The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney (13 page)

Chapter 16

Fiona
and I printed out every page we could find on the Internet about Jack Dawson and his brother's mysterious disappearance. There were quite a few pages—104, to be exact. Apparently Luke had been something of a celebrity in his hometown—star quarterback, top student, and (a bit of a surprise here, although it explained how he learned to argue so well) captain of the debate team. His vanishing was much more than a one-day wonder.

In fact for six months the local newspaper had run constant updates on the investigation. After a while actual news seemed a bit scarce on the ground, so the paper had resorted to asking people for their pet theories about the disappearance and then running that speculation under headlines like T
HE
L
UKE
D
AWSON
M
YSTERY
: W
HAT
M
IGHT
H
AVE
H
APPENED
.

“Listen to this.” Fiona read part of one article out loud. “‘Jack Dawson seems to be a sensitive young boy, clearly distraught over the event that has caused a seismic upheaval in his life.'” She scanned down a few paragraphs and read more. “‘He stands at the living room window, gazing wistfully into the night, as if hoping that his brother, Luke, would soon come home again.'”

“Really? That's what it says?” I read over her shoulder in disbelief. The writer seemed to be indulging in a little wishful thinking. Her description of Jack— sensitive, distraught, wistful, hopeful—sounded like some weird, parallel universe version of the person I knew.

“Where do reporters come up with this stuff?” I demanded, remembering, too late, that her mother was a reporter.

But she didn't take offense. She just said, “I know what you mean. Although Jack could have been in shock or something.”

“Maybe,” I said, although it was still hard to imagine a sensitive or wistful Jack.

We didn't have time to read much more before Fiona's mother knocked on the door and asked if we wanted an afternoon snack. We said yes, of course, and took the printouts with us into the kitchen.

“Carrot sticks?” she asked, holding out a plate. “Or if you're not interested in the healthy alternative, chocolate chip cookies?”

Fiona defiantly grabbed a cookie. “Mom has to watch her figure. The camera adds ten pounds, you know. But since
I'm
not on TV—”

“I'm a mother,” Mrs. Jones said mildly. “It's my duty to push vegetables.”

Fiona rolled her eyes at me. I took two cookies as a sign of solidarity and gave her a wink. She grinned back, and we settled ourselves at the kitchen table with the articles spread out before us.

Her mother began unloading the dishwasher as I picked up a paper at random. This article had been written by a different (and clearly more observant) reporter, who introduced Jack by saying: “Jack Dawson, 15, sat huddled on one end of the couch, staring at the toes of his sneakers in grim silence.” Now,
that
was the Jack I knew.

“Imagine waking up one day to find out that someone you loved had vanished from the face of the earth!” Fiona exclaimed, her eyes wide.

As she gave a delighted shudder, my mind flashed to a photo of my father, waving good-bye as he bounced down the road in the back of the ornithologists' pickup truck. My mother had snapped the picture as he left, capturing his exuberant wave and his half-guilty, half-gleeful smile as he escaped into another life.

Glad to be going. And, maybe, still glad to be gone.

Mrs. Jones glanced over at us. “What do you have there that's so fascinating?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing,” said Fiona.

Her mother gave us a knowing glance, then leaned over Fiona's shoulder to read one of the headlines.

“‘Search for missing boy ends after two weeks,'” she read out loud. “‘Family increases reward for information to twenty-five thousand dollars.'” She shook her head. “How tragic.”

She picked up the first story we had printed out. “Why are you girls so fascinated by this story?” she asked absently as she began reading.

“Jack is in our class,” I said. I pointed to his picture. “The missing boy's brother.”

Mrs. Jones glanced over at me, her eyes sharp and interested. “Really.” Her gaze moved on to rest thoughtfully on her daughter. “I certainly hope you aren't planning to bring up bad memories for this poor boy—”

“We're not going to say anything to him, Mom!” Fiona said indignantly. “Honestly. Give us credit for
some
tact!”

“All right, honey. Just making sure . . .” Her mother flipped through the papers spread out on the table, frowning in concentration. “It looks like this story got a lot of attention.”

“It was a small town,” I pointed out as a tiny alarm bell went off in my head.

“Mmm.” Fiona's mother wasn't listening. She grabbed a pen and memo pad from the kitchen drawer and began jotting notes. “Unsolved mysteries always get great ratings.”

“Mom!” Fiona protested. “How is doing a story on this any different from talking to Jack about it? Won't you be ‘bringing up bad memories' for him?”

Her mother waved one hand dismissively as the alarm bell in my head rang even louder. “I would approach his parents first, of course.”

