Dead to You

My eyes open wide. Blake and Gracie are here now too, gathered in the doorway, and we’re all completely silent. Gracie looks up at me. Blake’s face is intense, hoping for dirt to mock me with, I’m sure.

“What about him?” Mama looks concerned now, less scared. I rack my brains, trying to think of anything I could have done wrong. Driving violations, maybe? It can’t be. I’ve been very careful and I still only have my permit, so I’m always with Mama or Dad. I haven’t done anything. I’m sure of it. But the panic grows.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to sit down?”

“Yes, I’m sure.” Instead, Mama grips the doorframe.

The bald guy nods. “Mrs. De Wilde, your son Ethan was abducted nine years ago, is that correct?”

“Yes. Did you find that woman Eleanor?”

“No, ma’am. I’m afraid we have sad news. We’ve found the remains of Ethan’s body.”

Mama’s jaw drops, and for a moment it’s completely silent. “What?”

“Your son is dead, ma’am. Some hikers strayed off trail up near the Canadian border and found his remains. His death . . . we believe it happened a short time after he was abducted.” He pauses. “Tests confirm it’s your son Ethan. I’m so sorry.”

The words jump around in my head, not making sense. My stomach hurts.

Mama clutches her sweater at her throat and glances at me, then back at them. Her voice wavers. “He’s not dead. You’ve made a mistake . . .”

“No, ma’am. I’m sorry,” the detective says firmly, like he’s probably had to do a hundred times. “There’s no mistake. We compared DNA to the missing person’s follicle sample on file—hair that was pulled from Ethan’s comb back when he was abducted. Do you recall that, Mrs. De Wilde? The DNA matches.”

I don’t understand. I try to put the words together but my brain is cloudy and won’t let it happen. So I get caught up diagramming the detective’s sentences in my head like I’m sitting in English class, wondering what the hell they’re doing with my comb, like maybe I dropped it when I got off the bus and they’re returning it. Thinking maybe I should be grateful.

My body is so numb I can’t feel my fingers. The words repeat in my ears. Slowly the cloudiness clears.

And everything changes. The numbness goes away, and pain, like nausea, washes over me. The sentences come together, and finally . . . finally I understand them. I understand everything. I know where my lost memories are, the ones I’ve been searching for, the ones I was sure would come back someday. Racetracks and sno-cones and Rags the dog . . . and a brother I loved. All those memories are frozen, irretrievable. Buried in the wilderness under nine years of snow, nestled alongside the bones of a strange boy.

A boy named Ethan, who once had a comb, and hair that was not my hair.

I hear a ghastly moan and look around, dazed, before I realize it escaped from inside me.

As if he’s just awakened from a trance, Blake turns slowly and looks at me, horrified. Scared.

Gracie doesn’t understand. She tilts her head, stares. Her pink lips make a little O.

Mama’s eyes meet mine. Her face crinkles and then slacks as all the color drains out of it.

Bile jumps to my throat, making me choke, cough. The dam in my brain, the one that always tries to hold back the fear and truth and insanity of my fucking life, bursts wide open and it’s a flood in there. I can’t hold it back, and I can’t swim.

I can’t breathe.

All the memories flail around—Ellen’s crack-whore boyfriends beating the shit out of us. Me crying out “Mom!” and her too fucked up from drugs or fists to stop them or to help me. Running from the men, from the dealers, from the landlord, from the cops. And her getting rid of me. That’s what messed me up the worst. After all of that, she dumped me off and never came back. Real mothers wouldn’t do that.

Would they?

How could they?

I wonder, when was the first time I thought about it . . . wished for it? Was it tiny at first? So tiny, maybe, that it was barely even a complete thought. It hummed to me. Maybe I have a different family somewhere. I remember it now. On the freezing-cold nights, it gave me something to stay alive for. God, I wanted it so bad. The library, the searches. And then, bam! There, on the screen in front of me. Like looking in a mirror. Every day I stared at that picture, every day I read a little bit more, thinking maybe. Maybe.

Maybe.

Imagining it. The more I learned about the boy, the more uncertain I was about my past. The more convinced I became. This was it.

I was so sure.

And now . . . here in the mudroom, it’s all crashing down and I’m drowning in it.

Ethan is dead.

I am nothing. Nameless. No one.

I gasp for air.

When Mama cries out, I hear months, years, of grief in her voice. Her sweet, dark eyes and little round body, her fingers that slip off the doorframe and clutch at her throat, just like the first time I saw her, her faltering knees that threaten to buckle.

I turn away, lean hard against the wall, feeling my gut seize up, the boot kicking my ribs and stopping my breath, and then I push against the service door to the garage as if the wood, the brass handle, can give me strength to face them. To face these people, this family surrounding me . . . as they begin breaking to pieces all over again.

I glance at Gracie as she starts to point at me, and I imagine what she’s about to say to the police, to Mama.