I looked down. “How much time do we have?”
“About ten minutes. But we should go down. All the stations in town will be taking the news conference live at the top of the six o’clock news. That’s good, Mom. Most people will be home from work, if they work on Saturdays. And it’s so hot tonight most people will be indoors. It’s the best exposure you can get. And we need the exposure. Pretty soon, William will be missing for twenty-four hours. And you heard what Strombino said about that.”
I looked back in the mirror, horrified at the yellow tint of my skin in comparison to my white shirt. My cheeks looked sunken, my eyes dark.
“Come on.” Stella pulled on my hand softly.
I took my hand back gently to indicate I was fine to walk on my own. As soon as we walked down to the kitchen, I heard the screen door snap, and Kate was there, wearing a dark business suit. “Are you ready, Mom?”
I left the mug, thinking the caffeine might make me even more jittery. If that were possible.
The screen door exited to the north end of the wraparound porch. Tom, smoking a cigarette, paced beneath large Kimberly ferns. Another man and a woman, also smoking, stood nearby.
“Lynn, this is Tony and Deanna from the Washington office, they both just flew in.” He quickly snuffed out the cigarette. “Tony, Deanna, this is my wife, Lynn, and my youngest daughter, Stella. You remember, Lynn, that Tony works with Kate in our press office. Deanna is kind of a surprise; I didn’t know she was joining us. This is her first day. Some hell of a first day,” Tom said, straightening his tie.
“I’m so sorry for all this,” Deanna said, trying to hide the cigarette in her own hand.
Stella walked over and stopped her father’s efforts, taking the tie into her own hands. He thanked her quietly.
Kate rounded the corner of the porch, motioning for us all to follow. Tom walked over and took my hand.
“My wife isn’t a fan of the cameras. Or any attention, for that matter.”
“I’ll be fine,” I replied, so softly only he could hear me.
“Oh Mom, wait.” Stella rushed back into the house. She appeared seconds later, holding a large framed photo of William’s magazine cover.
“Oh my God, I almost forgot.”
As we crossed across the porch, the woods beyond seemed to vibrate in the summer haze.
The lights took him, Brian had said.
You know you’ve heard it before.
My family called my mind a steel trap. I remember the ever-changing shoe sizes of my grandsons, how much aluminum to add or subtract in soil to change the color of a hydrangea, the names of quilt patterns. I am everybody’s first choice on teams for Trivial Pursuit. Roxy commented she would give me psychedelic drugs if it meant I would stop recalling the time she admitted she found George W. Bush attractive.
How long can I pretend I haven’t heard it?
Live-feed vans and satellite trucks, with tall masts and enormous dishes, lined the street in front of the house. I scanned the call letters on all the trucks, failing to recognize several of the stations, which had come from all over the state. Some of the larger trucks had no writing at all, which, I remembered from Tom’s election nights, meant they were local production companies hired by the networks.
From the trucks rolled long black cables, stretching across the yard like snakes, leading to the sea of cameras standing in a row. It felt as if we were approaching a firing squad.
Tom gripped my hand and led us towards the microphone stand, a silver rod where more than a dozen mic flags were fastened, decorated with garish colors and numbers. Standing among the cameras were reporters, armed with notebooks. I could hear several of them talking, broadcasting live off the top of the six o’clock news.
“… Marcus, Senator Roseworth is now approaching the microphone…”
“… I can see his wife and two of his daughters with him…”
“… One of them is Channel Four’s own Stella Roseworth, who is obviously taking some time off to be with her family…”
“… It doesn’t appear the parents of the missing boy are here, and none of the other grandchildren are here, including the one we’re told who last saw William Chance…”
“… Let’s listen in and see what the senator says.”
Tom stopped before the microphones, squinting in the brilliant last light of day.
“On behalf of my wife, Lynn, our children, and our grandchildren, I want to thank you all for coming here tonight. And thank you to all the volunteers and police officers who have helped us try to find our William.”
The lights took him.
Of course I remember. But I didn’t even dare mention what I suspected; I just hoped we’d find him by now. We all just need to focus on alerting everyone to his disappearance—that’s what matters now.
“As you all know, my youngest grandson disappeared in these woods late last evening. We have combed every inch of the area, spoken with all our neighbors, and there is simply no sign of him. We have no other choice but to assume he has somehow been taken.”
The lights took him.
I can’t tell them now. They’ll think I’m hallucinating. Tom will rush me to the hospital, fearing I’ve had a stroke.
“We are asking everyone watching to take a good look at our boy. Our William. He is everything to us. His momma misses him, his daddy misses him, his brothers miss him, and his grandpa and nanna really miss him. He’s our baby boy, our Will, and we need all your help to find him and bring him home.”
Like fireflies in evening shadows, the lights on top of the cameras started to glow. The sun had faded behind some powerful clouds, and the photographers scrambled to keep enough light on our family. The satellite truck operators turned on the large lights on stands that stood behind the row of cameras, to light both the press conference and the reporters who would soon turn back to the cameras to repeat what had just been stated. The lights bathed my family in white, causing my eyes to flare.
The lights took him.
With that, I admitted to myself what I’d worked so hard to bury. There was no use denying it.
William had been taken, just like all the others.
FIVE
I walked into the kitchen, pulled my sunglasses from the tangles in my hair, and glanced out the windows above our banquette. The purse that I intended to set on the counter slid off my shoulder and landed with a thud on the floor, and the keys I always carefully put in the drawer under the microwave crashed to the floor with it.
The window provided a wide view of the satellite trucks that had doubled, maybe tripled in number since I left that morning. The monstrous vehicles now appeared to line both sides of Evelyn Avenue. More photographers had arrived to stand on our side lawn, their lenses following investigators walking in and out of the woods. Heavy traffic prevented the trucks from parking on Harding Road, which is why I’d taken it when I’d returned a few minutes ago, fearing but not fully comprehending the chaos surrounding our home.
I should have known when I’d driven to Anne’s before eight and found another crop of cameras waiting to document me hurrying into their house. I had never been so thankful that she drove a Subaru with tinted windows, so we could pull out of the garage and none of the cameras could get footage of Brian in the backseat.