Finding Jake (21 page)

She leans forward.
“Taken what?”

It is almost as if those two words slip through the salivating mouth of some predatory animal. They pierce, tearing at what is truly behind her words.

“I mean . . . he should not have suggested we hire a PR firm.”

“Why not, Simon?”

I sense being on the most frightening, unsure footing I have ever stood upon in my life. The tattered remains of my world hang in the balance. I do not know the proper response. I should remain silent, knowing whatever I say could push it all over the edge, into the abyss.

“It was thoughtless on his part.”

“No, it was not. It was very thought out. I can’t believe it. You think our son did this, don’t you? Goddamn!”

To describe Rachel’s expression would be an injustice. Her eyes bore through me, as if peeling away the imperfections of my outer layers only to find utter rot at the core. For the first time, I taste hatred in the air between us, a foul, acrid thing that dries my mouth like scalding coffee. I know now what I have done, but she is right. My head hangs.

“I don’t. But where is he? What else could it be?”

She rises. For the first time in our relationship, Rachel towers over me in every sense. I look up at her, pleading, but to no avail. When she speaks again, her words hiss from her mouth like droplets of acid, burning, sinking down to my soul.

“That brain of yours, that whirling dervish of
what ifs
, is probably picking through every moment of the past, trying to find out how you caused this. What? Was it that we didn’t take him to playdates? Or maybe we didn’t push sports on him. God knows a star football or lacrosse player is
far
less likely to do something awful to someone. Right? Is that what you’re doing to our son right now?

“You never could accept things for what they are. You have to pick it apart like scraps from a bone, leaving everyone and everything around you bare and exposed. You never once thought about it, did you? You’ve already forgotten how special he was.”

Tears run down both of her cheeks, random tracks of sorrow plunging from her chin toward oblivion. Her words don’t cut like I’d expect them to. Instead, I listen to each one. Could it be that I have thought too much, but not enough? The concept grates at my sensibility. Yet at the same time rings hauntingly but confusingly true.

I had been thinking too much. I thought that I failed Jake. I should have taken him to playdates. I should have helped him be a better athlete. I should have pushed him to be more social, more talkative. I should not have let him have a Facebook page or Twitter account. I never should have bought him a video game or a Nerf gun. More important, I should have seen this coming. How could I have not seen this coming?

What I need to grasp hold of, to pull forth and never let go of, is so simple. With each passing minute, a beautiful memory of my son vanishes, replaced by the angst and horror around me. The key is not to learn the now; it is to remember the
then
.

Before I can do that, Rachel hands me her iPad.

“Read this.”

My wife shows me a conversation playing out on a Facebook post. I see Jake’s name, his picture, and Alex Raines’s as well. I begin to read:

“I don’t get it.”

“Someone else originally commented.”

“Oh,” I say, rereading the thread. “So what Alex is saying is in
response to someone else. It’s probably Doug. You think he’s talking about that doll?”

Rachel’s hands rest on her hips. “What doll?”

I realize I never told her about it. When I do, finally, she is incensed.

“Why did you take it?”

“I thought . . . if they found it.”

“What, that they’d think Jake did it?”

“I . . .”

“You need to find our son.”

Our conversation is left at that simple truth. She leaves me; I hear her footsteps somewhere else in the house. Then she reappears, Laney in tow. My daughter looks at me and I am surprised that there is no accusation implied by her expression. But there is utter sadness.

“No, Mom,” she says, tugging at Rachel’s arm. “Don’t leave. I don’t want to leave. We need to stay together.”

Rachel pauses. I understand now. She is taking Laney and leaving me. I predicted this moment, maybe even before the nightmare began. There is nothing that can stop it, so I remain silent, watching them. I feel no hope or anticipation. I simply feel the numbing cold fingers of loss tracing paths across my body. Rachel’s words vibrate against my skull. I have failed again. I have not found Jake.

Rachel stares at me. My lack of fight gives her all the ammunition she needs.

“Laney, we have to go. Your father needs some time to think.”

“I don’t want to. Why can’t you two just get along?”

