Chương 2
“He told me what to write.”
I stood too fast and had to catch myself against the wall.
“Mr. Cho.”
The manager returned.
“I’m here.”
“Please keep him with you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m calling the police.”
There was no hesitation on his end.
“I think that’s the right thing to do.”
My mother’s neighbor, Mrs. Feldman, watched me with both hands pressed together beneath her chin.
She had known me since I was twelve and still called me Jenny when she forgot I was forty-one.
“Jennifer,” she said when I ended the call.
“What did that man do?”
I looked at my phone.
There were three unread messages from Gideon.
The newest had arrived twelve minutes earlier.
Great beach day.
Kids wiped out.
Leo says hi.
I opened our thread and scrolled upward.
Every ordinary lie remained there in blue and gray bubbles.
Breakfast.
Swimming.
A movie.
Ice cream.
Sleep.
The complete fictional week of a child who had been alone in Ohio while his stepfather drank beer beside an ocean.
I called Gideon.
He answered on the fourth ring with wind roaring behind him.
“Hey.”
I heard music, then Camila laughing in the distance.
“You okay?”
“Where’s Leo?”
The wind stopped abruptly as if he had stepped indoors.
“What?”
“Put Leo on the phone.”
A beat passed.
“He’s showering.”
I looked at Mrs. Feldman.
She must have seen something in my face because she sat down hard on the hallway bench.
“Gideon.”
“What’s going on?”
“Put my son on the phone.”
“He’s in the shower, Jen.”
His irritation arrived now, useful and familiar.
“I’m not dragging him out soaking wet because you’re having a panic moment.”
I almost admired the performance.
Almost.
“What did he have for dinner?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Answer it.”
“Pizza.”
My nails dug into my palm.
“What kind?”
“For Christ’s sake.”
“What kind of pizza?”
“Pepperoni.”
He sighed loudly.
“We ordered from that place near the hotel.”
“You’re at the hotel?”
“Yes.”
“And Leo is there?”
“Obviously.”
Mrs. Feldman bent down and began peeling the foil away from her casserole, then seemed to remember what she was doing and stopped.
I could hear my own pulse.
“Tell me the hotel name.”
Another pause.
“You know the hotel.”
“No.”
“You have the reservation.”
“You booked it.”
“Jen, I don’t know what this is, but I’m not doing an interrogation while you’re upset.”
There it was.
The pivot.
My grief had become evidence against me.
“Is Roger there?”
“Yes.”
“Put him on.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to ask him something.”
“No.”
That answer came too fast.
In the background, a sliding door opened.
A child said something I could not understand.
Gideon covered the phone, but not completely.
“Go back outside.”
The voice was Roger’s.
“Dad, are we getting dinner?”
“In a minute.”
I waited.
Gideon returned.
“Look, the kids are hungry.”
“My son is sitting inside Keller’s Market in Columbus.”
Nothing came through the phone.
Not wind.
Not breathing.
Nothing.
Then Gideon said, “What?”
It was too clean.
Too controlled.
“My son.”
I forced each word out separately.
“Is at Keller’s Market.”
“He what?”
“He walked there because he ran out of milk.”
Gideon made a noise that might have been a cough.
“Jen, listen.”
“No.”
“This is not what you think.”
“Six days.”
“He wasn’t supposed to leave the house.”
The sentence escaped him before he could catch it.
Mrs. Feldman closed her eyes.
I did not speak.
Gideon began again, faster.
“I mean, obviously, if he was there, which—look, let me explain.”
“You told me he was with you.”
“I was trying to keep you from worrying.”
“You told me he went swimming.”
“You were burying your mother.”
“You told me he ate shrimp tacos.”
“I was trying to give you one week without another problem.”
Another problem.
My son had been converted into one with four syllables.
I walked into my mother’s apartment because standing in the hallway suddenly felt obscene.
Her reading glasses still rested on the kitchen table beside a half-finished crossword puzzle.
Mrs. Feldman followed without speaking.
I said, “Why did you leave him?”
“He didn’t want to go.”
“That’s a lie.”
“He was complaining.”
“He has talked about this trip since February.”
“Well, then he changed his mind.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re telling me an eight-year-old decided he wanted to spend six days alone?”
“He wasn’t supposed to be alone the whole time.”
I froze.
“What does that mean?”
Gideon exhaled.
“I had arrangements.”
“With who?”
“People checking in.”
“Who?”
“My brother.”
“Evan is in Phoenix.”
“A neighbor.”
“Which neighbor?”
“Jesus, Jen.”
“Name one.”
He did not.
I opened another app on my phone and searched flights.
My fingers shook so badly I entered Columbus as the departure city twice.
“There are police on the way to Leo right now.”
Gideon’s voice changed.
“Police?”
“Yes.”
“Why would you do that?”
The question was so astonishing that I laughed once.
It came out ugly and breathless.
“Why would I call police about an eight-year-old left alone for six days?”
“You’re making this bigger than it needs to be.”
Mrs. Feldman whispered, “Hang up on him.”
I did not.
I needed to hear what Gideon believed could still save him.
He lowered his voice.
“Jen, think before you start something we can’t undo.”
I looked at my mother’s crossword.
One clue had been answered in her cramped handwriting.
Four letters.
Trust.
She had written FAITH.
“I think you already did that,” I said.
Then I ended the call.
He called back immediately.
I declined it.
He called again.
I declined that too.
A text appeared.
Please do not involve cops until we talk.
Then another.
Leo was safe.
Then a third.
I made a bad judgment call but this is not abandonment.
I stared at those words until Mrs. Feldman took the phone gently from my hand.
“You need shoes,” she said.
May you like
I looked down.
I had kicked mine off inside the apartment an hour earlier while packing my mother’s clothes for donation.
