when those words hit you in the gut.
Ben was only ten when his father died, an aneurysm during dinner that dropped the man to one knee next to the kitchen table, and then face-first into oblivion. And what he remembered most about that time was how Nikki’s parents let her sleep in his bed because her prolonged embrace was the only thing that allowed him to get through the night without waking up in tears. He could remember how everyone had closed in around him en masse; his best friend, aunts, uncles, cousins, even his mother, who’d just been made a widow in her late thirties—they had all worked in concert to protect him, the baby, the only child of a good man gone too soon.
How many times had he heard those two words back then? Too soon, too soon. Well, eighteen was also too soon, right?
Still, everything about this week was different. He wasn’t the baby anymore, for one, and he had no special status amongst all those who had gathered on the banks of Bayou Rabineaux, spreading grid maps of Tangipahoa Parish across the hoods of their sun-baked cars, loading into fantail boats to assist in the fruitless search. No one left behind was special or more significant than any other. That’s what the sudden disappearance of an entire family could do; it sent out a pressure wave that leveled all their loved ones with the same explosive force, rendering them incapable of caring for the man, woman or child standing next to them.
At times, he’d found himself praying to a God he wasn’t sure he believed in and asking the simple question, Is this how you would have me grow up? Not with a great love or some accomplishment, but the sudden unexplained absence of the person I cared most about in the world? Is this how you would have me start in the big wide grown-up world?
Nikki, the only person in his life who’d taken him aside and told him she would always be there, no matter who he turned out to be. No matter who he fell in love with. And what had he done? Justnodded and smiled as if she’d offered him a ride home after school that day, as if he didn’t understand what she truly meant. Yeah, thanks, Nick. Hey, that new cheerleader’s kinda hot, maybe I should ask her out, huh?
Down the hall, his mother had turned up the volume on the TV just enough to let him know she was parked in the living room a few feet from the front door. And because their house was a small shotgun cottage, that meant she had the back door in plain sight as well. So he was basically under house arrest. Again.
If she hadn’t called and made them come home when she did, he and Anthem would probably still be traveling back roads, hanging missing-persons flyers all over the state. But it had been a hell of a first day, that was for sure.
They’d started around dawn and managed to hit every gas station window and restaurant bulletin board from Madisonville to Gonzales. They had a flyer for each of them. Nikki, Mr. Noah and Miss Millie. And for most of the day, it had felt good. They were doing something. Being proactive, as Ben’s mother liked to say.
But after she ordered them home, their adrenaline surges subsided, and as they were driving back on Interstate 10, the setting sun a blood-orange bonfire behind them, each too consumed with thoughts to turn on the radio, that’s when Anthem exploded with the first sobs he’d let lose since Nikki vanished. And they were snotty, choked things, desperate wheezes combined with terrible, gut-clenching whines, and Ben could only rest his hand on Anthem’s shaking knee lest he lose control of his car. And after a while, he managed to speak again. “I was going to go. I was going to go with her, to North Carolina. That’s what I was . . . That’s what I was—” going to tell her that night, Ben knew; Anthem didn’t need to finish.
Now, as Ben watched the dance of shadows on his ceiling, he envisioned the flyers the two of them had left all over the state that day. He saw the black-and-white
Ben was only ten when his father died, an aneurysm during dinner that dropped the man to one knee next to the kitchen table, and then face-first into oblivion. And what he remembered most about that time was how Nikki’s parents let her sleep in his bed because her prolonged embrace was the only thing that allowed him to get through the night without waking up in tears. He could remember how everyone had closed in around him en masse; his best friend, aunts, uncles, cousins, even his mother, who’d just been made a widow in her late thirties—they had all worked in concert to protect him, the baby, the only child of a good man gone too soon.
How many times had he heard those two words back then? Too soon, too soon. Well, eighteen was also too soon, right?
Still, everything about this week was different. He wasn’t the baby anymore, for one, and he had no special status amongst all those who had gathered on the banks of Bayou Rabineaux, spreading grid maps of Tangipahoa Parish across the hoods of their sun-baked cars, loading into fantail boats to assist in the fruitless search. No one left behind was special or more significant than any other. That’s what the sudden disappearance of an entire family could do; it sent out a pressure wave that leveled all their loved ones with the same explosive force, rendering them incapable of caring for the man, woman or child standing next to them.
At times, he’d found himself praying to a God he wasn’t sure he believed in and asking the simple question, Is this how you would have me grow up? Not with a great love or some accomplishment, but the sudden unexplained absence of the person I cared most about in the world? Is this how you would have me start in the big wide grown-up world?
Nikki, the only person in his life who’d taken him aside and told him she would always be there, no matter who he turned out to be. No matter who he fell in love with. And what had he done? Justnodded and smiled as if she’d offered him a ride home after school that day, as if he didn’t understand what she truly meant. Yeah, thanks, Nick. Hey, that new cheerleader’s kinda hot, maybe I should ask her out, huh?
Down the hall, his mother had turned up the volume on the TV just enough to let him know she was parked in the living room a few feet from the front door. And because their house was a small shotgun cottage, that meant she had the back door in plain sight as well. So he was basically under house arrest. Again.
If she hadn’t called and made them come home when she did, he and Anthem would probably still be traveling back roads, hanging missing-persons flyers all over the state. But it had been a hell of a first day, that was for sure.
They’d started around dawn and managed to hit every gas station window and restaurant bulletin board from Madisonville to Gonzales. They had a flyer for each of them. Nikki, Mr. Noah and Miss Millie. And for most of the day, it had felt good. They were doing something. Being proactive, as Ben’s mother liked to say.
But after she ordered them home, their adrenaline surges subsided, and as they were driving back on Interstate 10, the setting sun a blood-orange bonfire behind them, each too consumed with thoughts to turn on the radio, that’s when Anthem exploded with the first sobs he’d let lose since Nikki vanished. And they were snotty, choked things, desperate wheezes combined with terrible, gut-clenching whines, and Ben could only rest his hand on Anthem’s shaking knee lest he lose control of his car. And after a while, he managed to speak again. “I was going to go. I was going to go with her, to North Carolina. That’s what I was . . . That’s what I was—” going to tell her that night, Ben knew; Anthem didn’t need to finish.
Now, as Ben watched the dance of shadows on his ceiling, he envisioned the flyers the two of them had left all over the state that day. He saw the black-and-white
Similar Books
