Come Find Me(79)

“Yeah, I’m here,” I say. Last thing I want is for them to call right back if I hang up.

“I’ve been trying to get through for days. I saw on the news…” Her voice wavers with emotion.

I close my eyes, willing this call to go faster, to get this over with. A well-meaning stranger. Or worse.

“I live in Collins County,” she continues, which doesn’t mean much to me. “And my house, it backs up to Northridge Forest.” Still nothing. “I think I have something that belongs to you.”





In the end, it’s a lawyer I’ve never met who convinces Elliot to see me. To talk to all of us, to try to piece together his fragmented mind.

I’ve taken this drive before, and I’m just about to direct Joe when he swerves over to the exit ramp. I check my phone one last time before sliding it into my bag. My nerves are frazzled. The initial excitement about seeing my brother again has turned to fear, and the only person I thought could read between the lines of my message—Going to see my brother today—still hasn’t responded to any of my texts. It’s been two days since I saw Nolan at the service, and still nothing.

Joe eases the car into a parking spot, and suddenly I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know what to say, how to act. Joe opens his car door; then, seeing I’m still sitting there, he closes it again.

“I don’t know what to say,” I explain, shaking my head.

Joe sighs. “He’s your brother. You’ll know what to say.”

    But it’s been six months, and I’ve been out here, and he’s been in there, and it suddenly seems like an impossible distance to bridge.

Joe shifts in his seat so he’s facing me. “Okay, so, a few things. He’s lost some weight. His hair is ridiculous again, always half in his eyes; it’s driving me crazy.”

I raise my head and crack a grin, picturing the Elliot he used to be. Remembering the look on my mother’s face when he cut his own hair. The laughter I could barely contain.

“And,” Joe continues, “he’s scared.”

“But I thought you said the lawyer was optimistic—”

“He’s scared of what you think of him. That’s why he didn’t want to see you, all this time. What he remembers…” Joe looks out the window, like he’s seeing it, too, then shakes it off. “What he remembers is seeing you through the glass, with the gun in his hand. You are the one thing he remembers.” The one thing that breached the divide that night. That cut straight through to him.

I stare out the glass, remembering his expression. The line that divides his life as well.

“I’m ready,” I say.

When we finally make it through—leaving our things, all connections to the outside world—the first thing I see is the lawyer’s back, leaning across the table as he speaks.

But then there’s the sound of metal on metal as his chair pushes back and Elliot stands, looking over the lawyer. He is exactly like Joe said: skinny, in desperate need of a haircut. I can see the toll of six months in here. Six months alone. But none of it matters right then; I only see my brother.

His eyes, shadowed underneath, jump from Joe to me, and he holds my gaze, his expression softening. Whatever he was looking for, he must already see it.

    “Hi,” he says, and the word makes me smile, despite where we are, and everything that’s happened. It’s the sound of his voice—a thing I didn’t even realize I’d been missing these last six months.

And then I hug him, even though I know we’re not supposed to, but that’s okay, because Joe was right—he’s my brother, and I don’t even have to think about it. I hear him mumble “I’m sorry,” over and over, until he takes a seat at the table.

“No,” I say, sitting next to Joe, across from Elliot. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you there.” I look up at him, across the table, through my blurred vision, and he’s shaking his head, like he doesn’t understand. “I’m sorry I left you in here.” That’s what I’ve been thinking, all this time. If only I had called his name that night, called him back to me. Let him know that I believed him right then—that he hadn’t done this. If maybe that would’ve brought him back, right away.

“I should’ve done so many things differently,” he says. “Before. After.” He shakes his head. “I missed you a lot, Kennedy.”

My eyes lock with his across the table, and it’s then I believe it: he will come back to me.

The lawyer walks us through the case, but Elliot keeps his eyes down on the table the whole time, his hands folded together, like he can’t bear to hear it. How many times, I wonder, has he had to endure this? The horrors he’s seen, which I can only imagine.

“Elliot was sitting at his desk, working on a project, and didn’t hear his mother and Will come home. The first thing he remembers is the sound of a shot,” the lawyer says.

    Joe puts a hand on Elliot’s arm, as if to steady him. Just as he did for me.

The lawyer lays out the things Elliot must have told him, about the Will none of us ever saw. The controlling, manipulative version, who used Elliot’s grades and his status at school to undermine his concerns, who isolated our mother from her colleagues—and us.