One

Apparently, last night was homecoming. I probably heard about it in class. The news just didn’t stick in my head and make it to my social calendar, which is as wide open as the Wyoming prairie. The Trombley girls only cover their mint green Volkswagen Beetle in blue and yellow window paint and streamers once a year. That’s how I know. Their tiny car serves as my autumnal equinox. It has for five years. The first two when Morgan Trombley, the oldest of the three daughters, still lived in the two-story house that sits as a dusty blue mirror image to our brown one across the street. These past three years of homecoming reminders have all been the courtesy of middle daughter, Eleanor, who’s a senior like me. One day, it will be Addy’s—the youngest of the Trombley girls—turn to decorate the hand-me-down car and send the young male hermit neighbor— that’s me —the sign that fall is upon us.

The yard across the street is eerily still, a contrast from the evidence that it wasn’t so quiet over there a few hours ago. Someone draped green and yellow streamers through the Trombley trees, and there are red Solo cups sprinkled around the lawn. I must have slept through the party. And I’m guessing from the school spirit scene out my window that the Oak Forest High School Badgers won the football game. I suppose I’m a Badger, too. That whole community spirit thing that others feel with our high school eludes me. I feel more Badger-adjacent than full-fledge Badger.

I turn my attention from the window and glance toward my bed, the blanket neatly folded hotel-style around the pillows. The only evidence that I slept there is the turned-up bottom of the comforter that I must have kicked over my legs to keep them warm. My laptop is still open with my half-finished essay. I fell asleep mid-sentence last night and clearly let it slide off my chest to the corner of my bed. The blinking cursor draws me in, and when I drag the computer closer I notice the battery icon is a glaring red.

Seven percent. Ha. A few more minutes and I might have lost all of last night’s hard work.

I save the draft and close it, moving my computer to my desk to charge it back to full strength. My grandpa’s second coughing fit is happening right now. When he first moved in six months ago, I worried when he had these at five, six, and seven in the morning. He told me if war didn’t kill him a nicotine-induced cough sure as shit wasn’t about to. I have my doubts, but for two decades he’s proven all of us family worry-warts wrong. Now they’ve become part of my routine. I don’t really need to set alarms anymore. Sixty-four years of smoking has turned Grandpa Hank into my personal wake-up call device.

You up, Jonah?

It doesn’t hurt that he usually follows his 7 a.m. round up with a sturdy pound against our shared wall and this question.

I pound back.

Twice.

Time for coffee? I shout.

He coughs out a laugh, and even though it sounds god-awful, it makes me chuckle. Don’t you know it!

I flip the corner of my comforter back over my mattress, the easiest bed-making ever, grab my Chicago Tech sweatshirt from the floor, and poke my head through. I’m tangled in the twisted arms by the time I enter the hallway, and Grandpa Hank puffs out a short laugh before helping me sort things out.

You’re the only person I know who can solve a quadratic equation but can’t put on a damn shirt, he muses.

Quadratic equations actually aren’t very hard. They’re kinda beginner math, I deadpan.

His lip ticks up, lifting his scraggly beard and mustache along with it.

You’re a real smart ass, Jonah.

"I heard smart in all of that, so thank you," I joke back, patting his chest with my palm as I pass him to head down the stairs.

Grandpa Hank is my favorite person. He always has been. He was around a lot more than my dad, his son, ever was. Not that my dad was an absent parent or anything, at least not by choice. Randy Wydner was incredibly responsible, albeit not enough to get a life insurance policy. My guess is he did the calculations on his age and health and found it wholly unnecessary. Fitting, then, that the same responsibility might be what killed him. My dad literally worked himself to death, putting in seventy-plus hours a week for a decade straight to help his best friend’s tiny start-up company become what it is today—a leader in the future of AI. Not that my dad saw any of the riches from that success. My mom likes to try to sell the both of us on the lie that my dad just passed away before Corbin’s company went public last year and broke out huge. And on the surface, that’s all factual. But Mom and I are still here, and while Corbin is off yachting on the fruits of my dad’s literal labor, his two living dependents are barely staying afloat. If Corbin were a real friend, he would’ve thrown a few scraps our way. That’s how I see it. Grandpa Hank sees it that way, too. He calls him Crooked Corbin in front of Mom. When it’s just me and him, he calls him a Real Son-of-a-Bitch. Both are accurate.

