The Lost Boy

by S. A. McEwen

  They’d watched Abby quietly for a while. Johnny was kind, but he was also cautious.

  Eventually, he’d nodded at Ray, and Ray had made his way over to where Abby lay, half against the wall, his breathing still erratic, his eyes closed. Ray had been frightened momentarily, but when he spoke to Abby, softly, Abby’s eyes had flown open, his terror so immediate and so enormous that Ray had stepped backward without thinking.

  Instinctively, he knew how to soothe Abby, without ever having exchanged a word with him. He showed him his hands, palms upward, trying to say, “You’re safe here, you’re safe with me.” And he’d gone a decent distance away and sat down, his eyes down. “We’ll help you, if you like,” he’d said, and Abby had cried, and cried, and cried, and Ray didn’t need to ask him any questions, because he knew that moment, under the bridge, when you were all alone and your life had changed so ferociously there weren’t even any words to say.

  For the first time in his life Ray had a role, even if Abby might have disagreed with it.

  “You said you didn’t want to talk to them.” Ray is watching Abby closely. His mind is whirring. Abby calls him at 10 p.m. every day when he is away, but Ray had called him too, this trip. Every time he stopped for a break he called, just to check. Ever since that police officer had knocked on their door.

  Abby had spiralled into panic that day. Ray hadn’t seen him so distressed for years. And it wasn’t that he didn’t want to see his parents—just that he had put them in a box somewhere in his mind, and left them there for thirty years. And when they had finally gone into a homelessness service—together, spurring each other on—Abby had declared his family were all dead. The social worker had offered to try to find any remaining relatives, but Abby had been insistent.

  There was no family.

  There was only Ray.

  Slowly, slowly, they had built up a life. Some emergency housing. A Centrelink account. Some job seeker support. Ray had already taught Abby the alphabet, but they found they could get more help. There were services that existed just to help them find a job. Their heads spun with the possibilities.

  It was hard to trust people, after thirty-odd years on the streets or in the justice system.

  It was hard to ask for help.

  But they did. And three years later, Ray felt like they were finally okay.

  Except now there was a small child in their living room.

  A small child that half the nation was looking for.

  Wolfie seemed happy enough. He was lining up his toy cars, murmuring to himself. Occasionally, one car would be moved out of line, made to carefully execute an imagined task, and returned to its spot in the line-up.

  Ray was panicking, but he was also mystified.

  “Did you drive?” he asks, astonished.

  “How did you find….?” His voice trails off.

  “Doesn’t he miss his family?” he whispers, and Wolfie looks up at him then, and Ray’s heart skips a beat, because he looks just like Abby—the wide eyes, the high cheekbones. The peculiar little set to his chin.

  Abby looks confused, and glances to Ray, to Wolfie, and back to Ray again. And suddenly Ray sees it.

  “That’s your sister on the news,” he says slowly, pieces of the puzzle starting to make sense to him. Like, why on earth Abby—who never talks to anyone, who doesn’t like people at all—would pluck a child off the street and take him home and think it was okay.

  “Olivia,” Ray murmurs, staring at Abby. “Olivia Shorten.” They never talk about the details. Just once, they had told each other, holding on to each other in the dark. What happened to them.

  Ray, watching his father hold his mother over that balcony, the savage satisfaction on his face as he let her look at her son one last time, then casually let go of her.

  Abby, watching the teachers pressing down on Marley, the way his legs twitched, the urine seeping across the floor. The whole classroom in uproar: the noise of it. The panic.

  “He can’t breathe!” Abby had screamed, but no one listened to them, no one cared, they just wanted them all to be quiet, to comply. And Abby had watched Marley’s eyes roll back, glaze over, the fight leach out of him and away, away, away.

