I&#39ll Be There (33 page)

And then no one seemed to notice as she got to her feet and walked out of the Mountain Basin Inn ballroom.

The sun had disappeared from the sky, but an afterglow of smoky orange was still on the horizon, and real night was still minutes away. If she’d had on shoes that were
more comfortable, Emily would have just walked home. But there was a bus stop right in front of the hotel, and one of the big blue buses was shutting the door when she reached the sidewalk.

She had a choice. She could try to catch it or wait for the next bus. She looked over her shoulder at the hotel. The idea of waiting was problematic. What if Bobby came looking for her?

And so she slipped out of her shoes and took off in a run, reaching the bus just as it began to pull away from the kerb. Emily pounded on the glass, and the driver, surprised to see the
seventeen-year-old girl in the black prom dress, hit the brakes.

It was bright inside, and a dozen people watched with intrigue as Emily boarded. She was flushed from running, and her hair, which had been pulled back in a clip, now fell loose around her face.
She carried her shoes and her handbag as she fumbled for the fare. She looked not like a runaway bride but maybe like someone who ran away from a funeral. She suddenly wished her little brother
could have seen.

As Emily headed to the back of the bus, she thought to herself that everyone had a story.

Tonight she was just one of those people whose story was more interesting.

They’d gone to Chang’s for dinner and had their favourites – sesame shrimp and lemon chicken. Jared’s fortune cookie had read,
Expect a big
surprise
. Tim’s had read,
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
.

Now home, Tim Bell let Jared stay up past his bedtime.

It was Saturday night and he knew that Debbie and Riddle would be arriving soon, and he reasoned that it was better to explain things now than for Jared to find Riddle as a surprise in the
morning.

Emily was another matter.

Normally Emily had a curfew of midnight, which she could extend until one o’clock with permission. But tonight was the prom and the after-party and then the breakfast. Bobby Ellis had
explained over the phone that there would be a limo, and no one would be driving, and he’d keep her safe.

So Tim Bell really had no idea when he’d see his daughter. He wasn’t used to keeping track of things like that. Details were Debbie’s domain. Now, with three kids, he imagined
he’d find himself more in the thick of it. Kids were like farm animals. You had to keep your eye on them. And now he was going to have more to corral. Jared had asked, endlessly, for a
brother. And now he was getting one.

Tim Bell doubted that Jared ever imagined an older brother, but with Jared you just didn’t know.

That might have been what he meant all along.

Debbie pulled into the brick driveway, musing to herself that so much in life can change so fast. Everything really did need to be taken one day at a time. Riddle didn’t
get out right away but sat motionless in the passenger’s seat staring over at the house.

Debbie had explained during the ride in her calm, matter-of-fact way that he’d be living with them. That this would be his house. But now, as he looked at it, she wondered if that had been
the right thing to do. Maybe the best way would have been to ease him into his new situation.

But it wasn’t like there was a handbook she could consult for all of this.

Once he’d seen Debbie’s car pull off the street, Tim had turned to Jared, who was sitting on the floor looking at a book on frogs. He had a scheme that involved trying to catch a few
down in the stagnant pond behind the golf course and bring them home, where he’d start a habitat and sell their tadpoles to other kids as pets.

Tim said, ‘Your mom’s back.’

Jared looked up from the frog book and smiled. ‘Good.’

Then he went back to the tadpoles. Felix, on the other hand, was going crazy. Debbie was his favourite person in the world, so this was expected. But this was a different kind of going crazy,
even for a wildly exuberant dog.

And then the cats suddenly appeared. They looked like regular cats now, no longer skeletons of cats wearing fur suits. But they still always stuck together. And now the two cats jumped up onto
the back of the sofa to get a better view of something happening outside.

Tim shot the animals a look. Didn’t they say that pets could predict earthquakes? Maybe there was something to that. Tim looked out the window. He could see that Debbie and Riddle were
still in the car. Maybe it wasn’t going well.

Suddenly Tim decided he’d better give Jared some warning. ‘Jared, your mom brought someone back with her . . .’

