“Did you use one of those Internet people-finder services?”
Naomi shook her head. “That was too expensive, with the money I had then. I just did what I could. I had a lot of friends, and whenever they’d go out of town, I’d ask them to look in city phone books. It’s not a common name, Shiloh. Eventually, my friend Diana called from Minneapolis and said she’d seen a Michael Shiloh in the white pages, just a number, no address.
“I was too shy to call the phone number, so I called directory assistance. I said, ‘I know you can’t give me an address, but is this the M. Shiloh on Fifth Street?’ I picked that street name at random. And the operator said, ‘No, I’m showing an address on 28th Avenue.’ So I was really excited then. It was like a project. I had Diana ask her cousin back there to look through voter-registration records, and his whole address was there.”
“I wish everyone I worked with on the job had your initiative,” I told her. I wasn’t just flattering her; her dedication was impressive.
Naomi looked pleased. “I was a freshman in college by then. I wrote him a letter, although I was trying not to get my hopes up. Then, three weeks later, I got a letter.
“It wasn’t a long letter, but I must have reread it four times. I just couldn’t believe I’d found him. He hadn’t been a real person to me up until that moment. He had this funny writing, all caps, kind of spiky.”
“I know,” I said. “What did he say?”
“He mostly answered the questions I’d written to him. He said that yes, it was him, and he wrote a little about his ‘lost years.’ The time he’d spent working around Montana and Illinois and Indiana and, what? Wisconsin, I think.
“He said that he’d gotten a GED instead of finishing high school, and that now he was on the police force. He told me he liked Minneapolis but wasn’t sure he was going to settle there permanently. And ‘I’m not, nor have I ever been married.’ I thought that was a funny way to put it, like he was up in front of a Senate panel.” Naomi paused, thinking. “He said that I shouldn’t rush into marriage and motherhood. He thought I should take some time off from school and see the world, or at least America. Get some perspective on things. And then he told me to ‘study hard.’ ” Her eyes narrowed, looking at something over my shoulder. “Sorry, I’ll be right back.”
I turned and put one leg back over the bench, watching as Naomi went to referee a dispute over a piece of playground equipment. It took a few minutes for her to sort things out and soothe the hurt feelings, and then she walked back to me.
“Where was I?” she said.
“You’d just gotten your first letter from him.”
“Right,” she said. “Well, it seemed like a promising start to me. So I wrote him back, and he wrote me. And back and forth, a couple of times. I wrote him almost immediately after I’d get one of his letters, but usually there was a wait for his answers to my letters.
“Finally I wrote to ask him if, since he wasn’t sure he was going to put down roots in Minnesota, did he think he might ever come home to Utah? I asked him why he’d stayed away so long and said that everyone would probably be happy if he came back, at least for a visit. He never answered that letter. Six weeks later, I decided to call him.” She smiled, but with a slightly wry look. “So I did. He picked up, and I said, Hi, this is Naomi.
“He said something like ‘Yes, Naomi?’ and I thought he didn’t know who I was. I said, Your sister Naomi, and he said, ‘I know.’
“I was starting to feel uncomfortable. He was totally different on the phone than in his letters. I said something to the effect that I’d just called to talk and he said, ‘About what?’ ”
I felt embarrassed on her behalf, because I could so easily hear Shiloh’s cool voice saying it.
“I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I was really embarrassed. I managed to get off the phone without hanging up on him outright, but it wasn’t smooth. I never did that again.” Naomi laughed a little, as if still embarrassed.
“I didn’t contact him again until Dad died. The awful thing was, Mom had died a year earlier, and I hadn’t called him. It’s so awful to say it slipped my mind, but I was really broken up and I just didn’t think about Mike at all. The next year, when Dad died, I’d been through it before, so in a way it was easier. And I had Rob. We were engaged then, and he was really supportive.
“Mike had moved by then, and he was unlisted, but I left a message with him at the police department and he called me.” She paused, remembering. “It was very different from the other time I’d called him. He was really kind.” She smiled. “When I told him the news, he asked me how I was doing and how I was feeling, about Bethany, and so forth. I told him about the funeral arrangements, and”-she looked rueful-“I guess I just assumed he was coming. Looking back, I can’t remember that he ever said he was. So the day of the funeral came, and he wasn’t there. He just sent a flower arrangement. I’ve got to admit, I was hurt. Not on my behalf, but on the whole family’s.”
I remembered the flowers. The florist had called the house with a question about the order, and if it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t have known his father had died at all. I’d asked him why he wasn’t going back to the funeral, and offered to go with him. Shiloh had refused and had brushed off further questions.
On the day of the funeral, Shiloh had more or less stayed drunk, and for weeks afterward he’d been such intolerable company that I took to volunteering for extra shifts at work and spending free time with Genevieve and Kamareia.
“Naomi,” I said, “your father’s death hit him a lot harder than you might have realized.”
Naomi glanced up at me. In retelling the family history, she’d forgotten that I was someone who lived with Shiloh and was a witness to his daily life.
“Well,” she said, “anyway, two months later, when Rob and I got married, he sent us a gift. I’d forgotten that I’d even mentioned the wedding to him when we’d talked on the phone.” A breeze ruffled Naomi’s dark hair and she brushed it back into place. “It was a beautiful leather-bound photo album. It was like he knew I liked to make up family albums, even though I’d never mentioned it. It was a perfect gift. But no note. After that we started exchanging Christmas cards again, but his are just signed. There’s nothing personal about them.” Her voice dropped a little lower. “I guess I don’t really understand him at all.”
“He can be hard to understand,” I agreed. “Or, to be honest, he can be a-” Don’t say prick “-a heel.”
Naomi giggled. “But you married him!” she said, a little shocked at my spousal disloyalty. Then the laughter dried up and she was serious.
“Is he really missing?” she asked, as if I hadn’t made that patently clear.
“Yeah, he is,” I said.
A squall rose from the playground and this time we both turned. A little blond boy sat, legs akimbo, in the gravel. Blood was springing up from a fresh scrape on his elbow. Scratched elbows and knees: the common colds of childhood.
This time I followed Naomi. She took a travel-size package of tissues out of her sweater and pressed them to the boy’s blood-smeared skin.
Around him, other children had formed a semicircle to look on, miniature versions of the people I saw on the job, the ones who stopped everything to watch at accident and crime scenes.
“This might take a little while. I’ve got to take him inside to the bathroom.” Naomi made her voice higher and brighter. “What’re all those tears for, Bobby? Everything is just fine.”