I fold the flyer back up, my heart sinking.
“You try Frost Bridge?” she asks.
“He’s never there,” I say.
She nods. “It’s getting real cold out. You have to think where they go when it’s too cold to be outside. You know, where they won’t be bothered. Empty places, stuff like that. I have to get back to work now.”
She starts to shut the door.
“Wait,” I say.
The door opens again. She puts her hand on her hip.
“If you see him, Joey, the nice kid, could you tell him to please come home?”
“Maybe,” she says.
It’s out before I can stop it.
“How can you do this?” I whisper. “I mean, all this, all these people’s lives? Kids’ lives?”
She looks at me for a long time.
“You do what you have to do,” she says finally. “And you live with it. Like I said, I have work to do.”
She shuts the door.
Daniel whispers, “The drug dealer in the green bathrobe has to get back to work now. My god, what have you done to my life, Emory Ward?”
* * *
—
We’re driving back down Wolf Creek Road when Liza says, “She said empty places?”
“Yeah.”
I meet her eyes in the rearview mirror.
She nods.
“The Mill,” I say.
Daniel presses the gas.
* * *
—
It isn’t hard to get into the Mill. They’ve cut the chain-link fencing and spread the holes wide. It’s easy enough to crawl through. Daniel helps me. Liza helps Jeremy. They’ve broken the padlocks on the front doors of the main building with bolt cutters. Most of the lower windows are covered in particleboard or are broken, the glass jagged and sharp.
Inside, it’s half dark, some morning light peeping through the dusty, high windows.
Daniel whistles.
They are scattered everywhere. Playing cards, holding their hands over small fires in old cans. Someone has strung up a makeshift laundry line. Tents are everywhere.
There are Pup Pop cups from Ziggy’s EZ Mart, chewed straws, wads of dirty toilet paper, dirty clothes. Used needles. Just like Frost Bridge. Somewhere, far off in a corner, a baby is crying, and the sound makes my heart hurt.
Jeremy nudges a blanket out of his way.
“Careful,” I say. “People live here. This is their home. We have to be respectful.”
“Fan out,” Liza says. “There are like a hundred people here. He could be anywhere.”
I remember the boy at the outpatient center, the one with the holes up and down his arms.
How he said people were weak and drugs filled the holes in their souls. There are a lot of holes in my family’s mill right now. Too many to be filled.
The needles are everywhere, mixed in with the garbage on the floor, dirty clothes. People go to the bathroom everywhere.
I walk along rows of people sleeping, peering down at each face. I have the flyer and hold it out, but I don’t have much hope. It seems like some people can’t even comprehend what I’m asking. Or they don’t care, because why should they? I’m no one to them.
Each body I pass, my heart sinks lower and lower. Each time I hold out my flyer and get a shake of the head or an impassive stare, I try not to lose hope.
And then I think about what Simon Stanley said. About the struggle and the joy. I’m surrounded by all this struggle right now. Joey is going to be a struggle, a long puzzle of a struggle that might take a lifetime to complete, but maybe, just maybe, I can try to turn what I’m seeing right now into the joy part.
I pull out my phone and call my dad, keeping my voice low.
“Emory,” my dad says, relieved. “I went to your room, but you weren’t there. I’m glad you’re out of bed, but could you tell me where you are, please? I don’t need two missing children.”
“I’m at the Mill,” I tell him. “And you should bring Mom.”
* * *
—
It’s hard to read exactly what’s going through my mother’s mind as she walks slowly through the Mill. She’s gingerly stepping over sleeping bags, stuffed trash bags being used as pillows. The baby is still crying somewhere, an eerie sound that hangs in the air.
“I used to come here all the time when I was little,” she says. “It was always so busy and loud and important-sounding in here. So many people, working.”
“Mom,” I say gently. “We don’t need condos in Mill Haven. Someone else can do that.”
Daniel and Liza are next to me. Jeremy is off to the side, helping a woman unroll her sleeping bag.
My dad appears, a baby in his arms and a gray-faced teenage girl by his side. The baby. The one who was crying.
“Abigail,” he says. “This is Carly. I met her a few months ago when she came into the ER. She ended up having an emergency C-section.”
“They cut you open,” Carly says matter-of-factly. “It’s a bitch.”
“The thing is,” my dad continues, “Carly was on methadone while she was pregnant, trying to get better, but when you get a C-section, a doctor prescribes you painkillers. Vicodin. Oxycodone. The very thing Carly was trying to wean herself from. Doctors can’t not prescribe that for a patient who’s just had major surgery. So recovering mothers are sent back out into the world with the very thing they’re addicted to. With very little support at home, and very few skills to cope.”
“I came here,” Carly says. “It seems okay. Better than where I was. My mom stole my Percocet and said the baby was bothering her.”
My mother reaches out and touches the baby’s cheek softly.
“Abigail,” my dad says. “I don’t know where our son is. I’ll never stop hoping he comes home and gets help, but right here, right now, we can do something. You can build something else that matters in this town. Look around you. These are all versions of Joey. Think of that.”
My mother looks at Carly. “I’m sorry about your mother. A girl needs her mother when she has a new baby.”
“Mom, you can do this,” I say. “Fuck your shoes. Remember?”
My mom is quiet, her face sad as she gazes at the baby, as she looks around at what the history of her family has become.
“I need some time to think,” she says slowly. “I just need a little time.”
“Okay,” I say, grateful. “We can do that.”
* * *
—
My father has taken a leave of absence from the hospital. Every few days, three of us, me and my father and Liza, take boxes of canned beans, bags of apples, toilet paper, baby wipes, bottled water, to Frost Bridge and the Mill. I sit to the side while my father talks to the people, taking their histories and temperatures, checking their injuries and illnesses. He cleans up the old needles and gives them new ones. Delivers strips of Suboxone, hands out flyers for the outpatient center.
Because, he tells me, they can’t stop doing what hurts them. They can’t control it, but he can try to keep them safe while they do what they need to do. Each time we go, there are more of them, but there is never Joey.
At night, after everyone is asleep, I’m still texting him, even though his phone is dead and gone. Even though my words will drift into darkness and silence, they still matter. It still matters to say them, each and every time. Maybe in that alternate universe Daniel talks about, one word, somehow, some way, will reach Joey, wherever he is. A slight murmur in his ear that causes him to look around and think about us. Me.