The camera swung to the right, and there was Danny. This was shot in 2008, so he was eight years old. In a couple of years he’d be gone. He was sitting by the edge of the present pile, towheaded and dressed in the same matching pajama set Nicholas was wearing, only his were blue instead of green. He had ripped the wrapping paper off the corner of a box and was snooping at what was beneath.
“No peeking, Danny!” said a voice from somewhere off camera. It sounded like Lex.
“Hey, that’s mine!” Nicholas cried.
“I was just looking!” Danny said. “Don’t be such a baby.”
Danny’s father entered the room, carrying a tray filled with steaming mugs. I hadn’t met Robert Tate in person yet, only spoken to him on the phone. No one seemed to be in any hurry to take me to the state penitentiary in Lompoc where he was doing his time, which was just fine by me.
The family drank hot chocolate and started to open the massive pile of presents. Nicholas carefully peeled the tape and paper off his boxes and examined each gift closely, while Danny tore into his in his frenzy to get to the gift beneath. He took one look at the remote controlled car Jessica had given him before putting it aside in favor of the mystery of the next wrapped box. Pretty typical kid behavior, which was only remarkable in how different it was from Nicholas’s. Patrick had Lex sit beside him and unwrap his gifts so he could keep filming, which took a while since Lex kept coming and going from the room. Robert gave Jessica a diamond bracelet he said he’d seen her eyeing in a store window in New York the month before. She stumbled over her thank-you, and when he leaned in to kiss her, she turned her head toward one of the speaking children, and his lips hit her cheek.
It was all here. Everything there was to know about these people, if I could just watch closely enough.
I closed my eyes for a moment and imagined myself in Danny’s place, felt the crinkle of the wrapping paper under my hands, the sweet aftertaste of the hot chocolate on my tongue, the warmth in my body that came from being loved and belonging. I could almost believe it was a real memory.
I watched the entire video of Christmas/Klosters—which turned out to be some fancy ski resort—and another of the grandparents’ wedding anniversary. Mostly, the videos reinforced what I’d already learned about Danny. He was extroverted, funny, and high-spirited, with a tendency to be inconsiderate of others. He worshipped Patrick, but he and Nicholas fought frequently, which had to explain some of Nicholas’s ambivalence to me, although it did seem a bit extreme for him to be holding a grudge against his kidnapped brother over some childhood scraps.
But then, half-asleep and almost ready to throw in the towel for the night, I noticed something I hadn’t before. I couldn’t believe it had escaped my attention for so long.
In one way, if no other, Danny was a lot like me. He was a watcher.
I was well into the anniversary video before I caught it, because he was surprisingly subtle, but when I ran back the DVD, I saw things I’d missed the first time through. Danny eavesdropping on a conversation between his parents, pretending to fill up his drink while Jessica and Robert had a low conversation just a couple of feet away. Peering around Lex’s shoulder to read what she was texting. Even peeking at Nicholas’s present. I’d assumed that Danny’s thoughtlessness was the product of a childlike obliviousness to his surroundings, but now I was thinking that very little escaped Danny’s attention.
For the first time I felt a real kinship with him.
By the end of the anniversary video I could barely keep my eyes open anymore. The rest of my research would have to wait for another night. I shut down the DVD player and replaced the DVDs I’d removed. On my way back to my room I stopped in the kitchen. It had been many hours since dinner, and my stomach was rumbling. I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and was rummaging in the pantry for a snack when I heard the front door open. I froze as the beeps of someone entering the security code into the alarm panel echoed off the marble floors of the foyer and into the kitchen. I was stuck with no way to get back upstairs.
I heard the soft tapping of shoes in the hallway, and then, before I could decide what to do, Jessica was standing in front of me.
? ? ?
She startled when she saw me, and I could tell from the quickness of her reaction that she was actually sober. She reached automatically for the light switch but then dropped her hand without flipping it.
“What are you doing down here?” she asked.
“I was thirsty,” I said.
“Oh,” she said.
Silence.
“I guess I’ll go back to bed now,” I said.
“How is school?” she asked, the words coming out in a rush.
“Um, it’s okay,” I said.
She nodded. “That’s good.”
“Yeah.”
She twisted the two rings she wore on her right hand, spinning them around and around. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around much lately. I haven’t been feeling well.”
Rampant alcoholism will do that to you.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I hope you feel better soon.”
“Thanks,” she said.
This was bizarre. I had to get away.
“I’m going to go back to bed,” I said.
“Okay,” she said.
To get to the stairs I had to pass her. Her hands clenched into fists as I got closer to her, like she was afraid they would reach out to me of their own accord.
“Good night, Mom,” I said over my shoulder as I walked away.
She didn’t turn look at me. “Good night.”
? ? ?
After those first few days in the Tate house, I’d rarely thought about Jessica. Except for the day she resurfaced to enroll me in school, she was such a nonentity that I sometimes forgot she even existed. Aside from Mia, who sometimes asked where she was, no one ever talked about her.
Maybe because of the mother I’d had, it didn’t strike me as particularly strange at the time.
I still can’t believe how blind I was.
? ? ?
“She hates me,” I told Lex the next morning. “She won’t even look at me.”
“I told you, Danny, she’s sick,” Lex said. She was scrambling eggs while I was keeping watch over the toaster. It was Saturday morning and we had the house to ourselves. Patrick was at work, Mia was at Eleanor’s house, and Nicholas had gone hiking with Asher, which I assumed was a lie, because I couldn’t imagine Nicholas hiking. He had been pointedly ignoring me since whatever happened out at the pool, and he’d even snapped something I couldn’t make out at Lex this morning on his way out the door.
“She keeps all of us at arm’s length, not just you,” Lex continued. “And I think . . . Honestly? I think she’s a little scared of you.”
The toast popped out of the toaster, and I jumped. “What? Why?”
She shrugged. “If she lets herself believe you’re really back, you could disappear again. I know it sounds stupid, but I think she’s just trying to protect herself. Because she loves you so much.”
“Is that Nicholas’s excuse too?” I asked.
Lex’s back was turned to me, but I saw her freeze. “What do you mean?”
“He just seems mad at me all the time,” I said.
She turned and scooped some eggs from the skillet onto my plate, a tight smile on her face. “Well, there’s always been tension between you two, and he’s not great with change. I’m sure he just needs a little more time to adjust to all of this.”