  “He’s just having a holiday with Uncle Abby,” Abby falters now, his frown deepening. “He was crying. He was all alone. And he ran to me when I said hello, like he knew who I was. Like—”

  But Ray interrupts him. “How did you find them?” His mind is working overtime. The police officer had told them Abby’s parents were trying to find him. That they were seeking to press charges against the school—long since closed down—and teachers involved in the incident—here the police officer had looked at Abby gingerly—and explained that they had found an Adam with the right birth date, though his surname had changed. She had just thought she’d swing by and knock on the door.

  Abby had been so distressed by this news. He had crawled under the table and rocked gently back and forth, making a low humming sound. Ray had carefully closed the blinds, turned off the television, treading lightly on the carpet. Then he went and sat under the table with Abby. Apart, but together.

  Abby didn’t need to say anything. Ray knows this story like he knows his own. He may have only heard the details once, but the story underneath it is as familiar as breathing. This is what made his partner tick.

  They abandoned him.

  They didn’t want him.

  They sent him to that awful school where his friend had died, and no one had even done anything. No one had even cared. And he had run, run, run, found somewhere dark, somewhere quiet, but it wasn’t even very far, how long had he run for, was it five minutes, was it ten, was it twenty or thirty?

  No one had come for him. No one had helped.

  How hard was it to find a thirteen-year-old boy sleeping rough in the city?

  Abby had said “wrong Adam” more firmly than Ray had ever seen him say anything in his life, and closed the door before the police officer could ask any more questions.

  Abby didn’t know it, but they had tried to find him. That the police that Ray and Johnny avoided were the same police searching known homeless hangouts for a boy matching his description. So in some ways, Johnny and Ray saved him; and in others, they did not.

  After a couple of weeks, the search for Abby had been scaled back. Because how long could a small boy with Abby’s “difficulties” survive by himself on the streets? The school reported he was low-functioning. The family insisted he could ask for help, he could tell someone his name, his address, that when he was calm he could function perfectly well, but the school advised they doubted that very much.

  But now Ray waves a hand impatiently, waving away his last question, because it’s not important right now. For all that Abby struggles with—with people, with noise, with functioning when those two things are combined together—it is clear that Wolfie has found some way to feel comfortable in their little home. More pressing: “Why didn’t you call the police when you saw him on the news?”

  Abby looks terrified again. And Ray knows the answer to that—the question is superfluous the moment it has left his mouth. He and Abby have spent enough time on the streets to know how they will be treated by law enforcement officers. And they might have a flat and steady jobs now, but mistrust is engrained in them. There’s only so many times you can be treated as worthless without it expecting that it is the way it will be.

  Ray gently takes Abby’s hand.

  “We have to call the police,” he says. “We have to take him home.”

  But before Abby can answer, there is a loud knock on the door.

  Epilogue

  Two Months Later

  Olivia is sitting on her back deck, sipping a glass of wine.

  Wolfie is playing on the trampoline.

  “I’m off,” says Nick, poking his head through the back door. “I’ll take your folks to their hotel to settle in before I bring them back here.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Charlie
offers, and Nick reaches an arm out, half guiding Charlie with him, half just using it as an excuse to hold him close.

  Olivia murmurs her understanding. Everyone is nervous. She doesn’t even know if Abby and Ray will turn up. It’s been hit and miss with just her little family, a forty-sixty strike rate that they’ll come when they say they will. Bringing Amelia and Daniel into the mix will probably overwhelm them, and Olivia is trying not to be too hopeful.

  Olivia pictures Abby and Ray at home, sitting quietly on their ragged red couch. It’s worn through on the arms, the fawn threading underneath hanging in some places all the way down to the floor.

  The first time she had seen it, she had felt… something. It wasn’t distaste, and it wasn’t pity. She still can’t really pin down that day to any narrative that makes sense. It was a few days after Wolfie was home, the jagged edges of feelings she couldn’t manage gradually feeling manageable. Wolfie had clung to her, those first few days. He was like a puzzle piece, clicking to her with finality and ease—but it wasn’t fear or brokenness. It had seemed like relief and love.

