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I hold the front door open, but my fifteen-year-old doesn’t even glance at me as he brushes past. I tell myself tonight will be good for us. It has to be. Sam goes back to his mother’s in a couple days, and our week so far has been about as fun as a catheter insertion.
At least the night sky is clear. It’s nearing the end of May, and the precious few months of nonshitty Indiana weather are just beginning. I step out onto the porch behind him and draw in a luxuriant breath. “You believe school’s over?”
Sam doesn’t answer, just crosses the yard, and I have to hurry to catch him, my bum leg slowing me down. We move side by side up the road, but I might as well not be there.
“I bought ribs,” I tell him. “We can grill out tomorrow when your friends are here.”
“Can’t go to the park after curfew though,” he answers.
Dammit.
I want to tell him a thousand things, that even in normal times—which these are decidedly not—I can’t just give him permission to break the law. The Hollow closes at sundown, so if I let him and his buddies venture there after dark and their parents catch wind, I’ll be the negligent father who lets the kids run wild.
What’s next, John? Gonna buy ’em beer?
If my son and his crew would simply sneak out, the way my friends and I did at that age, all would be well. But Sam is honest, and he has to ask permission. No virtue breeds as much trouble as honesty.
“Drew’s dad lets us have fun,” Sam says.
I consider a subject change—an upcoming movie or even a fucking knock-knock joke—but I know he won’t be deterred. So I say, as nonconfrontationally as I can, “You’ll still have a good time. There’s the fire pit, the trampoline—”
“Too old for the trampoline.”
“You could play basketball—”
“Until eleven.”
I sigh. “Our neighbors have to work in the morning. You have any idea how loud a basketball is on concrete?”
Sam mutters something under his breath, and we’re at that tipping point where I should let it go, but I hear myself demanding, “What did you say?”
“You’re nicer to the neighbors than you are to me.”
I clench my jaw. Sam’s a sweet kid most of the time—when he gets his way—and my own dad and stepfather were such shitbags that I want to be better. So to most of Sam’s requests, I say yes, but he requests things all the time, and it can’t always be yes, and now I’m fuming because this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. We’re supposed to enjoy a night walk to Insomnia Cookies; instead, we’re fighting and I can’t control my own anger, much less his.
guy . . .”
I steel myself.
“. . . but you’re not like that at home. Why do you always have to be the responsible parent? Why can’t you be fun for once? Mom is.”
Outstanding, I think. The Mom Card.
I tell myself: Turn down the temperature, don’t engage, but this is bullshit. For the billionth time, I wish my son could see who I really am, instead of some grumpy old bastard.
Or maybe you really are a grumpy old bastard?
“And now he gives me the silent treatment,” Sam says. “Fantastic.”
I draw in a shuddering breath. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
“Then let us have fun.”
That word again: fun. According to Sam, I’m The Thief of Fun, The Stealer of Joy, The Mangler of Hopes and Dreams. Are other kids like this? I don’t know. Sam’s our first, so I’ve got nothing to judge by. All I know is that other dads act like they never have problems. They puff out their chests and proclaim, “I just show my kids who’s boss.”
“Look,” I begin, “I know the past year has been tough on you.”
“Don’t,” he says and looks away.
A hollow feeling gusts through me, and in its wake comes the guilt.
He has been worse since you and Iris separated. You can’t blame him for circumstances you created.
“There’ve been three disappearances,” I say, but Sam is ready for this.
“They weren’t even kids, Dad.”
“The seventeen-year-old was.”
“And she probably just ran off! The other two were old, so don’t pretend there’s some child predator on the loose. People go missing all the time.”
I want to argue that the other two missing people aren’t old—they’re twenty-eight and thirty-four for Christ’s sake—but a worm of disquiet is insinuating its way into my guts. I don’t like the energy tonight, and not just between me and Sam. It’s like the shadows of the historical homes looming over us are denser than normal, fiendish creatures eager to slurp us up and digest our bones. But if I turn back now, Sam will use it against me. We round the corner, Sam enumerating all the reasons why the disappearances are nothing to fret about, that three in the same day are simply a coincidence.
“You need to follow your own advice,” Sam tells me. “What do you always say to us in class?”
I shake my head and try to ignore the dull throb at the base of my skull.
“Be a scientist, Dad. Think about why we’re always arguing. It’s not complicated.”
“You’re right,” I say. “It isn’t. Whatever you get, you want more.”
He makes a scoffing sound, and I recall how pleasant it was to have Sam as a student this year. No matter how poorly we were getting along outside school, as teacher and student, we were fine. Because school was uncomplicated. There, Sam trusted me, or pretended to. There, he believed I was competent.
As a dad, he considers me an abject failure.
“You might not believe this,” I say, “but I care about you. I want you to be safe.”
“This is the safest town in the world. Can’t you just loosen up?”
Yes, I think. I do need to loosen up. But not about this—there’s no way I’m giving you permission to run around the woods at night after three people have disappeared—but in general, yes. I need to loosen up. Your mother tells
me the same thing.
