Everything We Lost: A Novel

1

Lucy Durant stood on the roof of her father’s house with her toes close to the edge and peered down into a gaping black hole. It was almost midnight, the sky moonless, the front lawn drowned in shadows. Gravity nudged her shoulders forward. How easy it would be to let go, to tip and spin into oblivion. How high up was she? Twenty feet? Thirty? High enough for bones to shatter, though the darkness below was so concentrated it seemed that if she fell, she would fall and fall forever and never hit the ground.

A swell of laughter rose from inside the house. Glasses clinked. Jazz music filtered through the open attic window behind her. Four hours in and the engagement party showed no signs of being anywhere close to winding down. No one noticed her slip away. No one noticed her before that either, as she stood in the corner of the living room staring at her shoes. All the focus was on Robert and Marnie’s happily-ever-after. Which was fine with her, or should have been, and might have been, if they had picked any other day but this one. The fifth of December—ten years to the day that her brother went missing.

She had asked Robert to change the date. Any other Saturday, she’d pleaded, but Marnie insisted on the fifth. Marnie and Robert met five months ago on the fifth of July at 5:55 P.M. when the elevator they were riding in stalled between the fifth and sixth floors. They were stuck inside for fifty-five minutes before the fire department came and got them out. The number painted on the fire truck waiting outside the building was fifty-five. It was fate, Marnie liked to say. Her lucky number had always been five, and if that wasn’t a sign, she didn’t know what was. The universe brought her and Robert together, and now she wanted her fairytale ending, and whatever Marnie wanted, Marnie got.

We’ve never made a big deal of it before, Robert had said to Lucy when she brought up the potential awkwardness of an engagement party overlapping their unofficial day of mourning.

It was true. In years past, December fifth came and went without ceremony. Robert never brought it up, and a few times Lucy didn’t even realize what day it was until after it was already over and she was left with halfhearted guilt that she’d forgotten something so important. But there were other years when she was plagued with a dark inertia in the days leading up to and following the fifth of December. Years when she didn’t see the point of even getting out of bed. Ten years was a long time to miss someone and yet the hollow ache in her belly never seemed to lessen.

After her father refused to change the date of the party, Lucy tried to distract herself with preparations. She sent out invitations, helped decorate the house, and even offered to pick up Marnie’s five-tiered, eight-hundred-dollar engagement cake from the bakery the morning of the grand event. What happened next wasn’t her fault.

A street preacher had set up his pulpit a few steps from the bakery entrance. He stood barefoot on a five-gallon paint bucket that bulged and started to crack under his shifting weight. The sheet wrapped toga-like around his body was pink daises on a white background, dirty and stained along the bottom where the hem dragged. Eyes wild and darting, he spread his lips and bared crooked yellow teeth at a small crowd of curious onlookers. His coal-colored hair was unwashed, long and knotted down to his shoulders. White crumbs from some prior meal caught in the tangles of his thick beard. He smelled sour from too much sun, overripe and festering. Beckoning with fingers curling and uncurling, he said, We are a part of something bigger than anything your small minds can even begin to imagine.

Lucy paused on the outskirts of the crowd to watch. She’d stopped looking for her brother in the faces of strangers years ago, but this street preacher was about the right age, midtwenties, and though she never saw Nolan with a beard, she imagined it would look something like this, unkempt and curling at the ends. She studied him for a moment, noting the stooped shoulders and lanky arms, the familiar cadence of his voice, the fury and ache of a broken mind, a man-child suffering delusions of grandeur.

I have been given a gift, the street preacher said with a stoner’s smile. To see the connections. He fluttered his fingers away from his body, his hand a bird taking flight. I know what is coming, and I am here to prepare the way.

Then he turned his cold blue gaze on Lucy. His eyes like iced-over lakes, bottomless and ringed in dark indigo. Nothing like Nolan’s, which were baked-earth and warm.

The street preacher winked at her and in a singsong voice said, You and you and you and me. The sun and the moon and the stars are free.

Someone threw a handful of coins into a can at the man’s feet. The clanging sound jolted Lucy from her daze. She turned away from the preacher, embarrassed to have thought him anything like her brother, and went into the bakery where she paid for the cake without looking at it. Her hands shook a little as she carried the cake to her car. She drove fast, hoping speed might unravel the guilt knot forming in her throat. The street preacher was not her brother, but if he had been, Lucy wasn’t sure she would have said or done anything different. She would have walked by in the exact same way, pretending she didn’t recognize him, one among hundreds of vagrants in Los Angeles County looking for a quick handout. She still would have lowered her gaze and left him behind.

