That left me.
That’s why Earl and I got so close, I guess. Before Sam disappeared, we didn’t get along that well. But with Sam gone, when Mom kind of shut down, it was me and Earl, working together, trying to keep everything from falling apart. Mom worked all day, and then she’d come home and glue herself to the computer, or else make phone calls, and so Earl and I would cook dinner sometimes—nothing fancy, nothing like Mom could cook, but it got food on the table. When the house got messy, Earl and I would pick up the slack and vacuum, mop the kitchen, change sheets, scrub the bathrooms, do the laundry, all the stuff Mom used to do on autopilot. When she had one of her crying spells, we’d both sit next to her and just hold her till she calmed down. When she had one of her bad patches, where all she could do was lie in bed, either crying or half-sleeping, Earl and I would just sit and watch the TV on low volume, ready to go to her if she called out. Or I’d do my homework at the kitchen table while he read a book in his recliner till he started snoring and I’d tap his feet with my pencil and he’d wake.
I take another sip of the drink and, again, he doesn’t stop me. He’s staring at his cigarette now. What must he be thinking? Is he happy, or scared? Is he thinking about what our lives will be like now? Sam is back. And maybe Mom is back—back to who she was before Sam went away. What does that mean for us? As if reading my thoughts, Earl reaches his hand across the table. I take it in mine. He doesn’t answer the questions in my head. He doesn’t speak. And neither do I. The silence is nice, so we just sit there, safe in the present moment.
===
During the first few weeks after Sam had vanished, I had to sit at home and wait for any important phone calls while neighbors hovered about—Mrs. Sykes, the Kellers, others, depending on the day. Aunt Shelley came for a week, too, before she had to get back to Nashville, feeling helpless. Mom and Earl, went out driving, looking around. The police were looking, too, of course. But Mom took matters into her own hands. “I have to do something,” she told me. “I can’t just sit and wait.” She organized a search of the woods, even though that’s not where Sam was last seen, and other places, too. Mr. and Mrs. Keller, everyone in the neighborhood, Mom’s boss and other coworkers, the guys on Earl’s construction crew—everyone tried to help. They scoured any snatches of forest along Skyland. They knocked on doors and posted signs. They went on the news, making appeals for anyone to come forward if they’d seen Sam. Surely, on that busy road, someone had seen something. Sam’s picture—his fifth-grade school portrait, where he’s wearing a blue-and-red-striped polo and his impish, winning grin—was published in the newspaper each day for weeks. Mom and Earl were on the phone constantly—with the police, sheriffs, FBI. I never could understand who was in charge of what. There were leads, tons of them, but they all proved to be false. It seems that people thought that every eleven-year-old kid in the state of Alabama might just be Sam. In those first weeks, looking for Sam consumed every waking moment of our lives.
A lot of the time I was at home alone, waiting, sitting around. I felt bad if I read a book, or watched TV. Any mental space not devoted to Sam felt like a betrayal. Like I was a bad sister. A bad daughter. Just a bad person all around.
I thought back to that day and wondered what I could have done differently. I should have put my foot down—No, Sam, you can’t go. Or I should have gone with him and Josh. Maybe I should have tattled on him as soon as Mom got home. No, I should have called her the minute he left the house. Over and over in my mind, there was always something I could have done—one little thing—and Sam would still be with us. And sometimes I got angry. I wanted to run over to Josh’s house and grab him and slap him, ask him why he left my brother like that. And then I’d get mad at Sam, for being so dumb. You brat, I would think, you always had to get your way. If you’d just have obeyed the rules for once, we’d all be fine. You’d be here still. Sometimes, I’d cry myself to sleep, hating Josh and hating Sam and then hating myself most of all.
At the end of August, our despair about Sam reached a fever pitch. The blistering heat didn’t help. Going outside, it felt like God was mocking us. Oh, your brother’s missing? How about some sunburn and heatstroke to go along with that? I started taking long cold showers, and that way the sound of the water could stifle my sobs.
One night, I heard Mom on the phone, speaking loudly like she was upset, or more upset than usual. I cracked my door open so I could hear. For a terrifying moment I thought she had some news about Sam.
“No, don’t come,” I heard her say. “I told you a million times these past few weeks, it wouldn’t do any good.”
I knew then that she was talking to my dad. Not just by what she said, but from the contempt in her voice.
“Don’t take that tone with me. I know you blame me, but—no, but . . .” I hadn’t seen him in two years. I hadn’t wanted to. Part of me hated him. He’d left us. He’d chosen to be away from us. Why should I miss him? But right then, for some reason, it hit me: I did miss him. I was desperate for him. I crept down the hall. Mom paced about on the cordless, her back to me.
“It would just be a distraction. . . . No, she doesn’t need you, you’d just—”
“Mom!”
She spun around. She cupped the mouthpiece and said, “Go back to bed.”
“I wanna speak to Dad.”
“It’s late. You can speak with him tomorrow.”
“Dad!” I shouted, something inside me erupting. “Daddy, come home!” Daddy—had I ever called him that? I ran up to Mom and tried to snatch the phone away, but she dodged me.
“Beth, stop it!”
I kept shouting “Daddy!” I clawed for the phone, and she looked at me like I was crazy. And I guess I was crazy. We all were by then. Tears on my cheeks, my eyes cloudy, I started hyperventilating. And suddenly Earl was there and had his arms around me and was walking me back to my room. “I want my daddy,” I said through my sobs, like a pathetic little girl.
“Shhh,” Earl said.
Earl told me to focus on breathing. In and out, in and out. And I don’t know why, but I think that’s when it really and truly hit me that Sam was gone forever. But more than that: That’s when I first thought that he was probably dead. I couldn’t fool myself any longer. Something horrible had happened to him and he was never coming back.