How about you make the coffee and I scramble us some eggs? Grandpa asks.

I swallow hard, my back to him and my attention on the coffee pot, and utter out a tepid, Sure. My grandpa’s eggs are runny as hell. They’re barely edible. I have to eat them fast in order to choke them down. The unfortunate result of that is that my grandpa thinks I gobble them up because I like them so much. I just don’t have the heart to break it to him. Every time he stands at that stove, he waxes on about his years as a cook in the army. I bet the soldiers slurped those suckers down out of desperation, too. I remind myself each time that I can use the protein. Runny eggs are as close as I get to working out.

Mom’s already gone to work. She started taking on weekend shifts at the garage in Old Town, answering phones and keeping up with the books. I don’t think the owners actually need the help; they aren’t very busy. It’s a charity gig, but it pays the gas and electric bills, so my mom goes dutifully. Thank God for the business of doing taxes. It’s all my mom does in both jobs, and she’s the last person her company will ever let go, or so she says.

You hear the big ruckus across the street last night? My grandpa’s question is his way of asking why I don’t go to parties. He thinks I need a social life. He’s right. He’s also caught me staring across the street on more than one occasion. He’s polite enough to not bring up the pretty blonde girl this early in the morning; he usually waits for his evening whiskey to kick in to needle me.

I do stare, though most of the time I’m too afraid to actually talk to Eleanor. In fact, we’ve probably only exchanged words a handful of times. All of the Trombley girls are beautiful, but Eleanor, she’s special. Eighteen, hair that falls in waves, and a cheerleading uniform that fits as if she was born to wear it, she’s literally a dream girl. My dream girl.

But it’s more than how pretty she is that has me captivated. I can’t quite pin what it is exactly, but ever since junior high, I have been smitten with her. Like the way awkward superheroes fall for normal humans with no explanation at all. Sadly, I possess no superhuman skills to wow her with or employ to leap into danger to save her. That doesn’t stop my massive crush, though. Maybe it’s her confidence, or maybe the smile she wears like a badge of honor, pushing her cheeks into round cherries. I could pick her laugh out of a crowd in a heartbeat. It’s as though it was created for me to hear, to recognize, and I don’t really know why.

I shake my head, realizing a lot of time has passed.

I must have really been knocked out, I finally respond. I gently kick a chair leg to make room for my thin frame to slide in while my grandfather coughs out a laugh at my expense. I have a feeling he knows I was daydreaming about Eleanor. I set his coffee by the seat next to me, then cradle my own mug and breathe in the steam coming from the top. I’ll need this smell to trick my brain into telling my mouth that these eggs I’m about to get aren’t a threat.

Grandpa shuffles in a circle, pan in one hand and one of mom’s blue plates in the other. He slides what he likes to call an omelet onto the dish before setting it down in front of me.

"Mmmm," I hum through tight, lying lips.

This time, the cheese he sprinkled on top is melted. That’s a positive step.

My lips pressed to the rim of my cup, I suck down a hot sip that coats my tongue with the bitterness of pure black coffee, then immediately scoop up a quarter of my eggs. The texture is its usual gag-worthy self, but I’ve managed to temporarily burn my taste buds enough to get through this first bite.

Someone has a birthday next week. He’s talking about me. The big one-eight. It’s not that I’ve forgotten, I just don’t get excited about my birthdays anymore. When I was nine or ten, we had parties. There would be cake and presents, and Dad actually took time off from work. It’s hard not to see my birthday as a financial inconvenience now. Especially since my mom insists I don’t work part time during the school year. I saved a good amount from cleaning movie theaters all summer to pay for incidentals, but it still doesn’t feel like enough.

