I wake up my laptop. Just a few minutes, then back to work. I go online and type in Sam’s name and a ton of articles appear. I click on the first one and start reading, but there’s not much information. He was found yesterday. The police knocked on an apartment door, looking for this man named Russell Lee Hunnicutt, and they found him. But they also found Sam. Sam was living there. When they asked, he told them he was Sam Walsh. “Can you take me home now?” he said.
My heart races as I scroll down the article. I need to see the man they arrested. The man he was living with. The man who took him.
And then there he is, near the end of the first article. I guess it’s the mug shot after he was arrested. He’s a big man, with messy brown hair, a not very well-trimmed beard. He’s facing the camera, scowling. And those eyes. One of them looks off to the side. A lazy eye, that’s what you call it. I remember now.
I just sit there and stare at him, hoping my own eyes are playing tricks on me. I blink and blink, but the picture stays the same.
It’s the man in the white truck. I’m sure of it.
I slap my laptop closed and sit there. At first I think I’m going to be sick. I can’t breathe. But then I count down from ten, like I do just before every match I play. Ten nine eight seven six five four three two one.
I open my eyes. Everything is going to be okay. That’s what Mom said, wasn’t it? Sam is home now. He’s with his mom and his stepdad and Beth. He’s back, probably sleeping in his old bed tonight, in his old bedroom in Pine Forest Estates. Sam’s home and alive. Everything is going to be okay.
CHAPTER 3
Holding It Together
Beth
When Earl drives up to our house, news vans are lined up and down the street, like they followed us from the conference. Or maybe these are different trucks. People seem to be everywhere—in their own yards, watching what’s going on at ours, and also surrounding our driveway in the street. Neighbors, well-wishers, but also reporters, TV people—the lights of their cameras blast in at us. Some neon-orange traffic cones are blocking our driveway, acting as a sort of barrier. Two cops see our car and move the cones aside. No one says anything as Earl eases the car into the driveway, but the crowd breaks into applause and cheers and I can hear things being shouted, like “Welcome home!” and “We love you!”
Earl pulls into the garage and kills the engine. Sam, sitting next to me, tightens his grip on my hand but doesn’t say anything. He hasn’t said a word since we left the news conference. Before we’d gone to face all the people and reporters, I’d excused myself and gone into the girls’ locker room. I wanted to cry, to loosen the tightness that had been building in my chest, and I thought about going into a stall to do just that. Instead, I splashed cold water on my face in the sink. I knew I had to hold it together. And I did, sitting there calmly like a good daughter.
Earl unbuckles his seat belt and looks back at us and nods. I guess we all take this as a sign to get out of the car and deal with this craziness. The cheers and noise and shouting erupts all over again when we get out.
Mom grabs Sam’s hand and walks toward the edge of the driveway, where the crowd is held back by a few policemen. Earl hovers close behind, but I stay where I am. I feel kind of light-headed, just seeing everyone crowded around like that.
Mrs. Sykes from next door is being held back by the cops, but she’s waving and Earl nods to the police and they let her through. She’s known both Sam and me since we were little kids, and used to babysit us a lot. She can’t stop crying and hugging Mom, saying “It’s a miracle, it’s a miracle.” Then she latches onto Sam, hugging him in what looks like a crushing embrace, even though he’s taller and bigger than she is. “Baby,” she says again and again. I look at the other people lingering and watching, with smiles on their faces and tears in their eyes. “Sam! Sam!” The police fend off the news reporters who are holding cameras and microphones. A few more neighbors are waving at us, beckoning to get through, and again Earl gives the go-ahead and a few are allowed to approach. That older couple whose kids have moved away, the Albertsons. Weird Mr. Davis, who has three loud Yorkshire terriers that he takes for walks while he smokes cigarettes. Mrs. Tomek and her ten-year-old son Ruben. The young couple, the ones who moved into the Kellers’ old house—I forget their names. They don’t even know Sam. All these people, they swarm around Mom and Sam, while Earl keeps watch. I back away toward the house, and no one notices, thankfully.
When I get inside the phone is ringing but I ignore it and just stand against the counter, glad to be away from the lights and noise. Just hours ago I was skipping class and doing homework and kissing a boy and now I’m at home and my dead brother is alive and it seems like the whole world is outside, grabbing at us, and it’s just too much for me to process.
Water, I need water. I grab a glass and fill it at the sink and gulp so fast that I choke a little. I fill it again and guzzle more.
The phone finally stops ringing, but I can still hear the commotion outside. I don’t look out the window. I just try to breathe normally. And it seems to work. The tightness in my chest eases even more. I’m safe at home.
After a few more minutes, Mom and Earl and Sam finally come inside. Mom sees me and comes over and hugs me. Sam just kind of stands there, unsure of what to do.
He’s not used to his own house.
The phone in the kitchen—the landline Mom insisted we keep because that was the only number she knew Sam had memorized—starts ringing again. “I’ll deal with this,” Earl says, answering.
“You okay?” Mom asks Sam. Sam just flashes this weird cautious smile, the kind of smile you’d offer a stranger who held a door open for you.
He hadn’t said a word at the news conference—he hadn’t been allowed to. Mom did most of the talking, with Earl chiming in here and there, and then the sheriff and prosecutor and other people answering questions from the press.
I just sat there, silent. I kept stealing looks at Sam. But I couldn’t look at him too long. I don’t know why, but it made me uncomfortable, like he might catch me and see something on my face that would upset him.
“Come,” Mom says now, grabbing Sam’s hand. She leads him through the den, down the hallway.
“Here’s your room,” she says, as if Sam has never lived here.
Sam lets go of her hand and sits on his bed and looks around. Mom hasn’t changed a thing in here since he vanished. The same baby blue paint on the walls, the same checkered bedspread on the bed. A stuffed elephant wearing a “Bama” T-shirt perched on his pillow. A few soccer trophies stacked on a shelf over his bed. Some framed photos—me and Sam, Sam and Mom, Sam standing in a field in his soccer uniform, a soccer ball perched under his foot—sit atop the dresser, along with a mason jar full of dusty coins.