  There was the mess of the police processes, and the mess of how to move forward. But it had only taken a day—Olivia was certain she wanted to see Abby. She was confused, and frightened, but it wasn’t anger. It was the pull toward wanting to understand, to connect, dogging her her whole life. Abby had taken her child and she couldn’t make sense of it, and the only way forward was to see him, to hear him speak.

  Besides that, he was her brother. She had yearned for him in some form her whole life.

  Rolands had been frank. “I don’t think he’s a danger to you or Wolfie. I think he’s had a hard life, and I think he’s probably diagnosable with something. We’re having him assessed as a priority. In the meantime, I don’t think you should see him.” She’d been cagey about where Abby had been all these years, who he lived with, what she thought he might be diagnosed with.

  How they had found him, when no one else had managed to find him for thirty years.

  Olivia couldn’t make sense of any of it; she sat and cried.

  Now, Olivia pictures them there, Ray drinking beer, Abby drinking water, facing the television that they rarely turn on. The image soothes her. Her breathing slows.

  She won’t mind if they don’t turn up. They have the rest of their lives to have dinners together.

  Whenever Abby is ready.

  She feels a pang for Amelia though. It had taken all of Olivia’s skills to discourage her from landing on Abby’s doorstep the day that they found him. Rolands had been livid, for a start. Kind first, of course.

  We have Wolfie.

  He seems fine. We’re bringing him to you now.

  We’ll have a doctor check him.

  There are other fragments that Olivia can’t remember clearly. Was it Rolands who organised the psych assessment for Wolfie? Were they looking for information about what had happened to him, or were they assessing the things Olivia had reported concerns with?

  “Why didn’t you tell me you had a missing brother?” Rolands had barked down the phone at her, later, or was it the same call? It has all merged together, dense and overwhelming.

  He’s okay, he’s okay, he’s okay.

  Nick, running to her as she crumpled to the floor.

  He’s okay, he’s okay, he’s okay.

  Was it then, or later, that she tried to talk about Abby? The next few hours went so slowly, and so fast.

  There was Wolfie, quiet and wide-eyed, but running to her, his arms outstretched. Clinging to her so hard she thought they might be welded together forever, and she didn’t mind at all.

  There was Nick, sobbing and sobbing and sobbing, the weight of the last nine days crashing though him, tsunami-like, rushing in and rushing out in chaos, but leaving something calm behind.

  Her family.

  “Squish cuddle!” was the first thing that Wolfie said, calm as you like, as though it was any day, and nothing out of the ordinary had happened. And Nick had sobbed more, not able to lift him the way he usually did, to squash him in a cuddle between the two of them. He had crushed Wolfie to him, between them on the floor.

  And Rolands, was she angry? Olivia is not even sure of that now. She recalls not being able to answer that question: Why didn’t she mention her missing brother?

  “We weren’t allowed to talk about him” sounds ludicrous, in retrospect, given her missing four-year-old, and given that she was conversing with police detectives, not her mother.

  Now, she thinks about all the ways they buried Abby. Her mother, her father, Bing. How did that happen?

  Was she really not allowed to talk about him, or did she just learn to stop asking questions because when she did, the heaviness was suffocating?

  “It hurt too much” might have been more accurate, but Olivia was trying to process the world, and the ripples that had been ricocheting out ever since nineteen eighty-eight were too much to incorporate in her head, let alone out loud.

  “How?” she’d asked Rolands, confused, dazed, and got the barest of explanations: “He found you in the phone book.”

  “Why?” was harder to answer, and not even on Olivia’s radar at that point in time. She had been so desperate, so overwhelmed, so shattered, that she could not function beyond seeing Wolfie. The rest of it is a blur.

  Now Amelia is desperate. So desperate that Abby will be terrified.

  “It’s been thirty years, Mum,” Olivia had tried to explain to her. “He can barely stay with me for five minutes. He’s believed we abandoned him for all this time. He’s overwhelmed.”

