Emmy & Oliver - Robin Benway Page 0,8
the dishes lined up on the countertop made my stomach flip and I gripped the tile in my hand just as I heard some shouts from the cameramen.
“Mom!” I yelled, since that seemed like the right person to call for, and suddenly my parents, Drew, Caro, and I were tumbling out the front door and onto the porch. The camera lights shone like high beams as a police car made an eerily silent path toward Oliver’s house. There were two figures in the backseat, one much taller than the other. I saw the outline of Maureen’s hair and realized with a sickening feeling that I didn’t recognize the other person at all.
And right then, I wanted it to stop. I wanted to go back to surfing yesterday afternoon and have Caro announce nothing more exciting than a pop quiz in calculus that she totally failed. I wanted the neighbors to mind their own business and to my complete horror, I realized I wanted Oliver to go back to New York. His disappearance had created such a huge chasm that it still hadn’t fully repaired itself, and I didn’t know if I was ready to have it ripped open all over again. As terrible as the past ten years had been, they were familiar. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to trade them in for a brand-new set of issues and worries.
The police car’s passenger-side door opened and Maureen climbed out, along with the officer in the front seat. Cameras descended like electronic locusts and next to me, I saw my mom grab my dad’s arm. There were tears in both of their eyes. The police did their best to clear a safe path up to Oliver’s front door, but they couldn’t stop the barrage of questions that the reporters began to yell.
“Are you angry with your father?”
“What was it like seeing your mother again?”
“Do you know where your father might be?”
“What’s the first thing you’re going to do now that you’re home?”
Oliver’s door opened and he stepped out.
He was a stranger.
Taller, broader, dark hair, just like my mom had said. He was glaring at the cameras as Maureen put her arm around him. Maureen had seemed smaller and frailer ever since that day Oliver hadn’t come home from school, but next to her son, she looked tiny. I tasted blood and realized I was biting my lip too hard. Caro was crying next to me and Drew put an arm around each of us, hugging us tight. He was shaking. I think we all were.
When Oliver looked up and over at us, I made a noise in the back of my throat. I hadn’t seen him in ten years, but I had seen his face every night in my dreams, his little seven-year-old face that seemed way too young, and when his eyes met mine, I knew that it was him. He had the same frown, the same eyes, the same posture.
“I wonder if anyone checked his shirt tag,” I wondered out loud, and before anyone could ask what I was talking about, Oliver disappeared into his house, the door shutting behind him.
And that was it. He was home.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Give Oliver space.”
That was the mantra for the next week, at least as far as my parents went. On the advice of several psychologists and therapists, Maureen, Rick, the twins, and Oliver all went on virtual lockdown. “It’s time for us to be a family once again.” My mom read one of Maureen’s group emails out loud one night as my dad and I were cleaning up after dinner. We had gotten a lot of these emails over the years—various “thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers” emails that Maureen had sent to friends and family members—but this was the first one that had an ending to it.
“Maybe Oliver doesn’t need space,” I said, drying a wineglass and trying not to get fingerprints all over it. “Maybe he wants to just be alone and not hang out with his old and new family. No one wants to be locked up with Molly and Nora.” They were Oliver’s half sisters. I babysat them every so often for money that my parents thought I was saving for college and I was actually saving for a new wet suit and board.
“According to the therapists, they need some intense bonding time,” my mom replied, delicately swiping her finger across the phone to turn it off.
“I’ve spent plenty of time alone with the