Later that night, after the sounds of the poker game had grown quiet in the kitchen—the clinking of chips and shuffling of cards, the rowdy laughter and softer groans of failure when luck started to run out—Peter tiptoed down the stairs. He paused at the bottom and peeked around the corner to see all four men on the couches in the family room, their socked feet propped on the coffee table, an impressive display of empty beer cans arranged before them. From where he stood, Peter could only see the back of Dad’s head, but despite the volume of the baseball game on TV, the others looked to be in various stages of sleep: one snoring, one with his eyes half closed, and the other with his mouth stretched open in an enormous yawn.
Peter slipped past the doorway and through the kitchen, moving silently around the table littered with stray cards and peanut shells and into the small hallway that bridged the kitchen and the garage, where he nudged open the door to his dad’s office.
He could count the number of times he’d been in here: once when he’d been stung by a bee and rushed in without thinking; once when Dad forgot to bring some paperwork into the station and called to ask Peter to find it for him. Another time a rainstorm had caused the window to leak, and the two of them had worked to plug the hole together, keeping the water from ruining the many plaques and certificates that checkered the walls, tokens of appreciation from a town grateful for his dad’s service.
Peter knew that one of the cabinets along the side of the room held two narrow shoeboxes filled with pictures of his mom. When he was little, he used to ask to look at them from time to time, and Dad would walk stiffly into the office while Peter hung back, clinging to the doorframe. He was always amazed at how gingerly Dad cradled the boxes, handling them with utmost care, as if they were important evidence in a criminal case rather than faded old snapshots.
Standing in the office now without permission, Peter felt nearly dizzy, and he moved quickly to the large oak desk in the middle of the room and pulled open the bottom drawer. There was a brown envelope that he’d seen before, the one where Dad dropped the keys each time a new car took up residence in the lot out back. He fished through until he found the set he remembered coming in months ago along with the blue convertible—an ugly blue rabbit’s foot that had been dangling from the ignition that day like something that had curled up and died in the car—and he pulled them out and closed his hand around them.
It wasn’t that he was necessarily going anywhere.
But it was nice to know he could.
Chapter seven
Emma’s life before this—first in North Carolina, then Washington, then New York City—was difficult to bring into focus. There were still the lingering outlines of houses and apartments, vague reminders of wallpaper patterns, a garage with a basketball hoop, a backyard with a swing set. But it was hard to separate what she knew from what she had seen in home videos and photo albums, from stories pried from unwilling memories.
Nobody in her family parted easily with information about the past. There were few tales of birthday parties or summer vacations unless they happened to coincide with a historical event, a book signing, or an academic conference. Her parents always teased Emma for her impatience—that skittish streak that kept her always on edge—but it was they who were hard to pin down. They had minds only for certain intellectual pursuits, and as she grew older, Emma saw that it was just getting worse. In a way it was not unlike a disease. Her dad was being slowly ravaged by poetry. Her mom had very nearly succumbed to the study of burial rites worldwide.
Somewhere along the way her family seemed to have come unglued; when, Emma wasn’t exactly sure. But she was beginning to wonder whether it had more to do with her forgotten brother than the natural forces of distance and time.
When her cell phone began to ring—dancing along the planks of the rest stop picnic table—Emma looked up in surprise. A few feet away the dog was lying on the grass, looking hopeful about the appearance of more fries, and he pricked his ears forward and eyed the phone. Emma could see on the screen that it was her parents calling, and she suspected that Patrick had now spoken to them. He was probably furious with her, and though she knew she should pick up, she couldn’t bring herself to do it, instead watching the phone until it fell silent again.
They’d be nearly frantic by now, she was sure, but she had no intention of turning back, so what good would it do anyway? It would only be a few more hours until she reached DC, and she could call them when she got to Annie’s. By then she’d be nearly halfway to North Carolina, too far for them to object to her continuing on.
She stood to toss her garbage in one of the bins, giving the dog one more pat as she headed back over to the little blue car, which was now sandwiched between two campers in the parking lot. As she squeezed by the one wallpapered with Texas-themed bumper stickers, she was surprised to find the dog at her side. He sat back and thumped his tail against the pavement, his bad leg tucked up close to him, his head cocked first to one side, then the other.
“You trying to hitch a ride?” she asked, stepping around him. He sat there and watched as she closed the door, then jammed the keys into the ignition, turning them once, twice, and then again. But the engine refused to catch, and she sat in the quiet car and leaned her head back on the seat, telling herself not to panic. After a moment she tried again, and a thin trail of smoke rose from the seams of the hood. Emma stared at it, and then beyond, to where the dog was still watching her, his mouth hanging open in a great doggy smile, looking like he was very much amused by her current predicament.
“It’s not funny,” she said as she strode past him and back toward the building. He trotted after her, a white shadow beneath the high ball of the sun.
In her pocket the phone began to ring again, and Emma was about to hit ignore when she changed her mind. She waited until it had stopped—until her parents gave up for at least another few minutes—then scrolled down until she found a different number.
If she were to call Patrick, he would only yell at her about the car and demand that she turn back. Her parents would want to come pick her up, and Annie would wonder why she thought it was okay to show up unannounced in the first place. If she were to call a tow truck, they would only charge her far too much and then put her back out onto the road, where the car would probably break down again in another fifty miles or so.
But Emma was on her way, and she knew for sure that she couldn’t stop now. And so she sat down at a picnic table and called the only person she could think to call.