After Silence

Despite a hole as deep as hell in my heart and growing, I thought fast and managed to come up with “I’m from the newspaper. They sent me out to see what’s going on.”

“You’re from the Spectator? Well, my name is Sandra Hagen, in case you want to use me as your source.”

I could tell she loved being able to use that word. “Thank you, Mrs. Hagen. Listen, I just got here. Could you tell me what happened?”

Clearing her throat, she threw back her head as if the television cameras were already rolling. “Anwen wasn’t around last night. She had to be up in New York for some thing or other. Brendan was here by himself and was the one who saw the guy who did it.”

“Brendan? Excuse me, did you say Brendan?”

“Yes, Brendan Meier, that’s her son. Don’t you know about him? That’s a story too! You ought to write that one up first. Do one of those two-part series on them. It’s a family that’s had more troubles than Job.”

“Brendan was kidnapped as a child.”

“Right. And they searched till they found him. Rumor has it the Meiers spent a couple hundred thousand dollars looking. Then her husband, Greg, died right after they found the boy.”

“I don’t believe it! They found him? I’ve never heard of that happening.”

“It’s amazing. But anyway, Brendan was home last night when this guy threw these bottles full of gas at their house. He heard something outside, which must have been the glass breaking, and ran out. Whoever did it was still standing there on their lawn, watching the whole thing go up. Can you imagine? Nedda Lintschinger, who lives in that house there, the blue one? She woke up at the sound and looked out the window too. Said she saw two men on the lawn and recognized Brendan in his pajamas ‘cause he’s such a tall boy, you know? Their house was on fire but the strangest thing was, these two guys were just standing there talking! Nedda said it looked like they were having a nice chat.

“Suddenly out of nowhere, the other guy starts screaming, ‘What? What? What?’ Just like that, then kicked Brendan you-know-where. The poor boy fell down but the other wouldn’t stop. Stood right there kicking and kicking him. Now that’s what Nedda said. I can only tell you what I heard, but she swears it’s what she told the police, so I guess it’s true.

“Whatever, the crazy man kept on kicking poor Brendan. Then he lit up another bottle and threw it against the house. Finally Nedda ran for the phone to call for help and didn’t see what else happened. All we know is the nut was gone by the time she got back to look. Brendan’s lying on the ground, not moving. She thought for sure he was dead. Thank God he wasn’t. He’s in the hospital with some broken ribs and a cut-up face, but they say he’ll be all right.”

Thanking her for her help and listening while she spelled her name so I’d get it right in print, I left Mrs. Hagen and walked over to the policemen. Luckily I always carry one of those small pocket tape recorders in case an idea comes to me. Introducing myself as a reporter for the Spectator, I asked what had happened and held the recorder in front of them. Their story was basically the same. They’d gotten a call reporting the fire and a possible assault in progress. When they sent officers to investigate, they found a burning house and an unconscious teenage boy on the lawn. No sign of the perpetrator. Fire presumably caused by Molotov cocktails igniting buckets of roofing tar which stood near the building. The Meier boy was in satisfactory condition at the hospital and was going to be all right. No idea who the “perp” was. They kept repeating that word—“perpetrator.” “perp.” Brendan said he’d never seen the other before. It was a boy, however, that much was sure. A teenager dressed like a punk, but the outfit might only have been camouflage, a costume to throw them off the track. Damage to the house was “expensive but not fatal.” The cop who said it liked the line so much he repeated it for his friends. If I waited a day or two, I could interview Brendan at the hospital. But I didn’t need to, because I already knew exactly what had happened.

Lincoln had read my file on the Meiers and in one dreadful implosive flash knew we weren’t his parents, Lily had kidnapped him.

How could he have remained sane? He did. But he came to the restaurant knowing. He flew East knowing the only thing he wanted to do now, in those first hours of his new life, was see his real parents and punish them. Yes, punish them for not finding him. For not looking hard enough; for not having spent all their time and energy and money to get their son back. Whatever they’d done over the years was not enough. Yes, he read the file and saw what tragic, wrecked lives they’d led since his disappearance, but he didn’t care. Whatever they’d suffered, he was the one who’d been kidnapped, violated, forced to live a life away from his natural family.

Nor did it matter that we had given him everything we could; we were kidnappers, criminals, monsters. The same words that raged through my head a decade ago when I discovered Lily’s secret. And still did. And still did.

It was worse for Lincoln, though, because that secret had been kept and nurtured by people he believed were his parents. Worse, as far as he knew, his real parents had abandoned the search for him.

What he didn’t know, what he hadn’t given me time to tell him the night before, was the Meiers were not his parents. Lily had not stolen their child. The reason she had those newspaper clippings about them and their plight was because she’d once spent an afternoon in Garamond, Pe

That’s right, Lincoln. If only you had listened. After her car was repaired, she drove west. Toward evening the next day, her stomach started grumbling and she knew she had to find a bathroom immediately. Luckily there were signs for a rest stop. Speeding up, she got there in the nick of time. Leaping out of the car, she barely noticed a Chevrolet Corvair parked ten feet down the way. No one was inside. No time to think about it. She ran to the bathroom.

Coming out, she saw the car again and would have ignored it except this time she heard a baby crying inside. Concerned, she started toward it. Way off in the field behind the parking area two people laughed. She looked and barely saw two heads moving up and down just above the grass out there. They were laughing, groaning, wrestling around. They were making love! What nerve! They’d felt like doing it, pulled right off the road, and ran into the nearest field. They were so lucky, whoever they were. She envied them their happiness and their guts. They had everything, she had nothing. Staring into the field unashamed, she wasn’t a voyeur; she was looking at happiness. She was drowning in her own life. A drowning woman looking at land for the last time.

But why was the child crying? It had to be theirs. Inside the Corvair on the back seat, a red-faced baby strapped into a powder-blue bassinet howled so savagely that all its features seemed to have congealed in the middle of its face. It certainly needed something—food, a new diaper, a hug—but Mom and Pop were occupied.

Lily looked both ways, saw no one, opened the driver’s door, and pushed the seat forward. The child stopped crying a second and glared at her. That meant nothing, but was all she needed. Stepping into the car, she took the baby in her arms and, without once looking back, ran to her Opel and drove off.

One day months later she was in a supermarket and saw that shitty newspaper The Truth. The one that talks about alien landings and cancer cures. On the front page was a headline: “The Town Where Babies Disappear.” There was a picture of Garamond, which she recognized because right in front was the gas station where they’d fixed her car. She bought the paper and read the article standing outside the market. Two babies in three years had been kidnapped from there, and neither had been found. They gave the names of the families. One was Meier. There were pictures of them and she loved how both of them looked. Wonderful faces. Intelligent in very different ways. They weren’t Lincoln’s parents. She didn’t ever want to know who the real ones were, but the same thing had happened to these people so close to where she had taken him. It was too much of a coincidence. After that, she always envisioned them as his parents. So every once in a great while she’d find ways of checking up on them over the years. I saw the clippings. First she called telephone information in Garamond for the address there. When they moved, she got the forwarding address from the post office. A couple of years later she wrote the newspaper in the new town where they lived and asked if there had been anything written about them. She said she was family and was working on a scrapbook for a pla