Page 5 of Middle of the Night

About how the police were just as lost, unable to find even the smallest clue about who might have taken Billy. Or why. Or what happened to him after that.

About how no one knows anything after all these years. And how we’ll likely never know. And how it all feels like my fault because I wasright therewhen it happened. And how sometimes the guilt is so strong that I find myself wishing it had been me who was taken.

“But you weren’t,” Claudia said. “You’re here, now, with me.”

She kissed me then, my heart exploding into a thousand butterflies. In that moment, I swore that I would remain there, with her, for as long as possible.

That turned out to be seventeen years, during which both of us graduated. Me first, then Claudia two years later. We stayed in the Chicago area, where she got a job with the parks service and I found a teaching gig at a private school not unlike the one I’d attended. I was never the most popular teacher. A far cry from the cool ones you see in movies, whose passion is so infectious that students end up standing on desks reciting poetry. I showed up, gave my lessons, guided bored teenagers throughGreat ExpectationsandTo Kill a Mockingbird.

Our life together might not have been exciting, but it was good.

Until it wasn’t.

Now I’m here, moving through a dark house half filled with boxes containing remnants of that once-good life. I retrieve my phone from the charging station in the kitchen (another tip for insomniacs: sleep with your phone in another room) and tap out a text.

can’t sleep. of course

I pause, then type what I’m really feeling.

i miss you, Claude

I send the texts before I can change my mind, even though I know they make me sound completely pathetic. Not at all how I envisioned myself at age forty. Especially the part about living in my childhood home. This was my parents’ idea, sprung on me when they announced they were finally taking the plunge and moving to Florida.

“You’ll be doing us a favor,” my mother said when I initially resisted. “Selling a house like this is such a headache.”

What she meant but couldn’t bring herself to say is that she knew I was going through a rough patch, both emotionally and financially, and that they were happy to help, even though I’m far past the age of needing help from my parents. At least, I should be.

I relented and moved into the house after getting them settled into their new condo outside Orlando. I’ve been here ever since, caught between adulthood and adolescence. Some days it feels like my parents will be home at any minute, carrying in groceries, my mother announcing that she bought that flavor of Ben & Jerry’s I like so much. Other times it feels like I’ve been hurtled into the future, to a time in which both are long gone and I’ve inherited everything.

At the end of the hallway, past the mudroom and the laundry room, is what used to be my father’s study and now serves as my makeshift office. The boxes in here are opened—a half-hearted feint at unpacking. My father left the bookcases but took the desk, forcing me to use my laptop propped on a battered coffee table I found in the basement.

I flick on a lamp, sit at the coffee table, and open my laptop. I tell myself that I have no idea what I’m looking for. That this is just mindless web surfing until I get tired or the sun comes up, whichever arrives first.

But I know full well where I’m going, typing in the address with the unthinking ease of someone slipping back into a bad habit.

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

NamUs, for short.

An online database of people who’ve gone missing, been taken, vanished into thin air.

I know the statistics well. Each year in America, more than half a million people are reported missing. Although the vast majority are quickly located, alive and well, some aren’t so lucky and end up on NamUs. Those who remain missing after a year or two or more eventually become cold cases.

Then there’s someone like Billy. A case so cold it’s now a block of ice.

As I type in Billy’s name, I can’t help but think about the presence I detected in the driveway. Feeling it was like being an amnesiac hit with a thousand memories at once. A sudden awakening, as surprising as it was comforting. A sense of long-forgotten familiarity.

And enough to make me think, for a slice of a second, that it was indeed Billy.

That he was alive.

That he had returned.

But Billy is still unaccounted for, a fact confirmed for me when his page appears on the NamUs website. At the top is his case number, his name, and his photograph, under which sits a red bar and white letters spelling out that most horrible of words.

Missing.

The picture had been taken in the school gymnasium the previous October. Somewhere in my parents’ condo is a framed portrait of me in front of that same smudged blue backdrop. In my photo, I’m grinning wildly, exposing teeth too big for my mouth, my polo shirt rumpled and my hair gelled into submission.

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