David Morrell - Long lost

I recalled our initial conversation, this time from his perspective as he told me things that only my brother could have known, seeing my amazement, winning me over. I went to the delicatessen across the street, where our conversation had continued. I sat where he had sat. I imagined myself from his perspective as he continued to persuade me that my long-lost brother had finally returned. I went home and pretended to be him coming into my house, looking around, seeing all my possessions, the things that he'd never been able to have. Was it at this point that his plan had formed? I deserve this, not you, he would have thought. Picking up this and that object, he would have worked hard to conceal his anger. You ruined my life, and this is what you got for it, you bastard.

Kate would have been easy to look at: her long legs, her inviting waist. But what about Jason? What would Petey really have thought of him? A damned nuisance. Petey's background didn't leave room for paternal instinct. But Jason was part of what Petey would've had if I hadn't destroyed his life by sending him home from the baseball game. Jason went with the package, with the attractive wife and the big house, so Petey wanted him. Petey wanted everything that I had.

I recalled the dinner that Petey had eaten with us and how polite he'd been, helping to clean the dishes. Later, he'd played catch with Jason. He must have hated every second of it, just as he'd hated pretending to enjoy reminiscing about our childhood before I ruined his life. But the worst moment of all, the most hateful for him, would have been when I'd brought him the baseball glove that he'd dropped when the man and woman had grabbed him. He must have wanted to shove the damned glove down my throat.

I went to Petey's room. I lay on his bed. I stared up at the ceiling and discovered that I'd picked up the baseball glove and was slamming my fist into it again and again. He would have wanted a smoke, but he wouldn't have ruined his plan by lighting up in the house and annoying Kate. So he'd crept downstairs, through the French doors off the kitchen, into the moonlit backyard, where he'd sat angrily on a lounge chair and lit a cigarette. I remembered looking from our bedroom window and seeing him down there. I imagined him pretending not to notice when my face appeared. I put myself in his mind. What are you doing up there? he'd have thought. Screwing the wife, are you, bro? Enjoy it while you can. It'll soon be my turn.

The next morning, I went to the barbershop where I'd taken him. I sat in the chair, feeling the scissors against my head, imagining that he'd festered from the insult that I thought he looked like shit and I was going to make him presentable. Then I went to the Banana Republic where I'd bought him new clothes. Then the shoe store. Then the dentist, where I'd made him feel self-conscious about his chipped tooth, reinforcing his sense that I thought he looked like shit.

When I walked into the dentist's office, the receptionist glanced up in surprise. "We weren't expecting you today, Mr. Denning. We're just about to close for lunch. Is this an emergency?"

"No." Confused, I realized that I'd almost tricked myself into believing that I could truly repeat the pattern from a year ago. "I must have gotten my days mixed up. Sorry to have bothered you."

As I reached unsteadily for the doorknob, I remembered waiting in the reception area while Petey had gone in to have his teeth cleaned and the chip in his tooth smoothed away. I tried to project myself into Petey, to imagine him sitting angrily in the dentist's chair. Since he hadn't been to a dentist in years, he would have been nervous, tensing a little as the dentist came at him with…

"Actually, there might be a way you can help." My hand trembling, I released my grip on the doorknob and went over to the counter that separated the receptionist from the waiting area.

She looked at me expectantly.

"A year ago, I was in here with my brother." My heart pounded from the shock of the idea I'd just had.

"Yes, I remember. I'm terribly sorry about what happened to your wife and son."

"It's been a difficult time." I fought to keep my voice steady, to hold my emotions in check. "The thing is, I was wondering…" I held my breath. "Do you know if any X rays were taken of my brother's teeth?"

"There!" I told Gader. "This'll prove it!"

The somber man frowned at what I'd set on his desk. "Prove what?"

"That my brother and Lester Dant are the same man!"

"Are you still trying to-"

"My brother had dental X rays taken a couple of days before he kidnapped my wife and son. When I was a child, my parents made sure that Petey and I went to a dentist for regular checkups. Show these X rays to our family dentist back in Ohio. He can compare them to his records. He'll prove that the teeth belong to the same person."

"But a nine-year-old's teeth wouldn't be the same as those of a man in his thirties," Gader objected.

"Because he wouldn't have had all his permanent teeth by the time he disappeared? No. My dentist says that my brother would have had a few permanent teeth, and even if they changed over the years because of work done on them, the roots would have kept the same structure. What would it hurt you to look into it?"

Gader set down a thick file he'd been reading. "All right," he said impatiently. "To settle this once and for all. In Ohio, what was the name of your family dentist?"

"I… don't remember."

He looked more impatient.

"But Woodford wasn't a big town," I said. "There weren't many dentists. It shouldn't be hard to track down the one we went to."

"Assuming he's still in business. Assuming he kept records this long." Gader's phone rang. As he reached for it, he told me, "I'll get back to you."

"When?"

"Next week."

"But that isn't soon enough."

He didn't hear me. He was already speaking into the phone.

Saturday morning, I rose from Petey's bed, put camping gear in the Expedition, and packed sandwiches in a cooler. As much as possible, I did everything the same as a year earlier, and at nine, exactly when we'd set out the last time, I took Interstate 70 into the mountains. The peaks were still snowcapped, the same as they had been the previous June. Ignoring their beauty, as Petey would have, I worked to recall our conversation. I squirmed as I sensed a pattern: Almost every time Jason had said "Dad" and asked me something, Petey had answered first. He'd been practicing to take my place, getting used to being called "Dad."

When I headed north into the Arapaho National Forest, I imagined him hiding his anticipation. I reached the lake and stopped where the three of us had stopped the previous year. I looked at where Petey, Jason, and I had pitched our tent. I hiked around the lake to the stream that fed it, climbing the wooded slope to the gorge from which the stream thundered. All the while, I thought of him looking around for a spot to get rid of me and make it seem like an accident.

I climbed loose stones to the ridge above the gorge. I felt Petey's excitement when Jason went around the boulder to urinate. Now! Brad's back was exposed. "Dad!" No, the kid was returning too soon!

Unable to stop, I hurtled my goddamned brother into the gorge, then spun toward the kid, whose face was frozen in terror.

My mental image of Jason's fright shocked me into the present. Snapping from Petey's mind-set, I was nauseated from the darkness of pretending to be him. Despite a chill breeze, sweat soaked me. Working down the loose stones to the trail at the bottom of the ridge, I couldn't help wondering how Petey would have climbed down without falling, given that he had a frightened, struggling boy to contend with. Then I realized that there was only one way he could have done it. The answer made me sick as I imagined what it had been like to carry an unconscious boy through the trees and back to the Expedition.