Written by guest author Emily Amsel

This story is part of the project A Writer’s Shindig. Emily Amsel’s story is the fourth of 6 short stories written for the project. You can read more about our collaboration and read all the stories posted thus far at A Writer’s Shindig.

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Elle woke to the sounds of her stepson leaping across the downstairs furniture, and shoved her head under the pillow, wishing for a few more minutes as the wooden feet scraped across the floor. And this was him being quiet. She sighed, testing the air outside the covers with one foot. Before she thought about it too much, she threw the covers off and sat up, swaying a bit, eyes still closed. She shivered as she walked across the room, and when the floor creaked, the sounds from below immediately ceased. Yet it never occurred to Justin that his own commotions were just as audible upstairs. Oh well, he wasn’t six yet.

She made the bed, Hugh’s side too, of course, because apparently he woke up having lost the capacity to pull up the sheets, then grabbed her hair brush and ran it through her hair. It made a thick crunching and she winced at the fine blond hairs sticking out of its bristles. Her mother’s hair was thin enough to see the scalp peeking through. Elle would be the same before she was forty.

Downstairs, Justin sat on the hassock wrapped in a blanket, his giraffe in his lap watching cartoons with him. He had a smudge on his face, high up on his cheek, near the café-au-lait birthmark below his temple.

“Breakfast?” she said.

“I already had cereal. I didn’t pour milk,” he added with a touch of a pout. A point of contention between him and Hugh. The first time he insisted he was big enough to handle the milk jug, he dropped it. It would be a while before Hugh let him try it again.

She went to fix her own breakfast and rolled her eyes at the sight of Justin’s bowl on top of the dishwasher next to his dad’s. He was a little kid, he forgot sometimes, but his dad . . . Frustratingly, it wasn’t fair to be mad since Hugh had to be out of the house at five this morning —this Saturday had been dedicated to the biannual security updates at his job, and most of the IT team would be getting overtime for it. Elle put both the plastic, kid-colored bowl and the gargantuan trough that held Hugh’s breakfast in the bottom rack. Her face scrunched up at the smell wafting from the dishwasher. Hugh could deal with that when he got home, which was another reason she wouldn’t complain about the bowls left two feet from the place where they needed to be.

She settled down in front of the television with her phone and her own bowl of cereal and by the time she was done, Justin had grown restless and started pulling out his cars to play his favorite game: demolition derby. Elle shut the television off and told him to go dress before turning the living room into a disaster site.

At noon, with pajamas discarded and the morning vacuuming and dusting complete, Elle went to Justin’s room and watched for a few minutes while he built a corral with his blocks. Hugh would be home soon and they would go into their typical weekend afternoon routine, housework, family activity, dinner, movie and popcorn.

“Time to go pick up the living room,” she said. “What do you want for lunch, tuna or grilled cheese?”

“Ummm.” He clicked a piece in, fashioning what she thought was a rather decent looking birdcreature to go in the corral, especially considering he was doing it without instructions. “Cheese. Can I have soda?”

“If you don’t want it for movie time, then okay.”

“Um. I’ll have it now, Elle.” He went back to his blocks.

“Living room,” she prompted, and he jumped up and ran downstairs to pick up his toys. It was five minutes before he made it to the kitchen, not even enough time for one side of the bread to get browned in the pan. He asked if he could pour out his own soda, the bottle was almost empty, please? And she gave the go ahead. He was still beaming about it after the sandwich was placed in front of him, and then Hugh came in and rested his computer case on the table. Hugh yelled, “Hey buddy!” and rubbed Justin’s head while the boy scarfed up the last of his sandwich. He tried to dash off but Hugh snagged his collar.

“Dishwasher,” he said, pointing at the plate.

Justin blinked at it. “Oh. Right.”

Elle resisted the urge for a smartass comment. “Want anything?” she asked instead.

“Nah, I’m good. I’ll grab a banana.” They kissed. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw Justin’s pace quicken.

“You have to take a look at that thing,” she said, nodding her chin at the dishwasher.

