His pantry is evidence of one thing: Cody’s never here, so it shouldn’t surprise me.
Yet it does. I open a bag of chips and take it with me as I go, walking slowly and taking in every detail of Cody’s place. It’s sparsely furnished, one could argue it’s a deliberately minimalistic style choice, but it’s almost like the place is staged. Like no one really lives here.
There’s a guest room with a bed and dresser. The bed is pristine, the sheets neatly tucked in as if housekeeping from a hotel had made it. I hesitate, eating a chip and staring at the black varnish before pulling out a drawer. Empty.
I toss the bag of chips on the bed and pull out another drawer and then another until I’ve looked through all of them. They’re all empty.
The closet drawers are the next to be opened. Again, there’s nothing but a folded spare blanket.
It is the guest room, after all. I doubt Cody has many guests. His uncle isn’t well and doesn’t like to travel. I can’t even remember a single time Cody’s spoken about someone coming to visit or stay with him. It’s only ever him going back home.
The closet doors shut easily enough and I continue my exploration. When I put the half-empty bag of chips back in the pantry and glance at the red digital clock on the oven to find it’s nearly 1:00 a.m., I’m empty-handed on any new information at all about Cody. There’s nothing personal. Not even in his bedroom.
My tired eyes beg me to sleep. My mostly unsatisfied appetite begs me to eat. And my conscience begs for more wine.
Shutting the still-barren pantry door again, with the same amount of disappointment as before, leaves me staring down the hall at the half bath and the small closet just beside it. It’s the last place to look and with nothing better to do and thoughts of Marcus still lingering and threatening to take over, I head to the narrow door.
The wooden shelves boast few toiletries and spare washcloths. His place is so bare, it’s… uncanny. I’ve nearly closed the door when I realize there’s a box on the very top shelf. It’s unlike anything else in this place because it’s a cardboard storage file box. Everything else seems luxurious, even if it’s bare and minimal. But the box on the top shelf is dusty from years of sitting still. I can’t reach it even though I try to and in my drunken state combined with boredom and… curiosity, I’m quick to grab the ottoman from the living room, drag it down the hall and get my hands on the box.
It’s heavy, so heavy and the sharp edges force me to wince when they dig into my forearms. I nearly drop the thing and I’m glad I don’t, because it’s filled with papers but also a thin, hollow tin horse. It looks like it was once a piggy bank, but its detail makes it look like a trinket one would give to a newborn baby.
It’s old and dingy, but I imagine once it was a beautiful gift at a baby shower. What the hell is it doing in a box that looks like crime scene evidence?
With the box on the ottoman, I sit beside it, cross-legged in my sweats and lift one of the straps to my tank top back into place. Confusion etches a deep line into the center of my forehead when I read adoption papers from almost forty years ago. Until I read the last name—Walsh.
First name: Christopher.
It must be a box of his brother’s things. It looks like Cody’s aunt legally adopted his brother after their parents died. Quickly I go through paper after paper, finding legal records, the criminal reports of his brother’s abduction and an autopsy. My hands tremble and it’s hard to read when my eyes water at the description of what was done to him. I can’t imagine reading all of this and knowing your younger brother… Swallowing back the tears, I push through, needing to know more and understanding why Cody would hide this box away.
It’s heartbreaking to the point that I almost miss the other names. The other boys who were abducted, including one named Marcus.
A sharp, frigid cold pricks down my spine and the lights seem darker as I read the black printed text on off-white paper, aged from sitting in a box, buried in a stack of articles that have yellowed.
Marcus Henry. The reports say he died but his body was never found. Only teeth and bones, which the police took as evidence of his passing.
Only one child made it out alive. I knew that; Cody told me.
I can’t shake the name of the smallest and youngest child, or his photo from evidence, barely a photo with how difficult it is to see his face, staring back at me in black and white. He’s a little boy in an oversized baseball jersey, holding a bat. I can barely make out any details of him. But the writing is easily read. Only eight years old when the picture was taken, according to the script on the back of the photo. And next to his age, his name: Marcus. It can’t be him. He’s dead and it’s just a name.