Chapter 7
Seven
Marcus and Valencia show up a little after nine the next morning. Just them. There are no cops, and Valencia says Easton stayed
home to finish up one of his final essays for school—which he left early when he heard they found me.
Even after they arrive, it takes almost two hours for the nurses to finally discharge me. The Beaumonts give me a new T-shirt,
jeans, socks, and underwear to change into and then walk me out to an expensive-looking gray Mercedes.
From there, they take me to get my hair cleaned up and to shop for more new clothes. Valencia picks out shirt after shirt,
asking if I like them while Marcus looks bored or answers emails on his phone. Several times Valencia scolds him when she
thinks I’m out of earshot, and he tells her he still needs to be accessible for work.
After that we go to an awkward lunch where Valencia tries her best to update me on all the things I’ve missed in the ten years
since I disappeared.
Mainly it’s about Easton. How smart Easton is, how he graduated fifth in his class before going to Columbia, how he plays baseball—one scary moment when he hit a fastball and the ball went right at the pitcher and knocked him out.
But the pitcher was fine, just a concussion.
And all about Easton’s ex-girlfriend, Casey, who broke up with him before he left for college.
“But don’t ask about her,” she says. “I think he’s still a little bruised over it.”
Then we drive two hours from DC to a small town in Maryland—stopping off at a Walgreens to pick up a toothbrush and deodorant.
Around three in the afternoon, we pull into the driveway of a massive three-story stone colonial.
The Beaumonts live in a sprawling suburban neighborhood where every house is surrounded by mature trees and a fence line marks
the edge of each huge property. Behind every home on the Beaumonts’ side of the street is the dark blue of the Chesapeake
Bay.
I get out of the car and look up at the house. It’s made of gray-brown stone and each of the windows has dark green decorative
shutters. There’s a small white portico above the front door with roman-style columns.
Valencia puts her arm around my shoulders and looks up at the house with me. “Does it look how you remember?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Marcus turn to me. This question feels like a trap. What if it’s not even the house Nate
grew up in? The articles I read didn’t have a picture of the house, just of six-year-old Nate. My eyes drift to the bay beyond
the garage. It probably is the same house, but it might be easier to stick to the post-traumatic amnesia thing.
So I shake my head. “Sorry.”
Valencia still smiles. “It’s okay. We repainted the shutters last year. And five years ago we had to replace the roof. Such a shame we had to get rid of the slate, but it was so damn expensive to maintain. And these asphalt tiles aren’t bad-looking.”
If Valencia feels bad about having asphalt instead of slate, she should see the house I grew up in, a two-bedroom rancher
with a much smaller yard. My hometown didn’t have neighborhoods like this one. It was mainly ranch subdivisions, townhomes,
an extremely modest “downtown” area with row homes and apartments, and a smattering of new construction on the edge of town.
But my parents weren’t a lawyer and a dentist—which I learned about Valencia while I was googling the family last night.
Valencia grabs a few of the shopping bags and I take the rest. Marcus heads for the door in the garage but Valencia scolds
him, telling him we should go through the front door. He sighs and gives me a look I can’t read. Maybe it says I hate my wife or maybe it says Always with this carefully curated way of living or maybe I’m tired and need to do some work. Either way, we follow her to the front door.
I take the time to look at the houses across the street and next door. The Beaumont house is a stone colonial, but the one
across the street looks like a mid-century wet dream. The road is freshly paved and completely empty except for a maroon sedan
parked a few houses down.
“Oh, wait!” Valencia stops me at the door, and I take one of the shopping bags from her, freeing her hand so she can reach
into her back pocket. She takes out a lone key on a key ring and holds it out to me. “Try out your key.”
I take it, looking at the sharp, newly cut edges of the metal. Then I put it into the front door lock. It turns easily, and I push open the door and walk into the house. Immediately a warning alarm chimes and Valencia heads over to a keypad on the wall and types in a code to turn it off.
“Easton?” Valencia calls out. “Honey, are you home?” No one answers so she shrugs. “He must be seeing some friends. We weren’t
sure how today was going to go so we told him to do his thing. Sweetie, did you talk to him?”
Marcus nods. “I texted him while we were shopping. He’s hanging out with JT.” Marcus shuts the front door and locks it.