“Ugh, I can smell it from here. All right. I wonder if there’s a clog in the pipe. Is it possible to plunge a dishwasher?”

He’d be chewing on that problem for the rest of the afternoon. She went out to the back yard and began mulching the flowerbeds, and Justin came out to help in a half-hearted way, enjoying digging through the dirt more than spreading it around.

“Ew, a worm,” he said, showing her the writhing form.

“Leave him in there,” she said. “Worms are good for gardens.”

His eyes went wide, marveling at this piece of information, and he carefully put the worm next to the rose bush. He stood up, eyebrows slightly pinched, shuffling from foot to foot.

“Why don’t you go help your dad?” she said. “Just wash your hands first so you don’t smear dirt in the kitchen.”

He ran inside and she went to get the rest of the mulch bags, tossing them in Justin’s wagon to cart around to the front yard. She settled in, reminding herself to prune tomorrow after Justin went to his mom’s.

Justin didn’t resent her for not being his mom, she was fairly sure. He had only been a baby when Hugh and Kara divorced—they had been in the process of separating when she learned she was pregnant and stayed together until the birth trying to decide whether growing up in a twoparent home would outweigh the trauma of having two parents who wanted to murder each other. It was almost two years later that she and Hugh started dating, a year after that they were engaged, and six months later the four year old Justin was the best man at their wedding, looking surprised and more than a little like he had no idea what was going on.

There was . . . a bit of an adjustment period. He never acted with outright you’re-not-my-mom resentment towards her (Elle was sure he was saving that for his teenage years), but he always inserted himself between her and Hugh if they were sitting next to each other on the couch, and more than once she went to bed hoping for some of the earth shattering sex Hugh promised her on their honeymoon and found Justin curled up next to him because he had a nightmare. One night Hugh tried to put him back in his own bed and he threw a tantrum until two in the morning and she was caught between wanting to lock him in the garage and hating herself for wanting to lock him in the garage.

She thought they were friends now, as much as a five year old and a grown woman who never wanted any kids could be, anyway. But she couldn’t guess how much longer that would last. Five years until he reached the cusp of tweenhood. What hell that was going to be.

Distantly, a door slammed. She raked the mulch over the dirt, it should be enough, she should have gotten one more bag to be safe, then a hand fell on her shoulder. Elle yelped, Hugh chuckled.

“I was not trying to be quiet,” he said.

“I’m in the zone!”

He shook his head, still smiling. “I’m going to the hardware store. I’ve got to go get something for that dishwasher.”

“Okay. Where’s Justin?”

“After diligently supervising me, he’s playing soccer in the back yard.”

She gave a dirt encrusted thumbs up, and he headed for his car. This gave her an excuse for a break at least, and she brushed mulch off her pants, went inside, and slipped out of her shoes before she tracked mulch everywhere. Her hands were caked in filth, and off to the half-bath she went to scrub them clean. A glance in the mirror confirmed she was frowning, stupid, no reason for it.

Hands clean, she picked up her shoes and headed into the kitchen to the sliding glass doors. Then her foot came down in a puddle of something liquid but slimy, and a sick shudder rolled up her spine. Of course she decided to carry her shoes. And oh god the smell!

She peeled off her socks and went upstairs to drop them in the hamper, not seeing Justin during her brief glance out the window. The muck was going to take forever to clean, and she’d have to guide the boy around it before tiny scummy footprints dotted her floors. When she got back downstairs, she sighed at the water pooled on the floor beneath the dishwasher and she grabbed the paper towels to dry it up only for more to leak out of the drain pipe in the middle of the appliance. At some point, she must have died, and this was hell.

“I would’ve taken care of it,” Hugh said when he came back in and she was still mopping up the mess. He put a plastic container on the table, bright purple, a curved pipe as the S in the logo.

“Declogger?” she asked.

“We’ll see if it works. Justin still out back?”

Her eyebrows shot up as she realized she hadn’t seen him since she came inside, and Hugh’s lips pressed together, mild annoyance. He stepped around her to check himself. Hopefully Justin hadn’t wandered out into the tall grass behind their property, the boundary of how far he was supposed to go when he was outside alone.