When she got home, Lucy delivered the cake to the kitchen. Marnie opened the lid and peered inside. She gasped, clutching one hand to her chest. Oh, Lucy, but her voice was not that of a woman delighted by a perfect engagement cake. Rather, she sounded quite despondent.

What did you do? Robert peered into the cake box.

The lilac fondant was cracked straight down the middle. The tiers had slumped and shifted, exposing decadent chocolate cake and glistening raspberry filling. Lucy tried to push the cake back together, smooth the frosting with a butter knife, but another crack appeared, and then another, narrow fault lines spreading ruin.

She tried to explain. There was this street preacher and this crowd, they were blocking the sidewalk. I had to push to get through.

She didn’t mention anything about the man reminding her of Nolan because her father had made it clear that today was Marnie’s day, and there would be no talk of what happened ten years ago, nothing depressing, nothing unsavory, nothing upsetting, end of story.

Marnie sighed and when she looked at the cake a second time, tears gathered on her lashes.

We could cut it up before the guests get here, Lucy suggested. Arrange each piece on a plate with those pretty little purple flowers from the garden. What are those called?

Pansies. Robert picked up the cake box.

Right, pansies. Lucy smiled at Marnie, but received nothing in return. It’s a little unconventional, but I doubt anyone will even notice, or if they do, they certainly won’t care once they start eating. I’m sure the cake still tastes good. It’s just a little cosmetic damage, that’s all. I’m sure it’s still delicious.

As she spoke, Robert carried the entire cake across the kitchen and dumped it in the trash.

Lucy started to protest, but Robert held up a hand to silence her. I refuse to serve this mess to my guests.

Robert . . . Marnie started, but he silenced her too.

I’ll call Donna. She’ll be able to find us something.

Donna was the woman catering the event. She was good at her job, the best, and expensive, but Lucy didn’t know how even she would manage this minor miracle of finding such a high-quality cake at the last minute. Robert wasn’t going to bother Lucy with the details, though. He shooed her out of the kitchen like she was a child. I think you’ve helped enough for one day. Why don’t you make yourself scarce until the party starts? And try not to screw anything else up tonight, okay? Do you think you can do that?

She would certainly try.

Lucy stayed in her room until the first guests arrived a little after eight. Then she wandered downstairs. A table near the front door quickly filled with expensive bottles of wine and flawlessly wrapped gifts. On a smaller table in the center of the room was an exact replica of the cake Lucy had ruined. She went over to see if it was real, but a tall woman wearing a tuxedo shooed her away. Marnie swirled from person to person, a shimmering rainbow of lilac and blue, her elegant dress hugging tight to her curves, her hair done up in a regal twist, her three-carat diamond engagement ring polished and dazzling, her smile even brighter. She kissed cheeks and giggled and charmed and swept Robert and everyone else up in her youth and gaiety. She had been a ballerina once, or so she claimed, and she moved like one now, with grace and a complete awareness that the whole room was watching her.

Everyone but Lucy dressed like they were attending a red carpet event. Long, flowing gowns and sparkling jewels, neatly fitted suits, ties, and polished shoes. Lucy was out of place in black skinny jeans and a baggy navy blue knit top, her russet-colored hair pulled into a nothing-fancy ponytail. But at least she was comfortable. This had been Robert’s one concession, a way to ease whatever small amount of guilt he felt for scheduling his engagement party on December fifth: Lucy could wear whatever she wanted. She might have disappeared against the wallpaper, a Prussian blue floral pattern, had it not been for her neon pink and green running shoes, which clashed with everything. Marnie made a face when she saw them, but said nothing.

It was ridiculous, this superstition of Lucy’s, this refusal to wear anything else on her feet. No flats, no sandals, absolutely no stilettos. Even slippers or going barefoot for long periods of time made her uncomfortable. She knew it was stupid, with no basis in reality, but she still did it, comforted by the tight laces and cushioned heels, knowing that if all other modes of transportation failed, at least she’d have on the right shoes. At least she could run like hell.