  It had taken days to see him. All Rolands would offer was that he was being detained and was cooperating. Olivia tried to imagine her brother, in interviews, the questions and recriminations, and she couldn’t picture him. It was a parallel world that she had never allowed herself to imagine—Abby, as an adult. Abby, doing adult things.

  All she could see was the boy, with the big round face. How that boy would have responded to having a family again. To being at a police station.

  Rolands called her every day.

  He’s seeing a social worker today.

  He’s seeing a psychiatrist today.

  His intentions don’t seem to be malicious.

  And every time, Olivia asked, “When can I see him?”

  On the third day, Rolands arranged it. Olivia had stepped through the doorway of the tiny flat. It was run-down, but neat and clean. Rolands opened the door for her, then moved quietly to sit on the decrepit red couch. Two men were standing as far away from the doorway as they could possibly get, and Olivia’s heart lurches, because Abby is thin, and his face isn’t round, and he looks just like Wolfie. And she had cried, and cried, and cried, and Abby had come to her, had stood next to her, and tentatively touched her arm. And—awkwardly, tenderly—tried to shush her tears away.

  Amelia and Daniel have been down and back from Sydney numerous times. And every time Abby refuses to see them.

  Rolands had advised that—after numerous specialist assessments, interviews with Ray and Abby—they would not press any charges, and passes on, with Abby’s permission, that the psychologist suggested a formal assessment for Autism Spectrum Disorder. Wolfie is likewise awaiting assessment, and Olivia tries to explain it to her mother.

  The possibility of a diagnosis for Wolfie is a relief, although Olivia struggles with guilt about not noticing. Shouldn’t she, out of all the mothers in the world, have seen what was happening?

  Her own counsellor reminds her that all presentations of autism are different, though. From what she remembers of Abby, through the fallible memory of a child, he presented very differently to Wolfie. At least, Olivia cannot remember his anxiety. Only how he struggled with noise. How noise overwhelmed him to the point that he could not function at all.

  How he couldn’t quite understand the social mores of other boys.

  “Does it matter?” asks Amelia, as Olivia tries to explain the process, what it means, and
Olivia thinks about this for a little while.

  “No,” she says eventually. “Not really. Wolfie will get funding for some supports. I don’t know if adults do.” Here, she makes a mental note to look into this, if Abby wants her to. She’ll mention it to Nick later, and he’ll remember her foolproof memory, how she never needs to keep a list, she just keeps it all locked away inside that beautiful head of hers. He’ll remember the two hundred thousand dollars. But he’ll—carefully, consciously—put it to the side, to be brought up in family therapy at some point, if it seems important. They’re going weekly, and the therapist had invited them to bring Charlie in to the next session.

  To himself, he wonders if the money was an apology. Maybe Patricia looked back on her cruelty, her calculatedness, and it was the only way she knew how to make amends?

  God knows, he understands how hard it is to look directly at your flaws yourself.

  “But it might just help Abby and us to understand him a little better,” Olivia goes on. “In the meantime, I can send you some resources if you like.”

  Personally, Olivia thinks that Amelia is going to need more than resources. She’s googled some local therapists for her mother. She knows what six months’ worth of guilt feels like. She can’t begin to imagine thirty-one years of it. Not that she can imagine either of her parents agreeing to therapy.

  Then again, she never imagined they went to the police year in, year out, keeping Abby on a missing persons radar, in the only way they knew how. She knows that last visit was the link that led Rolands to Wolfie. She knows Ray would have helped Abby bring Wolfie back to her anyway, but she is grateful nevertheless.

  Maybe she doesn’t know her parents as well as she thought she did.

  Now, though, she turns her attention to dinner.

  “I’m going to make burritos, Little One,” she calls to Wolfie. “You wanna help?”

  Wolfie shades his eyes to look his mother, then shakes his head, his lips moving, fingers counting. Olivia feels afraid, but also determined. She has a stack of books on her bedside table. Help is available, and she will use it.