A Son's Tale

THAT EVENING, AS SOON as his father had turned in for the night, Cal poured his glass of whiskey and shut himself in his office. As far as he knew, his father never set foot in the room that had formerly been a third bedroom—insisting that Cal needed his private space—but tonight he locked the door anyway.

He was there to write, to work on the compilation of impressions and thoughts that had become a lifelong project to him. Putting his life in book form. A story that was tragic. A hobby that was therapeutic.

Usually he wrote in sweats. His home office was the only place he allowed himself such casual dress. Tonight he needed the barrier more formal clothes provided. A mental barrier, perhaps, but one he chose to maintain.

Loosening his tie, he knelt in front of the wooden file cabinet his father had given him when he’d graduated from college. The solid piece of furniture had been one of the few things that had traveled with them through the years.

In its former days the cabinet had supported the middle sectional piece of the mammoth desk in his father’s headmaster’s office in Massachusetts.

The bottom drawer slid open to reveal the locked metal box Cal kept hidden away. He hadn’t opened the drawer, or the box large enough to hold several legal pads, in years.

Tonight he pulled it out, carried it over to his desk, sat down. Using the key from the ring in his pocket, he unlocked the black metal lid and slowly lifted it.

The first thing he saw made his heart pound. Ramsey had read a list to him of evidence contained in the box that had gone missing from the Comfort Cove Police Department.

Obviously the detective had never seen the “box.” It had been fluid like an envelope as opposed to hard-sided like a box. Made of some kind of durable plastic material. The kind that lined swimming pools, only a frosted clear color instead of blue.

At least that was what he’d thought when he was seven years old and had been left alone in a room with that “envelope” sitting on a counter.

The thing had been big enough to hold books.

Instead, it had been filled with his things. And Emma’s. And Claire’s. Taken from their rooms. Their home.

Even the clothes taken from their bodies, underwear included, the day that Claire had gone missing.

Cal stared at the small, dark tan bear lying on a backdrop of papers and old articles in the black metal box on his lap. The edges of its fur were matted, tips dirty from sticky little fingers, from tears.

The bear—Teddy, a young Cal had named it— was on Ramsey’s evidence list from that missing envelope.

But a seven-year-old boy could hardly be blamed for grabbing the bear and hiding it in his jacket. He could hardly be cha

rged with theft for rescuing a child’s toy and smuggling it home.

Teddy’s golden eyes gazed up at him. One of them could have had a tear seeping out from the crack down the center of it. He remembered the day the bear got hurt. They’d all been piling into the van to head out for ice cream. The sun was high in the sky and Dad and Rose were home so it had to be summer. He was already sweating even though he had on a T-shirt and shorts and the flip-flops Rose had just bought for him because they had the Boston Celtics basketball logo on them.

God, he’d loved those flip-flops. He’d worn them every day that summer. So proud he’d practically skipped when he walked.

Not so much because of the Celtics, though they were the coolest and wearing their emblem made him cool. But because he had a mom now. Someone who thought about things he liked, and not just things he needed. Someone who surprised him with gifts just because he was there, because he was in her thoughts. Because he was loved.

Rose was a teacher, too, just like Cal’s mother had been.

He coughed. Took a sip of whiskey.

Teddy. The bear. Claire had been about a year old and was in the throwing-everything-all-the-time stage. It was a game she played with him, and while he grumbled, Cal had secretly loved it that she wanted his attention. She’d throw things and then laugh out loud when he picked them up. Over and over and over again.

That day she’d thrown Teddy from her car seat, over to his seat by the sliding door in the side of the van just as his dad had slammed the door shut. The bear had escaped. Claire’s screams had muffled Cal’s voice as he tried to tell Rose that Teddy was in the driveway.

Dad climbed in the passenger’s seat of the van and Rose backed down the drive, all the while telling Claire to just hold on, she’d have her ice cream soon.

Rose had thought Claire was screaming for ice cream.

She’d been mourning her bear.

She got Teddy back. But not until after Rose had backed the van over him.

Cal had taken all the blame. He’d offered up his allowance money to buy Claire a new bear. But Rose had assured him that Teddy’s injury wasn’t his fault. She said that he’d done the right thing by staying put and trying to tell her what had happened.

She’d told him that he took excellent care of his little sisters and he wasn’t ever to doubt that.