Grandpa slices a thick pat of butter and swirls it in the hot pan; it crackles as it melts. I wonder how much of what I’m eating is egg and how much is butter.

You think about what you want? he asks, turning to meet my gaze. It shakes me out of my head and I shrug.

Not really. There’s a tinge of pity in his eyes while we stare at one another, both probably realizing how sad that statement is. I’m a boy about to hit a huge milestone and I couldn’t care less about the celebration of it all.

I drop my focus back to my plate and immediately shovel another forkful of eggs into my mouth, relieved when I see my grandpa turn his back to me again in my periphery. Sometimes, it’s hard to pretend things are normal. I do such a good job of convincing myself that this life is fine when really, it sucks a lot of the time. It’s tougher to keep up the act when someone’s calling me out on it, even though he doesn’t mean anything by it. I know if he could, my grandpa would rewind time and try to change the present for my mom and me. The pessimist in me is pretty certain we’d end up right where we are. I still wouldn’t have a clue who my father really was—what made him tick. The things that made him so brilliant also made him closed off.

Hey, Grandpa barks. I gulp down bite number three and dart my focus toward him with my fake satisfied grin plastered in place. He’s uninterested in my culinary opinion, though, and nods toward the window above the sink. There’s a lot of coppers over at that house you’re always staring at.

I’m both embarrassed and rushed with intrigue.

I’m not . . . I shake my head as I get up and move toward the window, knowing that finishing that statement is pointless. I am always looking at that house across the street.

Grandpa Hank slides back toward the stove and cracks more eggs to serve himself, but he leans to the left to stare out the window alongside me. He wasn’t exaggerating. There are five squad cars outside the Trombley home, two in the driveway and another three pulled up alongside the curb. There aren’t any lights flashing, and we would have heard sirens. Weird that they showed up sometime between me being upstairs and making my way down here.

I bet that pretty blonde you’re always looking at is up to funny business, Grandpa says. He waits for my sideways glance to pretend to pinch a doobie and draw in a hit. He follows it up with a cackling laugh as he elbows me in the ribs.

Eleanor isn’t like that, I defend. I don’t know for sure that she isn’t, but my instincts tell me she plays by the rules—mostly. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her stumble into her house after a late Friday or Saturday night. Her older sister did that plenty of times. The only thing Eleanor does is get kissed in the car. Shamelessly, I’ve watched most of those goodnight kisses. At least the beginnings of them.

Why am I thinking about all of this now? Damn Grandpa Hank! Old fart didn’t even wait for the whiskey to start in on me today.

I stare on, partly because there’s no way I’m going back to those eggs when they’re cold, but mostly because I’m glued to the scene unfolding across the street. Two officers pace around the front of the yard, stopping to squat and look closely at the grass every few feet or so. Another cop walks toward the back of the house with a German shepherd. The dog’s nose is fixed in the blades of grass, his head weaving methodically from left to right along the ground.

Hey. My voice is hushed as I alert my grandpa. I feel as if I’m on a stakeout or something. Look, there’s another.

Dumping his egg mush onto a plate, he abandons the pan in the sink then sidles up next to me, eating while we stand squared with the side-by-side window panes. A woman dressed in a black suit gets out of the new car, and walks up the center path in the Trombley front hard. I catch a glimpse of her gun at her side as she shifts her jacket. She stops to talk with one of the officers who’s been fixated on something in the flower bed. I hadn’t noticed before, but he’s wearing blue gloves.

I don’t think this is good, Jonah. My grandfather’s words are dulled, and as I turn to glance his way, his expression is just as void. He finishes his eggs and clears my plate once he’s done, not even bothering to ask if I want more. I don’t. And for once, it’s not because I can’t stand the texture passing over my tongue.

