“Bradley? Didn’t he come home? I saw him standing in line for the bus.”
Through my tears I stare down at the leftover lunch. I clutch the half-eaten sandwich, bringing the baggie to my nose. The peanut butter smell is strong, even through the plastic. It is the smell of little boys everywhere. I allow myself a memory—peanut butter smeared in his hair, on his cheeks, on the scratched metal tray of his high chair. I remember laughing at the mess as I swept him into my arms and carried him to the bathtub. It was four years ago, that day, when he was just learning that food was for eating, not for playing with.
Four years ago… yesterday.
I think for a second that I can’t take the pain, that this heart of mine will simply stop beating—for how can it beat when my son is missing?
“Come on, April,” the principal says quietly. “We should call the police. The longer we wait…” Thankfully, his words trail off.
Like mothers have done for centuries, I get up, I go on. I do what I have to do. “Yes,” I answer, and though my voice is a frayed remnant of itself, it is a triumph. For already, before this tragedy has truly begun, I can imagine the end. I am an old, old lady. My eyes are wild and I live in a box under the freeway. I haven’t spoken in fifty years. Not from this moment on.
The last word I ever spoke was to the police when Mr. Johnston handed me the phone.
“My son, Bradley, is missing,” I said. “He is six years old.”
I AM sitting on the front porch when Ryan gets home. Already the house is swarming with well-meaning police officers. They are poking through my son’s room, picking up toys and opening drawers. I cannot watch. They act as if the secret to his disappearance is here, in the one place on earth where he was safe. In my arms is Teddy, the tiny patchwork bear Bradley sleeps with.
Ryan stops in front of me. It takes forever, but I manage to lift my head and look at him. His beautiful blue eyes are filled with tears, and I realize that I have never seen him cry before. I ache to join him, to feel the relief of tears, but I am dried up inside, the tears a hard knot in my chest. It is all too real now; my husband is here, and I have to tell him everything that has happened, and when the words leave my mouth, I know I will fall apart.
Behind Ryan, a roving red police light throbs from its static place on the top of the patrol car, slicing through my yard in surreal bursts.
I force the enormity of my fear into tiny compartments. Details. These I can handle. “I called Susan. She’ll pick up Bonnie and Billy after school. We’ll have to tell them, or course. But I thought… not yet.”
Ryan kneels before me, his big hand caresses my face, then curls protectively around my chin. He is crying openly now, my strong, silent, honorable husband, and his pain breaks what little bit of my heart remains.
“We’ll find him,” he says to me in a voice I barely recognize.
In that instant, I love him so much it is a dull pain in my chest. “Yes.”
He moves around and sits beside me on the porch, pulling me close. Together we stare out at the yard—at the lawn that always needs mowing and the flower beds that always need weeding. I think of how often I have bitched about the lawn. How could I have missed the obvious?
This backyard of ours needs only one thing. Children. Children playing and laughing and drinking water from the green garden hose on a hot summer’s day. I close my eyes in shame, wondering when I let things get so tangled. Was it only a few hours ago when I thought my life was unfinished and unformed? It feels like forever; the idle thoughts of a selfish child.
I lean against my husband, gathering strength and courage from him. Time falls away from us; I have no idea how long it has been when a police car pulls up in front of the house. A uniformed man gets out and slams his door, walking purposefully toward us.
Ryan’s arm tightens around me, and I know he is feeling it, too, this sudden, numbing rush of terror. I stare at the policeman’s emotionless face, thinking the same thing over and over again. Don’t say you’re sorry.
A tiny sound, a moan, escapes me. I can’t hold it all in.
The policeman stops and gives us a gentle smile. The gentleness of it is almost more than I can bear. “Mr. and Mrs. Bannerman?”
“Yes,” Ryan answers.
“We need a photograph of Bradley… to put out over the wires.”
I deflate, relieved momentarily. A photograph.
I think of Bradley’s T-ball picture, tacked to the wall in the kitchen, the one where he is wearing a black batting glove and a toothless smile. I think of all the times he missed the ball and all the times I said, “Don’t worry, pal. You’ll be as good as Billy one day.”