“Yeah,” he says, staring at me like he’s in awe or something.
She looks down at him like she’s sad for him, like she doesn’t want to let go. “Well, anyway,” she says. “I’ll pick you up at two? That way we can get back to Aunt Gisele’s place to dress.” She turns her attention back to me. “My sister’s getting married tonight. Her second marriage, but still.” She hugs Tony, and I can tell they’re close, that she’s a good mom. All that goodness, I think, near so much evil. It doesn’t make sense. She says, “You two have a good visit.”
We watch as she drives off, till her car vanishes around a corner gas station. Then Tony looks back at me with those sharp, big eyes. He has on a green jacket that doesn’t seem warm enough for this chill. I take in the park. “Let’s find a bench?” I say. We walk to the nearest one, right in front of a rickety swing set and slide, and sit. Tony keeps fidgeting. I smile over at him. I want to tell him to relax.
“So,” I prompt. “Sam was your friend.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Sam Hunnicutt. That’s what he said his name was.”
“Oh,” I say. My belly clenches, but I know this is just the beginning. I want the blanks filled in, but I’m afraid to read the sentences once they’re complete.
“We became friends pretty quick. He was the only other kid my age in the complex when we moved in. I guess by the time we met he’d been there for a year.”
“You didn’t . . . You didn’t suspect anything was wrong?” I ask.
He looks down at his hands. His nails are bitten. “No,” he says. “Sam was quiet, but just, like, a normal kid. And Mr. Hunnicutt—Rusty. I mean, he was kind of grumpy and overprotective. But he seemed okay. He seemed normal.”
“But he wasn’t,” I say, more sharply than I mean to. I’m here to listen, I remind myself. Listen, and try to—try to what? What am I here to find out?
“Yeah. We’d play video games and he always said Rusty didn’t allow it and he always felt bad when we did, and finally we stopped doing that because I think he got in trouble once when Rusty found out. Rusty thought video games rotted your brain or something.”
“So, everyone thought Sam was . . . his son?” Saying this makes me want to vomit.
“No, his nephew,” he says, sounding sad. “Sam called him Rusty. Or sometimes he called him Uncle. When he called him that, you could tell it felt weird to him.” His big eyes look desperate. “You gotta believe me. It seemed normal. I mean, Rusty was really strict. I’d hear him yelling at Sam sometimes. But otherwise, they got along really good. I’d see them laugh together. Make fun of each other, but in a . . . you know, like friends do. It just seemed like nothing was wrong.”
Surely Tony’s memories are messed up. There’s no way this can be right. Sam was a captive. A prisoner. I inhale a deep breath of cold air. Tony must realize I’m upset because he doesn’t say anything else. He starts nibbling his nails.
Off in the distance, I take in Central High. Seeing it grounds me for a moment. I spent so many days there, while Sam spent his in that apartment, with that man. But now that man is in prison, locked away, and Sam’s with us. We have him back. I feel some of the knots loosening inside me.
“Sam didn’t go to school,” I say at last. “What did he do all day?”
Tony quickly pulls his hands away from his mouth. “He told me he was homeschooled. I guess that was weird because Rusty worked all the time, so when was he ever there to homeschool him? But I didn’t think much of it. Sam had these textbooks, he’d show me, but we didn’t talk about school and stuff. I just thought he was lucky.”
“Lucky?”
Tony shrugs, starts biting his nails again before he catches himself. “Yeah. I hated school. I mean, it’s better now. But people would call me Obama. No one was really that mean, but I was sort of . . . Well, you get it. But Sam never made me feel weird. Plus, we both had one parent, sort of, so we bonded that way.”
My belly kind of lurches when I realize he views that “one parent” as Russell Hunnicutt—not Mom.
“What did he say about his mother? His parents?” I ask.
“Uh,” he says, sounding hesitant.
“It’s okay,” I say. Breathe, I think, so that the queasy feeling I have won’t make me want to roll into a ball on the ground. “Go on.”
He won’t look at me, and I can tell he doesn’t want to say anything, and I almost wish he wouldn’t. “He said they died in a car wreck when he was a baby. When they lived in Ohio,” he says, his voice quiet.
“Died,” I say, like this is a new word I’m just learning.
“He talked about his aunt a lot, though, and his cousin. His cousin Beth. You.”
Cousin. Cousin Beth.
“A lot makes sense now. He talked about you all the time. I mean, I like my cousins okay, but we’ve never been that close, you know? Once I found Sam sitting at the picnic table in the courtyard, crying. I asked him why and he told me it was because he missed his aunt and cousin.”
It’s so much to take in. Cousin Beth. These fake worlds he had to create.
“These reporters all came to our complex, after the truth came out. After they took Rusty away,” he says. “They wondered how we couldn’t know that we had a kidnapped kid there. They made us feel like . . . like we were criminals.”
I picture the cameras, the reporters, invading their territory like they did with us.
“Those days, after it all happened, Mom and I just sat on the couch with the TV on, pretending like none of it was true. And one day she just finally started crying like crazy, and I did, too. Because we just felt . . . We should have known. We should have . . . saved him.” His voice trails off and he stands up, suddenly. He walks around for a little bit, and I think he might be crying, but I stay frozen to my seat. Finally, he walks back and settles back onto the bench, beside me.
“I really miss Sam,” he says.
I do too, I realize. I miss my brother—who he was. Because the Sam at home, I don’t really know him.
But I want to.
“What was he like?” I ask. “I mean, as a friend?”
Tony’s quiet for a bit, like he’s surprised at the question. “He was nice,” Tony says, his voice brightening. “He was funny. I mean, I guess he could be quiet. And a little nervous sometimes when it came to Rusty.” He shakes his head. “He was so different from the guys at my school. They’re so loud and annoying, and Sam wasn’t that way.”
He could have been, I think. But that part of his personality had been snuffed out. He wasn’t allowed to become a normal teenage boy.
“I miss him,” Tony says again.
“I know,” I say, hoping I sound comforting. It’s dawning on me that Sam’s return has affected so many people besides just me and my family. “Maybe one day you can come visit.”