No. Right now, I feel strangely sick. My gut is heavy with a sense of doom. And a selfish paranoia. The pretty blonde girl I like to stare at across the street hasn’t come outside since I’ve been looking out this window.

Two

Events like this have a way of grabbing everyone’s full attention in a matter of hours. Oak Forest isn’t a big city. It isn’t even that close to Chicago, the city we all say we’re from when anyone asks. This place is a suburb of a suburb, a clustered grid of streets that look the same at every turn. Giant oaks line wide, uneven sidewalks that have been cracked from years of snow storms and massive root systems. Before today, the biggest news to happen in Oak Forest was the arrival of the actual car used in the original Ghostbusters movie. Orson Symanski won it in an auction six years ago. He brings that sucker out for every New Year’s parade.

Today’s news is a little different. The first media truck showed up in front of our house about two hours after the cops arrived across the street. Grandpa Hank isn’t afflicted with the same debilitating social anxiety I am, so he ran out to offer the camera guy and reporter lady coffee and got the scoop before the news officially broke on Channel 7 thirty minutes later.

Addy Trombley is missing.

Somehow, eight hours have passed since the beginning of all this, or at least the beginning as Grandpa Hank and I know it. For the Trombleys, it’s been a harrowing thirteen or more. It’s the more that is full of mystery. Nobody seems sure exactly how long the nine-year-old has been gone. That’s the hook the media is hanging on to for now, and it’s playing out in living rooms up and down our street—throughout Chicagoland, really, thanks to the five o’clock news feed.

It’s playing out in ours.

I can’t believe nobody saw anything. My mom plops down on the opposite end of the couch and hands me a bowl of warmed-up leftover pasta. She’s still wearing her work shirt and her name badge that reads KARA. We’ve been consumed with the news for the last three hours. Mom came home from her shift early, the owners of the garage deciding to close up out of respect for the heartbreaking news. In reality, they wanted to sit glued to their televisions like the rest of us. Nobody will admit it out loud, but one of humanity’s greatest flaws is how excited we become when tragedies happen.

Jonah didn’t even hear the party. Nose in those books of his, Grandpa Hank says, prying the cap from his second beer as he settles into his worn blue easy chair. I shoot him a glare and he coughs out a short laugh.

The police came to interview us about two hours ago, and for all the times I’ve stared out that window watching the Trombleys with a certain dash of envy, I missed seeing the most important incident of all. I was useless. We all were.

It’s weird watching your own front yard on the news, Mom says, pressing the volume button on the remote to bring up the latest reports.

The glow of our living room window can be seen behind the live shot. I crane my neck and pull the flimsy curtain panel open an inch and squint when my eyes are hit with the harsh spot on the reporter.

She went to my high school, I mumble.

That broad? Grandpa says. I turn back in time to see him gesture toward the television, only to have my mom smack his wrist.

What was that for? He rubs his skin, then holds the chilled beer bottle against it as if her small slap actually hurt. She scowls at him, urging him to fess up to his misogyny.

"Fine. Lady, he grumbles. Mom clicks her teeth together and mutters, Jesus Christ."

Yeah, I cut in, ending their semi-playful spat. She spoke at last year’s graduation. I guess she’s the most famous person to come out of Oak Forest, or something like that.

Horseshit, Grandpa barks. Mom and I both flash our attention to him. He shrugs. Your dad’s more famous than she is. He’s just famous among smart people, and this town is full of real idiots.

My mom softens to him again, reaching over and squeezing the same spot on his arm that she smacked a moment ago. She misses Dad, and she shows it in these little moments of reverence. I only wish I could feel that same awe they do. Instead, I don’t really feel anything. Other than Grandpa living here and Mom being a lot more stressed, my life hasn’t changed much in the absence of my father. I didn’t really know him. That fact does make me sad, though, because now . . . I never will.

