I could’ve told them that from the start. Actually, I did tell them that. I’d spent the previous year hearing Abby in his bedroom through the wall, watching his friends taking over the house, staring down the shelves of his trophies and awards.
Liam Chandler running away? No. Not possible. There was the dream, the feeling, and then he was gone. Never to be heard from again.
But there were sightings. Two hundred and nine the first week (a kid hitchhiking in Florida; another filling up a gas tank in Ohio with a dog in the backseat; one buying a lottery ticket in Maryland), followed by 330 the second week. Calls from people who meant well, and those who didn’t. No leads panned out. Nothing real, anyway. The sightings picked up, spread across the country like his image was contagious, then shrank back in, slowly but surely collapsing on themselves. Like he was fading, just as we were reaching for him.
I saw him once myself, over a year later, when the investigation had slid to a halt. This past winter. I’d had the flu, and he appeared to me in the middle of a fever dream. I had been half-sleeping—that type of semiconscious state when you’re sick, where you dream, but you’re always right there, on the cusp of waking. I was curled up on the couch, blanket tucked around me, medicine on the table, half-dreaming of his voice, speaking to me. Then I opened my eyes and he was right there. Standing across the living room, in the same clothes he wore the day he disappeared: jeans, long-sleeved maroon shirt, mud-streaked blue sneakers with dirty laces.
Liam, I said, we’ve been looking for you.
It was my father who found me, standing in the middle of the room, in the middle of the night, talking to empty space. Who put a hand on my forehead and dosed me with Motrin and said, Let’s not tell your mother about this.
But even as my father spoke, shaking me gently, washcloth on the back of my neck, Liam still stood in the corner, in front of the fireplace. His mouth moved, but no sound came out, like there was some boundary he was desperate to breach.
“Listen,” I tell Agent Lowell, “knock yourself out. We used to get hundreds of emails a day. Why does one matter now?”
“Because, Nolan, the email included an encrypted attachment. Turns out, it’s a picture.”
My shoulders tense, and from the quirk of his lips, it seems he enjoyed springing this little piece of information on me. “A picture of what?”
“A picture of Liam. Your brother.”
“From when?”
“Well,” he says, taking a deep breath. “That’s what we’re about to find out.”
I take a step back, so close to being pulled back in; a trap, a lure. A carrot on a stick, until we’re back where we started. “Abby has a thousand pictures of Liam, sir. My guess, you’re not gonna have to look all that hard.”
“You think this is Abby’s work, Nolan? That she faked an email to herself? Abby has always cooperated with the investigation.” As if implying that I have not. “She seems pretty shook up to me,” he adds.
But that was the thing about Abby. Everything shook her. It was just in her expression. Like she was always a step behind, surprised by where she found herself. The last time I’d seen it, she was in the car with me—the moment she realized what she was doing. Like I’d been the one to start it, instead of the other way around.
“Yes, I think this is her doing,” I say, but my words have less force, less conviction. And I no longer feel I can leave the house; I feel like there’s something holding me, against my will. I go upstairs to my room, leaving the agent to whatever he’s doing downstairs. The answers aren’t going to come like this, this simply. With a picture of my brother in an anonymous email, after all this time. Not to Abby.
No.
The truth was sent to me. Something has been trying to reach me, and now it’s finally pushing through.
* * *
—
I never told my father the other part of the fever dream. The words I could just barely make out, Liam’s lips moving too fast to make out the rest. Help us. Please.
I bought this equipment the very next morning.
The first thing I notice when I upload the new data is that the signal is no longer there. I mean, it was, but eventually the signal went dead, around the time Lydia mentioned the power going out. It’s not there after the reboot. I change views, change parameters, hit a thousand different random numbers searching for something more. But all that remains is the expected background noise of the vastness of space, exactly where it’s supposed to be—a whole lot of nothing, in an endless expanse of nothingness.
“No,” I mumble, something twisting inside. It was right here. I stare at the screen, scrolling through the data over and over.
“Kennedy? Can you come out here?” Joe calls, finally back from campus, but I’m not done checking, I keep hoping I’m wrong. It could be showing up somewhere I don’t understand, some part of the program I don’t know about—
“Hey, did you hear me?” Joe peeks his head into the room, catching me off guard. “What’s that?” he asks as I turn the monitor of the computer black.
“Physics,” I say, and Joe nods. Like, of course it’s physics. Not: I think I’m receiving a signal from outer space, but I think it’s a warning, and it’s coming to my house, which, by the way, I swing by at night sometimes while you’re sleeping.
“Can you take a break for a sec?” He asks this though I’ve already obviously shut it down. But we’re like this with each other, asking, always, before we step.
“Okay.” I follow Joe out to the living room, where he sits in the center of the sofa, his arms braced against his legs, leaning forward.
Oh God, we’re about to have a talk. This is the demeanor he exhibited when: we went over the ground rules; we discussed our living arrangement; he sat across from me in the hospital, trying to find the words. The police had taken me there, in the ambulance they had no use for otherwise, because they didn’t know what else to do with me. I sat there, alone, in a white-walled room, with white sheets, a white curtain, everything shadowed beyond the bed. I have no idea how long I was there, only that, by the time I left with Joe, it was daylight.
He’s gotten better at the words. Not so much the demeanor, though.
I perch on the edge of a flannel recliner chair that I’m fairly certain he found at the side of the road somewhere on trash day. And I balance myself carefully on the ledge, leaning forward, so I can take off at any moment, depending on the direction of the conversation.
It’s then I see he has a few sheets of papers beside him, folded into thirds. He spreads them open in front of him, his fingers trembling, like he’s prepared to give me some speech. “The district attorney’s office,” he begins, and I’m already standing.
Here I thought he was out having fun with friends. But he was probably just working his way up to this.
He puts the papers aside. “Kennedy, sit down. We’re supposed to do this. I promised them.”
“Joe, come on.”
“The trial starts next week, Kennedy.”
“It’s not my trial.”
I see the muscle in his jaw clenching, but he must’ve taken up yoga or something, because he takes this deep breath and the muscle finally relaxes. So much different than the early days, when he’d slam a door, grab at his hair, look up at the ceiling, his eyes bone-dry but looking as if he’d been crying. He takes a deep breath. “I told him we’d go over the questions. Just you and me. None of that.” He shakes his head, as if the problem were the office, the wooden table, the man, and not the crack running through everything.
“Joe, I know. I know. And we will, I promise. But I can’t tonight.” I scramble for any excuse, completely desperate. “Lydia asked if I could sleep over. I forgot to check with you, but I told her I’d be there after dinner.” I look at my phone. It’s definitely after dinner, whether we’ve eaten or not.
“It’s a school night,” he says, but his objection is halfhearted already.
“Right. But Lydia goes to my school. We’re studying. We were studying, earlier, but then I had to leave.” I stare directly at him, my eyes watering from not blinking. I’ve never lied to him so directly. I hold my breath.
“This is important,” he reiterates, though I can see he’s losing steam. Joe wants me to have friends, to have a social life. To move on. He wants me to do this.
“Tomorrow,” I say. “After school. I can do this tomorrow.” I gesture to the papers, the couch and chair, whatever this whole thing is.
He nods. “Do you need a ride?”
“No,” I say, “she’s close enough to take my bike.”
“Leave me the address. And a phone number.”