What did Leila think? What did Leila believe? I knew who I believed. The mother’s confusion had been real, her grief alive. She seemed just like a woman who had been blindsided by the news that her son was missing. But she also seemed to believe her son was out there, that he could be returned. Maybe she hadn’t had time to process it; maybe she didn’t know about the odds of a child missing for this long coming back unharmed. Maybe she just had a mother’s hope that it would all work out. Or maybe she knew where he was.
You bring him back. That demand seemed oddly—directive. It was like seeing Joshua’s scrawl on the barn wall. LIAR GO TO HELL—it wasn’t a statement. It was a direction: you, you go to hell. And of course he meant me.
And then I knew what had really caught my attention. Deputy Tara Lombardi’s gentle reach for Bo Ransey’s arm. I’d seen her do that before, seen him shake her off on the courthouse steps when she was escorting him off the premises. He’d shaken the smug look off her face, for once.
But what if that wasn’t the whole story? What did I know about either of them? Only that Deputy Lombardi hadn’t thought much of the suggestion that Bo and Charity were a couple. Only that Deputy Lombardi didn’t think much of Leila Ransey, Mrs. Ransey, either.
I thought back over all the times Tara Lombardi had passed through my life, her eyes slashing and her doll-baby voice full of suggestion.
I’d seen her name somewhere, too, and struggled to remember. The newspaper? No. That evidence form Keller had given me placed Lombardi at Bo’s house early the morning Aidan was taken. So early as to be ahead of the call to 911?
But then I remembered the neighbor walking his dog in Sugar Creek Park. The park was normally safe as houses, he’d said. A sheriff’s car had been patrolling even that morning. The very morning before Charity’s body was discovered.
I flung open the door to the building and ran up the stairs, fumbling for my keys just as Margaret swept open her door and started yelling about the noise. At the top of the stairs stood Joe Jeffries.
I glanced down at myself. I could smell the raw scent of my afternoon: hay, wool, sweat, sex.
“I thought—was it tonight? I thought—”
He turned. “Anna—”
“I’m running incredibly late,” I said, opening the door wide and gesturing him inside. “And I haven’t even told Joshua I’m going out.”
“Anna—”
“Maybe we’d better reschedule—I might be needed at the sheriff’s—did you hear? Or, look, the truth is—”
“Anna, listen.” He waited for me to pay attention. “I’m here because I heard something troubling. I don’t know if it’s . . . is Joshua here?”
“Of course. Or he might be . . . well, I guess not practice.”
“He didn’t come to school today.”
I stopped. “What are you talking about? I heard him leave this morning. He was on time, for once.”
The hallway was dark, and beyond that, Joshua’s door was closed. He’d be in there until I rousted him out, the headphones on, the hair in his eyes.
Joe took a step toward me, and I backed away. I could still smell the sheriff’s cologne on my skin.
“Is he here?” Joe said.
“Probably in his room. Who said he didn’t show up to school?”
“I’m saying he didn’t show up. He was reported absent in homeroom, but that’s nothing to get alarmed about. But then—”
“I’ve been out all afternoon, but I was in this morning. He didn’t stay home today.” But then I remembered the in-service day. He hadn’t stayed home that day, either. “Let me—wait, let’s just check.”
The hall, only ten paces, grew longer; by the third step, my mind had turned toward the time that had passed since I’d seen him. I was just being paranoid. Aidan was missing, so any boy could go missing.
When I reached Joshua’s door, I could feel the quiet beyond. I knew the room would be empty. I swung the door open.
His bed was unmade, the floor littered with magazines and video game cords. The boxes that still held his clothes, open and overflowing.
“One of his friends was spreading a rumor today,” Joe said.
“Which friend?”
He stared at me, his mouth slightly open. “It’s the rumor you need to care about.”
“What did he say? Where’s Joshua?”
“His friend was saying—look, I don’t want to upset you. But it was all over football practice today that Joshua was running away.”
“That’s—” Absurd. Completely wrong.
But I couldn’t say it. I saw the look on Joshua’s face as he called me a liar. I felt the black force of the words meant for me on the barn wall.
Jeffries cleared his throat. “Have you seen him since this morning?”
Besides the call to the phone in the early hours, I hadn’t talked to him since last night, not since he’d blown up at me. Not since—not since I’d hit him. “No.” I opened Joshua’s closet door. The mess that met me there seemed right. “No. He couldn’t have run away. It’s ridiculous.”
“He hasn’t been having any troubles lately? At home?”
I glared at him. “You know he’s had some issues lately. At school. Where could he be?” I pushed past Joe into the hallway. “Joshua? Are you here?” I pushed open my bedroom door hopefully: dark. The bathroom: dark. The front room was wide open, not a single hiding place.
Joe came up behind me. “I know he’s had some problems with his schoolwork. But to run away? Does that seem like Joshua to you?”
I turned in a slow circle, taking in the empty room. Something wasn’t right. What was it? And then I saw. His backpack was missing from the table. “His backpack.”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” I said. A shrill alarm began to ring in my ears, and I raised my voice to be heard over it. “I don’t know.”
“OK,” Joe said. “Let’s be calm. What about his backpack?”
“It’s not on the table. It’s always, always on the table.” I thought of the pack’s dense bulk, the thump it made when he set it down. “He hasn’t been home.” I ran back down the hall to his room and pulled back the sliding door of his closet again. On the floor sat a stack of books: Our Land and Its People, math.
Oh, God.
I fell to my knees. Joe came to the door, his cell phone already out and to his ear. I picked up the copy of Huckleberry Finn, its edges frayed from its crushing life inside the backpack. “He’s been carrying this around forever.”
“Are all his books there? Yes, hello,” Joe said into the phone. “I need to have the police—Keller. I need the sheriff. Anna, are those the books for his current classes?”
My hands shook as I sorted through the stack.
“The sheriff, yes,” Joe said into the phone. “We might have a runaway situation. We’re not sure. Anna, your address.”
I was going through the books again.
“Anna, what is your address?”
“He didn’t run away.” I was running a finger down the spines of the books and found the loophole I needed, the hope. “His history class stuff is missing.” He must have gone to school. Who would run away with history books weighing them down?