Page 23 of Kill Your Darlings

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“I’m going to call,” Thom said.

“He’s probably just walking around in circles somewhere daydreaming.”

“Still.” He had the landline phone in his hand. “Do you know the number?”

Wendy checked her cellphone for Connie’s number and read it aloud to Thom. She wished he’d give it a few more minutes. Somehow,

as soon as the call was made everything was going to change. Jason would be officially missing.

“Oh, hey, Connie,” Thom said. “Jason’s not still there, is he?”

Wendy could hear the timbre of Connie’s nasal voice but not the words.

“No, not yet,” Thom said. “He’s probably just lollygagging. Do you know exactly when he left?”

After ending the phone call Thom looked up at Wendy. His face had lost all its color. “I’ll go look for him.”

“Okay,” Wendy said. Seeing Thom’s face made it even more real somehow than the phone call to Connie, although she was telling herself there was nothing to worry about.

Jason had been walking back and forth to his best friend Julia’s house for the whole of the summer.

It wasn’t far, just under a mile, but there was one semi-busy street to cross, and she also knew that Jason sometimes cut across the conservation land up near the ledge, even though Thom had told him not to do it.

“You stay here,” Thom said.

“Where are you going to look?”

“I’ll just backtrack over to Mount Salem Street.”

“You’ll check the woods?”

“I told him I didn’t want him to go through there.”

Wendy shrugged at him.

“Right, I’ll check,” Thom said.

“I wish you had a cellphone,” Wendy said. It had been a constant fight for the past few years, Thom determined to become the

last person in the world to get a cellphone.

“I know, I know. I’ll get one, okay? But I don’t have one right now.”

“Take mine, and if you find him, then call me here, okay?”

Thirty minutes later Thom hadn’t returned and he hadn’t called, and Wendy dialed her cell number from the kitchen phone.

“I haven’t found him,” Thom said.

“You’ve been in the woods?”

“Yes, but I’m at Connie’s now. Julia said that he left exactly at five p.m.”

“Oh God,” Wendy said, checking her watch, even though she knew it was almost six thirty.

“Look, Bob’s here now and he’s going to help me look.”

“We should call the police, I think.”

“Yes, okay. Let’s do it. You’ll call?”

“I’ll call.”

It was a police officer named Sean Berry who finally found Jason in Brimbal Woods.

It was just after eight, the sun having set.

The officer had taken his flashlight and gone off the trails when he heard Jason yelling out a feeble-sounding call for help.

It turned out that their nine-year-old son had climbed one of the larger boulders in the woods, then had fallen off its side and lodged himself down into a crevice between two rocks.

His ankle was badly sprained and his head was bleeding.

He’d been shouting for help so much that his voice had gone hoarse.

Jason was taken to New Essex Memorial, had his ankle wrapped, and was given a cognition test. Wendy couldn’t take her eyes

off of him. He looked the same as he had that morning, but somehow completely different. In the two hours he’d been missing

she’d somehow already said goodbye to him, convincing herself that he was gone and that the remainder of her life was going

to be empty and terrible. She’d even prayed, briefly, something she’d decided to keep to herself. She hadn’t been raised with

any kind of religion, but in the fifth grade her father had moved the family to Sweetgum, Florida, for a year, and the only

friend she’d made had been a girl named Kristi, who convinced her that since she hadn’t been baptized she was going straight

to hell when she died. Kristi’s family had taken Wendy to church, and for about a month after that Wendy had decided that

prayer was her only chance at avoiding eternal damnation. It had been a habit that lasted a month, and yet Wendy had prayed

that night, begging a god she didn’t believe in for a miracle.

After Jason had hobbled off to bed, she and Thom walked back downstairs, holding hands. Thom went out to the front porch and

Wendy asked him if he wanted a drink.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m going to quit drinking.”

“I would argue that your timing is off. I’m pouring myself a gigantic glass of wine.”

“I’ll have some wine, I guess. A small glass.”

They sat together and stared out toward the cove. On some nights, if there was fog and no starlight, it was like staring out into the abyss, the edge of the world.

“I thought we lost him,” Wendy said.

“I knew we lost him,” Thom said. “No, that’s not true. I didn’t know , but I felt in my heart that he was gone. That someone had come along with a van and kidnapped him, and we were never going

to see him again, never going to know what happened.”

“That’s what I thought too.”

