Page 93 of Fragments of the Lost
“What’s going to happen? To you?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I don’t know yet. But I’ve been talking to the lawyers about testifying. About deals. There are different possibilities.” They haven’t charged him with anything yet, so I had to hope there was a chance they would not.
I nod. There’s unfinished business, and my dad had told me this could take months, years, to play out. I heard, through my parents, that, since Caleb’s return with his father, they were adding to the list of his mother’s charges—charges of perjury, at the very least, from the case years ago. It would take time to resolve, I knew.
Police had been searching for Sean’s body in the Pine Barrens, but they’d yet to find anything, and his mother wasn’t talking.
For Caleb, it was just beginning. But this part wasn’t my story, anymore.
“Where are you going?” I ask, looking at the car beyond.
“With my dad,” he says.
I had heard, through school, through rumors and the spin everyone put on the story, that Caleb, now officially an adult, would be granted temporary custody of Mia. That the money would still be his, but that there was a death certificate to undo, a mess of paperwork to sort through. And so Caleb is, in a sense, still a ghost. Existing neither here nor there.
But the person on my porch is real. And I remember, again, that I loved him once.
“Come in,” I say. “I have some of your things.”
I lead him upstairs, where I’ve kept the fragments that led me to him. The shoebox, with theDon it, the photos of him and his father, from years earlier. The Swiss Army knife, found in his attic, that I kept as I swam through the river. The seashell. His house key. And last, the pictures of us.
“Jessa,” he starts, and how can anyone begin to even say it? To sum it all up, in a box? In a sentence?
How can I absolve him, and myself, for all of it?
“I know,” I say.
You know you’re near when you can hear them.
The gulls.
They call loudly, from the distance, in the summer.
In the winter, there are fewer of them, and the sound is fainter, but they’re still there. Coming in from the north, to replace the ones who fly south. A permanent fixture.
I crack the car window, out of habit, like I’m waiting for them. And when I hear the first call, I know I’m there.
—
I’m at the beach, and I’m alone, because it’s still cold. It’s just me and the birds, and I don’t mind it.
I wrap my jacket tighter around myself as the wind blows up off the ocean, the sand getting caught in my hair.
In the distance, I see a single shape, running from the direction of the pink hotel. He’s not the most graceful, and he looks like he’s about to keel over, but he keeps a steady, even pace. He slows when he approaches, the sound of his steps growing louder, along with his breathing.
“I thought I broke you of beach runs,” I call over myshoulder.
He holds up his finger, bends over, rests his hands on his thighs to catch his breath. “I’m determined not to lose next time,” he says.
I laugh. “Lose to who?” Because Caleb is leaving. I know they’ve seen each other, because they live back to back. I’m sure they had their own things to work out.
“To you, Jessa,” he says. “What, you scared to race again next summer?”
“No, I’m not scared,” I say.
“Anyway,” he says, “baseball season starts soon. And I really do need to stay in shape.” He looks back down the beach. “God, that run really is the devil.”
“I know it is,” I say, “and it doesn’t really get any easier, for the record.”