Sam is stalking forward, moving too fast for me. He’s ordinarily sensitive to my limp, but not tonight. I grit my teeth and push my bad leg harder, needles of pain piercing me from sole to knee.
“Did you see the Cubs score?” I venture. But I sound out of breath. Old.
He shakes his head at the obviousness of my gambit, and God, I hate this. Why does it always have to be so strained, so stilted? I glance at his profile and observe the strong jaw, the flawless nose, and simultaneously admire the handsome man he’s becoming and lament the little boy who once loved to spend time with me.
We reach the edge of campus, Insomnia only two blocks away. I want to believe, once we get our cookies, that everything will be fine. But I know they won’t make this better. My son is too hardheaded, and I guess I am, too.
I can’t let this slide into stony silence without telling Sam how I feel. After staying at his mother’s last week, he seemed reluctant to return to me, a reluctance that’s been growing with insidious persistence since Iris and I separated.
You’re losing him, a voice whispers.
There’s an office building on the right, a parking lot beyond, Insomnia on the other side of that. Time’s running out.
I stop. “Hey, Sam?”
He pauses at the far edge of the office building but doesn’t turn. “What?”
I swallow. “Whatever I do . . . I don’t do it to control you. I do it because I love you.”
His shoulders sag, and he puts his hands on his hips. “I know you love me. I just wish you remembered what it was like to be young.”
With that, he rounds the corner and enters the parking lot.
A thickness in my throat, I follow him, and when I limp around the corner, he’s not there.
Just gone.
I scour the area for several minutes before hobbling to the police station. He’s fine, I keep telling myself. He’s just wandering around campus.
But I don’t believe that. And with several disappearances already, I know I should report it as soon as possible.
I do. Then I use the lobby phone to call my wife. Soon after, Iris rushes into the station, her long brown hair slightly disheveled. “Emma’s at the Morgans’,” she says. “Tell me what happened. Tell me everything.”
I recount the incident, noticing as I do the way her eyes narrow. My story doesn’t add up, her expression declares. She eases down beside me, but an invisible wall crystallizes between us. In her mind, I’ve gone from an overcautious high school science teacher to the irresponsible failure who endangered her son in the middle of a citywide crisis. Of course, we don’t know it’s a crisis until Officer Harris, a kind-eyed, goateed man who looks perpetually embarrassed, tells us there’s been another disappearance this evening.
“Five disappearances?” Iris asks.
A sigh from Harris, like this is his fault. “Actually, your boy makes six. Another happened last night but wasn’t reported until today.”
We stare at him. Words are impossible. Six disappearances in a single day in a city with a population under fifty thousand?
“Did your son say anything about running away?” he asks.
I open my mouth, but Iris answers, “He and my husband were arguing.”
Thanks for that, I think.
Harris shifts his kind eyes to me. “What did he say before you lost him?”
“He said, ‘I wish you remembered what it was like to be young.’”
“You’d put your foot down about something.”
I tell him about Sam’s request to play in the Hollow, striving to keep it clinical, but I can’t help but feel a little vindication as I recount the argument. See? I want to shout. I’m not a shitty father! I was trying to keep him safe!
Harris nods. “I’m glad you—”
He breaks off as cell phones chirrup, his and Iris’s. I hear others through the windows. Not mine, though, because I left it at home. I wanted to be in the moment with Sam.
“Amber Alert,” Iris says.
“Shadeland,” Harris confirms, referring to a sleepy little hamlet twenty minutes away. “Hang tight a minute. I’ve got to check on something.”
When Harris is gone, I ask Iris, “How are you holding up?”
“Our son is missing,” she answers. “How do you think I’m holding up?”
She’s frayed, distraught. I get it. But I’m still taken aback at the unvarnished accusation in her voice. We stew in morose silence until Harris hurries through the door, his frown setting off new alarms.
seen playing in her yard.” A deep sigh. “Nationwide, there’ve been an abnormal number of disappearances the past few days. The average is around two thousand three hundred people—”
“Per day?” Iris asks.
He nods. “—but most of those people are found. Yesterday alone there were more than six thousand, and the majority of those are still missing.”
Iris and I exchange a glance.
“I don’t have the first damn clue why,” he says. “I don’t think anybody does.”
Into our bewildered silence, Harris continues, “Couple nights ago, there were missing persons reported in thirty states. Nothing peculiar there. Lots of them were runaways. But others were harder to explain. Couples on their way home from dinner. Downtown Louisville, a guy jogs ahead to start the car, his girlfriend’s on her phone texting. She reaches the car, only he’s not there. He’s not anywhere.”
We listen in appalled silence.
“Last night, nearly every state reported disappearances, but it wasn’t till today that folks began to notice the similarities.”
“Similarities?” I ask.
Harris shakes his head. “People are just . . . vanishing. All at night.”
I look at Iris, and despite the distance between us, a distance that’s broadened considerably in the last few minutes, I know we’re thinking the same thing: Emma.
Iris heads for the door. I tell Harris to call us any time, twenty-four seven. He says something meant to be reassuring, but I miss most of it because I’m hustling after my wife.
There’s a real possibility she’ll leave me at the station.
