Chapter 13
Mack scrolls through the app. We'd already decided he should be the one to do the looking, just in case my brother was sending someone dick pics. I don't think I could recover from seeing my brother's shwing-shwong.
"Penises are weird," I say, unthinking. Then I slap my hand over my mouth.
Mack freezes, then oh-so-slowly turns toward me. "What now?"
"Um." I feel myself flush to the roots of my hair. "I was just thinking--"
"About penises?" He grins.
"Can we just forget I said anything?"
"Not until you tell me why penises are weird."
I shake my head and give a nervous laugh.
"I was just thinking about how I really didn't want to see a dick pic if there's one on there.
Then I was thinking that I used to babysit, and I've actually seen a lot of penises.
" I shake my head, getting more and more flustered as I talk, the words coming out faster and faster.
"I know that sounds terrible, but I don't mean it in a creepy way.
Just--changing diapers and then toddlers take their clothes off for no reason and--"
Mack puts his hand on my shoulder. "I get it. I don't think you're a deviant who should be taken behind the barn and shot."
"Oh good."
"Take a deep breath and continue telling me why penises are weird."
"Because they all look pretty much the same. And then you grow up and see grown-up penises, and they all look so different."
Mack studies me as I blush a new shade of fuschia. He finally says, "How many grown-up penises do you think you've seen, give or take?"
I shrug. "Hundreds. Thousands, maybe."
He blinks at me then his shoulders relax. "For a second I forgot you were a nurse."
"Oh, yeah. I see them at work, too." I grin.
Mack smiles, shakes his head and turns back to the phone. "I haven't seen any penises yet, sorry to disappoint."
"Have you seen anything worth mentioning?"
"Looks like he texts with you and some lady named Sharon.”
“Sharon’s his boss,” I say. “But that's it?"
“There’s one group text of numbers without any names attached, but otherwise, that’s it.” He hands the phone over.
I check and see that he's right. I go into the deleted file and there's nothing there.
"Do you think he erased anything?" I ask.
"If he did, it's either gone or it will show up on the report that Zig is running."
My head snaps up. "Ziggy can pull deleted stuff off here?"
"Unless it's been rewritten, yes."
My eyes go wide, my heart pounds in my chest. "This was my old phone."
"So there might be some dick pics on there, after all?" Mack asks lightly.
"Might be."
Truthfully, I'm more concerned with the pictures he might find of me. Not that I'm into sexting, but I did lose some weight about six months ago, and I took progress photos along the way in my bra and panties. I'm not particularly eager for anyone to see me like that, especially not a stranger.
Mack pulls out his own phone and starts texting. "I'll make sure that Zig doesn't look at the reports. You can go through the photo section first and remove anything you don't want me to see."
"Thank you."
"No problem," he says. "You've seen a thousand dicks, you've seen 'em all."
"You think that would be the case, but an ill-timed dick pic is still quite the shock."
Mack shakes his head. "I can only imagine."
We lapse into a comfortable silence. It's easy for me to forget that I don't really know Mack that well. Even though I poured my heart out to him, and he knows more of what's going on in my life than my closest friend, it still feels weird and fresh, like this thing I can't reconcile.
Despite how comfortable we've become in each other's company the past few hours, despite the fact that I had my arms wrapped around his midsection on his bike, it’s still a little weird to have him here in my house.
It's like the two things don't reconcile.
This huge handsome guy, who looks like he's some made-up, AI-generated hunk on Pinterest is really sitting there, his elbows braced on the dining table as he scrolls through my brother's phone.
I don't mean to stare at him while he does it, but truthfully, I'm too distracted to look away.
Finally, about five minutes later, he frowns. “Do you know any of these numbers?” he says, sliding the phone across to me.
I look down at them. It's a group text message with at least five people in it. They're talking about meeting somewhere, but the words look a little bit like gibberish to me. It’s obviously code.
I frown and shake my head, but I pull my phone out to be sure, and start typing in each of the numbers to see if I have a contact that matches.
Oddly, none of the phone numbers have names attached in Alex's phone, even though, when I scroll up, it looks like they've been talking for weeks--almost as soon as he got out of prison.
“No,” I finally say when I can’t find any matches in my phone. A chill runs down my spine, because how is it possible that my brother's been talking to strangers and I didn't know about it?
“See if you can make sense of the messages,” Mack says.
I frown and start at the top. At the beginning, it seems like they don't know each other.
Like maybe somebody introduced them--a mutual friend, maybe?
But then, it's clear that the group message isn't their only means of communication.
Sometimes the conversations are only hours or days apart, but they're talking about stuff that happened.