Lucy tucked herself in a corner and watched the house fill with people she didn’t know. She recognized a few of Robert’s business associates, but couldn’t remember their names. They didn’t bother to reintroduce themselves; they didn’t even notice her. Robert had told her to invite a few of her friends. He’d said it as if she had so many to choose from. She talked to the barista at the coffee shop down the street sometimes, about books and the weather and the woman who came in every day and ordered nothing but foam, but an invitation to her father’s engagement party seemed too friendly, too personal for someone who only talked to her because she was hoping for a bigger tip. There were people in her running group, but they, too, were little more than casual acquaintances with running in common and little else. So maybe she was antisocial. So maybe she liked it this way. By distancing herself, she didn’t have to talk about personal things, nor was she barraged with the inevitable questions about family and siblings and what she was like when she was a kid. She never had to explain.

The volume of the party increased as more people arrived and then started in on their second and third drinks. Chandeliers threw gold prisms onto freshly waxed oak floors. Someone wondered loudly enough for everyone else to hear, how it was possible for such a beautiful young woman to be marrying such an ugly old man. Someone else answered that money had a way of making anyone handsome. Robert and Marnie laughed with the rest of the room. Then she squeezed him around the waist, looked into his eyes, and said, I guess love makes you crazy. Because that’s what this feels like. Crazy, out of my mind, out of this world, love.

The room heaved one great, affectionate sigh. Robert dipped Marnie in his arms and kissed her like they were teenagers again, young, in love, not caring who watched. A wolf whistle, a toast, the party swirled on.

It was too much for Lucy. The music, the glitter, the sequined bodies and made-up faces, the smell of alcohol on everyone’s breath, Marnie’s little speech. After the day she’d had, seeing her father with Marnie like this, the two of them happy, living in the present, unconcerned with the past, it cracked open some part of her and she had to escape. She needed fresh air. She carried a tumbler of ginger ale up the stairs two at a time to her attic bedroom and then crawled out the dormer window onto the gently sloped roof where she could finally be alone.

Lucy doubted any of her father’s friends knew very much about Nolan, doubted how much even Marnie knew. Robert was a self-made man, a rich man, who made his money buying, selling, and investing in tech companies, who lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, who owned a second house in Aspen, who drove a Mercedes or sometimes a Porsche, who still had all his hair and rugged good looks and was about to marry a former ballerina half his age. From the outside, his life was perfect. It was no wonder he kept his shame of a son to himself. Lucy was embarrassment enough. Twenty-four years old, still living with her father, working as his part-time secretary, no college education, no boyfriend, no prospects.

Despite the late hour, the sky above her was a wash of murky sienna, a purée of marine fog and city lights that blotted out most of the stars. Planets like Venus and Mars, as well as a few of the closest, brightest stars were still visible, though they, too, were watery and pale and hard to see. She used to know these handfuls of dots by name, and others that weren’t visible here, too dim to break through the pollution blanketing Los Angeles. As a girl, she’d lived in a place much darker than this, and on warm summer nights she and her brother would lie on their backs for hours tracing constellations with their fingertips. Too much time had passed since then, and she’d made no effort to remember. Their names, their stories lost to her now.

Across the street, the neighbor’s motion-sensor lights snapped on, illuminating a closed garage door and empty driveway. Lucy scanned the street and sidewalk and the narrow alley between the neighbor’s house and the one next door, but didn’t see anything that might have triggered the lights. A minute later, the lights snapped off again, returning the driveway to darkness.

She took a sip of ginger ale, then swirled the ice so it clinked against the sides of the glass, regretting now not taking the flute of champagne her father had offered earlier. She was careful about avoiding alcohol, afraid of how it changed her, the ways it muddled her brain and made her too much like her mother, but today was a day she wouldn’t mind forgetting. It wouldn’t be so bad to wake up tomorrow with no memory of this party and Marnie’s ruined cake, or of the madman who looked too much like her brother. It wouldn’t be so bad to drown out the words playing on repeat in her head, pulsing to the rhythm of the music below: ten years today, ten years today, ten years today.

She was about to climb back inside, go downstairs, find something fiery and strong to mix with her soda, toast to forgetting, and chug, when the power cut out. A loud pop and then the whole block went dark. Up and down the street, the neighbors’ porch lights turned off simultaneously, their houses descending into shadows. The music downstairs stopped, and the guests let out gasps of surprise.

Blackouts weren’t unusual, especially during hot summers when everyone ran air conditioners at full blast, but it was December and temperatures had been average, if a bit cooler than normal. There had been no squealing tires, no metallic crunch, no indication anyone ran into a power pole either. From her vantage point, Lucy could see over the rooftops to the surrounding neighborhoods where lights still blazed. Only this street, a string of houses to the left and right of her father’s, was shrouded in darkness.