I take after my mom physically. She’s slender, whereas my dad was always on the stocky side. I get my height from both of them, reaching six feet by my sophomore year. The rest of me, though, is a carbon copy of my mom. Dirty blue eyes, as she calls them, and copper-brown hair that doesn’t fall straight or curl. It means when I wake up in the morning, I look like one of those pencil-toppers I used to buy at the book fair in elementary school, wild strands poking in all directions.

I did inherit my father’s mind, and that scares me a little now that he’s gone. School has always been easy, but I have caught myself more and more obsessing on the work. My dad turned into a man who studied life rather than lived it. As much as I don’t want the same fate, it sometimes feels inevitable. My path has been carved.

. . .When police showed up at the Trombley residence, they weren’t sure what to expect. They say it’s procedure to investigate missing person reports with a certain sense of skepticism. As an officer, they’re not sure what they’re walking into. Is this the case of a runaway? Abuse or domestic violence? A teen drug problem? But what law enforcement quickly learned was that none of those shoes fit the Trombley case. The problem is, they’ve never really seen anything like this before. Addy Trombley is just a little girl, last seen skating in her driveway yesterday afternoon. Seemingly, under everyone’s noses, she simply . . . vanished.

Stupid, my mom mutters at the TV, knocking back the rest of her warm tea and bolting from the other end of the sofa where she’d been sitting near Grandpa. "These news people think they’re so clever with those little sayings. None of those shoes fit the Trombley case. I mean, my God, Rick and Patricia are living a nightmare and this, this broad, is playing around with nursery rhymes while her network exploits their tragedy. It all makes me sick."

"Oh, so you can call her a broad," my Grandpa says, earning an instant glare from Mom.

I was using it for effect, she shoots back.

Well, what do you think I was using it for?

Chauvinism, she retorts.

Grandpa and I don’t crack a smile in her presence, but the moment she leaves the room and is out of ear shot, he leans forward and cups his mouth toward me. "Don’t mess with your mother. She’s always right. And she has a mean left hook," he jokes, rubbing his arm. I expected him to say something else at first, but he’s always quick to take up Mom’s side beyond their usual jokes and banter.

Hey. I meet Grandpa’s squinty stare and for a few seconds he gnashes his whiskered lips together in thought. It feels as though I’m about to get a lecture.

I wanna give you your birthday present now. He coughs through his effort to stand up from the chair, and moves toward the side table near the front door, pulling out the small drawer and removing a wrapped package the size of a Bible. I’d think maybe that’s what I’m being given if I didn’t know what a heathen my Grandpa is. Mom walks in as he’s about to hand the gift to me.

Oh, I didn’t think we were doing this until next weekend, she says, a smirk playing at the corner of her mouth. She taps her fingernails against her refilled tea mug and perches on the arm of the couch. I hold her stare for a second, seeing if I can get her to crack. She only shakes her head.

I expect a card with some cash inside and maybe a flat-pan cake with some sprinkles for my birthday, which is definitely at odds with the heavy package now resting in my hands. I can tell it’s a book, but it isn’t your normal hardback or the latest Brandon Sanderson. The shape is too odd for that.

Well, go on. Grandpa Hank nods at my hands.

The goofy grin of a child takes over my mouth and I laugh out nervously while I fumble with the paper. It doesn’t take long to unwrap the beat-up notebook with well-worn leather binding and an ink stain smudged across the spine. Turning it over in my hands I study it, and after noting his trademark handwriting engraved with pen on the cover, I realize it belonged to my father. He wrote like a typewriter, complete with the little hoods over his lowercase A’s and tails at the ends of his D’s and T’s. I used to look at his notes in his briefcase when he packed up in the morning and always wondered how he wrote so much in such a meticulous way.

It’s Dad’s. I glance up just long enough to catch Mom’s glossy eyes and half smile. I lift the book and suck in my lips, feeling some reverence for this notebook, but probably not as much as I should.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. ‘Great. I turn eighteen and all I get is a crappy old notebook,’ Grandpa says.

I breathe out a laugh at my grandfather’s guess at my inner dialogue.

No, I like it, I say, thumbing through