Jodi Compton - The 37th Hour

“Where was I?” she said.

“You’d just gotten your first letter from him.”

“Right,” she said. “Well, it seemed like a promising start to me. So I wrote him back, and he wrote me. And back and forth, a couple of times. I wrote him almost immediately after I’d get one of his letters, but usually there was a wait for his answers to my letters.

“Finally I wrote to ask him if, since he wasn’t sure he was going to put down roots in Minnesota, did he think he might ever come home to Utah? I asked him why he’d stayed away so long and said that everyone would probably be happy if he came back, at least for a visit. He never answered that letter. Six weeks later, I decided to call him.” She smiled, but with a slightly wry look. “So I did. He picked up, and I said, Hi, this is Naomi.

“He said something like ‘Yes, Naomi?’ and I thought he didn’t know who I was. I said, Your sister Naomi, and he said, ‘I know.’

“I was starting to feel uncomfortable. He was totally different on the phone than in his letters. I said something to the effect that I’d just called to talk and he said, ‘About what?’ ”

I felt embarrassed on her behalf, because I could so easily hear Shiloh’s cool voice saying it.

“I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I was really embarrassed. I managed to get off the phone without hanging up on him outright, but it wasn’t smooth. I never did that again.” Naomi laughed a little, as if still embarrassed.

“I didn’t contact him again until Dad died. The awful thing was, Mom had died a year earlier, and I hadn’t called him. It’s so awful to say it slipped my mind, but I was really broken up and I just didn’t think about Mike at all. The next year, when Dad died, I’d been through it before, so in a way it was easier. And I had Rob. We were engaged then, and he was really supportive.

“Mike had moved by then, and he was unlisted, but I left a message with him at the police department and he called me.” She paused, remembering. “It was very different from the other time I’d called him. He was really kind.” She smiled. “When I told him the news, he asked me how I was doing and how I was feeling, about Bethany, and so forth. I told him about the funeral arrangements, and”-she looked rueful-“I guess I just assumed he was coming. Looking back, I can’t remember that he ever said he was. So the day of the funeral came, and he wasn’t there. He just sent a flower arrangement. I’ve got to admit, I was hurt. Not on my behalf, but on the whole family’s.”

I remembered the flowers. The florist had called the house with a question about the order, and if it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t have known his father had died at all. I’d asked him why he wasn’t going back to the funeral, and offered to go with him. Shiloh had refused and had brushed off further questions.

On the day of the funeral, Shiloh had more or less stayed drunk, and for weeks afterward he’d been such intolerable company that I took to volunteering for extra shifts at work and spending free time with Genevieve and Kamareia.

“Naomi,” I said, “your father’s death hit him a lot harder than you might have realized.”

Naomi glanced up at me. In retelling the family history, she’d forgotten that I was someone who lived with Shiloh and was a witness to his daily life.

“Well,” she said, “anyway, two months later, when Rob and I got married, he sent us a gift. I’d forgotten that I’d even mentioned the wedding to him when we’d talked on the phone.” A breeze ruffled Naomi’s dark hair and she brushed it back into place. “It was a beautiful leather-bound photo album. It was like he knew I liked to make up family albums, even though I’d never mentioned it. It was a perfect gift. But no note. After that we started exchanging Christmas cards again, but his are just signed. There’s nothing personal about them.” Her voice dropped a little lower. “I guess I don’t really understand him at all.”

“He can be hard to understand,” I agreed. “Or, to be honest, he can be a-” Don’t say prick “-a heel.”

Naomi giggled. “But you married him!” she said, a little shocked at my spousal disloyalty. Then the laughter dried up and she was serious.

“Is he really missing?” she asked, as if I hadn’t made that patently clear.

“Yeah, he is,” I said.

A squall rose from the playground and this time we both turned. A little blond boy sat, legs akimbo, in the gravel. Blood was springing up from a fresh scrape on his elbow. Scratched elbows and knees: the common colds of childhood.

This time I followed Naomi. She took a travel-size package of tissues out of her sweater and pressed them to the boy’s blood-smeared skin.

Around him, other children had formed a semicircle to look on, miniature versions of the people I saw on the job, the ones who stopped everything to watch at accident and crime scenes.

“This might take a little while. I’ve got to take him inside to the bathroom.” Naomi made her voice higher and brighter. “What’re all those tears for, Bobby? Everything is just fine.”

“I understand,” I told her over the sound of Bobby’s subsiding whimpers.

“Maybe you could come over tonight, for dinner, and we could talk some more.”

That was exactly what I’d been planning to suggest after our meeting here was finished, and now I didn’t have to. “That’d be good,” I said. “If you have pictures of Shiloh, anything of his, high-school yearbooks, I’d like to see them.”

“Sure. I have lots of family pictures.” She lifted Bobby by the arm.

“Before I go,” I said, “I need something to do with the rest of the day, and I was hoping to talk to your older brothers and Bethany, ask them a few basic questions. I need to know when they saw him last, or spoke to him last. Do you have their daytime phone numbers available?”

Naomi, half bent to hold Bobby’s arm, shot me a harried but thoughtful glance. “I think I can tell you the answer to those questions. They haven’t spoken to him for years, since before I tracked Mike down. I know I’m the only one in the family who was persistent about finding him.”

“That was pretty clear from what you’ve said today,” I told her. “But I have to make sure. I’m just being thorough.”

“Come with me,” Naomi said, starting to lead the boy toward the building. “I know all their numbers by heart. I can write them down for you.”

A cab picked me up outside the day-care center about a half hour later. Asked for a recommendation, the driver took me to a family-run two-story motel in downtown Salt Lake City. “I don’t need to be near Temple Square,” I told her. “I’m not a tourist.”

“Still, it’s worth seeing while you’re here,” she said.

“Maybe next time,” I said.

I knew what the afternoon held. Whenever you really need to reach people, it seems that invariably you only reach answering machines.

I prepared for this by getting a vending-machine sandwich and a Coke and some ice from the hallway dispensers, fortifying myself for a long wait. Then, in the room, I dialed the work numbers of Shiloh’s siblings, reached a grand total of none of them, and left messages. Then I ate lunch and dozed off waiting for return calls.

I must have slept deeply, because when the phone woke me and a man’s voice responded to mine, I said “Shiloh?” just as I had with Vang.

“This is Adam Shiloh, yes,” the voice said, sounding a little bemused at the familiarity of my address. “Is this Sarah Pribek?”

“Sorry,” I said, sitting up on the edge of the bed. “You sound like… like your brother.”

“Mike? I wouldn’t know. It’s been years, literally years, since I’ve spoken to him.” I heard the noise of an office intercom behind; he’d called me from work. “I suppose that’s a regrettable thing,” he went on.