They were quiet for a moment, Wendy trying to savor the fact that the world had returned to normality.

“I thought we were being punished,” Thom said.

It took her a moment to realize what he was saying, then Wendy replied, “Even if something horrible had happened, it still

wouldn’t have been punishment.”

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“How do you know?”

They hadn’t had this particular conversation for a long time, and Wendy searched in her mind for a way to end it quickly without

getting into a fight. “It’s possible, of course, but you know I don’t think about the world like that.”

“Some people are punished for what they do. And some people are rewarded for being good. That’s a fact.”

“Of course it is,” Wendy said. “I just don’t think those things happen for a reason, or not for the reason you think they

do. There’s no guiding hand in the universe dealing out karma and rewarding humans for their good behavior.”

“Lots of people think there is.”

“Well, yeah. Religious people. Look, I don’t want to fight, but I think you’re being argumentative for the sake of it. You

believe exactly what I believe.”

“Why? Because I’m not religious?” Thom said. “Don’t forget I used to go to church.”

“Did you pray?”

Thom said nothing, and Wendy continued. “The reason I know you believe what I believe is because you’re a logical human being.

You know that people do terrible things all the time and get away with them. And you know that terrible things happen to good

people. It’s random.”

“It’s not completely random, though, is it? If I work hard at being a good neighbor, when I need help then my neighbors will help me. And...

let me finish... if I’m law-abiding, if I don’t commit crimes, then I won’t go to prison.”

“I think you’re being na?ve, and I think you know that you’re being na?ve. Yes, we are lucky enough to happen to live in a

country with a decent justice system for people who are like us, but that’s it. Being a good person is a guarantee of nothing.

I mean, it’s possible that you can tip the scales, right? I agree with that. Same with health. I can eat my five fruits and

vegetables a day or I can only eat cheeseburgers, but it’s no guarantee of anything. Healthy people drop dead all the time.”

The lights were off on the porch and Wendy couldn’t see the expression on Thom’s face, but he didn’t immediately respond.

“Another drink?” he finally said.

“Are we done with this argument?”

“It’s not an argument. I think it’s a fundamental difference between us.”

Wendy felt a pulse of anger go through her. It had always bothered her that every argument they had led to Thom sulking about

it. “Look,” she said. “It bothers me because I know, down deep, that we are on the same page here. Or very close to the same

page. I just think the big difference is that you wish the world were a different place.”

“And you don’t?” He had leaned forward in his spring chair, and his voice had gone a little shrill.

“Of course I wish the world had more justice and equality and all that stuff. That’s not the point. It doesn’t.”

“If the world had more justice, then you and I would probably be in prison right now.”

“Okay,” Wendy said. “Jesus. Maybe right now is not the time for this conversation.”

“I’m going to get another drink. Do you want more wine?”

“No, I’m fine,” Wendy said.

He went to the kitchen and Wendy looked out at the cove, still dark, although she could make out a faint line of lights across

the other side of the harbor in West Essex. The wind must have turned, because she could smell the low tide. She heard Thom

returning to the porch and turned to him. But it was Jason, in his pajamas. “I can’t sleep,” he said.

“Come here.”

He came and slid onto her lap, something he hadn’t done in a year, at least. “You scared us tonight,” she said.

“What did you think happened to me?”

“I don’t know. Lots of things. That you fell off a boulder and hit your head. Oh, wait, that did happen.”

“Did you think I was kidnapped?”

“Honestly, we didn’t know what had happened, honey, and that was what was so scary. But no, I don’t really worry about kidnappers

around here.”

Thom came back onto the porch and quietly returned to his chair.

“What do you think would have happened to me if I’d been trapped out there all night?” Jason said.

“I think we would have found you in the morning. But I think that all of us would have had a very scary night.”

“It would have been a better story.”

“What do you mean? If you’d been out there all night?”

“Yeah.” Jason had a big grin on his face. “It might have made the news or something.”

Thom said, “We can take you back out there if you’d like, stick you between those rocks, and come back in the morning. How

does that sound?”

“Eh,” Jason said, a new expression of his, usually said with both his hands out with his palms up.

“You’re happy here at home?” Wendy said.

“Eh,” he said again.

“How’s the head?”

“It doesn’t really hurt anymore. My ankle does, though.”

“That’s good. We’d rather have ankle trauma than head trauma.”

“Ankle amputation?” Jason said.