4. Wolfe #2
Getting up, I went into the small living room to check on Blue.
He was still asleep, firelight reflecting in his golden hair, but he seemed content and not restless, so I sat at my desk again and opened my computer, pulled up a browser.
And paused for a moment as the wind scurried against the glass and tried my best to figure out what it was I needed to know.
Blue had amnesia. He was beyond slender; he was skinny. Grubby. Beat up. In my mind, he’d been one of those kids on the train or near the tracks in Hysham. He’d been riding the rails. But for how long? How old was he? Younger than me, that was for certain. And was anyone missing him at home?
My mind jumped from that idea to the question: Was he just some kid who had left home? Or was he someone who was considered missing?
I was pretty good at the computer, and especially good at browsing.
I had my accounts in a homemade spreadsheet, and I kept track of my tools and supplies and projects on Airtable.
I knew my way around the internet, but it took me a few minutes, my fingers hovering over the keyboard, to figure out what to type.
I entered the facts that I knew. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Around five feet ten inches. And skinny. Oh, so skinny. What else? Fine features. Articulate. Missing? Runaway? I erased that last word because surely he was too old to be considered a runaway.
The blizzard seemed to be making the internet slow; still, the browser gave me many pages of results. The first few were sponsored articles about runaways and missing people, but that wasn’t what I wanted. I scrolled until I got to non-sponsored results and started clicking.
The first group of links I clicked took me down rabbit holes, including one Rick Astley video and one about the old TV show called Missing Persons.
On another site was a database of actual missing persons, but I didn’t want to log in and give them my information and leave a trail.
After eight months in prison, I knew better than to leave a trail.
I tried again, shifting the words around.
I added on the run and runaway to the search bar and pressed the Enter button.
More sponsored links displayed at the top of my screen, and beneath that was a link that said, Missing From Home: The Story.
The link wrapped around, making it so that I had to click on it to read the article.
The result was a solid gold jackpot. At the top of the page was a picture of Blue, paired with a picture of another young man, who looked a lot like Blue but who was older. And the bold headline: Sommerville Family Scandal — One Son Dead, The Other Missing.
My eyes were drawn to the picture of Blue.
Shorter hair, the same blue eyes. Still pretty, but unmarked by the world.
Younger. Wide eyed. The text under the picture read: Crispin Sommerville, 17, last seen at The Reserve, Virginia.
I scanned the article. It indicated that Blue—Crispin—had left the Reserve without permission two years prior, in September.
Which meant that Crispin was 19. Not a child, but barely a man. Twelve years younger than I.
What was the Reserve? I looked it up. It was a reform school and detention center down in Virginia and, by the number of articles that popped up, it did not have a good reputation.
Who were the Sommervilles? That’s when it got wild, as my research pulled up articles that read like a barroom brawl during the gold rush.
The Sommervilles had money and clout. They lived at their million-dollar Virginia home in summer, flew to Barbados for the winter to stay at their beach shack (not a shack).
They rented jets. Chartered yachts. They owned horses. Cars. I blinked.
The reward for information about Crispin’s whereabouts was one hundred thousand dollars. This had been raised from the prior year’s amount, which had been seventy-five thousand. The year before that, it had been fifty thousand. He was the only son. The heir to his parent’s fortune.
From what I gathered in the article, the Sommervilles had a long lineage, a family branch in Maine, an interest in a fishing fleet there, and friends in high places.
The other son, Cameron, had died of a drug overdose the very month Crispin had been sent to The Reserve.
What was with these people? One son dies, and the other gets locked up?
The current reward of one hundred thousand dollars, an amount that went up every year, was telling.
The Sommervilles were desperate. Did they love their son?
Or were they trying to avoid more scandal or a fight over the money?
All that money. Next year, if their son didn’t come home, they’d likely be offering one hundred and twenty-five thousand.
I covered my mouth with my hand and rubbed at my jaw.
If his parents really loved him, a million dollars should have been a starting point for that reward.
It hadn’t been. That fact, and the fact that Blue had been sent to a reform school as punishment, told me that Blue must have left for a reason.
Outrage blossomed in my chest. Even if I could have used the money, the day the sun went nova was the day I’d hand Blue over.
When he got his memory back, Blue could make his own choices. But until then, what should I do?
I researched amnesia, blows to the head, head trauma, and memory loss.
The internet, as usual, gave me too much information.
My head ached as I scoured through it. But basically, it told me memory loss could happen through a blow to the head.
It would likely come back on its own, barring real damage to the brain, and the person should not be prompted with hints.
Which left me with one answer. I needed to take care of Blue and help him on his way when the blizzard ended. I’d call him Blue and never let on what I knew about him. Unless he asked me. If he did that, I’d have to fess up. In the meantime—
I stood up and stepped away from the computer, blinking against the dryness in my eyes. Going into the living room, I looked at him, sleeping in the warmth of the fire. His eyes closed, head tilted to one side. He seemed relaxed. Which was good. Sleep was healing.
The living room was a good room and, since the cabin had thick walls, it was cozy with the fire going in winter, deliciously cool in summer. I was lucky to find this place that no-one seemed to want. And Blue was lucky he’d fallen on my road, and not the road of some less scrupulous person.
Back at Reynoldsville State Prison, upriver from Cape Girardeau, where I’d grown up, the boys in the cells would have laughed their asses off to witness me being so honest. So upright. So uptight, they would have said.
But while I’d engaged in flimflam and blow job bidding wars and used cigarettes and ramen noodles as currency behind prison walls, I was not in prison now. I was free, and I could make decisions that suited me. And now that suited Blue.
Stepping closer, I reached out my hand to sweep the tangled hair from his face. His eyes opened, still sleepy. Still innocent to what a horrible family he had. Looking at me like I hung the moon.
“Wolfe?”
“Didn’t mean to wake you,” I said, pulling my hand back. “You had hair—”
“Tell Nimble and Star,” Blue said. “Tell them I found a good place. That I’m safe now. That they could come if they want. You’d let them stay, right?”
Having no idea who Nimble and Star were, I nodded just the same. “Sure, Blue,” I said. “As soon as they can make it.”
Protectiveness swept over me, a blizzard inside the walls, inside of me. He was beaten up. A mess. And still he was thinking about these other people. His friends from the train, perhaps. A quiet heart, but a loyal one. His friends were lucky, and I hoped he could find them.
Outside the cabin walls, the train whistle rang through the icy blizzard. Two longs, one short, one long. Repeated as the train met the crossing on Diamond Willow Road. Which told me that it was 12:43 in the morning, later than I had realized.
I was my own boss and of course could get up in the morning whenever I wanted, but it was better to stick to a schedule and get things done.
Otherwise, I’ll wander about the cabin and scroll the internet too much and look at the horizon and wonder why the hell I’d decided to come all this way, to the middle of nowhere—a pretty nowhere, to be honest—so far from my home.
No, wait. This was my home now. This cabin. The town of Hysham. I had everything I needed or wanted. And someone who needed my help.