“Hey, Dad,” I said into the phone. “You got my messages?”
“Yes.” Dad sounded so tired, and I could barely hear him over the din on his end of the phone. “Tell me what happened?”
I told him all about the phone call from Jude, trying to recount it word for word. Then I told him about how Jude had been in Daniel’s apartment in Maryanne’s basement.
Dad was silent for a moment. “All this searching for him, and he was practically in our own backyard,” he finally said. He sounded angry, shocked, and relieved all at the same time. “Anything else? Have you heard from him again?”
“No.” I hesitated for a moment. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to share Daniel’s theory with Dad, but I knew I shouldn’t hold anything back that might help find Jude. “Nothing definitive, anyway, but I think he may have actually been in our backyard.” I told Dad about James’s seeing something at his window, then the ransacking of Day’s Market, and the attempted break-in at the school.
“Daniel thinks it’s Jude.” I was just pulling into our driveway, and I decided to sit in the idling car until I was done talking to Dad—I didn’t want anyone to overhear our conversation.
“That’s a logical conclusion,” Dad said. “It makes sense.”
“Does it? Why would he do those things? Why is he back?”
“I don’t know, Gracie.” He sighed, and I heard some announcer’s voice in the background. He must have been at an airport or a train station. “I really don’t know.”
“Are you on your way home?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“What? But Jude was here. Why aren’t you coming—?”
“I need to go. It’s the last call for my train. I’ll explain later, but I don’t know when I’ll be home.”
Anger surged inside of me. Dad was gone all the time, and I’d thought it was because he was desperately looking for Jude—looking for a way to make our family whole again. But maybe it was us he was trying to stay away from? Why else wouldn’t he come home now? Right now when we needed him most.
“Fine. Just don’t forget where you live in the meantime,” I said.
“I’m sorry. I’ll come home as soon as I can.” Then he called to someone else on his end, “Yes, that’s my bag. I’m coming.” He cleared his throat and spoke back into the phone again. “One last thing, Gracie. You are not, under any circumstances, allowed to go looking for Jude on your own.”
I made a scoffing noise. It would have been a laugh if I hadn’t been so upset. I just found it funny and annoying at the same time that Dad would say the same thing as Daniel. Like they thought I wasn’t capable of not going out and looking for Jude.
“Just don’t, Gracie. You aren’t prepared for what you might find.…” He sighed heavily into the phone. “And we’ve already lost one child. Your mother would never survive if you left us, too.”
LATER
Mom was asleep on the couch when I finally went inside, the evening news playing in the background. I didn’t bother to wake her and went straight up the stairs. I was more than exhausted, drained of everything, and I could barely keep my eyes open. I was halfway to my bed when Baby James started crying in his room. It was a whimpering, frightened whine, growing louder and louder. I pushed his door open and looked in on him. He sat in his toddler-sized bed, rubbing his eyes. With the light from the hallway, I could see big, fat tears running down his red-splotched face.
“It’s okay.” I dropped my backpack in his doorway and scooped him up in my arms. “It’s okay, Baby James.”
“Not baby,” James said through his sobs. He was only two and half and was already starting to resist his family pet name.
“You’re right. You’re a big boy, huh?”
James nodded and cuddled close into my shoulder.
“Did you have another bad dream?”