“What?”
“I can only relay what he told me, but Mike Carroll knew people. I mean, Mike knew everyone. If you were in social services, in the Staten Island medical community, in the disability community, whatever—Mike knew you. Staten Island was a lot smaller then.”
“So what are you telling me?”
“That Mike Carroll did something illegal—really illegal—although I think he was right to do it. It was before my time with him, but this is what I remember. Lois’s husband—the boys’ father—was a cruel man. He wanted Charles behind him, in state care, and he wanted a new life. He wouldn’t let Lois visit Charles. It was like he was dead. That’s how Mike described it to me. As far as the father was concerned, there were two boys, not three.”
“Okay.”
“So Mike worked his connections. By ’71 or ’72, the family had moved away. That left Mike to do what he could for Charles. I have no idea if he’s still alive. If he is, I’m sure he’s under the assumed name.”
“Which was?”
“Caleb Evermore,” Nate said. He spelled out the last name. “I was reminded of it a little while ago, going through some old photos.”
“I don’t get it, though. How did Charles become someone named Caleb Evermore?”
“Mike knew staff at Willowbrook. Good people, exhausted people. He also knew people at a much better rehab facility. It was more appropriate for Charles’s disability, anyway. Mike knew the boy needed round-the-clock care, and probably always would. So he made things happen. Records got changed. Names. A kid who was Charles DeSantos, maybe, probably got listed as deceased. Then another kid around the same age popped up with this other name, Caleb Evermore. Orphaned. He was in one facility, but he really needed to move to this other facility. That’s all Mike needed. He couldn’t have changed things for a kid with involved parents, but he could do all sorts of things for a kid who was alone.”
“This can’t be,” Zochi said, barely above a whisper. It was just a verbal reflex. She had a feeling it was all very doable, and that Mike Carroll, whoever he was, had done it.
“You might think it’s crazy, but you had to be there,” he said, as if he’d read her mind. “In the early ’70s, when the city was broke, the state was cutting staff, and it was all just coming apart. Getting a severely disabled boy named Charles DeSantos from one place to another with a new name would have been difficult but not impossible. There were all sorts of things you could pull off, particularly if the kid was left for dead.”
“Dead,” she said, looking up from her notepad. “That’s how Lois viewed him by the time he was five or six, I guess. Dead.”
“I don’t know. Mike said Lois wasn’t the one who wanted to walk away from Charles. It was the father, Reggie. I never met him.”
“It was Lois who abandoned the other two, though. Just a few years later.”
He nodded. “I know. I never understood it. Mike never understood it. He never heard from her again that I know of. He just made do and hoped she’d turn up one day. I guess she never did.”
“What about her bringing the boys to the city in the first place, the night of the blackout? Did Mike know she was coming?”
“It was very short notice. Lois called him that morning, I think. I hadn’t heard from Mike most of the day; it’s not like we texted back then. All I knew was, the lights went out. Then I’m getting a call from my boyfriend in Staten Island, like, ‘Hey, can you give these two kids a hand and get them to the ferry?’ It was crazy. The whole night seemed like a dream. Then it just wasn’t discussed. It was Mike’s secret to tell, not mine. And our whole lives were secrets back then. We presented ourselves as friends. I think Robbie knew better, but he never said anything. Joe was just a nice kid. They missed their mother, and Mike and I didn’t know what to say. What do you tell two boys when their mother just disappears like that? We talked about all sorts of things. Maybe she got sick. Or a bump on the head.”
“Sounds awful,” Zochi said.
“Sometimes I wish that I would have stuck it out with Mike and been easier on him. I wish I had known Joe was still in the dark about his twin brother.”
“Wait,” she said quietly. Her pulse was thrumming in her ear. She had never felt so tired and yet so energized at the same time. “If Charles was in state care, it would have been in Staten Island, right?”