“I saw Daphne,” he says. “I invited her to my party.”
I stop, stunned. Luke has grown so much quieter since Jake disappeared. Now he’s invited someone to our house tonight? To what I’m afraid will feel nothing like a party, in spite of our best efforts?
But one look at his face and I can’t say no. His connection with Daphne was always particularly meaningful, and I can tell he’s missed her.
“Okay,” I say, gripping the cart handle as I try to adjust to this curveball. “What kind of party is this? Are you inviting your friends?”
He shakes his head. “Everything is weird with my friends.”
I should have known, should have noticed. But I was too caught up in my own grief. I try to slip into a playful tone. “Well, if you’d rather invite Jake’s friends, do you think we should invite Kolt and Seth too?”
Luke thinks this over. “Kolt, but not Seth. Seth is Daphne’s boyfriend now. And he underperformed in the state tournament.” As he talks, his thumbs dart across the screen of his phone. He looks up a second later.
“Kolt’s coming. We need more food.”
“You have his number?” I ask. “Have you always had his number, or just since the text?”
There’s no need to tell him which text.
“I already had it,” Luke says. “I’ve been texting Kolt ever since I got my phone.” I marvel at the way Jake is still helping his brother connect to the world, even in his absence. He’s always been so good at that: drawing Luke in with sports statistics, drawing him out with pickup games, passing that notebook back and forth.
And now Luke is one of the people Jake trusted with his four-word text, and I am not. As good as my son is in connecting others, the omission cuts me fresh every time I think of it. It’s not your fault. He must have known that the person he didn’t send that text to would get as clear a message as the ones he did.
It’s my fault.
Except that sometimes I wonder if I can see my son more clearly in his absence. Jake is not cruel. Is there another meaning? Something to decipher not only in the words themselves but in the people he sent them to? Luke, Daphne, Kolt, and the fourth number. No doubt the police know who it is, so why don’t I ever remember to ask?
I send Luke off to get a little more of everything. It helps and hurts, knowing exactly how much more we’ll need for Kolt because it’s exactly the amount we would have needed for Jake. And like a hundred other things today alone, this sets off a chain reaction that finds its way to the same set of questions, like water running a constant course until it’s carved a canyon.
Is he safe?
Is he eating?
Is he sleeping?
Is he scared?
Is he hurt?
Is he ever coming home?
Across the crates of colorful produce, Daphne comes into view, and I fix a smile on my face, hoping it looks genuine enough.
But she’s not smiling. She doesn’t even pretend, doesn’t try. She just comes and wraps her arms around my waist and lays her head against my shoulder and cries. This motherless girl, so small but so strong. I smooth the hair from her face and hold her close, and we stand there, weeping softly, surrounded by what should nourish us—but emptied, gutted all the same.
Until, once again, Jake bridges the divide by giving me the right words.
“It’s not your fault,” I say, dropping a kiss on top of her head like I did with my own boys until they grew up and laughed and blushed and pushed me away.
She only holds me closer, and my mind reels in reverse, all the way back to when Jake was a toddler. I had to follow him around all the time then, just to keep him from hurting himself.
What would I have seen if I’d followed him the night he disappeared?
Could I have kept him safe?
Could any of us?
The knock on the door isn’t a surprise. Coach B has been expecting it. Hoping for it, even. He’s been dizzy today, which isn’t unusual, so he’s had plenty of time to think of what to say while lying in his bedroom, the curtains tightly drawn to guard against the spinning world outside.
He’ll admit it’s selfish—wanting to feel he played some part if Ashland takes home the trophy tonight. But when he sees the figure before him on the front steps, he wonders how many others have looked at Jake Foster and hoped to take a little of his light and make it their own. How many people see him as the boy he still is: unsure, anxious, too much riding on him? So Coach B will do what he intended all along—sit and listen and give only the advice the boy’s actually asking for. And he will remind himself that every bit of it’s for Jake.
“Come in,” he says. “It’s cold out there.” And then, with surprise, “It’s snowing. And you’ve shoveled. Oh, my boy, I wish you’d saved your energy for the game tonight.”
Already he is saying the wrong things. Jake’s face falls; he starts back down the steps.
“What do I know?” Coach B says, opening the door wider. “It’s probably the perfect way to warm up. And you’ve got plenty of time to recover.”
The tournament is being played in the university arena three towns over, a couple of hours’ drive away. Still, the neutral site is closer to Ashland than to their opponents, so most of the crowd will wear the same red and white as Jake and his team. The boys have been able to sleep in their own beds and eat at their own tables throughout the tournament. They’re all hoping it will feel like a home game; the Warriors are undefeated at home this season.
But all that is hours