We pick up our daughter and head to my house. Emma scarcely speaks, but when I hug her, she clings to me, and that’s something. My thirteen-year-old isn’t as demonstrative as she used to be, but I guess few teenagers are. Still, holding my daughter fills a need in me I didn’t realize I possess.
I climb the stairs to my room, the one Iris and I once shared. The one we’d still be sharing if she hadn't filed for a separation instead of going to counseling with me.
When I enter, Iris is sitting on the edge of the bed, some piece of clothing clutched in her fingers. Moving closer, I see it’s one of Sam’s baseball jerseys. It’s scarlet and gray, our school colors. When Iris looks up at me, shiny eyed, I realize my vision is blurring. I’ve been holding it in. Playacting the strong man. The stalwart presence. But I’m neither of those things, not even a good father. If I were, we’d still have both our kids.
She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ears and gazes up at me, and though I want so badly to embrace her, I hesitate. The moment passes, and she heads into the bathroom.
I sit down on the bed and check my phone, but there are no messages, no texts. Sam is gone, could very well stay gone.
I hear a pill bottle rattle, the Xanax Iris reserves for Really Bad Nights. I know she’s about to head downstairs to the guest room, but I don’t want her to. Having her here reminds me of the happy years we spent together, years I’d give anything to relive.
When she comes back in, she says, “Can I ask a really stupid question?”
I lean back on my elbows.
“Promise you won’t get mad?” she asks.
much for those walls to go up.
Iris eases down beside me. “What if Sam just ran away?”
When Harris asked this question, I was amazed I hadn’t considered the possibility. I’d also experienced a quickening of hope. If Sam had run away, this might all be over soon. He would come to his senses and return, and even though we had issues to work out, our son would be with us. We’d be together. And in the end, that was all that mattered.
But coming from Iris, the question stings.
You’ve alienated our son to such a degree that fleeing into the night is preferable to getting cookies with you.
“You promised you wouldn’t get mad,” she reminds me.
I take a steadying breath. “It’s possible he ran off. He’s got friends at Purdue.”
And he does. Though just completing his freshman year in high school, Sam’s a hell of a baseball player, and through camps, he’s gotten to know kids at the neighboring university. A tantalizing ember of hope glows in my mind, and I want to protect it, want to believe Sam’s at one of their dorms now, sprawled on a couch watching TV.
“All kids run away,” Iris says. “I did. When I was seven, I told my parents I was leaving. I went out to my dad’s workshop and hid for hours. I even packed a bag. I forgot food though, so when I got hungry, I came back.”
She’s told me the story before, but this time it provides comfort. This is normal, her tone implies. This is part of growing up. Sam got mad; he’s blowing off steam. Now agree with me before I lose my mind.
“It’s possible,” I say.
She gives my hand a squeeze. “When he comes back, we’ll be firm with him, that he can’t ever do anything like this again. The timing was awful. The disappearances and all . . .”
And the hope in her face dims. We both know it’s bullshit. If we truly believed Sam had spent the night with someone, we’d have called them by now. We feel the truth in our bones. Whatever happened is something else. Something worse. We finish getting ready for bed, and I can tell by her torpid movements that the Xanax is kicking in. Good. She deserves a respite.
She leaves for the guest room. I try to read a book but can’t focus. Can’t do anything but fight the urge to go outside and look for Sam. I power off my e-reader, roll onto my side, and face the spot Iris once occupied. It takes a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. Iris is so light-sensitive that she taped over the tiny lights on the TV and the charging ports, and I’ve never bothered to remove the tape.
There is light slanting under the curtains, and it’s by this somber glow that I peer at her vacant pillow. I imagine Iris’s face. The tears on her cheeks. I did this to her. To our family. As they sometimes do in the small hours of the night, my thoughts spiral into those malign, skulking places in my head, to the stygian hell where I can no longer hide from unacknowledged truths.
You kept her at arm’s length.
You refused to be vulnerable.
I close my eyes, accepting the torment.
You blamed her for holding back, but you’ve always held back. She got tired of being open with you, so she followed your lead, and you both ended up embowered in your castles, alone and afraid. And now this earthquake comes, and both your castles fall.
I’m weeping, but the voice won’t stop.
But you, John . . . you created these ruins. They’re yours. You own them just like you own what happened to Sam tonight.
dreams are nightmare reels where everyone I love is taken, where this house becomes my castle. My prison.
My ruin.
The next morning, it’s everywhere. I want to shield Emma, but Iris keeps the television blasting out dire news. A CBS anchor calls them vanishings, while MSNBC refers to them as disappearances. Iris finally settles on CNN, whose chyron reads “Night-mare.”
I sit beside Emma on the couch and put my arm around her. She leans into me, and a slow tear trickles down her cheek. Her dark brown hair is just like her mother’s.
“Hey, honey?” I say to Iris, though it’s difficult to make myself heard above the reporters and whooshing graphics. “Can we give the TV a rest?”
Iris doesn’t answer. I notice the way her hands tremble and the dark circles under her eyes. She watches the screen so raptly I wonder if she heard me at all. When a story about a disappearance at a high school softball game in Oregon begins, ...
