I am already shaking my head at him, pissed off. Before, I was on the verge, and now I am there. “I am not giving you any more—”
“I don’t want money.”
“Then what?”
“The next time you sneak out, I don’t want money. I don’t want anything,” he says. “But I’m going to tell Jenna.”
“You’d really tell your sister?”
He sighs. It is not one of those old-man sighs, filled with weariness and fatigue. This is a child’s sigh, the kind that comes with a trembling lip. “Stop, Dad,” he says. “Just stop cheating on Mom.”
Now I am the one who is surprised. The full impact of what he has said spreads over me an inch at a time, until I have the whole picture.
He is a child. Adulthood is still years away, and he is not even close. Now, he looks younger than ever. He looks younger than he did the first time I lied to him, younger than the second and the third. He looks younger than he did the day I taught him how to hold a tennis racket and younger than the day he rejected it for golf. Rory looks younger than he did yesterday. He is still just a little boy.
This has never been about the money or the video games or even the blackmail.
This has all been about what he thinks I am doing. He thinks I am sneaking out to cheat on his mother. And he wants me to stop.
When I realize this, it feels like a shotgun blast to the stomach. Or at least how I imagine that might feel. It is much stronger than a punch. I do not know what to say or how to say it.
I nod and offer my hand.
We shake on it.
* * *
• • •
I keep all of this from Millicent, just as I have all along. I don’t even tell her that Rory has been reading about Naomi on the Internet. The kids see it all anyway. It’s everywhere.
Josh is still covering the story and is on TV all day, for breaking news and on the evening reports. He is still very young and earnest, but now he looks tired and needs a haircut.
For the past two days, he has been traveling around with the police as they check rest stops. That was where Owen kept his victims, in an abandoned rest stop, where he had hollowed out the building and turned it into a bunker. The police have been searching all of them, along with any bunker type of building on the map. They have not found a thing.
Tonight, Josh is out on an empty road, behind him a fleet of police cars. He is bundled up in a jacket and a baseball cap, which makes him look even younger, and he says they are checking on another possible location. They have been searching farther and farther out, even way out east near Goethe State Park.
It is because Naomi is still alive.
Josh does not say that. The police do not say it, either. But everyone knows that if Owen is still alive, so is Naomi. He always keeps them alive, and he does awful things to them. Things they do not talk about on TV. Things I do not think about, because Millicent is doing them now.
Or I assume she is. I assume Naomi is still alive, though I have not asked and have no idea where Millicent would keep her. The police searches make me wonder.
The next morning, while I am backing out of the driveway, Millicent comes out of the house. She raises her hand, telling me to wait. I watch her walk from the door to my car. She is wearing a slim pair of slacks and a white blouse with tiny polka dots.
Millicent bends down at the window. Her face is so close to mine I can see the tiny lines in the corners of her eyes—not deep wrinkles but well on their way. When she places her hand on the edge of the door, I see scratches on her forearm. Like she has been playing with a cat.
She sees where I am looking and pulls down the sleeve. My eyes go up to hers. In the morning sun, they almost look like they used to.
“What?” I say.
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a white envelope. “I thought this would be useful.”
The envelope is sealed. “What’s this?”
She winks. “For your next letter.”
This tiny thing lifts my mood. I do not write letters, but Owen does.
“It will convince them,” Millicent says.
“Whatever you say.”
She puts her hand on my cheeks and strokes it with her thumb. I think she is going to kiss me, but she doesn’t, not out here in the driveway where any neighbor could see us. Instead, she walks back to the house as casually as she walked out, like she has just reminded me to pick up almond milk on the way home.
I slide my finger under the flap of the envelope and open the corner.
Inside, a lock of Naomi’s hair.
Twenty-nine
Despite what Millicent said, I go back and forth about the lock of Naomi’s hair. I wonder if it will make things better or worse. Although Jenna is no longer carrying a knife, as far as I know, she also is not eating much. She picks at her food, swishing it around her plate. She does not say much at dinner. We have not heard any blow-by-blows of her soccer practices or school days.
I do not like this. I want my Jenna back, the one who smiles at me, the one who asks for something, so I can say yes. The only thing she asks for now is to be excused from the table.
If I send a letter to Josh, confirming that Naomi is Owen’s victim, the search will only intensify. The police will go through every building within fifty miles to find her, and the media will cover every moment of it.
But perhaps it is worse to not send the letter. Perhaps it’s worse to let everyone wonder if Owen has Naomi, maybe forever. Because then Jenna will learn that people can just disappear with no one ever finding them. It is the truth, but maybe she should not know that. Not yet, anyway.
Once again, Millicent is right. The lock of hair is useful.
I go through several drafts of the letter. The first is too elaborate; the second is still too long. The third is down to a paragraph. Then I realize Owen does not have to say anything.
The hair will say enough.
They will DNA-test it, and they will know it is Naomi’s. All I have to do is wrap it up in a piece of paper and sign at the bottom.
—Owen
The final touch is the cheap cologne.
I dump the lock of hair onto my letter. Fifty strands, a hundred—I don’t know how many, but they are a couple of inches long. At one end, the hair is frayed with slight differences in length. The other end was cut so straight I can almost hear the scissors snip.
I do not allow myself to think about it any further. I do not want to picture the look on Naomi’s face when she sees the scissors, do not want to imagine the relief she feels when only her hair is cut.
Instead, I fold up the paper around the hair, put it into a new envelope, and use a sponge to seal the flap. I do not take my gloves off until the letter is in the mailbox.
As soon as I drop it in, I feel a surge of adrenaline.
* * *
• • •
Work should be an escape, but is not. Everyone is talking about Naomi, about Owen, about where she might be held and if she will ever be found. Kekona is in the clubhouse; she does not have a lesson but is there anyway, gossiping with a group of women who are all old enough to be Naomi’s mother. The men sitting at the bar stare up at the screen, at the pretty missing woman they would have liked to meet. No one is saying anything about Naomi’s activities at the Lancaster. She has become everyone’s daughter, sister, the girl next door.