Rachel’s eyes look cold as well. “I need to leave, Laney. I need to get away from the house for a while. I think you should come with me, but I can’t force you.”

My wife walks away, through the kitchen toward the door to the garage. Laney breaks down, sobbing. She rushes to me and I hug her harder than I ever have before.

“It’s okay, sweetie. Just go with Mom. It’ll be safer for now. Once everyone outside leaves, I will join you. Okay?”

“What about Jake?” she pleads.

I hold her face and look into her tearing eyes. “I’ll find him, peanut. I promise.”

She looks up at me, wanting to hold me to my word.

“You promise?”

I pause, fully understanding this moment. She has spent years with me. She knows if I promise, it will happen.

“I promise.”

The tears dry up and she steps back.

“Bye, Daddy. I love you.”

I hold back my tears until she disappears into the kitchen. I hear her open the door and enter the garage. I am still her father. I am still Rachel’s husband. I will protect them. Crying, I go to the front door and swing it open. The mob outside sees it is me. They pulse forward. Jeers and microphones assault me but I stand tall, watching the garage door open. No one seems to notice but me. I am the perfect distraction, the ultimate decoy.

“Mr. Connolly, Mr. Connolly, how did you not see this coming?”

“Do you think fathers raising children is causing this increase in gun violence?”

“Did you hear about the shooting in Kansas this morning? Ten more children were shot and the alleged suspect claims he wanted to outdo your son.”

“Murderer!”

“Faggot!”

“This is your fault!”

I hear it all as I watch my family drive away, unmolested. A smile creeps across my face, no doubt it will fuel more negative reaction in the bloodthirsty media. I do not care anymore about appearances. My last gift, although it will never make up for my sins, will be to shield my family. I decide in that instant to be a lightning rod, to
absorb the worst anyone can throw at me, knowing that each word I survive is a word Laney and Rachel will not hear.

As I remain aloof but present on my front step, a strange thing occurs. The crowd quiets down. The reporters, the first to notice what is going on, retreat to their vans. On deadlines I am sure, they have little time and quickly figure out this venture will get them nowhere.

Eventually, the others in the crowd, random strangers along with a few familiar faces, vanish one by one. I do not move as almost everyone walks from my lawn and disappears down the street, to God knows where. I think about what might have brought all of those people to my house. They spout hatred and anger, but I think I know the true motivation—fear.

They do not fear me, although I do not doubt they blame me. No, these people fear the unknown. They fear unpredictability. The specter of randomness pricks them and they react like an exposed nerve ending. They must be able to answer one simple question,
How do I keep this from happening
?

I wonder how my reaction on the front step will be interpreted. The crowd will see my lack of response, my smile, as a cold, psychopathic tendency. Genetics, they will say, are to blame. I tainted my son from the dawn of his creation. Luckily, they will think, my family does not have such tendencies. We could not stand up to such a barrage of righteous indignation without reaction. Therefore, our sons and daughters will not grow up to be cold-blooded killers . . . like mine. My Jake. The kindest, gentlest, most pure person I have ever known. But the doubt still lingers. Did I know him at all?

My eyes focus and I see that one person remains, Mary Moore. Her face has changed. It now drips with judgment and rage.

“Why my daughter?” she yells at me. “Why couldn’t it have been yours?” This too, I absorb, for now. Once the door closes, my demeanor changes. Good or bad, I’ve done what I can for Rachel and Laney. Now I must keep a promise.

JAKE: AGE THIRTEEN

“You promise?”

I glanced into the rearview mirror, looking at Laney.

“I can’t promise. What if there is a lightning storm and it gets canceled? What I can promise is that I’ll do everything I can to do the plunge. And you know Dad. I never break a promise.”

“Well,” she said. “You’re doing the polar plunge with me, then. Because there is no way they are going to cancel the whole thing. It doesn’t lightning in March. Plus, thousands of people will be there.”