“I don't know if the Dawsons will want to do another interview,” I said hastily. “It looks like they had their share of news coverage last year.”

“Yes,
but
,” her mother countered, listing her arguments with the ease of long practice. “There's always the chance that someone who knows something will come forward. Newspaper articles are fine, but a television audience is huge. Thousands of people will see the story and be on the lookout for this boy. Someone might remember seeing him.”

Fiona nodded slowly as she saw the logic of this argument. “If anyone in our viewing audience has seen Luke Dawson or has any information about his disappearance, please contact Channel Seven News,” she intoned in a deadly serious anchorperson voice.

“Or your local police,” her mother added, but without much conviction.

That alarm bell was clanging so loudly that I was surprised no one else could hear it.

“They might be too upset to talk,” I said, giving it one last try.

“Oh, Mom has a special talent for getting people to open up,” Fiona assured me. “Her news director is always sending her on stories where people have suffered some sort of tragedy, because they always start out by saying that they won't talk to
anyone
, they're just too distraught, and then they always end up giving her an exclusive interview. Always.”

Mrs. Jones double-checked the date on one of the articles. “The one-year anniversary of Luke's disappearance is in a few weeks,” she said to herself. “Good hook.”

She asked, “Do you mind if I hold on to a couple of these articles?” even as she was picking them up and heading out of the room. “I think I'll make a quick phone call to Cutler—”

“That's her news director,” Fiona explained. “He'll
love
this story! And who knows? Maybe Luke will see the story and decide to contact his family! Maybe someone who saw him will call in with a tip! Maybe Mom will solve the mystery! Wouldn't that be
awesome
!”

She kept talking, but I wasn't listening anymore. I pushed my plate of cookies away. I had that hollow, fluttery feeling you get in your stomach right before a roller coaster plunges straight down at breakneck speed.

Chapter 17

“Sparrow
! Come help me, sweetheart!”

I cautiously followed the sound of Grandma Bee's voice, well aware that her use of the word “sweetheart” meant that nothing good was in the offing. Sure enough, as I rounded the corner of the house, I spotted her in the side yard. She was standing in a martial pose, her legs planted in a wide stance and her arms raised as if she were about to deliver a killing blow to an unsuspecting passerby.

She lowered her arms and peered happily at me through trifocals smeared with mud. “
Just
the person I was hoping to see!” she cried. “Sparrow, you are the answer to a weak old lady's prayers!”

“No. My elbow still hurts.”

She blinked innocently. “I have no idea what you're talking about, dear.”

“Last month?” I reminded her. “Helping you practice judo throws?”

For the past two years Grandma Bee has been creating a new martial art designed for older people. Her belief, based on a completely immodest assessment of her own talent, was that the elderly could be organized into our country's most effective crime-fighting force. “It's so unexpected, you see,” she always says. “Who would ever suspect that a man wearing a ‘World's Best Grandpa' T-shirt could kill with his bare hands?”

“I promise I won't hurt you,” she said, inching closer. She stared into my eyes and spoke slowly and evenly. “Everything . . . will . . . be . . . all . . . right.” I had a feeling she was trying to work hypnotic mind control into her technique.

“Forget it,” I said, backing away.

“Stand still. You won't feel a thing.”

“No, no, no, no, no.” I sprinted for the porch.

As I took the steps three at a time, I heard her yell after me, “You know, it doesn't hurt to be rendered briefly unconscious! It's actually rather restful!”

Once safely inside my room, with the door shut and firmly bolted, I pulled the printouts from my backpack and flung myself on the bed to read. An hour later I put the papers down and stared unseeingly at the ceiling.

The most illuminating article was a long feature story written six months after Luke's disappearance. The investigation had stalled. There was no news, good or bad. The newspaper had clearly wanted to run something, however, so the reporter had recapped the facts and then filled in by interviewing almost everyone, it seemed, who had ever crossed paths with Luke.

LOCAL TEEN'S DISAPPEARANCE

STILL A MYSTERY

Investigators Stymied,
Family Reaches Out to Public, Psychics

BY LITTON HOUSTON BERES

Collins, New York—It happens every day. Someone vanishes without a trace. A toddler is snatched from a supermarket, a teenager runs away, a husband or wife decides to jettison daily responsibilities in favor of a new life somewhere else, somewhere far away. It happens every day, and according to law enforcement statistics, the missing person is usually found. Eventually.