Hugh’s body was rigid, and Elle figured out why in an instant: the back yard was quiet, too quiet. She stepped out, scanning the tall grass for Justin and hoping she could spot what Hugh missed. He’d been playing soccer, probably with the neon spotted ball he liked, and his favorite activity was kicking it with as much force as he could muster. Sometimes they made it into the woods.

“Justin?” she called. Then, a little louder, “Justin!”

She waited for his high-pitched reply, but there was nothing. She took another step out and called again, really putting her diaphragm into it.

Waiting, waiting. Hugh bellowed this time, but the small figure did not come sheepishly pushing through the grass, ready to lose his movie privilege.

“He must be out front,” Hugh said. “I’ve told him time and again . . .”

She tuned out the rest of the rant and walked up to the edge of the grass, high as her chest, a thin barrier that separated the back end of the houses along the street and the thin strip of woods that led to a two-lane road. The trees weren’t much, scrawny, scraggly things sticking out of thin soil, but it would be possible for any child, even a young one, to lose his way in them. She called for him again, three times in increasing volume. The only response was the same startled silence of the birds.

Then he had to be out front. Elle turned and recoiled at Hugh’s sudden reappearance, and worse, the sick, pained expression on his face, same as the time Kara, his ex, saying everything was okay, but Justin cut his finger on a pizza slicer and they had to go to the hospital for stitches.

“He’s not out front?” she said.

He met her gaze, then quickly looked away. “I don’t like this.”

“Go check around the neighborhood. I’ll look in the woods.” “No. I’ll check the woods. Your shoes aren’t sturdy enough. Go to the playground and see if he’s there.”

She looked down at her dingy white sneakers as he brushed past her. Of course they were fine, but in his mind, he would be giving her the easier (as in, less screw-up-able) job. Whatever. It was his kid, he got to call the shots.

Chad Rowan was mowing his lawn across the street, noise protecting headphones on, dark glasses covering his eyes. Some boys—the younger Holloway kid and an unrecognizable face— were skateboarding down the street, attempting to jump, getting only half an inch off the ground. They were fourteen, too old to take interest in Justin, who would have been too shy to do more than stare from a respectable distance.

She headed down the street towards the playground, jogging a little so her heart had a reason to beat fast. Giggles drifted across the air before she caught sight of the towering blue slide, the Big Big Slide, as Justin called it, but disappointment soon swelled in her chest. It was only the trio of girls on the swings, eleven or twelve, one hanging back so both hands and feet were on the ground.

They shook their heads in tandem when she asked about her stepson, and the giggling resumed before she got ten feet away, hushed and badly stifled. Elle jogged back down the street to the teenagers still gliding along the pavement, but they hadn’t seen Justin either. She waved at Chad and he cut his mower. No, he hadn’t seen the boy all day. Her mind went blank and she chewed on her lip before she jerked back to alertness and jogged down to the Golds since Justin liked to play with their daughter Mercy. No luck there either.

For a moment when Elle crossed the sun-bathed street back towards her house, she realized none of this could be happening. She had just been cleaning up the mess and hoping this would finally fix the troublesome appliance that was only four years old. Justin couldn’t be lost. He should be running around in the yard.

Her legs took her back there before she could stop them and she was forced to face the empty yard and the discarded toys in the sand box. He never went farther than the grass on his own, not once. Why would he choose this day? For all the events that would have to line up for an upper middle class white boy to disappear from his own back yard, what was it about today that made her stepson vanish?

She shook her head trying to dispel that ugly word, but it stubbornly clung fast.

Hugh appeared through the grass, eyes wide and hopeful until he saw it was just her. “What are you doing out here?”

“He wasn’t in the park,” she said.

“Go back and keep looking!”

He turned and went back into the trees. Elle’s heart was beating louder than it should have been. Oh, god, this couldn’t be happening. They’d find Justin and never let him out by himself again. He’d be the only seventeen year old whose parents followed him to prom.