Jared looked from the frog book to the dog. ‘Felix is losing it.’

Tim continued. ‘You remember Riddle . . .’

He had Jared’s attention now. ‘He couldn’t swim. I’m going to learn to be a lifeguard. I already decided that.’

Tim kept going. ‘Well, it turns out he didn’t die in the river like they told us.’

Jared shut the frog book. ‘No one really told me what happened. What do you mean, he didn’t die?’

‘He survived. And he was found in Utah.’

Jared’s eyes were like saucers. ‘
Really?
Does Emily know? Does Mom know? Is he okay?’

And then, before Tim could answer, the front door swung open and Debbie and Riddle walked in.

Emily leaned her head against the tinted bus window. How many people took a bus home on prom night? How many people had their dates walk out on them? She suddenly felt bad for
Bobby. Maybe she should have stayed and told him to his face that she was leaving. But she didn’t want to cause a scene. Wasn’t it better this way?

And then, up ahead, she could see the marquee for the Motel Six. The red neon sign that said
No Vacancy
was turned on. Underneath, in glowing yellow letters, she could read,
We’ll leave the light on for you
.

Emily shut her eyes. She’d done the right thing.

The bus turned at the corner and headed onto Scofield Avenue. They were passing by the old part of downtown. There wasn’t much traffic, and the bus went through a half dozen lights before
stopping in front of the bus station.

An elderly woman sitting near her stood up to get off. Emily glanced out the windshield and she could see that someone was in the shadows of the bus enclosure waiting to get on.

But with the tinted glass and dusky sky, Emily could barely see the person.

Checklist. Fire in the fireplace, not good. Cats, excellent. Dog, also excellent. Emily not being home, not good. Cold milk, good. Bed downstairs, not good. Bed in
Jared’s room, possible. Leftover chilli, unknown.

Within the first five minutes, they established that a fire reminded Riddle of being out in the woods, and that reminded him of Sam, and that was really not good. Emily not being home upset him.
He wanted to see her.

Riddle held the cats in his arms and tried to pet the dog at the same time, and that was also not good. But the pets were a great thing. They gave the room focus.

The bed in the little room downstairs was concerning to Riddle because everyone else slept upstairs. Good point. He didn’t want to sleep alone.

Did they all want to sleep together outside in a tent?

Sam stood at the front of the bus paying his fare.

Emily, in the back, couldn’t clearly see his face, but she could see the shape of his body and she knew.

It was him. It was Sam.

So she was dreaming.

Or someone put some kind of drug in her lemonade at the prom. Bobby Ellis. Maybe even Rory.

Because she was hallucinating. Right?

Because what was Sam, who was dead, doing getting on a city bus?

Was there someone else in the world who looked just like him?

Isn’t that what people said?

That there was someone in the world who was your twin, visually speaking. The person at the front of the bus stood exactly Sam’s height, with the exact same posture. He had his wild hair,
but was skinnier. He was angular in a way that Sam wasn’t. Plus he moved in a different way. He was stiff. He was hurt.

And Sam didn’t have a worn jean jacket, but his jeans looked like ones that Sam had worn. And then he turned, and she saw his face.

It. Was. Him.

And he now saw her. And he just stared right at her. Unblinking.

Emily opened her mouth, and all that came out was, ‘I . . .’

That was it. Nothing else. Just ‘I’. His eyes were locked with hers. He came closer and she was on her feet and she was moving towards him and finally she said, ‘Sam.’
And Sam, ‘Emily.’

He did not expect to see her on the bus.

He did not expect to see her wearing a beautiful dress, barefoot, holding her little sandals in her trembling hand.

He did not expect to see that.

He was going to find her with her family at her house, and even that made him feel afraid, like he’d fall apart. And now this.

Now, in front of a dozen people under fluorescent lights in the aisle of a city bus, she was there.

And she wrapped her arms around him, and even if he wasn’t real, she was never, ever going to let him go.

The city bus route did not go by the Bell house.

