Chapter 5: The Boy in the Blue Sweater
The Henderson house was a beige split-level at the end of a quiet street.
There was a plastic slide in the front yard.
Red and yellow.
One of the handles had cracked and been wrapped with electrical tape.
David stared at it through the windshield.
"He likes slides," he said.
He said it like he was guessing.
Nobody answered him.
We had driven in two cars — Rachel and I in ours, David following behind in a rental.
The officers had taken our statements and let us go with instructions to appear at the station the following morning.
CPS had been notified.
A caseworker would be in touch within twenty-four hours.
I rang the doorbell.
A woman answered.
Late fifties.
Reading glasses pushed up on her forehead.
She looked at Rachel first, then at me, then at David standing slightly behind us, and her expression did the quiet arithmetic of the situation.
"Mrs.
Henderson," Rachel said.
"Come in," the woman said.
The house smelled like dinner — something with onions and warm bread.
A television was on somewhere down the hall, low volume.
Cartoon sounds.
Mrs.
Henderson led us into the living room and stopped.
"I'll get him," she said.
"He's been asking about you all week, Rachel.
I didn't know what to tell him."
She disappeared down the hall.
The three of us stood in the living room and didn't speak.
There was a drawing on the coffee table.
Crayon.
A house with a large yellow sun and three figures of unequal height standing in front of it.
The tallest figure had been given a red shirt.
The smallest had been given what appeared to be a dog, though it might have been a cloud.
David picked it up.
He turned it over.
On the back, in an adult's handwriting — Mrs.
Henderson's, probably — was a single word: *Marcus.*
David set it back down very carefully.
Then we heard footsteps in the hall.
Small ones.
Marcus came around the corner holding a stuffed elephant by one ear.
He was wearing a blue sweater, slightly too large.
His hair was dark, like David's.
His eyes moved across the three of us slowly, with a seriousness that did not belong on a three-year-old's face.
He looked at Rachel.
"You came back," he said.
Rachel's breath caught.
"Yes."
"Mrs.
Henderson said you might."
"I did."
He looked at me.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Tom," I said.
"I'm a friend."
He accepted that with a small nod and turned to David.
Something happened.
Marcus didn't speak.
He just looked.
And David looked back.
And the room got very quiet in the way rooms do when something true is happening that nobody has words for yet.
"Hi," David said.
His voice came out wrong — too rough, too careful, like a man walking on ice he wasn't sure would hold.
"Hi," Marcus said.
Mrs.
Henderson appeared in the doorway.
She had her arms crossed and her eyes were wet, though she was holding herself together with the particular dignity of a woman who had been holding things together for a long time.
"He's a good boy," she said to David.
"He's a very good boy."
David nodded.
He couldn't speak.
Marcus walked to the couch and climbed up and sat with his elephant in his lap.
He looked at Rachel.
"Are you going to take me somewhere?" he asked.
Rachel sat down across from him.
She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees.
"We need to talk about that," she said.
"But yes.
We want to make sure you're somewhere safe and happy."
"I'm happy here."
"I know."
"But Mrs.
Henderson said she has to go far away."
"She does."
Marcus looked at his elephant.
He smoothed one of its ears.
"Will there be a slide?"
Nobody laughed.
But something loosened in the room.
"We'll make sure there's a slide," I said.
He looked at me again.
Studied me.
"You're not just a friend," he said.
I didn't know what to say to that.
"No," I said.
"Not just a friend."
He nodded again, that same small serious nod, and looked back at his elephant.
Mrs.
Henderson caught my eye from the doorway.
She tilted her head toward the kitchen.
I followed her in.
She poured two glasses of water without asking and set one in front of me.
"How bad is it?" she said quietly.
"The children at home needed medical attention," I said.
"My daughter and my son."
Her hand went to her mouth.
"Rachel didn't tell me—"
"Rachel didn't know how bad it had gotten.
Or she didn't let herself know." I wasn't sure which was true.
I wasn't sure it mattered yet.
"David," she said.
"Is he—"
"He's trying."
She looked through the doorway at the living room.
At the man sitting on the edge of the couch three feet from his son, not touching him, not pushing, just being there.
"He called every month for the first year," she said.
"After the number changed, we lost him.
I felt terrible about that."
"He thought Marcus was gone."
"And now?"
I looked at my water glass.
"Now we figure out what comes next," I said.
From the living room, Marcus's voice carried through clearly: "Do you know any songs?"
A pause.
Then David's voice, rough and careful: "A few.
Do you like trucks?"
"I like elephants."
"I don't know any elephant songs."
"That's okay," Marcus said.
"You can learn."
Mrs.
Henderson pressed her lips together hard.
May you like
I looked at the ceiling for a moment.
Then I picked up my phone and called the hospital to check on Lily and Noah.
