“Hey, don’t worry, I’m sure there’s a logical explanation. What happened next?” I made a “WTF” face at my partners, and stepped out of Raine’s office, heading quickly to mine. I knew the guys would understand, even though this came so close after cutting out of the chemistry retreat the way I had. Actually, even if they didn’t understand, they could suck it. Zero fucks given.
“Then I was up at around seven. like usual. I ate, did a few things online, and like I said, I just assumed he was still asleep.”
“So he left somewhere between one a.m. and seven a.m. Right?”
“I assume so. He was definitely asleep when I went in there, so I’m guessing it was more likely to have been some time in the early hours of the morning. The first thing I did was call his cell, but it started ringing in his room, so wherever he is, or whatever he’s doing, he doesn’t even have a phone to call me if he needs to. I’m terrified, Beck.”
“Fuck. And I’m sure I know the answer to this, but I’ll ask anyway, just in case. Have you tried calling around?”
“Of course. I’ve already tried Kate. They are very close, but I know if he had gone to her, she would have let me know. I’ve also called the parents of all his friends I had numbers for, and also left messages on the kids’ phones. They’re in class at the moment, so phones are off. I even tried calling the school in case he decided to go back early. Nothing…” The air felt heavy with unspoken words.
“What are you not telling me?” She spoke at the same time I did. “There’s something else—”
“What?” I was getting better at telling when Mel was holding back on me.
“I think he knows about us. About you. That you’re his father I mean.”
“What? Why do you say that?”
“I was going through his room, looking for clues as to where he might be, and I found my old diary, and our yearbook under his pillow. If he read my diary he’ll know pretty much everything. It’s all there. There are even photos of us together. It doesn’t really help me to know where he’s gone, but I guess it gives me more of an idea why.”
“Jesus. Have you called the police?”
“Yes. They’re on their way over here. I just wanted to…I don’t know…I want you here…I know I shouldn’t ask, but can you get here?”
“What the fuck Mel?”
“I’m sor—“
“No, don’t be sorry. That’s my point. Our son is missing. Where the fuck else do you think I’d want to be, even if you hadn’t asked me?” I’d been heading to the car the whole time we’d been speaking. “Send me your address, and I’ll be there as soon as I possibly can.”
I raced across the city, literally hating every other human being within a ten mile radius. Every driver, cyclist, and pedestrian who stood in the way of me and my goal of getting to Mel. Every dawdler on the cross walk, every texting driver wasting vital seconds fiddling around on their phones on a green light, every cyclist dominating a narrow street, slowing traffic to a crawl. I didn’t think I’ve ever wished bad things on as many unsuspecting strangers. Fuck them all.
I arrived at Mel’s small neat house in Ardsley in forty minutes flat. I pulled into the driveway behind a red Subaru I assumed to be hers, and jumped the stairs two by two. There was a squad car parked on the street in front of the house, also. The door flew open at speed before I had the chance to knock or ring, and seconds later, Mel was sobbing in my arms.
“Hey, hey, I got you.” I snaked my arms around her, bringing one up to the back of her head, relishing the feel of her thick, glossy hair in my hand.
“Oh, Beck, what a fucking mess.”
She had that right.
“I know baby, but we’ll fix it. I’m sure he’s fine. He’s a preteen. He probably just had a surge of hormones, got mad, and shot through to let off steam.”
“You can’t know that. He’s been gone hours. He could be anywhere,. Anything could have happened to him by now.” She had a point, of course, but my job right now was to comfort and soothe her, not add more fuel to the fire of her distress.
I had my own fears pushing their way to the forefront of my mind, about all the truly terrible things that could be happening to him at that exact moment. I tried my best to bury them. Panicking about the worst case scenario wasn’t going to help any, and it definitely wasn’t what Mel needed from me right then. If I could do nothing else, at the very least I could be strong for her, if she couldn’t be strong for herself.
A few moments later a young female police officer approached us on the doorstep.
“Ms. Reid, is everything okay here?” She appeared to notice me then. “Oh. You would be?”
“An old friend.” “Her boyfriend.” We spoke at the same time.”
“Sam’s father,” we said in unison.
The officer looked at us as though we were nuts, raising her eyebrows in question. I guess it would seem a little strange to the uninitiated. Hopefully once we had had a chance to explain, she would understand better. She motioned us into the house with an impatient wave of her hand.
“As I’m sure you can appreciate with cases like this, time is of the essence. Come inside. I just need to get some more details from you, and we can then get on with our search procedures.” She softened her features then, smiling slightly.
I followed the women, entering Melissa’s home for the first time. It was sad to be there under such desperate circumstances, but a part of me couldn’t help but feel flattered that she had reached out to me, after being so closed with me in the past. I just hoped that we would quickly find Sam, and put this whole sorry situation behind us.
I wondered selfishly whether as I had feared, Sam finding out about me this way would jeopardize our future relationship. I knew from painful firsthand experience that nobody liked to find out they had been lied to about something so important for so long. As a child who grew up without his own father on the scene, I would have been livid with my mother, if I’d found out she had intentionally withheld access to him from me.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, that was never the case for me. My father was absent but accounted for for the vast majority of my life, by design on his part. As it would transpire, too late, we were in fact his dirty secret. Well, my mom had been, and then when I was born, I was too.
Mel
It felt odd that the first time Beck was here was under these terrible circumstances, but I was glad he was. I’d unpack the reasons why he was the person I’d wanted here the most— above Kate, above my mom—once Sammy was back safe and well, tucked up in his bed. He would be. I knew that. Something deep inside me told me so. Call it intuition, call it superstition, call it blind faith. I had no idea what it was, but something told me that this ordeal would have a happy ending, and I was clinging to the notion. That and Beck’s moral and physical support.
As we entered my living room, the officer introduced herself again, for Beck’s benefit. Officer Nicole Lewis was younger than us, in her mid-twenties, perhaps, with thick red hair pulled back into a severe, no nonsense bun, low on her nape. Her scrubbed clean, make-up less face, and the spattering of freckles creeping across her nose and high cheekbones put me in mind of Anne of Green Gables, though she lacked pigtails for Gilbert Blythe to pull.