Brian Freeman - Thief River Falls

He frowned. “I was awake when she came upstairs. I pretended to be asleep. I didn’t like the way she looked at me.”

“How did she look at you?”

“Like she knew who I was.”

Lisa’s brow furrowed with the tiniest pang of worry. “No, that’s impossible. There’s no way that Laurel could know who you are. And if she recognized you, she would have told me.”

“She knew me, Lisa,” Purdue repeated. “I could tell.”

“Did she talk to you? Did she say anything?”

“No.”

“Well, did you know her ? Did she look familiar to you at all?”

“No.”

Lisa shook her head. “Then believe me — you don’t have any reason to be scared of Laurel. She’s always trying to figure people out, and that may be why you felt the way you did. That’s just how she is. The fact is, she would do anything to help me, and there aren’t many people like that in the world. She wants to help you, too.”

“She wants to take me away from you. I heard her. She thinks you should give me to the police. I told you, the police want to kill me.”

“Yes, I know what you said. Don’t worry, I’ll stay with you until we get to the bottom of this. The main thing is to keep you safe. We need to find out what happened to you, and then we need to figure out where you come from and get you back to your family.”

“I don’t have a family,” the boy announced.

He said it so simply and quietly that it broke her heart.

“Why do you say that?” she asked.

“Because it’s true.”

“Did you remember something about who you are?”

“No, I’m just pretty sure my family is gone. That’s why I left.”

“Left where?”

“Wherever I was.”

He was talking in riddles, and Lisa couldn’t understand him. But that didn’t matter to her. He was back, which was the only thing that was important. She picked up the boy — he felt light as a feather — and put him down in one of the kitchen chairs. Outside the windows, the pink of dawn had begun to wake up the world. She could hear the morning chorus of the birds, all squawking their greetings to the day.

“Do you want some breakfast?” she asked.

“I’m not very hungry.”

“Well, I’m going to make bacon and eggs, and I’ll bet you get hungry when you smell them.”

Lisa puttered in the kitchen, humming as she put breakfast together. Purdue sat in the chair and watched her with the same quiet seriousness he always did. He had his hands folded neatly together in front of him. He didn’t say anything at all until the sizzle of bacon had already filled the room.

“I heard you tell that lady that you don’t have any family, either,” Purdue said.

Lisa kept her voice light. “Yes, that’s right.”

“Why not?”

She flipped the bacon with tongs and cracked eggs directly into a skillet. “Oh, a lot of things happened. It’s a long story.”

“Was it sad?”

She broke the yolks with a plastic spoon and stirred around the eggs. “Yes, it was very sad.”

He nodded intently, processing this information. Breakfast was ready, and Lisa put the meal onto two plates that she deposited on the table. She sat down in her chair and picked up a fork and knife, but she noticed that Purdue wasn’t eating at all. She didn’t like the fact that he had no appetite. “My eggs are world famous, Special Agent Purdue. You better try them. And bacon’s best when it’s crispy, right? I like my bacon almost black.”

The boy made no effort to pick up his fork. “What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“What happened to your family?”

Lisa took a bite of bacon. She picked up a forkful of eggs and then put it back down. “Do you know what it means when somebody dies?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s what happened. They all died.”

“How?”

“Different ways. The how isn’t really important. They’re gone.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Yes, it hurts very much.”

“How did they die?” he asked again.

She stared at her plate and found that her own appetite had vanished, too. “This isn’t something I talk about, Purdue.”

“Please?”

“Why is it important to you?”

“Because I like you.”

She mustered a smile, but it was hollow. “I like you, too.”

“Was your family big?”

“Pretty big. I had four younger brothers, plus my parents. We were all very close. All of us squeezed into one little house in Thief River Falls.” She took a deep breath, feeling the Dark Star arrive like a cloud over the sun. “My mom... my mom was killed in a car accident two years ago. That was hard enough on all of us, but it turned out to be just the beginning. My father was so sad without my mother that he couldn’t handle it. He couldn’t live without her. A month later, he... well, he killed himself. Then my youngest brother died in his sleep. He had what doctors call a stroke, which is like a heart attack in the brain. I’m sure it was caused by the stress of losing both of our parents. And three months after that, my two other brothers were driving home in a thunderstorm, and they tried to make it across a flooded road. Their car was washed away, and they both drowned. That was all in the space of six months. Six months took away my whole family.”

She heard herself reciting the facts as if the words were coming from someone else. She felt far away, looking down on the room, detached from her body. Oddly, she felt nothing. She’d cried about it so many times that she’d cried herself out and had nothing left but a numbness that never went away.

“I heard you say you still had a twin brother,” Purdue murmured.

“Yes. Noah. He left.”

“After everybody died?”

“Yes. I bought this house, because I couldn’t live in Thief River Falls anymore. Noah lived here with me for a while, but it became too much for him. I think seeing me every day was too much of a reminder of the Dark Star.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, that’s what he and I called that year. The Dark Star. You know what an eclipse is, when a shadow blocks out the sun? That year was like an eclipse that erased our entire family.”

Purdue sat at the table with a little crinkle in his forehead. He seemed to think about everything she said. “So I guess you’re lost, too, huh? Like me.”

“I guess so.”

“I don’t like it. Being lost, I mean. I feel like I’ve forgotten everything important.”

“I don’t like it, either. The difference is, you won’t always be lost, Purdue. You and me, we’re going to figure out who you are and where you’re supposed to be.”

“I don’t have any place to be,” the boy said.

“You do. Trust me. We all do.”

“If we’re both lost, Lisa, why can’t I just stay here with you? You don’t have a family; I don’t have a family. I could live here.”

He said it earnestly, as if it were the most natural solution in the world. They both needed someone, and they’d found each other. End of problem. Lisa didn’t know how to answer him.

“Well, first let’s find out who you really are. Right now, you’ve forgotten everything, but when you remember, you’ll probably discover that you have a family who misses you and is going crazy trying to find you.”

Purdue shook his head firmly. “No, I think it’ll be worse if I remember things. I’m better off forgetting.”

“Why do you say that?”

The boy didn’t answer. He chewed a fingernail and looked scared.

“Purdue? Did you remember something?”

His blue eyes opened wide, and then he nodded.

“What is it?” she asked. “What do you remember?”

“Voices.”

“What did they say?”

Purdue closed his eyes. He put his hands over his ears, as if he were trying to block out the noise from somewhere. “You saw what he did to her. Make him scream.”