Where do I go? Should I call Kara? No. I can’t imagine what she’d think if I was the one to tell her her son wandered off. Hugh will have to call her when he gets back. We can’t wait.

The girls were still hanging around near the swings, strolling towards the northwestern corner, returning home to their parents, of course. Elle crossed to the next street, where she knew even fewer people, and knocked on doors. Each time she asked the person on the other side if they’d seen a young boy with brown hair and eyes, a hard, judgmental flash came into their eyes before they said no.

Back to the house. Hugh hadn’t returned yet. Her stomach seized, and before Elle could lurch to the bathroom, the remains of her lunch splattered on the hall floor, a mash of cheese and bread.

Justin had the same thing, she thought, and her stomach rippled again. She dashed for the kitchen, but all that came up was burning liquid, and she ran her mouth under the faucet until the taste of stomach acid was flushed out. Once this was over, it would be embarrassing how she overreacted.

After she cleaned up the mess, she headed to the back yard, where the light had taken on a golden quality as it eased into twilight. Hugh appeared in between the trees and she kept her hopes tightly under rein, but when she saw he wasn’t holding an exhausted little boy in his arms she still managed to be crushed.

Elle had known fear like this, though only twice before, first the accident her father had been in, seeing him in the hospital, unconscious with stitches in his head, leg in a cast, and her thirteen year old self only able to imagine him never waking up again. Then Mom’s cancer diagnosis, the fear lasting much longer this time, easing up after the remission started, or maybe just buried because “remission” did not mean “cured”. But it was the same as what ate away at Elle now, cold, sapping away her strength.

“We need to call Kara,” she said to Hugh. He recoiled, but nodded, heading inside to do so of course so Elle wouldn’t overhear the ass-reaming his ex was going to give him. Everything would be turn out all right in the end, it always did, but Kara would never let them forget it. She was probably going to refuse to allow Justin to come back until they put a fence up.

Elle stepped through the grass heading for the tree line, nearly breaking her ankle in a hole just big enough for a groundhog to hide in—though the way it crumbled meant this was likely limestone, and a neighbor nearly broke an ankle in a similar hole when she first moved in. Still, it would be a lot easier to live with a broken ankle than… this.

“Justin!”

She chewed on her lip until it hurt, and the wind did not bring a response. Damn it, if he wanted to explore the woods, he had to go with a grownup, that was the rule, and his dad was always happy to oblige. Maybe he chased after an animal, or one of the neighbor kids cutting across. He couldn’t have gotten far. The woods were just big enough that you needed to stand in the exact middle if you didn’t want to see any houses or cars. At the end was nothing but a busy street, the kind that even at midnight would have traffic. Elle bit the swollen spot on her lip as she imagined Justing dashing across it. A metallic taste filled her mouth.

For now, she’d assume Justin stuck to his side of the street and she went back to knocking on doors. One after the other after the other, she’d knock, they’d answer, she’d show a picture on her phone, but they always shook their heads. Most of these people weren’t in her normal bubble, and she didn’t like this being their first impression of her. There was always a flash of judgment in their eyes. It no longer mattered.

She reached the corner that led to her street, the Lin’s house, and Tommy Lin had lived in this neighborhood since he was a child. He still remembered all the nooks the children hid away in, and he grabbed his son to help him look. “

Won’t take long,” he said. “Justin’ll be back by dinner!”

Elle continued, and now that she was with her people, there were offers of sympathy and help. The Rodrigo girls, teenagers, agreed to call their friends in the area. Fran Willet offered to knock on doors. Glenn Holloway said he’d check the park and the convenience store down the road. Elle made her way back home and entered to find Hugh on the stairs, head in his hands.

“Half the neighborhood’s looking for him,” she said.

“Kara’s coming,” he said in answer. “She’s ready to rip my head off. All she could do was scream that we weren’t watching him.”

“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let myself get distracted. I should have been watching him!”

Tears sprung to her eyes and she expected him to react, squeeze her shoulder, reassure her it wasn’t her fault, but he continued to sit there, and it was shitty for her to expect comfort right now anyway. She kissed the top of his head and went back out to check with the neighbors.