Waiting for “eventually” is the hard part. That is what is facing Robert, 47, and Sarah, 45, Dawson, of Collins, and their son Jack, 15. The Dawsons' son Luke, who had just turned 17, disappeared six months ago. Despite a continuing intensive search, the police have not found any clues to how or why Luke vanished. The mystery has unsettled this small town, where almost everyone, it seems, knew Luke Dawson, and absolutely everyone has a theory about what happened to him.

Neighbors share their speculations at the grocery store or dry cleaners. Classmates talk about Luke in hushed tones between classes or at lunch. But the Dawson family no longer cares to listen to hypotheses or conjecture or suppositions.

They just want their boy home.

The morning of September 30 dawned cloudy and cool. Although the temperature got warmer during the day— Sarah Dawson remembers being grateful for the last bit of Indian summer—it was clear that fall weather was on its way.

For Luke Dawson, an athletic boy who played quarterback for his high school football team, this meant turning his mind to school and sports. An avid hiker, biker, and fisherman, he tended to spend the warm summer months outdoors.

“That kid really liked to get out in nature,” says Will Grissom, 65, owner of Grissom's Outdoor Gear. “He was in here all the time, getting information about new hikes he wanted to try. Didn't buy much, though. He was real practical. Had one pair of hiking boots, one old fishing rod, one beat-up hat, you know, one of everything, and he never traded up.”

Friends and family say that both Dawson boys loved to hike and camp, but that Luke particularly enjoyed solitary time in nature. He often went on hikes by himself. However, his parents say that he was very safety conscious and always let them know the route he planned to take. They also point out that he did not leave any note or message the day of his disappearance.

The park service conducted searches along Luke's favorite trails in case he had decided to go for a spur-of-the-moment hike and been injured or lost. After two weeks, they found no trace of him and had to call a halt to the search.

“The problem with most wilderness searches is that there's just too much ground to cover,” said Park Ranger Georgia Keener, 32. “We were out there from sunup to sundown. He may have had an accident, but we didn't find a trace of him after days of searching.”

Others strongly disagree with the theory that Luke could have had a hiking accident.

“That boy knew this area like the back of his hand,” Mr. Grissom says. “No way he had an accident. No way, no how.”

Some have suggested that family tensions may have made Luke run away from home. A neighbor says that he often heard Luke and his father fighting, “My wife and I would hear them going at it sometimes,” said the neighbor, who asked that his identity be kept confidential.

The Dawsons say that any arguments were typical family disagreements. However, the number and intensity of arguments had increased noticeably in the months preceding Luke's disappearance, according to the neighbor.

Henry Winston, Mrs. Dawson's second cousin, has also said that he watched the arguments between father and son escalate over the years. He adds that any normal adolescent angst could have been magnified by the fact that Luke was actually Robert and Sarah Dawson's nephew.

Sarah's sister, Merrilee, and her husband, Ben Kelly, were killed in a car accident when Luke was five years old. The Dawsons became his legal guardians and, within a year, adopted him. By all accounts, Luke's bond with Jack was particularly strong from the very beginning and remained so until his disappearance. “Closer than brothers, if that's possible,” said Johnny P. Jones, head football coach and civics teacher at Collins High School. “It's a tragedy. I feel for the family.”

Mr. Winston says that Luke became more interested in learning about his birth parents as he got older, increasing tension in the family. Mr. Dawson had not gotten along with his brother-in-law Ben Kelly, who had enlisted to serve in Vietnam when he was only 17 years old. In contrast, Mr. Dawson had spent several years protesting the war.

Their political differences were only one source of disagreement between the two men. Mr. Dawson blamed his brother-in-law for the accident that claimed his life and his wife's, insisting that Mr. Kelly's habit of reckless driving had led to the tragedy.

“Every time Luke stepped out of line, even one little inch, Robert was all over him,” Mr. Winston says. “It was like he was afraid that Luke would turn out like his dad. You know, wild. Then Luke started wearing his dad's old army jacket from Vietnam. I thought it was kind of nice, sort of a tribute. But it drove Robert crazy.”

Luke's friends insist that he was not a reckless person or the kind of person who would run away from his problems.

“He always volunteered to be the designated driver when we went out,” said one friend, 16, who asked not to be identified because he and his friends have not yet reached legal drinking age. “He said he really didn't like alcohol, but I think he just liked to be in control.”

But if Luke did not have an accident and did not run away, the question remains: What did happen to him?

Speculation is rife in this small town, from the plausible to the frankly unbelievable. Some people insist that Luke was kidnapped, even though no ransom note has ever been received. Rumors persist that drug smugglers sometimes travel through the backwoods of Zoar Valley to avoid detection by the local police. If Luke encountered them while on a hike, some people theorize, he could have been murdered as a result.

