strangle his brother, and I’m not sure I want to stop him. “There was a freaking missing-person report. A search warrant. Everybody who cares about him has been scared shitless for weeks. You’re calling that a success?”
“He’s alive, isn’t he?”
I’ll leave Kolt to argue with Kmart. I’m done with him, anyway. This is about Jake. About moving forward.
“Come back,” I say to Jake. “There are people at home who still care about you, no matter what. You don’t have to hide out for the rest of your life just because you made some mistakes.”
“I wish I could go back,” he says, his voice thick. “But it’s better for both of us if you climb in your car right now, Daph. Without me.” He reaches a hand toward me, then lets it fall to his side.
Tension crackles between us. I know exactly how it would feel to take one step forward and rest my head against his chest. And he must know exactly how it would feel to thread his fingers through mine and kiss the top of my head. Impossible as it may be to quantify, we both know exactly how much comfort we could find in each other’s embrace if we just gave in to the gravity pulling us together.
But in all of this, we never actually touch each other.
“There are other options.” I hold out the stack of papers I’ve been driving around with for weeks. “I’ve been reading about addiction,” I tell him, knowing how ridiculous I sound. How different reading about it is from living it.
But the words are all I’ve got, and I promised myself I’d say them if I ever had the chance. “I know coming back would be hard. But I also know you’re more likely to get better if you’re surrounded by people who love you. And, Jake, we love you. That’s why we’re here.”
Instead, he steps back. Looks toward the truck. “We have to go.”
“You don’t,” I say, holding the papers out toward him. “You said you wished you’d done everything differently. If that’s true, do it differently. Starting now.”
He looks down, ashamed. “We can’t afford any of that. We’re still paying off my surgeries. How can I ask my mom to pay f
or this too?”
Tears sting my eyes. “You have to trust her enough to let her make that choice. Please, Jake. Come back.”
“I can’t,” he says. “Think about it, Daphne. You’re smart enough to understand why.”
So I try to see the world the way Jake sees it right now. The fact that the cops really might be after him, even at this very minute, ready to drag him back to Ashland and put him through the trauma of arrest and questioning and who knows what else for a crime he didn’t commit. The people he loves but feels he has let down in unforgivable ways. The incredibly intimidating prospect of surrendering himself to an inpatient program in spite of his lifelong fear of doctors and hospitals and anything like them. The memory of his father and how rehab wasn’t enough. The impossible cost of it all.
Or he can go with the person who has pulled him out this far, in search of a truly fresh start.
But just because I can see why he believes this is the answer doesn’t mean I believe it. It’s too easy to imagine all the ways this could end in tragedy.
“I’m terrified,” I tell him.
“So am I,” he says, and he raises his hand to reach for mine.
I’m about to take it, hold it, keep it close to my heart, when I realize he’s reaching for the brochures. I riffle through the stack, wishing I’d written myself a script for this part.
“I can show you statistics,” I say. “We can compare programs. Figure out costs. There’s a way to make this work—”
Jake cuts me off. “I’m not saying I’ll do it,” he says. “But I’ll think about it. We’ll talk about it—after you guys are gone.”
No. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. “I’ll think about it” is not good enough.
“You’ll talk about it? With him?” I don’t even try to keep the venom out of my voice.
“Yes,” Jake says. “After you leave.” He closes his eyes, swallows hard. “Just go, Daphne. Please.”
I scrape and scramble for the right words to make him change his mind, but even as I do, I see the decision set in his jaw.
“I’ll think about it” is all I’m going to get, because all my hours of worry and preparation weren’t enough.
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