“What about a baby book or a photo album from when he was little?” Those were the kinds of things that almost every mother had.
I saw Denise’s back stiffen.
“I can look,” she replied vaguely.
After we finished canvassing Bo’s room, I followed Denise back out to the living room, to a shelving unit that held the television. At the bottom were two cabinet doors, which she opened. Inside were several photo albums. She pulled out the first one she came to and turned to hand it to me.
“You can look through this one. I’ll look through the rest.”
Taking the album from her, I turned to the couch and perched on the edge of a cushion. I ran my hand over the brown leather cover of the book then traced the gilded letters that read Family Photos with my fingertip . Beneath that, someone had used black permanent marker to pen numbers, obviously the year .
The cover creaked as I opened it, a sure sign that the album was not viewed very frequently. I flipped page after shiny plastic page looking for any indication that Bo had been a part of the Bowman family before three years ago, but I found none. All the vacations and Christmases, the birthdays and picnics, were all devoid of Bo, of anyone other than Denise and her husband.
Though I was bothered more than I cared to admit, my heart broke a little for Bo. I wondered if he knew, if he’d somehow found out about the farce. But then I wondered how I could ever tell him if he hadn’t. It would break his heart. Bo genuinely loved his father, or at least he thought he did. It would hurt him to know that none of it was real. It would be like losing him all over again. Whether they were or not, to Bo the memories felt real, real enough to die for.
I closed the book and rested it in my lap, glancing over to watch Denise search for a lie, for something that wasn’t there, something that never had been.
Finally she looked up, tears in her eyes, and she said, “I’m so sorry, Ridley. I can’t even remember what he looks like.”
Standing, I carried the album back to the cabinet and put it back where it belonged. Gently, I took the other one from Denise’s fingers and put it away as well.
“It’s alright. I’ll find something else. I think you need some rest. I bet you’ve had a long night.”
Though she looked distraught, there was a confused blankness in her eyes that made me feel incredibly sorry for her. Someone had used—unthinkably, cruelly used and abused—her mind and her emotions in ways that no one deserved. It was a violation, an assault of the worst kind. She’d been tricked to love a son that wasn’t hers and, for a while, she’d grieved the loss him, all on top of the loss of her husband. Now, she was lost, confused, and hurting, and she didn’t even know why.
I said my goodbyes to Denise and left so she could go to bed, all the while my anger was mounting. Someone out there, some monster, was wreaking havoc on people’s lives and whoever it was had to be stopped, had to be punished.
I was behind the wheel, my Civic’s engine purring quietly in the morning fog, when an idea occurred to me. Quickly, I got out and ran back to the front door and knocked.
Once more, I thought I heard hushed voices and movement inside. Gingerly, I opened the screen door and leaned in closer, hoping to hear more clearly. More than anything, I could hear Denise’s voice as she spoke softly to someone. The voices quieted for a moment before someone other than Denise spoke in a tone loud enough for me to discern.
The voice was deeper than Denise’s, but still unmistakably feminine. It was hoarse and husky, bringing to mind images of Sharon Stone or some other sultry older woman.
I knocked again and waited, but there were no sounds to indicate that Denise might be coming to the door. The polite thing would’ve been to leave, to let Denise go to bed or tend to her secret visitor, but I wasn’t feeling particularly polite so I knocked again, this time snapping my knuckles harshly on the wood.
After another full minute or two, Denise finally answered the door. A lightly sweet, floral smell—rosy almost—drifted out through the open door.
My smile was bright with apology. “I’m sorry to bother you again, but—”
“Pardon?”
“I know you were getting ready for bed, but I wanted to…” I felt my smile fade as I trailed off. A spooky thread of apprehension slithered down my spine as I looked into Denise’s puzzled periwinkle eyes. It only took a couple of seconds for me to realize that she had no idea who I was.
Clearing my throat, I stumbled on. “I’m sorry to bother you. I think I have the wrong address.”
I smiled again, a quick twitch of my lips, before I turned and nearly ran off her porch.
Once inside my car again, I sat looking at the house, wondering whether or not I should have tried to get inside, to see who was in there with her. Obviously, it was a vampire. Someone had managed to completely erase me from her mind in a matter of minutes. They weren’t just trying to erase Bo; they were trying to erase all evidence that Bo ever existed, including those who knew and loved him—people like me.
If they (whoever “they” were) thought Bo was dead, they’d need to go back and clean up their mess, cover their tracks. I drew a small amount of comfort from that—the idea that if they thought Bo was truly dead, they might stop hunting him and trying to kill him. Right on the heels of that encouraging thought, however, was one a bit more troubling. What if I was a loose end that needed to be tied up as well?
Throwing the gear shift into reverse, I sped down the driveway and made my way to school. Hopefully it was true what they say: there’s safety in numbers.
********
That night, I lay in bed, once again thinking of Bo and all that I’d learned. I seemed always to think of Bo, to crave him, to need him like I needed food and water, like I needed any essentially sustaining things. It was getting harder and harder to drag myself through the days knowing that I probably wouldn’t see him, and it was getting harder and harder at night to believe that it really was him that I was smelling in my room. As time marched on, his presence was becoming more surreal, like my mind and my heart were colluding to play a cruel trick on me. I clung to the story that Lucius told, if nothing else than as a possible explanation and confirmation that Bo was, in fact, alive. Tighter and tighter I held onto that as I felt him slipping through my fingers. I couldn’t—I just knew that I couldn’t—survive losing him again, even if I’d never really gotten him back in the first place. Hope was the only thing that had kept me living this long.