Silas “Skeeter” McGee, 73, owner of the town's only gas station, insists that Luke was abducted by a Bigfoot-like creature that he says has been spotted dozens of times by hikers and campers over the last fifty years.

Detective Seymour Calhoun, who is leading the investigation into Luke Dawson's disappearance, has not yet ruled out foul play. Contacted for comment, he would only say, “We are keeping an open mind at this point about the case.”

Although friends and neighbors are already talking about Luke Dawson in the past tense, his family refuses to give up hope. In fact they took the unusual, but by no means unheard-of, step of hiring a psychic. Joanne Waters, a close family friend, describes the séance held in the Dawson living room approximately three months after Luke's disappearance.

“A woman named Mrs. Rosario called Sarah out of the blue and said that she was getting messages about where Luke was,” Mrs. Waters says. “I guess Sarah felt pretty desperate by that point. So she set up a reading, and they asked a few friends to be there for moral support.”

Apparently the friends were suspicious of the psychic from the beginning, as were Mr. Dawson and the Dawsons' son Jack, who was also present. Mrs. Rosario did not offer a first name and refused to talk about any previous successes she had had as a psychic, citing privacy and confidentiality concerns. (Several attempts to reach Mrs. Rosario for comment were unsuccessful.)

Her appearance also raised eyebrows, according to Mrs. Waters. “She wore tons of makeup—I mean, tons! It wasn't very warm in the living room, but she was sweating so much that her eyeliner started to run down her face halfway through the reading. And her hair was a mess, just wild, with so much hair spray you could smell it across the room. And she wore a caftan covered with bright red and purple flowers.” Mrs. Waters paused, then added, “She just didn't seem trustworthy somehow. We all felt it.”

Mrs. Rosario insisted that all curtains must be closed and only one candle lit, plunging the living room into darkness even on a sunny winter afternoon. She then settled into a trance. For an hour, she told the group about images that were coming to her, including a fast-flowing river, a late-model red Ford truck, and the number 638.

Unfortunately, none of these clues meant anything to the family. The information was later passed on to Detective Calhoun, who refused to comment on how, or if, it was used.

Shortly after the séance was held, Mr. Dawson increased the reward he was offering for information about his son's disappearance to $25,000. So far, no one has come forward to claim the reward.

For now, that is where the case of Luke Dawson's disappearance stands. Still a mystery, still a source of bewilderment for this small, tight-knit community, still a matter of deepest grief for his family—

“Now do you have a better idea of why I contacted you?” asked a voice somewhere behind my left ear.

I sat up abruptly, spilling the pages onto the floor and somehow banging my elbow on the bedside table.

“Ow!” I rubbed my arm and glared resentfully at Luke. “Do you always have to sneak up behind me like that?”

“Sorry. Occupational hazard of being a ghost.”

I glanced at the papers. “I hope you don't mind. . . .”

“No, it helps, actually.” He settled himself in the window seat. “A useful summary and relatively accurate. Although just for the record,” he added, “Henry Winston may be my mother's second cousin, but she can't stand him. We saw him maybe once a year.”

“So all that stuff he told the reporter about you and your dad—that wasn't true?”

He sighed deeply. “Oh, it was true, I
guess
,” he admitted. “I mean, yes,
technically
we were arguing a lot. But he made it sound so sinister. We didn't hate each other. We just got on each other's nerves.”

“Your father must feel horrible—” I began, without really thinking through where that sentence was going.

“
Exactly
the point I've been trying to make,” Luke said with an air of triumph. “If you had been willing to listen earlier—”

“Okay, okay,
okay
.” I started grabbing the papers from the floor. “I got it.”

I stacked them in a neat pile, thinking hard.

“And I guess I could help you,” I said grudgingly. He opened his mouth to reply, and I hurried on. “
Not
by passing on a message!
Not
by saying that I've talked to you! But maybe there's something else I could do, something a little more anonymous.”

“Like passing a note in gym class?”

I refused to dignify that with a response.

He shrugged, smiling. “Well, that's a start. Let's see.”

He stood up and walked over to the maps I had pinned on the wall. “Tibet, Patagonia, the Azores,” he said, running one finger across the countries. “Don't you have any local maps?”

“Sure. Right there.” I moved behind him to point to the map and jerked back when I felt the freezing cold. I shivered and saw him give me a sidelong glance that was both understanding and a little sad.

He knew. He knew that if he were still alive, I'd feel a subtle warmth from his body, not that otherworldly chill. It must be heartbreaking, I suddenly thought, when you truly realize that you can never again interact with people the way you used to, that you've moved across an invisible border and can't cross back.