Part 1: Eight Weekends
Where the Boys Went on Weekends
“When is my son coming home? He’s been spending every weekend at your place!”
It was eight-fifteen on a Saturday morning. I stood at my kitchen counter in my bathrobe with a cup of coffee, watching the leaves on the backyard maple turn orange.
I almost laughed.
“Denise,” I said, “what are you talking about? Nathan’s been at your house since yesterday.”
Silence.
The kind of silence that has weight to it. That presses on your ears.
“Laura,” Denise said slowly. “I haven’t seen your son in weeks.”
I nearly dropped my coffee.
“But he goes to Cole’s every Friday.”
“And Cole tells me he’s staying with Nathan!”
My stomach dropped through the floor.
Our boys had been best friends since kindergarten.
Nathan and Cole. Cole and Nathan. You couldn’t say one name without the other. They met on the first day at Cassidy Elementary, when Cole cried because his mom had left and Nathan walked over and handed him half a peanut butter sandwich. They’d been inseparable ever since.
They learned to ride bikes together. They broke their arms together, falling out of the same tree in my backyard the summer they were eight. Nathan’s left, Cole’s right, so they could sign each other’s casts. They wore matching Halloween costumes until they were thirteen and decided it was embarrassing.
Both sixteen now. Both juniors at Lafayette High School in Lexington, Kentucky. Both tall and gangly and constantly hungry and allergic to answering text messages.
And for two months, they’d spent nearly every weekend together.
Or so we thought.
“Denise,” I said. My voice sounded strange. Far away. “When did you last see Nathan?”
She was quiet for a moment. Thinking.
“Early August, I think,” she said. “Before school started. He came over for a cookout. What about Cole?”
I thought about it.
“Same,” I said. “August.”
Eight weekends.
Eight.
Every Friday since the end of August, Nathan had packed his backpack, kissed me on the cheek, and said, “I’m going to Cole’s. Back Sunday.”
Every Friday, Cole had told Denise the same thing about our house.
And neither of us had checked.
Where on earth had our sons been sleeping?
I hung up and called Nathan.
Straight to voicemail.
Hey, it’s Nate. Leave a message or don’t, whatever.
I called again.
Voicemail.
Again.
Nothing.
My phone buzzed. A text from Denise.
Cole isn’t answering either!!!
I opened Nathan’s last text to me. From Friday night. Eight-forty-two p.m.
Mom, Cole and I ordered pizza. Don’t wait up. Love you.
I’d read it Friday night on the couch, half-asleep in front of a cooking show. I’d smiled. I’d sent back a heart.
I looked at it now. Love you.
I typed: Nathan, I know you’re not at Cole’s. Call me now.
I hit send.
Delivered.
Not read.
Denise came over at nine-thirty.
She lives four streets away. She didn’t drive. She ran. In her pajama pants and a Kentucky Wildcats sweatshirt and sneakers without socks. Her hair was in a messy bun. Her face was white.
She stood in my kitchen and stared at me.
“Laura,” she whispered. “What if something happened to them?”
“Don’t say that.”
“What if they’re in a ditch somewhere? What if they got in somebody’s car? What if—”
“Denise. Don’t.”
But I was thinking it too. I’d been thinking it since the second she said I haven’t seen your son in weeks.
We called their friends.
Every single one. Every number we had.
Marcus Thompson, who plays basketball with them. His mom said Marcus hadn’t seen either boy outside of school in weeks. “They’ve been kind of weird lately,” Marcus told me, when his mom handed him the phone. “Like, they leave right after school on Fridays. Real fast. They don’t hang out anymore.”
Jaylen Ross. Nothing.
Emily Park, who Nathan had a crush on in ninth grade. Nothing.
The kids from the robotics club. The kids from the youth group at St. Peter’s that the boys had stopped attending in September. Nothing.
Nobody knew anything.
Denise drove past all their usual hangouts.
The skate park off Tates Creek Road. The basketball courts at Woodland Park. The Waffle House on Nicholasville Road where they used to go at midnight after football games. The McDonald’s. The movie theater at Hamburg. The batting cages.
No sign of them.
I stayed home, in case Nathan came back.
I sat at the kitchen table with my phone in front of me and stared at it. I checked Nathan’s location on the family plan. He’d turned it off. When? I scrolled back. September first.
The first Friday.
He’d planned this.
At noon, I went into his room.
I hadn’t been inside Nathan’s room in months. Not really. Not past the doorway. He’s sixteen. He wanted privacy. I respected it. I thought that’s what good mothers did.
It looked the same as always. Unmade bed. Clothes on the floor. A poster of a band I’d never heard of. His old guitar in the corner, the one he’d stopped playing in middle school.
But there were things I’d never noticed.
On his desk sat a box of medical gloves. Purple nitrile. The kind nurses use.
Under his bed was a printout from a website. How to Care for Someone with Advanced Liver Disease. Highlighted in three colors.
