of the tone from his linebacker days at Hobbs High. Shelly loved to run her hands down his arms when he lay on top of her, the definition of his triceps making her shiver. It had been a year since she last felt that, but now she needed to feel him closer more than ever.
Her family.
Randy stretched his back, ran his fingers through his thinning hair, then reached back inside to grab his briefcase.
'Honey,' he said, noticing the commotion on the front porch. 'Please tell me there's a Michelob left in the fridge, I-'
'It's Daniel,' Shelly blurted. 'He's back.'
Randy looked up, confused. Then when everything came into focus, his briefcase fell to the ground. He stared for a moment, shaking his head, then ran up the steps to join his wife. He placed his palm over the boy's forehead, pulled his hair back, gazing into the young, confused eyes.
Then he joined his wife in the embrace.
'You people are weird,' James muttered. 'I don't get it. Who is he?'
'This,' Randy said, turning the boy to face him, tears streaming down his face, 'is your brother. His name is
Daniel. Do you remember him?'
James had been just three when it all happened. Shelly didn't take it personally when Daniel looked at his sibling, bewilderment reigning over his face, a slight twinkle of memory.
'My brother?' James said. 'I thought he was, like, stolen or something.'
'He was,' Shelly said, stroking Daniel's hair. 'But thank you, God, somehow our boy has found his way home.'
James looked at Daniel. There were no bruises on his body; no cuts or scrapes. His clothes looked new enough to still have the tags on them. Though he was so young,
Shelly wondered if James remembered all those people rushing in and out of their house. Men and women with badges, other loud people with cameras and microphones.
Once on an Easter egg hunt, Shelly had entered the bedroom to find James and Tasha rifling through a trunk stuffed full of newspaper clippings about Daniel's disappearance. James had asked Shelly about Daniel once, and she answered with a single tear, a trembling lip. He never asked again.
To Shelly, this was God's will. It was fate that her family be reunited.
To James Linwood, though, he couldn't understand how his brother, who'd disappeared nearly five years ago without a trace, could simply reappear like magic without a scratch on him.
2
The bar was sweltering hot, but the swirling fans made it more palatable than the thick sweater choking the New
York streets. It didn't take long to learn that Augusts in
New York could be brutal. My first summer in the city, I made the mistake one day of wearing a T-shirt and sweater to the office. Jack told me between my clothes and the
Gazette 's sporadic air-conditioning, I'd lose ten pounds before the day was up. While I doubted the New York summer could get any hotter than my childhood years in
Bend, Oregon, when later that night I peeled off my sweater and squeezed out the moisture, I realized East
Coast summers were just as brutal as their West Coast counterparts.
I took another sip of my beer-my third of the night, and third in slightly under an hour-and casually glanced up at the baseball game. Out of the dozen or so patrons, only two or three seemed to care about the outcome. The others were nursing a drink, chatting up the bartender or, like the six people my age playing darts, far too busy reveling in their own bliss.
I'd gotten to know the bartender, Seamus. Things like that happen when you become a regular. Some nights I had trouble sleeping. This necessitated finding somewhere to go to kill time. Somewhere I could be lost in my own thoughts. That's how I stumbled upon Finnerty's. Quiet enough to lose yourself. Loud enough to drown everything out.
Most nights I was happy to imbibe among young Irish gents and apple-cheeked female bartenders. U2 and Morrissey seemed to emanate from the jukebox on an endless loop. Though I enjoyed the Irish pub, sitting in Finnerty's made me feel that much closer to the elder drinkers, sitting with bottomless glasses of whiskey, talking to the bartender because he was cheaper than a psychiatrist. All of this, by proxy, made me feel more and more like I was becoming Jack O'Donnell. In many ways being compared to Jack would be a compliment. Just not this one.
Jack O'Donnell, to put it bluntly, was my idol. He'd worked the city beat for going on forty years, and any conversation about New York journalism was incomplete without mention of the old man. Growing up, I'd gone out of my way to read every story O'Donnell wrote, not an easy task for a kid who lived three thousand miles away from New York. I had our library special-order the Gazette on microfiche. I would take on an extra newspaper route just so I could afford the next O'Donnell book in hardcover when it hit stores. I couldn't, or wouldn't, wait for the paperback.
A few years ago I'd arrived at the New York Gazette a fresh-faced newbie reporter who deigned only to shine
O'Donnell's shoes. He was a journalistic institution, writing some of the most important stories of the past half century. Despite his age, Jack seemed to grow younger with every word he typed. Even though Jack's first assignment for me led to disaster-namely me being accused of murder-he was the first person at the newspaper to give me an honest shot at showing what I was worth. Both Jack and Wallace Langston, the Gazette 's editor-in- chief, had taken me under their wings, given me stories that I grabbed on to tenaciously and reported the hell out of. Without Jack
I probably wouldn't have come to New York. Because of him I found my calling.
Like any idol, though, once you got closer you could see that some of the gold paint covered a chipped bronze interior. For all his brilliance with a pen, Jack's personal life was a disaster. Several times married and divorced. On the highway to alcoholism while seeming to hit every speed bump at sixty miles an hour. Yet, despite Jack's faults, he was the tent pole to which I aspired to in this business. As long as I could stop there.
Nights like tonight, I was content to sit on the aged bar stool and ignore everything. It was easier that way.
Then I felt a cold splash on my back, whipped around to see a tall, lithe redhead standing over my shoulder, her hand over her mouth as if she'd just seen a bad car accident.
'Oh, my gosh!' she said, grabbing a pile of napkins off the bar and mopping at my shirt where she'd spilled her drink. From the look and smell, I could tell she'd spilled a cosmopolitan. I'd say I was thankful it wasn't one of my good shirts, but the truth was I didn't own any good shirts.
Just one more article of clothing with an unidentifiable stain.
'No big deal,' I said, wringing as much liquid from the cloth as I could. 'It's a bar. You kind of expect to be hit with a drink or two.'
She smiled at me. I wondered if she thought I was funny, or if she was just relieved I wasn't the kind of asshole who would bark and shout at a girl who'd accidentally spilled a drink on him.
She was pretty. Tall, in good shape, but I could tell a lot of effort went into her appearance. Probably too much.
Her jeans were tight, light blue tank top with a neckline that plunged far down enough to catch the eyes. Her cheeks and eyelids glistened with sweat on top of sweatproof makeup. She was probably a natural beauty but simply didn't trust herself. I thought I noticed a small dark spot, a mole perhaps, by her right collarbone, but quickly realized it was a passing shadow. She was the prettiest girl
I'd noticed in Finnerty's in a long while. Either that, or I just never bothered to notice.