I merged my wife’s car onto I-95 heading south. It was the Wednesday of spring break, early afternoon. Normally I would avoid the bottleneck of the interstate at the mall exit but I figured our random time of departure should help avoid that traffic. I was right and we sailed onto Route 1 with no problem. One hour and a half more and we would be basking in the briny air of Bethany Beach.

“Maybe hundreds, sweetie. And it can lightning in March. Just not too often. Are you going to run the five K with me?”

“No way!”

“I thought you wanted to run track in middle school?”

This conversation was retread at least once a week in our house. It got Laney fired up every time, but she really did want me to jump into the ocean with her. Honestly, I did not want to. The ocean temperature in midspring was significantly colder than, say, January, because the months of winter cooled it to a heart-stopping forty degrees.

Rachel plugged a movie into the portable DVD player we used in the car. The kids quieted down, their voices replaced by Ben Stiller’s in
Night at the Museum
. A good choice because the dialogue was funny enough even without being able to see the picture. For some time, Rachel and I just listened, laughing occasionally.

“When is Jake’s meet next week?” Rachel asked.

I laughed. “If you don’t know, we’re in trouble. I think it is Wednesday. The eight hundred is usually around four-ish.”

“I think I might make that.”

“Don’t tell him unless you’re sure.”

I probably should not have said that. Jake had reacted a few weeks prior when his mom missed a track meet she had planned on attending. I did not want him to be disappointed.

“It’s okay, Mom,” he said from the backseat.

“Thanks, buddy.”

I glanced over and caught the smile on her face. Although Jake contradicted me, I appreciated it. The moment passed and we continued to talk, the mundane of school-age children—schedule, schedule, and more schedule. Our cadence eased into normalcy and I grinned as we sped past flat, open farmland.

The movie wound down as we entered the beach towns. The first stoplight at Lewes, what Rachel called Five Points when she was a kid, signaled our arrival. I felt the tension slide down my back as if the asphalt had vacuumed it away. When we coasted through the bend into Dewey Beach, I craned my neck, peering down a side street to get my first glimpse of sand.

“It’s the dogs again,” Rachel moaned.

My wife did not like greyhounds. Irrational as it seems, the mere sight of their spindly legs and pointed snouts sets her teeth to itching. I laughed, not at her discomfort, but for the ironic fact that our favorite place on the planet also hosted an annual greyhound owners’ convention. They were everywhere, walking by the Starboard and the Rusty Rudder, two staples of the Dewey Beach nightlife. Greyhound heads poked out of car windows and between guardrails on motel balconies. I counted thirteen as we waited for the light to change.

Rachel let out a sigh of relief (at which we all laughed) as we left town and drove along the isthmus between the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. My kids, even as teens and preteens, loved to see the old watchtowers. Giant cylinders rising from the sandy dunes, acting as sighting points for a little-known, but highly fortified military installation during World War II, Fort Miles. During the war, the place bristled with dozens of guns, some able to launch massive shells almost thirty miles out to sea. Now, the towers stood as silent sentinels with their half-circle vertical slit windows facing out to a calm Atlantic Ocean.

At times throughout my children’s lives, I have likened myself to those lonely towers. I imagined standing on the outskirts, a daunting figure on the horizon of their existence. I threatened any who dared to harm them, silently hinting at some great consequence. Yet, when life’s pain washed over them like the waves of the ocean, constant and unstoppable, light shined on the truth. My threat, like those towers, was hollow. I manned no arsenal of destruction. Instead, as all parents inevitably do, I stood by powerless to stop the pain that must be a part of my children’s lives.

I swallowed down that thought like a thick, chalky pill. Rachel glanced in my direction but looked away just as quickly. I think she sensed my doom. My kids chattered in the back, talking about walking to Candy Kitchen when we arrived at the house. I drove,
letting the proximity to the ocean clear away the bitter afterthoughts.

That night, we took the kids to the Grotto in West Bethany. A local chain, I believed their pizza to be the most polarizing food in the mid-Atlantic. People who grew up going to the beach tended to love the strange pie with a swirl of blended cheese on top. Others, introduced to it later in life, despised it. Except for me. For the kids and me, Grotto was a must-have every trip.