And in his trash can, a receipt from a Walgreens. Dated two weeks ago. Bandages. Saline solution. Ensure Plus, vanilla, 24-pack. Adult incontinence pads, size L.
Adult incontinence pads.
I sat down on his unmade bed.
I didn’t understand.
I didn’t understand anything.
At midnight, Denise came back over.
She’d been driving around all day. She’d gone to the police station at four o’clock, where they told her the boys were sixteen, it hadn’t been twenty-four hours, and they’d probably turn up. She’d gone back at eight. Same answer.
We sat at my kitchen table with our phones in our hands.
The house was quiet. The refrigerator hummed. Somewhere outside, a dog was barking.
“Has Nathan been acting strange?” Denise asked.
I thought about it.
I pictured his face every Sunday night when he came home. Exhausted. Gray. Dark circles under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept in days. I’d assumed they stayed up all night playing video games.
I pictured the way he rushed straight upstairs and into the shower the minute he walked in the door. Every Sunday. Before he even said hello. I’d assumed teenage hygiene was finally kicking in.
I pictured how he’d stopped telling me what they’d done.
“How was Cole’s?”
“Fine.”
“What’d you guys do?”
“Nothing. Hung out.”
I thought about his hands. One Sunday in September, I’d noticed his knuckles were cracked and red. As if he’d been washing them over and over. I asked about it. He said it was from basketball.
I thought about the night in October when I came downstairs at two a.m. for water and found him sitting at the kitchen table in the dark. Just sitting there. Staring at nothing.
“Can’t sleep?” I’d asked.
He’d looked up at me. And for a second, his face did something. Crumpled, almost. As if he were about to say something.
Then it closed.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Nothing, Mom.”
He went back to bed.
“I thought he was just growing up,” I said to Denise.
Denise buried her face in her hands.
“Cole’s been the same,” she said through her fingers. “Exactly the same. Tired. Quiet. He asked me last month if I knew how to make chicken soup from scratch. Cole. Cole, who eats cereal for dinner. He wanted to know how to make soup.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I showed him,” she said. “I thought it was cute. I thought he had a girlfriend who was sick.”
By three a.m., neither of us had spoken for an hour.
By four, we were about to call the police again. Denise had her phone in her hand. Her thumb hovered over the nine.
“If we call them again,” she said, “they’ll have to take it seriously. Thirty-six hours. Two minors. No contact.”
“Call them,” I said.
She pressed the nine.
Then, at 4:37, a key turned in my front door.
I knew that sound. I’d know it anywhere. The way the lock sticks a little. The way you have to jiggle it.
I jumped up so fast my chair fell over backward.
Denise dropped her phone.
I ran down the hall.
The front door opened.
Nathan.
“Where have you been?!”
I was screaming. I couldn’t stop. Thirty-six hours of terror poured out of me all at once.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve put us through?! Two days! Two days, Nathan! I thought you were dead! I thought you were in a ditch!”
He stood in the hallway.
Alone.
No Cole.
Behind me, I heard Denise make a sound. A small, strangled sound.
“Mom, I—”
“Don’t you dare lie to me!” I was shaking. “Two months! Eight weekends! You told me you were at Cole’s! Cole told Denise he was here! Where have you been spending your nights?!”
He slowly raised his head.
The hallway light was on behind me. It fell across his face.
And for the first time in two months, I truly looked at him.
All my anger vanished.
Just like that. Like a candle blown out.
His face was gray. Not tired. Gray. Like someone who hadn’t slept in days. His eyes were swollen nearly shut. Red-rimmed. Wet.
He’d been crying. For a long time.
His hands hung at his sides, trembling. Something dark covered them. Dried. Brownish-red. Caked into the creases of his knuckles. Under his fingernails.
Blood.
There was blood on his shirt too. His gray Lafayette Generals T-shirt. A big dark stain down the front. Spatters across the sleeve.
Not his. I could tell. He wasn’t hurt. He stood up straight. No wounds. No bandages.
Somebody else’s blood.
And over the bloody T-shirt, he wore a jacket.
An old jacket. Olive green. Faded almost to gray. Army issue. Too big for him. The sleeves hung past his wrists. A patch on the left shoulder. A screaming eagle. The 101st Airborne.
And on the right chest, above the pocket, a name tape. Black letters on olive drab. Stitched on with thick thread.
RHODES.
I grabbed the doorframe.
My knees buckled.
I knew that jacket.
I’d washed that jacket. Folded that jacket. Pulled that jacket off a man passed out on my kitchen floor at three in the morning. Stuffed that jacket into a black garbage bag and set it on the porch the night I changed the locks.
Ten years ago.
“Oh, God,” I whispered. “Nathan. What have you done?”
He was crying. He didn’t try to hide it.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I said.
He opened his mouth.
“Mom,” he said. His voice broke into pieces. “It’s Dad.”