The power wasn’t out for long. Enough for a few bewildered blinks, and then another pop sounded and the streetlamps flickered and hummed to life again. The porch lights flared bright all at once. The music downstairs exploded. Saxophones and trumpets picked up right where they’d left off. The guests cheered, a sweeping crescendo followed by clinking glasses and heady laughter.

Lucy tried to laugh it off, too, but something caught her attention at the end of the driveway near a row of hedges separating their lawn from the sidewalk. Something crouched in a sliver of deep dark where the streetlights didn’t reach. Maybe not, maybe her eyes were playing tricks on her. Then the shadow moved. It shuffled forward a little and then retreated, as if it sensed her watching. A raccoon. It was just a raccoon. What else could it be? But even as she thought it, another part of her brain screamed that it was too big to be a raccoon. Much too big.

She stared at the shadow, waiting for it to move again, willing it to shuffle into the light so she could see its black-rimmed eyes and fur-covered face, confirming its raccoon-ness, but the shadow stayed low, all features concealed. The longer she watched, the more she began to doubt herself. There was nothing there. A blacker shred of night and that was all. Her mind running wild because her father was getting remarried, and today was December fifth, and she’d run into that street preacher who had reminded her, and her brain was finding patterns, making shapes, turning emptiness to substance, filling the world with monsters.

Lucy hurled her tumbler toward whatever-the-hell thing, real or imagined, was hiding in the bushes. The throw fell short. The glass struck the concrete driveway dead center with an explosive crack and splintered to a million tiny pieces, the shards below more visible than the stars above.

2

The well-worn path wove through chaparral and oak. Lucy ran with her arms loose and her head up, taking long strides, devouring the distance. The sun was high enough to make her squint and hot enough to make her sweat, but she didn’t slow down inside the shady patches. She pushed her legs harder. Somewhere in the distance a creek burbled. She flew past an old man and his Jack Russell terrier. The dog yapped and whipped around to bite her heels, but he wasn’t quick enough. Two miles down. Another three to go before she turned around or even thought about slowing her pace.

She was trying to outrun the dark thread threatening to stitch its way up her spine and into her brain in the shape of a migraine, the last thing she needed right now. She pushed faster, harder, until there were only her shoes hitting the dirt, only her chest aching, only the motion, the blur of trees in her peripheral vision.

Two days before her eighteenth birthday, Lucy thought she saw Nolan in Seattle. Robert had dragged her up to the University of Washington for a campus tour even though he knew she wanted to take a year off to consider her choices before committing. Robert scoffed at her. Of course she was going to college. No child of his was going to become part of the uneducated moocher class. Besides, she’d been offered a track and field scholarship, and there was no way she could turn that down. She didn’t bother telling him that she already had.

They were on a walking tour of the campus when she heard a familiar laugh. Loose and free and round and full, boisterous, like the person laughing didn’t care who heard. She tracked the sound to a dark-haired boy standing in front of the library talking to a girl with curly brown hair and black-framed glasses. The boy was tall and lanky and he kept pushing his hair out of his eyes. The girl said something, and the boy tilted his head back to laugh again, inviting the whole world to join him. And in that moment, it seemed so perfectly simple: Nolan was alive. He had a new life now. In Seattle. He was a student at UW. He had a girlfriend who made him laugh.

This would have been enough for Lucy, if it had in fact been him. She wouldn’t have needed any kind of explanation or reason or promise to reconnect when the time was right. She wouldn’t have needed anything but this knowledge that he was alive somewhere. Alive and happy. But the boy glanced in her direction, and the illusion crumbled. His face was too round, his nose too snubbed. His forehead heart-shaped, his chin feminine and soft, his lips too full, his eyes pale. Lucy excused herself from the tour and raced to the nearest bathroom to throw up. She told her father it was food poisoning, that she’d eaten some bad potato salad. They flew home a day early, neither of them saying a single word the almost three hours it took to get to Los Angeles.

