“Which you never do anyway. If you did, I wouldn’t have been called in to your school today.”
He dropped his face to the floor. “Oh,” he said into the carpet.
“Yeah, it was a good time for everyone,” I said. “I got to hear all about your stellar work ethic and some incident with a chalkboard.”
He looked up, wincing. In a strange way, I liked him like this. I said something, he reacted. Better than silence. At least I knew he could hear me.
“Or maybe I should say not involving a chalkboard. And now Mr. Jeffries wants me to come to your school and show everyone the magic of handwriting analysis—”
Joshua rose from the floor so quickly, I jumped back.
“You’re not going to, are you?” He threw the game controller to the floor and stared at it. So much like Ray just now, busting up his toys. “That’s what I need.”
He yanked the headphones off and sat heavily on the edge of his bed. I waited for him to swipe at his bangs. He did.
My mind raced to catch up with him. What was I learning?
“I won’t go if you don’t want me to,” I said slowly. “But—come with me now. We’ll grab burgers and malts at the Dairy Bar, and I’ll help you with your homework after.”
He turned a creased forehead toward me. He’d gotten so much from me, even if he did have Ray’s profile, his eyes. Look at the disbelieving expression on his face. Look at his suspicion. Look at his doubt. I’d given him that. Every bit of that was from me.
Chapter Seven
In the car, Joshua tucked himself into the passenger door. I fidgeted with the radio, finally deciding on silence. It was a cool evening, good for a drive. We pulled through town slowly, the windows rolled down. In the square, a group of boys sat on the wall enclosing the courthouse lawn. Joshua’s head swiveled as we passed.
The limestone buildings of downtown gave way to some older wood-frame houses, then a pharmacy, a gas station, a tire place, then a dirty white shop with blank windows. The sidewalks grew rough, cracked. We were only a mile or two from our comfortable apartment and its double deadbolts, but I felt the presence of those old enemies, decay and neglect. I slowed, leaning toward the passenger side to gaze up at the houses on that side of the street. Joshua’s hair was still wet from his shower and he smelled sweet: bar soap, laundry detergent, warm skin.
“What are we doing?” he said finally, as though granting me a favor.
“Research for a job I’m doing here in town,” I said, pulling the truck over to the side. A few impatient drivers rushed around us.
“Where’s the handwriting?”
“It’s not quite like that. It’s more like . . . reconnaissance.”
He glanced at me. A word of war, of video games. I hadn’t meant to offer a branch, but he seemed interested. “Recon? Are you on a stakeout or something?” He was teasing me, and I took the time to enjoy it. He leaned toward the windshield and peered out.
“OK, maybe more like surveillance.” I pointed to the specific house, a gray square-faced place with two front doors. One stood partly open, the screen hanging crooked. The porch sagged under the weight of a couch and a stack of boxes and milk crates.
“Did a murder happen here?”
“Do you think I’d be sitting here? Do you think I’d bring you along? A little boy is missing. This is his house.”
“I bet he’s not missing the house,” Joshua said.
Part of me wanted to agree with him, but I knew better. How could I explain to him how complicated it was, to love and hate a place so much? To know your home’s lack but still defend it—even yearn for it. To see glossy color photos of it and be angry it still existed without you. “He might be. This is his home, no matter what it looks like. If a stranger took him, I’m sure he’s missing it very much.”
“Did a stranger take him?”
I pictured the grocery list clawed into pink paper. “No,” I said. “His mother took him. His father wants him back.”
“Oh.” He sunk back in his seat and picked at a spot on his window with a fingernail.
“There’s a part of me that hopes the mother gets away,” I said, willing him to react. I wanted him to agree with me, but why should he? I was asking too much of him. Most of the time I asked too little, except his entire stock of faith.
“Why?” he said.
“I can tell from her handwriting that she loves her son so much, and all I can tell from the dad’s handwriting is that he’s probably not the kind of man who should’ve been anyone’s father,” I said. “That’s a problem, because I’m supposed to help the father get his son back.”
“Did you help?”
“I’m helping. But it’s hard to do what’s right. Right doesn’t always feel right.” I watched the back of Joshua’s neck. “And if the mother did take him, then—” I thought of the ridiculously attractive young babysitter. “Then she might have done a terrible thing in order to get her son away.”
I looked up at the house and thought I saw a face—a woman, young, dark hair—peeking out from behind a curtain. The curtain dropped.
A dark vehicle screeched to a stop next to our truck. I turned my head and saw the glint of the streetlight flash on the hood of a black SUV just as it started to back up and parallel park behind us. I pulled forward to make room, then did a U-turn toward home.
Back through town, Joshua slumped against the passenger door, as far from me as he could get.
I took a deep breath. We were supposed to talk about math, but I didn’t think math was the problem. “Would it be the worst thing, for the little boy to live with his mom and not his dad?”
He began to pick at the spot on the window again. “No.”
“No?”
“But why?” he said.
“Why what?”
“Well, why couldn’t he see him?” he said. “Sometimes?”
Shards of memory: the glint of sun on the new boat oar. Lake water at the back of my throat.
We drove on, stopping for a red light a few blocks from the apartment. The truck rumbled lightly under us as I calculated the silence ahead. He was only thirteen. At least five years until college, and then what? In the silence, he might become the very thing I feared. Or worse: I might lose him altogether.
The image that came to me now was my mother, leaning against a kitchen counter, then turning away. I’d had a broken arm and she’d said—what had she said? This isn’t how I raised you. To talk back, she meant.
The light changed but I sat staring at the bright green circle, immobile until the car behind us honked. I pulled through the light and to the side of the street, threw the truck into park, and turned to him. What were the words we had agreed on, over time?
“Joshua, you know your dad had some—he was sick, and I didn’t think he could get better,” I said. “I worry that I was wrong, but I don’t think so. I worry about a lot of things. If there’s something you want to talk about . . .”