The Leaving Part 5

He was put in a room alone.

Locked in, actually.

Was he accustomed to being locked up? Used to being alone?

He had to have been imprisoned.

Right?

For eleven years?

The room started to spin, so he sat down.

THE HORSE. TEETH YELLOWED, CHIPPED.

He let his head fall to the table, forehead first, heard the door click open.

"You okay there?"

"I will be," Lucas said. "When I get some sleep. And some answers."

"Answers?"

"Answers." Lucas looked up.

A middle-aged detective who'd shaved what was obviously a balding head now sat across from him. He was thinner than seemed healthy, and something about his mouth seemed British, but he had no accent. He said, "I never thought I'd see the day."

"What day is that?" Lucas asked.

"I'm Mick Chambers. I was the lead investigator when you all went missing." He folded his hands together on the table in front of him. "I figured by now you were all, you know . . . dead."

Lucas reached down and checked his pulse on his wrist with two flat fingers. "Not dead."

"Yes." Chambers shook his head and smiled. "I see that." Then he leaned forward, cleared his throat. "This whole thing? The Leaving? Pretty much ruined my life."

"And that's supposed to be my problem?" Lucas didn't have to put his fingers back to his wrist to know that his pulse was quickening with irritation; the cops on the scene had called it that, too-The Leaving-right before cuffing him. Would they give that whole mess a catchy name, too? The Cuffing?

"No," Chambers said matter-of-factly. "But this is all very strange."

"You have a reputation around here for being a master of the obvious?" Now he could almost feel the tapping in his wrists, blood boiling from the inside out.

Chambers smiled again, wider this time. "Listen, Lucas. I don't need you to like me. I honestly couldn't care less. But I got guys who are going to be banging down that door right there in about ten seconds. FBI. Younger guys. Hungrier guys. I may not even end up as lead on this case and there's not a lot I can do about it, so let me just ask you something."

"Fire away," Lucas said.

"If you were me, and there were a bunch of kids who were abduct ed years ago, and when they came back-just showed up-they said they didn't remember anything-about ten-plus years?-would you believe them?"

He pictured the others.

Wondered whether Scarlett was having a better homecoming.

How could she not?

Was she his . . . girlfriend?

"Would you?" Chambers pressed.

"Probably not."

"And if one of them was at the scene of an accident the very night he happened to come back, and it turned out his father was dead, would you believe it was an accident?"

That free feeling was now officially gone. "I didn't kill my father." Then with raised voice: "Why would I kill my father?"

"You might have your reasons. I have no idea who you actually are."

"I"-Lucas leaned forward-"am the person who's going to figure out what happened, figure out who did this." His blood seemed to cool at the idea of it.

"Oh, yeah?" Chambers stood. "Well, good. You be sure to give me a call when you've got it all sorted."

Knocks on the door came right before it opened, and two men flashed badges.

Chambers said, "He's all yours" and left.

AVERY.

Avery flushed the toilet-she'd held off as long as she could out there on the porch-and washed her hands, then stopped in the hallway outside The Shrine and decided to call Sam, who was her boyfriend. Why was she always reminding herself of that? It was possible she needed reminding because he was her first actual boyfriend and the concept was still fresh. More likely, there was another reason, but she wasn't ready to admit that quite yet. He might not even pick up so late-or was it so early?-but this was the sort of thing you woke people up for. Especially people who were your boyfriend.

As the line rang, she went into her brother's room and lay down on his s...o...b..-Doo bedspread. Apparently he'd loved that show-and supposedly she'd watched it with him, but she didn't remember; when she'd gone back to watch some episodes a few years ago, she'd found s.h.a.ggy annoying.

"Hey," Sam said sleepily when he answered.

"Hey," she said beneath a sky of glow-in-the-dark constellations.

"Everything okay?"

"They're back." She'd spotted the Big Dipper on the ceiling. "My brother and the other kids."

"What?" That quickly, he was wide awake.

"Well, he's not back." And there, the Little Dipper. "Not yet, but we've heard they're back."

"No way," he said.

"I know." The bed smelled lonely. "My mom's sitting on the front steps. Waiting. She heard that they don't remember anything."

"How is that even possible?" Sam said.

"I have no idea. It's all just . . . crazy. Right?"

Sam had only moved to Fort Myers a few years ago, so he didn't really understand how crazy it was, not having lived through it all the way everyone else had. Not the way she and Ryan had. Sam had seen the movies, but that was all.

Avery didn't actually remember much about the day it happened; she'd been only four years old. But she learned everything she needed to know eventually.

For starters, her parents had given her endless lectures about strangers-they still did-and why she should fear them, because she didn't want to end up like her brother-abducted by some crazy guy and held hostage somewhere or, worse, killed or sold on some foreign s.e.x-slave black market-did she? And, "Sorry, Ave, but we're not sugarcoating this for you. This is your reality. The world is a horrible place. The Bogeyman and Slender Man may not be real, but there are worse, real things to fear. And not just guns and ISIS but quiet, messed-up people who can take a bunch of kids and make them go poof."

When she was old enough, she went online. She knew about the small bus a few people saw behind the school that day and that the bus company claimed no knowledge of it. She'd read about the search parties in all the nearby swamps and on beaches, the accusations thrown at the school security guard, the lawsuits filed against the school district and the bus company (her parents had initiated the claims), and the suicide, a few weeks later, of the school princ.i.p.al. She'd also read countless supposedly moving profiles of each of the kids, which said dumb things like how they loved music and sports and playgrounds and princesses and all had sparkling personalities.

Of course they did!

THEY WERE FIVE!.

Avery had even been on TV the day it happened. She'd watched that clip once, then never again. Her four-year-old self, clinging to her once-beloved Woof-Woof and saying, "I really want Max to come home."

Brutal.

Now she was impatient for him to get on with it.

She said, "What do you think is taking him so long?" and knew it sounded ridiculous.

Scarlett

Back up on the terrace, the woman-her mother, her mother-was waiting for her, holding pajamas.

"The night before you disappeared," she said, "you told me you were going on a trip. Your exact words were that you were going 'to the leaving.' Do you remember that?"

Scarlett closed her eyes.

"I don't." She opened them. "And we just disappeared? Like . . . how? Did you look for us?"

"Of course!" Now looking tight, defensive. "It was the first real day of kindergarten."

"What does that mean, 'real day'?"

"The first day all the kindergartners went to school. They do a staggered start, with some of the kids going one day and then the rest another day. So it was the first day all the kindergartners were there together."