“What are you talking about? I don’t understand,” she heard Matthew say. “No, I just…why can’t you just tell me?” Matthew begged into the receiver and Claire closed her eyes. She’d never believed, not for five seconds, that anything so bad as those things she could not consider, could ever happen. It had been fear, only fear, nothing beyond it and she could not imagine five minutes from now, no less five hours, five days, five years. No, at the very worst Preston had broken a leg, he’d fallen and cut a finger, he needed stitches, she’d even go so far as to believe, to concede that perhaps her precious little boy needed an overnight stay at the hospital. But that was all, really that was all and they would get over it, they would work through it. Nothing else could happen to him.
“The police are coming,” Matthew offered as he entered the living room. “A detective is on his way. They have to talk to us, that’s all they said, they wouldn’t say anything else,” he went on, speaking as if he’d stuffed a loaf of bread in his mouth.
When Claire had met Matthew in college he was just a guy, the kind of average that stands out it’s so middle of the road. He played poker and watched sports but never once begrudged his wife a trip to the ballet or a conversation about a book she’d read. He had guy friends; he got along with her girlfriends, though never too well. But here, seeing him with tears in his eyes it was as if this wasn’t happening. Matthew didn’t cry. He’d gotten misty eyed the day Preston was born, he’d broken down at his father’s funeral, but this, these prolonged tears were different, unreal, wrong.
The knock on the door came quickly, too quickly, as if a half hour had become three minutes. There was the first knock, polite and kindly, a knock that seemed to understand that it was after nine o’clock and even if this was official police business there were common codes of decency to follow. When neither Claire nor Matthew answered, both of them standing in the front hall waiting for the other to move the seven steps to the door, the knock grew harsher, so much so that the doorbell was dangerously close to being rung. Claire flinched at the thought of such a wildly intrusive bell at a time like this and marched toward the front door, turning the knob carefully as she was met with a heavyset detective in a brown and beige suit. He was an older man with small eyes and a ring of thin hair around the sides of his head. Behind him stood a tall, slim man, more like a boy, with big eyes and a smooth, clear complexion. His short brown hair was cropped close to his head and he nodded politely as he looked Claire in the eye. They both flashed their badges and the older, heavier one did the talking.
“Hello Ma’am, Mrs. Tumber, I’m Detective Jameson and this is my partner Detective Toby, can we come in?”
“Yes, thank you,” Claire replied. She’d been standing at the door with her hand on the frame, but she moved to the side, indicating that the detectives should enter.
“I’m sorry to have to come see you under these circumstances,” Detective Jameson went on, professionally, though uncomfortably.
“Yes, my husband and I, you can imagine,” Claire started just as uncomfortably, her hands visibly shaking as she led the detectives through the foyer and into the living room. “It’s just that our son hasn’t come home. He went out to play today and wasn’t back at five, when he’s supposed to be, and he’s still…I mean, I called his friends and he’s still not home…” Claire started to shake slightly, fighting back tears as Matthew, who’d bucked up since she’d gone to the door, put his arm protectively around her. Claire wanted to shrug him off, but didn’t have the strength.
“Is there anyone else in the house?” the detective asked. “Any adults, any other children?” he inquired shaking his discomfort as his voice moved toward pure professionalism.
“No, why?” Claire asked. “Why would you ask that, why would you care?”
“We like to have everyone in the house present when we talk to them… especially when things are as sensitive as this,” the detective explained. “Mr. and Mrs. Tumber, we got your call at six oh three and we’ve been searching for your son since then,” the older detective went on. “Are you sure you don’t want to sit down?” he asked, pointing to the stuffed white couch in the corner. Claire shook her head no. “It’s hard to find a boy that age, or at least to ID him because he doesn’t have any form of identification. He doesn’t usually carry a wallet or obviously a driver’s license or sometimes not even a school ID.”
“I understand,” Claire said, wondering why all these technical explanations. “Where is my son?”
The detective blinked for an extra long moment before facing Claire and Matthew. “It’s that we found a boy in the woods about a half hour ago. He was lying near a tree, not breathing. It looked like he’d been dead about two hours, maybe three. We have to get a coroner’s report to find out and to figure out what caused his death.”
“His death? His what?” Claire asked and the word felt cold, like floating in outer space. It was as if she were dangling above her body, as if none of it, absolutely none of it were real. She’d heard the words the detective had said as if she’d been listening to a garbled version, as if the truth of it all had been held under water, the words struggling, flailing, drowning. “No? What?”
“We haven’t been able to ID the boy yet, but we haven’t had any other missing ten year olds and this boy we found matches your description. If you come down to the morgue with us to ID him. . . .”
“What? Come with you?” Claire asked, shaking her head as she backed away. The living room was spinning, salmons and pinks, the soft blue of the curtains, the pictures on the mantle, the way Preston had looked just a few months ago in his school picture. It was all there, it was all real and she couldn’t imagine another reality, as if time and space could alter and there could be no Preston. How was that possible? “What? Are you kidding me? He just went out to play, this doesn’t make any sense, how could he be. . .no. . .I just don’t. . . .ID the body? That’s something they say on TV. This isn’t a crime drama, Matthew, what is he talking about?”
The senior detective stood straight and tall while the younger one looked at the floor. Claire kept pacing until Matthew grasped her arm, looking her in the eye. “Claire, we have to go,” he said. “It might not be him, you never know. But we have to go to the hospital. We have to see,” her husband’s words were slow and sure but very kind.
“No, Matthew, what are you talking about? We can’t go. We have to wait for Preston, Preston will be home.” Claire smiled and all of a sudden it made sense, it made perfect sense and if they just waited Preston would come back.
“Take your time,” the detective interjected considerately as he paced in the direction opposite Claire and Matthew.
“Why aren’t they telling us to stay home? What if Preston comes back? One of us has to wait until Preston comes back. Our little boy…we have to wait for our little boy,” Claire cried, picturing him walking through the door, tousled brown hair, maybe some dirt on his face.
“I think we both have to see him, we both have to ID him,” Matthew explained calmly, “just in case.”
“In case what? What’s going on, I’m not going,” Claire cried, wresting herself from her husband, she marched back toward the kitchen and then out to the dining room where no one had had an appetite tonight.
“Claire,” Matthew said one more time and she could sense the moon outside, the woods only a few feet away. She could feel the blue-black of the night, the way the light cascaded onto the yard with its swing set and under-sized basketball hoop, the bike and roller blades, a bat and ball left over from when Preston and Peyton had played in the yard earlier that morning. That morning. . .and now it was night and it didn’t make any sense, none