She hands me a piece of paper. It’s the email, sent at 9:43 a.m. I’m remembering the time we went to Indianapolis to eat at that pizza place, the one with the organ that came up out of the floor. Kate must have been eleven, I was ten, Decca was a baby. Mom was there. Dad too. When the organ started playing—so loud the tables shook—the light show started. Remember? It was like the aurora borealis. But what stays with me most is all of you. We were happy. We were good. Each and every one of us. The happy times went away for a while, but they’re coming back. Mom, forty-one’s not old. Decca, sometimes there’s beauty in the tough words—it’s all in how you read them. Kate, be careful with your own heart, and remember that you’re better than some guy. You’re one of the best there is. You all are.
“I thought you might know why he wrote this, or maybe you might have heard from him.”
“I don’t, and I haven’t. I’m sorry.” I hand her the email and promise to let her know if by some miracle he gets in touch with me, and then she goes away, and I shut the door. I lean against it because for some reason I feel the need to catch my breath.
My mom appears, the skin between her eyebrows pinched. “Are you okay?”
I almost say sure, yes, great, but I feel myself folding in two, and I just hug her and rest my head on her shoulder and let her momness surround me for a few minutes. Then I go upstairs and turn on the computer and sign onto Facebook.
There’s a new message, as of 9:47 a.m., four minutes after he sent the email to his family.
The words are written in The Waves: “If that blue could stay for ever; if that hole could remain for ever; if this moment could stay for ever.… I feel myself shining in the dark.… I am arrayed. I am prepared. This is the momentary pause; the dark moment. The fiddlers have lifted their bows.… This is my calling. This is my world. All is decided and ready.… I am rooted, but I flow.… ‘Come,’ I say, ‘come.’ ”
I write the only thing I can think of: “Stay,” I say, “stay.”
I check every five minutes, but he doesn’t reply. I call him again, but the voicemail is still full. I hang up and call Brenda. She answers on the first ring. “Hey, I was getting ready to call you. I got this weird email from Finch this morning.”
Brenda’s was sent at 9:41 and said simply, Some guy will definitely love you for who you are. Don’t settle.
The one to Charlie was sent at 9:45 and read, Peace, you todger.
Something is wrong.
I tell myself it’s only the heartbreak at being left, the fact that he disappeared without saying good-bye.
I pick up the phone to call Kate and realize I don’t have her number, so I tell my mom I’ll be back, and I drive to Finch’s house.
Kate, Decca, and Mrs. Finch are there. When she sees me, Mrs. Finch starts to cry, and then before I can stop her, she’s hugging me too hard and saying, “Violet, we’re so glad you’re here. Maybe you can figure this out. I told Kate maybe Violet will know where he is.”
Through Mrs. Finch’s hair, I look at Kate: Please help me.
She says, “Mom,” and touches her once, on the shoulder. Mrs. Finch moves away from me, dabbing at her eyes and apologizing for being so emotional.
I ask Kate if I can speak with her alone. She leads me through sliding glass doors, outside to the patio, where she lights a cigarette. I wonder if this is the same patio where Finch found the cardinal.
She frowns at me. “What’s going on?”
“He just wrote me. Today. Minutes after the email he sent you. He also sent emails to Brenda Shank-Kravitz and Charlie Donahue.” I don’t want to share his message with her, but I know I have to. I pull out my phone, and we stand in the shade of a tree as I show her the lines he wrote.
“I didn’t even know he was on Facebook,” she says, and then goes quiet as she reads. When she’s finished, she looks at me, lost. “Okay, what does all that mean?”
“It’s a book we discovered. By Virginia Woolf. We’ve been quoting the lines to each other off and on.”
“Do you have a copy of the book? Maybe there’s a clue in the part that comes before or after this.”
“I brought it with me.” I pull it out of my bag. I’ve already marked the words, and now I show her where he got them. He’s taken them out of sequence, picking and choosing certain lines over a series of pages and putting them together in his own way. Just like his Post-it songs.
Kate has forgotten about her cigarette, and the ash dangles, as long as a fingernail. “I can’t figure out what the hell these people are doing”—she gestures at the book—“much less see how it might relate to where he is.” She suddenly remembers her cigarette and takes a long drag. As she exhales, she says, “He’s supposed to go to NYU, you know.”
“Who?”
“Theo.” She drops the cigarette onto the patio and crushes it with her shoe. “He got early acceptance.”
NYU. Of course. What are the odds we were both supposed to be there, but now neither one of us is going?
“I didn’t—he never told me about college.”
“He didn’t tell me or Mom either. The only reason we found out is that someone from NYU tried to contact him during the fall and I got to the message first.” She forces a smile. “For all I know, he’s in New York right now.”
“Do you know if your mom ever got the messages? The ones from my mom and the psychiatrist?”
“Decca mentioned the doctor, but Mom almost never checks the home phone. I would have picked up the messages if there were any.”
“But there weren’t.”
“No.”
Because he erased them.
We go back inside, and Mrs. Finch is lying on the couch, eyes closed, while Decca sits nearby arranging pieces of paper across the floor. I can’t help but watch her, because it’s so much like Finch and his Post-its. Kate notices and says, “Don’t ask me what she’s doing. Another one of her art projects.”
“Do you mind if I take a look at his room while I’m here?”
“Go for it. We’ve left everything the way it was—you know, for when he comes back.”
If he comes back.
Upstairs, I shut the door to his bedroom and stand there a moment. The room still smells like him—a mix of soap and cigarettes and the heady, woodsy quality that is distinctly Theodore Finch. I open the windows to let some air in because it’s too dead and stale, and then I close them again, afraid the scent of soap and cigarettes and Finch will escape. I wonder if his sisters or mom have even set foot in this room since he’s been gone. It looks so untouched, the drawers still open from when I was here last.