Chapter 7
As Maggie had said, reporters and TV crews milled around outside Chamberlin near the front entrance.
I didn’t see Brantford, Nguyen, Adam, or anyone else I recognized.
Five members of campus security had formed a human shield guarding the front doors, and they looked down the steps at the reporters with grim expressions.
I watched the reporters from around the corner of the building.
As I stood there, cheek pressed to the rough surface, one eye peeking out like I was the world’s worst secret agent, I felt detached.
Like I had fallen into a film version of my own life, and I was the actor portraying myself.
I had to shake the feeling. It wasn’t going to help me get home.
Following Maggie’s advice, I turned and fell in with a line of students winding their way through the botanical garden.
I didn’t have a backpack, nor was I wearing sweatpants and flip-flops with dirty socks, so I didn’t have on perfect camouflage, but I kept my head down and tried to blend in.
The students talked and laughed, oblivious to the cluster of reporters and TV crews behind us.
The group looped around Lathrop. I ducked away from the students and down an alley between Lathrop and what I thought was a dorm, heading back for University Avenue.
The idea of all that had happened was hard for me to fully grasp.
It’d been just an instant for me. Thirty-two days for everyone else.
Time for word to get out, for Brantford to make his case to the press.
Time for a reporter to accost my son. I thought about what Adam had said, about the military or government getting involved.
I hoped that was paranoia. At least the reporters hadn’t breached the building and gotten into the lab.
I walked, trying to look casual but still hurrying, to the nearest bus stop.
I ended up waiting there twenty minutes for the next bus.
I sat under the awning, angling my face away from the street—until I realized I didn’t even know if the reporters knew what I looked like.
I started making calls. I was conscious I had no voicemails waiting for me, but I tried not to think about what that implied.
The first number I tried was Amy’s. She didn’t answer. I left a quick message. “Amy, honey, it’s me. I’m back. Maggie told me about the reporters. Call me, tell me where you are. I want to see you and Lyle. I love you.”
I sat for a few minutes, flicking my eyes between my phone and cars and students moving by. Taking a breath, I tried the next contact.
He picked up on the first ring. “Hello.”
“Dad.”
“Scott.” Dry. Flat.
“How are you, Dad?”
“Where are you? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
He could hear the cars going by. “It doesn’t matter. Listen, Dad…”
“Your wife called here a few days ago.”
“She did?”
“Asked if we knew anything.”
“Knew anything about what?”
“Didn’t say. She sounded upset.” There was more than a hint of accusation in my father’s tone. “Your mother talked to her.”
“Dad—”
“What’s going on with you, Scott? You do something?”
“Dad, you might see me on TV today.”
“What have you done? Did you get arrested or something?”
“Look, I wanted to warn you, all right?”
“Warn me about what? The police after you? You in some kind of trouble?”
“No. Not exactly.”
“Then what?” His tone was harsh, sharp. I was thirty years in the past, a kid, listening to his voice and fearing his unpredictable spikes of rage as he loomed over me.
“I gotta go. Tell Mom I love her.”
“Tell her yourself, goddamnit. Don’t you hang up on me—”
I pulled the phone from my ear and ended the call. I sat against the hard, graffiti-marred bench and stared into space until the bus arrived.
I was surprised there were no reporters waiting for me at the duplex. Maybe they thought I was still inside Chamberlin, back on the UW campus. I jogged across the tiny front yard in front and bolted through the front door.
Inside was empty. The furniture was there, but Amy and Lyle were gone.
There were no notes on the kitchen counter or stuck to the refrigerator doors.
I checked Amy’s closet. Her suitcase and several articles of clothing were missing.
I didn’t need to check Lyle’s room, but I did anyway.
It was the same. Clothes and a few books gone.
I sat on Lyle’s bed, thinking. I doubted Amy would go to her sister’s place in Sun Prairie, but I tried calling Kate anyway.
She picked up on the third ring. “Really not who I want to talk to right now.”
“Hello, Kate.”
“What do you want, Scott? Or should I call you ‘Deadbeat’?”
So, she knew. At least she knew part of it and was being very Kate about it.
I felt the vein in my forehead pulsing. I was glad, distantly, she wasn’t standing in front of me, because I might have done my next disappearing and reappearing act in jail.
What kept me from snapping was what always did: my decision, long ago, not to become my father.
“Is Amy with you?” I spaced out each word, asking the question slowly.
Maintaining control. I was not my old man.
“No, Scott, she’s not. And maybe if you pulled your head out of your ass you wouldn’t have to ask me that because you’d know where she was.”
“Thanks, Kate. A real pleasure as always.”
“You know what, Scott?”
I hung up before I could find out what. She called me back, and I looked down at the vibrating, tweeting phone with a mixture of disbelief and a kind of vague, distant appreciation for her spirit.
A very distant appreciation. Eventually the buzzing stopped and a notification flashed telling me I had a voicemail.
I didn’t have the energy to listen to it, so I shoved the phone in my pocket.
It rang again the moment I took my hand away. I almost let it go to voicemail, knowing it was Kate. But I pulled it back out and looked at the screen. Amy. I nearly dropped the phone trying to answer. “Honey.”
A long, painful moment. Then, “Scott.” A single broken word. A mixture of exhaustion, anger, and a dozen other emotions.
“Amy, where are you?”
“At my mother’s.”
“You’re in Minnesota?”
“Yes.”
“Is Lyle with you?”
“He is.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yes. I think the reporters scared him. They scared me. They were terrible, Scott. Kept asking why you were doing this, and if I was in on the whole thing. It was like they were all out to get you, like revenge, and you’re this …
charlatan they can catch and—and mock. Because you’re a fake. ” There was a ragged edge to her voice.
“Can I come up there?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Scott,” she said. “It’s been a month. A month. It’ll be two next time. It’s confusing. For Lyle, I mean…”
“This isn’t something I can control.”
“I know.”
“If I could stop it, I would. You know that. If I could make it stop…”
“I know.”
“Damnit, Amy, I’d kill myself before I’d hurt you and Lyle.” I barely got the words out. Hot tears ran down my cheeks.
She made a strangled noise. It came through thin and tinny on the phone. “God, Scott, don’t say that.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I just—I’m losing you. I’m losing Lyle. And this thing, whatever it is, I can’t do anything about it. Now the fucking news—”
“Scott.”
“It’s all a mess, Amy. I’m coming apart. I’m losing it.”
“Scott. Scott, come up. Get out of Madison. Come see us.”
I nearly asked her to say it again, to be sure I’d heard her correctly. But then I had a sudden, overwhelming feeling that if I asked, she’d take it back. “I’ll be there in four hours.”
“Okay.”
“I love you.”
“I—I love you, too.”
I hung up and sat there with both hands pressed against the sides of my head, staring at the carpet.
The headache was pounding now, back and forth between my temples, although it was different from the one that came with the transitions.
This was pure stress. Pain pulsing in time with the collapse of my life.
I took a long, slow breath, then stood up to find some aspirin and prepare for a long drive.