Or Else by Joe Hart
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
—Charles Dickens
You’re responsible. All of us are our choices, and yours are suddenly on fire and burning the ones you care about the most. You did this.
You are going to find her. You are going to find the boys. All of them alive and well. You are going to do this because you are the reason they’re missing.
This is how you’ll do it.
You’re going to dig in and keep your head up. You’re going to notice things. You’re going to see what other people miss. You are going to think and reason and deduce better than any of the sleepy-eyed detectives you write about in your books. You are going to work harder than you ever have before, because you love her.
And you’re going to do it in secret, because a secret is trust, and she trusted you.
1
Footsteps coming down the hall in the dark.
Dad was up again.
I woke, rubbing my eyes in the faint blue light of the still-glowing television. I was on the couch, neck hurting from falling asleep against the world’s hardest pillow.
Dad emerged from the hall and skirted through the living room, barely a ghost in the light of whatever god-awful programming was on at . . . I checked my phone . . . two thirty in the morning. He passed out of view, slippers shuffling.
Tired. So tired. A few broken nights of sleep in a row will do that to a person. I thought back to days of yore, of flopping down at 10:00 p.m. and going somewhere else completely for a flawless eight or nine hours. That was the past; this was the now. Before and after. Like a diagnosis.
“Dad,” I said, rising from the couch. He’d already disappeared into the main bath. I don’t know why he always came out to use this one when he had an en suite in his bedroom. Just another mystery of what was happening to him, another quirk of the disease slowly lowering blinds and turning off lights in the corridors of his mind.
He was standing at the sink holding his razor, hot water beginning to steam up the mirror, obscuring his reflection. The writer in me thought of an overobvious metaphor about how soon he wouldn’t be able to see himself in the mirror, and I stuffed a mental gag down the writer’s throat.
“Hey, Dad, whatcha doin’？” I asked, rubbing the last of the sleep from my eyes.
“Hmm? Oh hey, forgot you were still here. I had to pee.” He stopped, blinking a few times, then reached out and shut off the hot water. “Thought I had an early shift.” He huffed a quiet laugh and shook his head.
“It’s okay. Wanna try going back to bed?”
“No. I think I’ll sit up a bit. Watch a little TV.” I followed him back to the living room, helped him get comfortable in his recliner, made sure he had the remote, hugged him good night.
“Night, son.”
How many of those did we have left? It’s what I’d taken to wondering whenever he called me son or said my name. How many more times would I be Andy? How long before I became a stranger with a familiar face? Then just a stranger.
“Night, Dad.”
I stood on his covered porch and took in the neighborhood, so dark and still and quiet at this hour. Long breath out, deep breath in of night air. The Loop, what we called the little development where our family had lived since my parents bought the lot the house stood on now, was dotted with a dozen or so homes—both sides of the long, curving street on the lower slope of a hill. Beyond the far side of the road, untouched wilderness met the edges of manicured lawns. Wildness and domesticity merged but didn’t mingle. In the distance the Adirondacks were dark heaves against the night sky.
I took the steps down to the front walk, pausing for a second to glance at the house two doors up from Dad’s. It was like all the others and different at the same time. I smiled at that. Knowing a secret was good. At least I’d always seen it that way. A secret was safety. A secret was trust.
Past the house the church rose at the pinnacle of the hill, lording over all below. Its steeple stabbed at the sky. I looked at the building, its shape still seeming much too large for its plot of land, a stomach spilling over a cinched beltline. The church was new—at least to our town it was. New fifteen years ago, when I was transitioning from high school to college out of state. The old church had been demolished, torn down and removed like something the community was ashamed of. They rebuilt on the foundations, though, the sprawling catacomb basement of my nightmares. My older brother, Cory, had lured me down there one day on the pretense he would let me fly his radio-controlled plane if I just explored with him for a while. Mom had been busy with whatever function she’d been overseeing in the parish hall above, and Cory and I were left to our own devices.