It makes no sense and there's abbreviations everywhere.
I look up at Mack. “I don't know what this is. I don't understand it.”
He nods. “Check out the last conversation from a few days ago.”
I scroll to the bottom. “They were planning on meeting,” I say, even as I read. My heart beats a fast tempo.
“And then there's nothing,” Mack says.
I shake my head. “I don't understand.”
“Neither do I. But Ziggy should email a report sometime tonight. Maybe he’ll have something. I'll have him send it to both of us.”
I nod and scroll back up, picking up where I left off on the messages.
“They talked about meeting before,” I say suddenly.
Hope lifts my heart. Maybe this group messages has nothing to do with Alex’s disappearance. Maybe he just skipped out on parole and he's joyriding halfway across the state.
But I don't know if I really hope that. And I don’t think I believe it.
When Alex got out of prison, both the parole board officer and me impressed the importance of following the rules.
If Alex doesn't comply, he's going back to prison.
And not the nice one he was in either--the one where the really bad guys are kept.
He knows that. He understood it. He was solemn. And I made him promise that he would keep his job. Alex always keeps his promises…if he’s able.
A ball of nerves is lodged in my stomach. I've been too chicken to check in with Alex's boss, Sharon. I don't want to get him into trouble if he told her he was taking vacation or something. I don't want to alert her to the fact that he's he took off and is therefore in violation of his parole.
“Three and a half weeks,” I mumble out loud.
“What's that?” Mack says.
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
“No, what is it?”
“It's just…” My hands flop open on the table. “I have three and a half weeks to find him before his parole officer comes back for a home visit.”
Mack frowns. “This isn't on you, you know.”
“Do you have siblings?” I peer at him from beneath my lashes.
“A younger sister.”
“Then you get it. At least a little bit,” I say. “Logically, I know he's an adult who's made his own decisions. But in here?” I clasp my hand to my chest. “I can't quite convince myself of that.”
“Feelings aren't always logical,” Mack agrees.
“I know I can't control what happens to him. But he's been through a lot with our parents and grandma dying.” I sigh. “I can't help but wonder what things would have been like if mom and dad hadn't gone on that trip.”
I clamp my lips together to shut myself up. I don't know what it is about this guy that has me saying everything I think. I don't like it--it's too vulnerable.
I'm used to keeping a professional distance with people. You learn it quick, or the job destroys you. Being present when a doctor tells a family that their loved one's going to die makes you throw up walls for self-preservation really quick.
Mack nods, slowly, as if he was taking time to consider my words. “I understand why you want to find Alex so badly. But it isn't your job to make up for something that happened to you, too.”
My nose wrinkles. Sometimes I forget that I'm not that much older than Alex.
Sometimes I forget that I can't be expected to be his mom or his dad.
No matter how much Grandma tried, she couldn't quite fill those shoes for either of us.
She did a good job, don't get me wrong, but it was never going to be the same.
Mack’s right--I lost my parents, too. I’m not going to replace my parents for Alex any more than our Grandma could.
“I guess so,” I say.
Mack nods like he knows that's as much as I'm willing to admit. He takes Alex's phone back and starts scrolling and clicking again. I zone out for several minutes, wondering where the heck my brother is.
That's something I never fully understood before this happened--how exhausting it is to wonder. I think about what it will be like a year from now if I never find out what happened, if I never find Alex.
I shake my head. There are families who never know what happened to their loved one.
You see the stories every day--a girl goes out to a bar with friends and gets separated from them; a guy goes on a bike ride and never comes home.
And you wonder how on earth people can go missing like that. It shouldn't be possible.
There are so many eyes, so many cameras everywhere, and yet still people disappear off the face of the earth.
I catch myself picking at my cuticle and stop.
That’s a nasty habit I struggled with after my parents died.
I guess stress brings up old wounds, no matter how long buried you think they are.
There's a muted ding, and Mack pulls out his own phone. “Ziggy just sent the first report through.”
I retrieve my laptop from the desk in the corner. Call me old or whatever, but there's still some things I prefer to do on a computer instead of a phone. For some reason, opening a PDF on a tiny screen feels wrong to me.
“He's got names and addresses for a bunch of those people in the group text,” Mack says, after a few seconds of scanning.
I boot up my computer. My nose wrinkles when I see that only one of them is local--some guy named Hugh Danvers, who lives in Haven, about fifteen miles from my house.
The rest of the people are scattered all over.
There's another in South Texas, but then the next closest is Kansas.
There's one from Shropshire, UK. And yet another one in Japan.
“I don't get it,” I say again.
“Neither do I. But we'll figure it out.”