Halfway through the flight, the plane passed over the Sierra Nevada mountains and floated for a while above a flat, tan expanse that from so high up looked completely empty of life, though she knew it wasn’t. Lucy stared down at this once familiar terrain that now resembled the lonely surface of Mars. She imagined her brother somewhere below them, wandering circles through the dunes and scrub for years and years, battling sun and storms, digging for water, catching raindrops, chewing leaves, eating ants and grubs, trying to find his way out. Then her mind drifted back to the boy standing in front of the library, how hopeful she’d been, how desperate. It was then she decided to stop looking for Nolan everywhere she went. If he was out there somewhere, and she wasn’t convinced he was, but if he was, wherever he was, whatever he was doing, if he wanted to, he could find her easily. During the six years that followed, she stayed in the same place. She didn’t travel, barely even left the ten-mile radius around her father’s house. Now all that was about to change.

Early this morning, Robert had called her into his office. She thought he wanted to talk about the cake, apologize maybe, but when she sat down in the high-backed, antique chair that Marnie had picked up at an estate sale, he started in on the same lecture he gave Lucy every year around this same time. You know, when I was your age, I was married, with a mortgage, and had already been promoted to senior accounts manager. I was thinking about starting my own business, starting a family. I had plans.

I have plans, Lucy said.

Well, I’d love to hear them. Robert laced his hands together across his broad chest and rocked back in his oversized leather office chair. His mahogany desk took up half the room, but somehow he didn’t look small behind it. The opposite, actually: the desk a dollhouse size and her father a giant.

She knew what he was thinking. Here she was, twenty-four, in the prime of her life. She should be out on her own by now, doing whatever it was other twenty-four-year-olds did. Traveling the world, sleeping with older men, working entry-level jobs in Fortune 500 companies, cozying up to her boss, building her résumé, going to bars and clubs and underground rock concerts, meeting new people, dancing, drinking, experiencing life. All Robert wanted for her was what any father wanted for his daughter. Opportunities. Money enough not to worry. Love that lasts. He wanted her to be happy. What he didn’t seem to understand, what no one did, was how easy it was for a person to get stuck. There were so many dead ends in life, so many wrong turns and missteps and she found it all so paralyzing. It was safer to stay put. You couldn’t get lost if you didn’t go anywhere.

He kept a large bronze statue on the corner of his desk. A bald eagle with wings spread wide, talons clasped tight around a skinny log. Lucy stared at it instead of her father when she asked, Have you spoken to Detective Mueller recently?

Robert reached over and made a small adjustment to the statue, straightening the base so it was flush to the edge of the desk. You know how this works. If they have any new information, they’ll call.

But we could call first, couldn’t we? She knew it was a waste of time. The detective would tell them the same thing he’d been telling them from the beginning. Without new leads, new evidence, new witnesses, they were at a dead end and there was nothing more to be done but wait. Sometimes missing persons cases found resolution years later. Sometimes they never did. It all appeared to hinge on luck and good timing.

I didn’t call you in here to talk about your brother. Robert leaned his elbows on his desk. His gaze narrowed as he studied her, trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong, how he ended up with such a failure of a child, two failures, if he counted Nolan, though Lucy knew he never did.

We only want what’s best for you, Luce, he said.

We being he and Marnie. As if her opinion counted, as if at twenty-nine, Marnie had lived so much more life than Lucy. As if five years made a difference when it came to having your shit figured out.

Maybe I should have pushed you harder, he said. But I know how difficult it’s been for you, and I wanted to give you time to grieve, to try and figure things out on your own. I think I’ve done that. I think I’ve given you more than enough time. And now that Marnie and I are getting married, well, she just thinks . . . Robert folded his hands together on the desk. We both think it’s the right time.

Lucy struggled to understand. The right time for what? She shuddered at the thought of a pregnant Marnie waddling around the house, of having to pretend to care about a new sibling who would never even come close to replacing the one she’d lost.

You can stay through the end of the month, of course, Robert said. Spend Christmas with us. And we’ll help you with a security deposit, first month’s rent if you need it. Consider it a housewarming gift.

They were kicking her out. She had seen this coming, was surprised it hadn’t happened sooner, like after she dropped out of college her freshman year, but still her eyes blurred with tears that she quickly blinked away. She wasn’t ready. She would never be ready.

You should also start thinking about a new job. At least he looked sorry about this part. A full-time position. Something that can offer you a bigger paycheck, better benefits. You can still work part-time with me, of course, if you need the extra money, but I think it will do you some good to get out there and see how the rest of the world works.

What else could she do? She agreed to his plan, gave him the compliant smile he wanted, then left the office, laced up her running shoes, and headed for the nature park at the end of the street.