Riddle knew that better than anyone, because Riddle had memorised all the routes and had ridden the bus and thought about the bus even when he wasn’t riding the bus. He had drawn diagrams
of the town and of the bus lines and he had included all of the bus stops.

But now, looking out the front window through the gauzy, sheer white curtain, Riddle saw a city bus. And it had put on the brakes right in front of the Bell house.

Riddle turned to the room and said, ‘The bus came here.’

Everyone turned to look outside, and he was right.

There was a city bus right at the kerb. And the door was opening, and two people were getting out.

Jared didn’t care much about buses, so he went back to looking at Riddle’s hands, which were all scratched up.

Tim Bell bent down to pick up Jared’s big picture book about frogs, which was now in danger of getting stepped on.

Debbie, who was exhausted from the driving and the lack of sleep, took a moment to lean against the couch and shut her eyes.

And that’s where they were when Riddle screamed.

Sam heard his brother’s muffled scream, coming from inside the house, and it was like a razor cutting his throat. He’d heard that scream before.

But then the heavy front door of the Bells’ house opened, and Riddle came out onto the brick walkway, and he was running.

He was running straight to him.

And Sam felt his knees give way and it was possible, in just that moment when he realised that he had a little brother and that this little brother was alive, that everything bad that had ever
happened to him in his life was erased.

Because he now knew that sheer joy wipes out pure pain.

No one slept that night.

Not Sam or Riddle Border.

Not Emily Bell.

Not Jared, who had never stayed up past twelve-thirty in his whole life.

Not Debbie or Tim Bell.

Not Bobby Ellis.

Not Nora or Rory.

Not Olga from the Mountain Basin Inn, but that was because she had drunk regular coffee instead of decaf served by accident at the hotel concierge desk.

Not even Detective Sanderson, who had received a call from the Bells telling him about Sam, and who then had sat up in bed all night watching film noir and wishing that he had been born in an
era where he could wear a fedora to work.

Sam and Riddle held on to each other for what seemed like forever, and then both of them, unable to contain themselves, found their faces wet with tears.

That got Emily weeping, and then the rest of the family joined in, except for Jared, who for some reason couldn’t stop laughing. Felix the dog barked for a solid ten minutes.

Once they finally got themselves under control, everyone kept explaining, over and over and over again, what had happened. Then Debbie insisted, despite the late hour, that they go to the
emergency room at Sacred Heart hospital and have Sam checked out.

It was there that it was made official that Sam had broken his shoulder. The X-rays revealed that, despite everything that had happened in the intervening weeks since the accident in the
national forest, the bones were well on their way to knitting back together. Only an orthopedist would be able to tell if they needed to be surgically reset.

And so they were all squeezed into one car, because no one wanted to be separated, and they were driving back across town to the Bell house at four in the morning when they passed a limousine
filled with juniors and seniors from Churchill High School who had left the after-party.

Bobby Ellis was inside the stretch, wondering how so much could have gone so wrong so quickly.

In the back seat of her parents’ car, Emily had changed out of her prom dress and was wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt from her soccer team. She’d never ridden in a limo that
night and didn’t even register that Bobby might be inside the one that passed.

An hour later, when the sun rose, the sky was fiery orange, and no one could ever recall seeing it that way.

Hiro Yamada of Medford Coin had for ten years kept the valuable penny brought in by Clarence Border.

In the second week of June, a photo of Clarence appeared online with an account of the man who had wrongly taken his two young sons and spent years on the road. Hiro immediately recognised the
group.

Hiro contacted law enforcement and was directed to Detective Sanderson, who was coordinating the legal aspects of the case on behalf of the two minors. A judge in Utah juvenile court had awarded
temporary guardianship of both Border boys to Debbie and Tim Bell.

Sam and Riddle couldn’t remember going into Medford Coin.

But Sam remembered his mother having a penny collection. And he remembered that it was kept in a blue cardboard penny holder. That turned out to be enough identification.

The penny, which Hiro Yamada had certified as authentic, was then put up for auction and sold ten days later for the record price of $48,202 in San Francisco.