My throat goes dry, and I have a few seconds of panic as I realize I’m trapped with these people. I put my hand into my pocket
and feel the sharp teeth of the key, slipping it between my index and middle finger. Marcus steps around me and my heartbeat
slows.
Valencia says something about JT and his mother, but I don’t listen, instead focusing on the house.
The entryway is a large room with stairs in the middle that lead up to a landing with a big leaded glass window looking out
over the backyard and the Chesapeake. Two smaller sets of stairs branch off to the left and right of the landing.
Beneath the left side of the stairs is a doorway that looks like it leads back to the kitchen, and on the opposite side is
a closed door. To my immediate right is a large entryway into a living room with a stone fireplace. To the left is a dining
room. There’s a white tablecloth over the table and it’s set for eight, with multiple utensils, plates, and glasses at each
setting.
“We also repainted,” Valencia says, looking around. The walls of the entryway are an extremely light—almost white—gray. The living room is darker gray, and the dining room is beige. “Do you remember how the dining room used to be that strange, almost robin’s-egg blue?”
I shake my head. “Sorry.”
Valencia’s smile drops. “That’s okay.”
The look on her face feels like a knife stabbing me. I don’t know why I feel like that. I shouldn’t! These are strangers and
they’re not my real parents. Or maybe it’s because if they were my real parents, they wouldn’t be trying so hard.
Is it because Valencia cares?
“Sorry, everything is a little . . . murky,” I say, trying to keep my cover.
“Is there anything you do remember?” Marcus finally asks. It’s definitely a test this time. I can see it in his eyes.
So I pause, thinking for a long time and trying to run back some of what I read. Something I could use as a breadcrumb for
them. If I can give them one little part of Nate’s life, maybe they could fill in more information.
Then it clicks.
“I remember the bay,” I say, pointing toward the back of the house. “Not what it looks like.” I close my eyes and instead
picture the time my parents rented a house in the mountains. Not for fun, of course, but because there was a revival with
our church and four other local churches. It was late fall, so we didn’t go swimming, but there was a lake in the neighborhood
and we walked down to it one night. “But I remember the leaves in the trees and the way the orange at sunset would reflect
off the water.”
I open my eyes to see Valencia staring at me. There are tears in her eyes.
When I glance at Marcus, he’s looking down at the floor.
Valencia takes a step forward and puts her hands on my cheeks, trying not to cry as she smiles up at me. She opens her mouth
to speak but instead hugs me.
I guess it worked.
I put my arms around her, and she squeezes me tight. The heaviness in my chest loosens, like cured concrete cracking away
from me. I don’t like this feeling. Two thoughts at odds but fighting it out in my gut. On one side, there’s a blaring alarm
and a megaphone voice telling me it’s wrong to be taking advantage of these people. But on the other is the empty pit of loneliness
I’ve been feeling for months—and in all honesty, years before that—telling me to let them in. To let them treat me like the missing son they’ve been worried about for ten years.
I should be listening to that first voice. The alarms. But then the hug silences all that.
Valencia lets go first and I realize we’ve been hugging for longer than what’s probably considered normal. My face burns with
embarrassment and before I even know what I’m saying, I apologize again.
“For what?” Valencia asks with a look of concern.
I shrug.
“Let’s get you settled,” Marcus says. He seems a little less suspicious now and picks up some of the shopping bags, leading
the way upstairs. Valencia grabs a bag and hands it to me, then takes the rest, and we follow Marcus up the stairs and to
the left.
The second-floor hallway wraps around the entry like a U-shaped balcony. There’s a large window looking out to the front yard and the roof of the portico. The door to the first room at the top of the stairs is shut. The next, which is open, leads into a blue-tiled bathroom.
The third door toward the front of the house is also open and Marcus walks in. It’s clearly Nate’s bedroom. Only it looks
as if it hasn’t been touched since he disappeared. The dresser is a dented, warm-colored wood. There’s a stegosaurus-shaped
rug in the center of the wood floor and little dinosaurs hang from the metal pull chains attached to the ceiling fan. The
shelves are filled with old books a six-year-old would read. One thing stands out from the rest: a full-sized bed made of
dark wood and a gray fabric headboard.
“This was the nicest grown-up bed we could find last night,” Valencia says. “Your old one is down in the basement, but we