“Nothing. Itwasfree.”
“I don’t want you paying for me. I can get you themoney.”
“I didn’t pay anything for it. It was an extraticket.”
“An extra ticket?” Finn shook his head. “There aren’t any extratickets.”
“There are if you know whotoask.”
His eyes locked on mine, and I felt that incredible attachment towards him once again. What the hell was it about him? “Well, are you sure you want to give it to me? You don’t evenknowme.”
“Oh, my god, Finn! Would you prefer I give the ticket to some other smellyhomelessguy?”
“No!” helaughed.
“Do you want itornot?”
“Hell, yeah, Iwantit!”
7
Emma, 2004: A Mother’sDestruction
Aunt Mel arrivedfrom Michigan in the middle of the chaos. It had been four days since Jake’s disappearance, and my parents were coming apart at the seams. The very glue that had held us together was now dripping down the cracks of our shattered family. When her older sister arrived, my mother collapsed into her arms. The Carver sisters were strong women, but even the sturdiest of stock could not bear the weight of a missing child. Mel kept Mom focused on what was important – Jake – and she encouraged my mother to throw herself into the search for her son while she took over the parenting duties that were currently beingshunned.
And thank god for Mel. With four children of her own, my aunt was a pro, and she got right down to work parenting us in the style we’d been raised. Efficient, caring, and tough…my siblings and I needed her strength and guidance. With her there, anything seemed possible. Her optimism kept our fragile family from breaking down as we waited for one of our own to return home. No matter the external chatter that filled our home with negativity, Aunt Mel was steadfast in her belief that we would be whole again. She told us tales of happily ever afters, and I hung on hereveryword.
As the days wore on with no new leads and with the prospect of finding Jake alive dwindling, a new normal began to take form. Aunt Mel stayed with us for two weeks before she too seemed to lose faith. Before she left to go home to her intact family, she’d taken the step of contacting our school, securing Keith, Kyle, and me piles of homework and missed assignments. None of us had been back since Jake’s kidnapping. Neither Mom nor Dad had said a word about school, so we just didn’t go. When the envelopes arrived, Keith and Kyle ignored theirs, but I went to work immediately, welcoming thedistraction.
With my aunt gone, my parents out of commission, and Keith continuously disappearing, there was effectively no adult in the house who could be counted on. The day-to-day necessities that kept us all collectively moving forward fell on me. I tried to focus my mother on the task at hand, but she was an emotional wreck, solid and focused one minute and then bawling or disengaged the next. Strangely enough, she seemed to develop an aversion to the children she still had left to hold. When Grace or Quinn tried to curl in her arms for comfort, she pushed them away. If Kyle was crying on the living room floor, she’d step over him. And if Keith or I asked her anything, her immediate response was toberateus.
Dad was just gone, searching… always searching. And when he did come home, he stumbled around like a zombie, as if the life had been sucked clean out of him. Unlike my mother, whom I was growing to despise, my father’s behavior was so pitiful that I felt nothing but sympathy for hisbrokensoul.
The fact that I held my mother to a higher standard was not lost on me. She was our family’s foundation, and for that reason, didn’t have the right to crumble. But crumble she most surely did. My normally well-kept mother morphed into a caricature of her former self. She stopped eating. She stopped sleeping. She stopped living. Her loss consumed her. It was like watching a slow and painful demise. I knew in my heart that if Jake’s death were confirmed, my mother would notsurvive.
I was too young to know a love like that, one so all-consuming and heartbreakingly fragile. It terrified me. How could anyone willingly set himself or herself up for such unbearable despair? Why bring beautiful, precious life into the world only for it to be stripped away so cruelly? No, my mother’s pain would never be mine. I would never bear a child of my own. I would never love as my mother loved, nor would I ever lose as she was so spectacularlylosing.
* * *
“Emma?”
I looked up from my biology book to stare into the angelic face of little Quinn. The blond hair that flipped up around the ears, the big gray-green eyes, and the tanned skin reminded me so much of Jake at that age that I blinked him in for a moment, wishing he really were Jake and that I was back in a past where my brother was still happy and safe…andhome.
“Emma?” herepeated.
I focused on Quinn, trying to keep the disappointment and sadness at bay. My baby brother did not fully understand what was happening, and I preferred to keep him in the dark. No sense in him being as terrified and miserable as the restofus.
“Whatisit?”
“I’mhungry.”
“Go ask Mom or Dad for food. I’m doing myhomework.”
“I can’t find Daddy, and Mommy is lying in bed. She won’tanswer.”
“She won’t answer?” I asked, immediately standing at attention. Was this it? Had she finally succumbed? Fear cycled through me as I tore down the hallway in a panic. Quinn followed behind me, running to keep up with my brisk pace. I flung open her door and rushed to her side. My mother was sprawled out on the bed, her hair splayed in every direction and still in the same rumpled clothes she’d been wearing for days. A bottle of sleeping pills lay byherside.
“Mom?” I touched my hand to her face, and a shudder of relief rocked me. At least she was warm and alive. I pokedher. “Mom?”
