“What? I don’t do anything with the information. I’m just curious, is all,” she’d said. She seemed more surprised that I wouldn’t think to do the same.
I find the site now and plug in the property address for the house where Caleb grew up, and I pull up the listing. It was purchased by a Carlton Evers.
“Carlton!” I shout. “His name is Carlton!”
“I’m right here, Jessa,” Max says, jumping from the sound of my voice. But I catch him grin, excited by the new piece of information as well.
From there, it’s an easy enough search. Carlton is not a common name. I know, as soon as I type it in, I should get his obituary.
Instead, I pull up an article about a sentencing hearing. My stomach sinks. Ashlyn was right. “Oh God.” I skim the details.
Caleb lied about his father; his father was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for a conviction of arson and endangering the welfare of the people inside—Caleb and Eve. Apparently the whole thing was an accident, an insurance scam gone wrong; Eve and Caleb were supposed to be out of the house. But they weren’t.
It isn’t hard to understand why Caleb would lie about that, discovering that a parent almost recklessly killed you for a money scam. But still, it stings. He never chose to tell me. Even later.
I pull out the bus ticket from the drawer where I’ve stored Caleb’s things, because I have a feeling in my gut. This town. I pull it up on the map. I search for prisons, and find one. And I know, with sudden clarity, that his father had sent him that bus ticket, in hopes that he would use it.
He never did.
I don’t blame him. His father put his life in danger, for an insurance scam. It’s reprehensible. It’s unforgivable.
At the bottom of the article, there’s a mugshot, and my heart drops. He looks so different from the photos Caleb kept in his room, blurred and smiling in the distance. Here, the camera is zoomed in on his face, so close you can see the lines of rebellion or contempt.
I push the chair back. My breath catches. I’ve seen his face before. I’ve seen this man. “I know him,” I say. “Max, I’ve seen this man before.”
And so has Caleb.
I look closer, to be sure, but the face remains the same, lining up in my memory. I have seen this man before, with the eyes a little softer, some added weight with time, and the hair slicked back, as he brushed it out of his face, water dripping from the ends.
—
That day at the waterfall. The man in the river, who was swimming nearby. He waded through the water, offered to take our picture.
I flip through those photos now, until I find the right one. Caleb’s face is frozen in the image, as if he’s staring right through it, to something beyond, and he is. He was.
He’s looking right back at the camera with a haunted expression, looking right through the lens.
I think of the letter again, the one I found in his room. Begging him to show up. Three lines, to break my heart.
And eventually, when his father got out of prison, he did. But he didn’t want to go alone. He brought me, as a buffer, the first time he saw him. They didn’t interact at all that day. But it must’ve been the start.
Now I’m thinking of all the times he blew me off, when he wasn’t where I thought he would be. All the excuses he gave. Going to Jessa’s. Have to help set up for her brother’s party. If that date on his to-do list was for the second time they were meeting, and that was why he told me he couldn’t come at first.
Just as I think he’s left me behind, I’m realizing that all along, he’s been leading me closer, leaving a trail of clues. But now I’m worried what he’s brought me into.
Max stares at the side of my face. I stare at the computer screen. All these pieces, tying us together.
“I need to talk to Terrance Bilson,” I say. “A man came to see him, when Caleb was visiting him at college. I need to know if it was him.”
Max isn’t moving. He’s sitting at my computer, staring at the screen, at this part of Caleb we both never knew.
“Max,” I say, and he jerks back.
“I don’t know his number,” Max says.
“Okay. It’s okay. I know who will.”
I print out the mugshot image and throw everything in my purse, and already I’m making a plan. I hold tight to the items in my purse, these things he left behind. Fragments of lost memories. Now clues left behind, for me to follow. To find him.
—
I decide to ask Julian for Terrance’s number. I text him the question, assuming he’s in class. My phone rings a minute later. He’s rightly suspicious. “Why do you need Terrance’s number, Jessa?”
“Do you have it or not?” I ask.
He sighs, a drawn-out pause, in which I imagine the internal argument he has with himself. Then he starts rattling off a number—so maybe the pause was just him looking up his contact info.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Jessa? Is everything okay?”
Julian is one state away. One train ride. One car ride. It is both close and infinitely far away. “Yes,” I say.
“I can come home this weekend,” he says. He doesn’t even know what he’s offering, but part of me knew he would do it, that I could count on him.
“Julian,” I say. “You can’t help with this.” Julian is all rational, contained energy. He wants to believe the best of people. He believes that people want to tell him the truth. That he can fix things. But this is an emotional, gut response. You have to be willing to be wrong, and I don’t know if Julian has ever risked his own image in his life. If he’s willing to be the one out on the limb, who falls, who makes a scene. To lean forward and let someone else decide whether to drop you or not. To jump when you can’t see under the surface, when you don’t know what might be hidden underneath.
Terrance agrees to see me. Not that I gave him much choice. I asked him what time would be good for me to stop by, and I must’ve caught him off guard with the question, because he says he’ll be around all evening.
Max drives again, and I direct him. We don’t speak. There’s something too fragile hanging in the balance.
By the time we arrive on campus, it’s dark. My mom calls, asking where I am. My car is home, and I am not. Also, I’m supposed to be sick.
“I was feeling better. Hailey picked me up. We’re at the library,” I tell her, and she pauses, like she can feel the lie.
“Jessa, please come home.”
I wonder if Julian called her to say he was worried. Always thinking it’s the right thing to do, that he knows what’s best for me.
“I will,” I say. “Soon. Mom. I’m just in the middle of something.” I hang up, and I turn the phone to silent.
Terrance’s dorm room is on the third floor of an old building with no elevators. The walls are made of something that looks like cinder blocks, painted over. When he opens the door, he looks too big for the room, which has two twin-sized beds crammed beside two desks, and another above-average-sized guy behind him. The other guy is eating Chinese food from a carton at his desk, and the scent is overwhelming.