For ten years Robert had sheltered her from the tangled memories of her past and the public’s relentless curiosity. He had allowed her to hide from a history she didn’t understand anymore, if she’d ever understood it in the first place. Ten years ducking and avoiding and doing what she could to not think about Nolan and the night he disappeared. Ten years hoping someone else would come up with answers. But no one had. They were no closer to finding out what happened to Nolan than the day he went missing, and her hope was a desperate and useless thing, a thorny vine bleeding her heart dry.

Lucy reached the end of the trail. She turned and ran back the way she’d come. Her freshman year of high school she’d joined the track and field team to impress a boy, a boy she thought she would love forever. She placed in a few events, but was never a star like Patrick. None of them were. He was born running, and always came in first, minutes ahead of the others during practice and competitions. The rest of them breaking their bodies to try and keep up. When she left Bishop, she lost touch with everyone, including Patrick, but the running stayed with her. Her only love now.

It was strange how some memories from that time were so clear, while others were blurry and could not be trusted, obscured by time and distance, or missing completely. Take the day Nolan went missing, for example. She could recall quite clearly what time she woke that morning, what she ate for breakfast, when she left the house. But what happened later that night, who she talked to, what she did, how she got home—there were several empty hours, as if someone had taken an eraser to her brain and scrubbed it clean. She remembered what she told people she remembered, after he was already gone and there were questions needing answers, but they were things she made up at the spur of the moment because saying she didn’t know, that she couldn’t remember, felt too much like an admission. Of what, she wasn’t certain, but saying something seemed better at the time than saying nothing. She doubted that remembering the truth about what happened that night would make any difference or bring him back to her, but sometimes she wondered, What if it does?

There were a few things she knew with certainty, facts established apart from herself. Witnesses, evidence, concrete things that other people could turn over and discuss and confirm, saying, Yes, it happened like this.

On December 5, 1999, sixteen-year-old Nolan Durant left home with his wallet and a backpack filled with clothes, food, his toothbrush, and several hundred dollars in cash. He never returned. The missing person’s report was officially filed with the Inyo County Sheriff’s Department four days later on December 9, 1999, once it became clear to the boy’s mother that he was not with his father or with friends or camping out in the desert by himself. An alert went out to all relevant agencies and media outlets. A few days later, Mr. Stuart Tomlinson, a neighbor of the Durants, came forward and told the investigating officer that he heard yelling around midnight on December 5, 1999, and when he went to see what was going on, he witnessed Nolan shoving someone into his pickup and then speeding away from the house. He was unable to offer any specifics about the person Nolan supposedly left with that night because of poor lighting and bad angles. He was certain of only two things: Nolan drove off in his pickup around midnight, and he was not alone.

Perhaps there should have been a rush at this point to uncover more leads before the trail went cold. Perhaps if Nolan had been a girl instead of a boy, or six instead of sixteen, things might have gone differently. As it happened, the sheriff’s department, which was already short-staffed because of the holidays, suddenly found themselves inundated with panicked calls about Y2K and potential grid shutdowns, and Nolan’s case waited in limbo until a research scientist working at Owens Valley Radio Observatory called almost three weeks later to report an abandoned vehicle near their property. A navy blue 1989 GMC Sierra. The exact make and model Nolan was last seen driving. It didn’t take long for police to run the plates and identify him as the registered owner.

The pickup was parked on the shoulder of Leighton Road less than one hundred yards from the telescopes. The doors were shut, but unlocked. The windows rolled up. The gas tank a quarter full. The keys were in the ignition, but there was no sign of Nolan’s backpack, his wallet, or the money, which led the police to believe he left town of his own volition. There was something else found inside the vehicle that the public never heard about. An officer had come to Lucy and her mother’s house the next day carrying a black marble composition notebook in a plastic evidence bag. When he asked if they recognized it, Sandra started crying uncontrollably, and Lucy was forced to answer in her mother’s place. It was Nolan’s casebook, a journal he carried with him everywhere so he could take meticulous notes about supposed UFO sightings and things he called Strange Happenings. The officer put on a pair of gloves to remove the notebook from the bag and turned to the last entry. Lucy couldn’t remember the exact wording, but it was something about how the world was unraveling, how he couldn’t tell what was real anymore. The only line she remembered was the last one, where he’d pressed down hard enough for the paper to tear. I’m sorry.

