Page 64 of Come Find Me
He smiles back, but it’s like he knows I’m lying.
—
Two coffees and three breakfast sandwiches later, we head back to the house.
Both cars are gone. We linger at the curb, staring at the house. “I’m going to ring the bell,” I say, since neither of us appears to have a plan. “Go park somewhere else in the meantime. If someone’s home, I’ll meet you around that corner.”
Nolan leaves me at the sidewalk, and I enter the gate of their white picket fence, easing it shut behind me. It’s a modest home—two stories, older, but kept up nicely. There are brightly colored flowers on either side of the porch. When I ring the bell, it echoes inside. No one appears after a few moments, so I use the brass knocker, just in case.
Still nothing.
I look over my shoulder to see if anyone’s watching. It’s a residential street, but the homes are hidden behind larger oak trees, and I hope that obscures the view of me, if any of the neighbors are watching. Eventually, I hear someone walking up the driveway, and I prepare to come up with some excuse—selling something; looking for directions—but it’s only Nolan.
I shrug one shoulder at him and then check the obvious places for keys: under the flowerpots and the doormat. Out of luck, we circle around to the backyard. Here the curtains are pulled open, and I can see the darkened kitchen, the laminate surfaces, cleaned and orderly. Except for a coffee cup in the center. I freeze, wondering if someone’s there, or whether someone has just forgotten it.
Nolan knocks this time, and I stare him down. “And what exactly will you say to explain why you’re knocking on theback door?” I whisper.
He shrugs. “Lost Frisbee?”
Oh my God,I think, looking at the sky.He’s serious.
Thankfully, no one comes to the door, and I resume my search, checking the downspouts and around the patio furniture. There’s a metal planter on the patio, and tipping it to the side, I find a metal key, lined with dirt. “Hallelujah,” I mutter, wiping it off on the side of my shorts.
The back door creaks when I push it open, and the downstairs smells like syrup and coffee. It reminds me, suddenly, of home. And I can hear my mother and Elliot talking at the table—only now I can’t remember whether they sounded happy, or whether there was tension underneath. I remember Elliot saying, “You don’t see the other side of him, Mom,” but when I walked into the room, they stopped talking. I remember entering the room, my mother tucking her dark hair behind her ear, her smile when she saw me, the steaming mug in her hands—
“Kennedy?”
Stop.I have to stop. But I wonder if, even then, they were discussing Hunter Long.
“Coming,” I say.
The first floor doesn’t appear large—a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, maybe a bathroom out of sight. There’s a family photo on the mantel of the fireplace—a mother, a teenage daughter, and a younger version of Hunter, without his hair bleached white. He looks just like the image hanging on Nolan’s wall. There are other photos surrounding it, including a man, but Hunter isn’t in any of those pictures.
Nolan completes a circuit of the downstairs. “Come on,” he says, waiting for me at the base of a staircase. I follow him up the carpeted steps, the wood underneath our feet squeaking with every shift in weight.
There appear to be three bedrooms upstairs, all off a single hall—two with their doors open, which Nolan walks right by.
“It will be that one,” he whispers, pointing to the closed door. Still, I peek in the other two doorways we pass—a room in purple and gray, clothes strewn across the floor, which must belong to the teenage girl in the family photo; the other room has a queen bed and an ornate headboard.
Pushing open the closed door, Nolan holds his breath, as if expecting to see something waiting for us.
But, as I could’ve told him, it’s only the emptiness. You can feel it, that the room has been abandoned. Someone has been through here, cleaning, organizing, so all that remains is a bed, neatly made, with a pillow on top; a dresser, all drawers firmly shut; and a closet door, also shut. You can see the vacuum marks on the rug, and I know we’re leaving a trail of evidence just by setting foot in here.
I’m thinking about how to cover it up—find the vacuum, maybe?—when Nolan walks straight for the closet, his footprints marring the pristine lines on the floor.
When he opens the closet door, an assortment of shirts faintly sways on the bar, disturbed by Nolan’s presence. He lets out a long sigh. It’s just an empty room, and I think he must be facing the truth, too: that there was nothing leading us here. This room belongs to a missing kid, but, like I learned when I was standing in the downstairs of Nolan’s house, there are hundreds,thousands,of missing people, all over the world.
There’s nothing on the walls. Nothing for us to find. Elliot and my mom were probably talking about someone else that morning, anyone else. We’ve driven through the night to look at the room of a random kid, who will end up meaning nothing to us. We’ve been trying to force the connection, seeing it everywhere, even in things that don’t exist.
This room feels like it’s hovering in the in-between, just like Liam’s room felt to me when I hid upstairs at Nolan’s house. Like it’s the ghost of a room, waiting for someone, with all the life sucked out of it.
Nolan frowns, looking around. “When you don’t have answers, you don’t know what to do….”
“Answers don’t always make things easier,” I say.
Nolan’s face changes, and he reaches for me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…That was a terrible thing to say.” But he sets his jaw, looking out the window. He means it, I realize. He thinks it’s better to know, even if the knowing is horrific. What must it be like, living in that house, for him to think my life is the better option? What must it be likehere?
“It’s all terrible, Nolan,” I say.