No one except Lucy and her parents and the investigating officers had ever read his last entry. The media didn’t know about it, but it was still a matter of police record, evidence filed away with the rest, stuck in a box and forgotten on some basement shelf.

After Nolan’s pickup was discovered, there were a few searches of the area around the observatory, but nothing of interest was found. There was a powerful storm the night he went missing and several smaller ones in the days following. The police said that whatever evidence there might have been once—footprints, tire tracks, remains—was likely washed away. Posters went up around town, asking for tips, and for a while, people were interested. They speculated and came to their own conclusions. Some said suicide. Some said he joined a cult. Some suspected a drug deal gone wrong, or a gang hit. Maybe he’d been put into witness protection. Most certainly he was dead. A psychic wanted a thousand bucks to deliver a message from Nolan’s tormented spirit. Then a tip came in, someone swearing they saw him alive and well in Reno. None of it was true, or all of it was, depending on who you asked. No one knew anything, really, and speculating can only last so long before people start to get bored. Especially when there’s no body, no evidence of any heinous crime or any kind of crime at all. And especially with a kid like Nolan who had always been a bit of an outcast.

The media moved on to other stories. Then someone started tagging the posters, drawing flying saucers around the edges and giving Nolan antennae and a ray gun. After that, the posters were torn down and thrown away. Finally, the police shrugged their shoulders and said that given the evidence to date, Nolan was most likely a runaway. Most likely, he would come home on his own whenever he felt like it. Or maybe he never would, but that was his choice, too. They began to focus their manpower and resources on other cases. Then at the end of January, a pretty, blond mother of two went missing, and the public, the police, the whole rest of the world, forgot about Nolan completely. Robert was satisfied with the Inyo County sheriff’s investigation and conclusion, and stopped calling the house every day to check in. But Sandra refused to accept the theory that Nolan had left without telling anyone. He was a good boy who loved his family. She tried to keep the public’s interest by hiring a private investigator and paying someone to set up a web page. But she also stopped sleeping and started drinking heavily, and by February, she was no longer fit to be anyone’s mother. By March, Lucy was living in Los Angeles with her father, and trying her best to put the worst day of her life behind her.

Those were the facts. The things Lucy didn’t have to remember because they were in the case file and the newspapers and on the Internet where anyone could find them. And the rest of it? The missing hours of that day, the things she couldn’t remember, the memories that remained elusive and fickle, slippery at the back of her mind, the fleeting moments, images that felt more like dreams than reality? These were the reasons she ran.

3

Lucy’s cell phone chirped from across the room. She ignored it and continued pulling shirts and blouses off hangers and tossing them into three piles. Keep, Goodwill, Garbage. She was amazed at how easy it was to accumulate so much stuff without even trying. She could take it all with her, rent a truck, fill it with everything she owned, cram whatever she could fit into a studio apartment, and put the rest in storage. But that seemed like a lot of effort for things that were so easily replaceable. Her cell phone chirped again, and then started to ring. She grabbed it off the bed. Another number she didn’t recognize. She’d lost count of how many calls she’d gotten so far this morning. She sent this new caller to voice mail and went back to sorting clothes.

Christmas had come and gone, a quiet affair with the three of them exchanging gifts early in the morning before Robert and Marnie drove to San Diego for the weekend to celebrate with her parents. Lucy had spent most of that time by herself, curled up on the couch watching old movies and eating caramel popcorn. Now she found herself with less than a week left to finish packing and find a nice place she could afford, which every minute seemed a little more impossible. She wondered what Robert would do if she refused to leave, if January rolled around and he found her still sleeping in her attic bedroom, all her clothes still hanging in the closet. What could he do?

Her phone rang again, the number blocked. This was getting ridiculous. She ignored the call, but a few seconds later the ringtone went off for the thousandth time, another blocked number, or the same one, it was impossible to tell.

This time she answered. What?

The caller seemed shocked either by her harsh tone or that he was finally speaking to a real person. He stammered a few seconds before spitting out his name. "I’m Kevin Handler with the San Francisco Chronicle. I’m trying to reach Lucy Durant?"

Wrong number. Lucy hung up.

Sometimes this happened around the anniversary of her brother’s disappearance. A reporter would want to write a follow-up piece, a Where Are They Now? kind of deal, and they would call to interview her for this paper or that blog, or tape her for some 48 Hours special on missing children. Usually, though, the calls came a few months before the actual anniversary, and in the past, there had never been so many.