Whisper Down the Lane by Clay Chapman (inspiring books for teens txt) 📕

on Sunday before church gets out. We’ll have the corn all to ourselves, I swear.”

“It’s not fair,” Elijah mutters under his breath. Cursing us. The silent treatment is new. Something he’s testing out on us. Only time will tell if he keeps this one in the tool kit.

It’s not that the Fall Harvest Fair feels exactly like a flashback to better times. It’s more like waltzing into some idealized version of the past we all want to believe in. Imagine a whitewashed rendition of yesteryear, filtered through an Instagram lens of yellowing leaves crackling under our feet, the wistful scent of autumn in the air. A real Bradbury throwback.

The Friends of Danvers who specialize in face painting offer up a trio of prefab faces: Pumpkin. Skull. And to honor our signature seasonal mascot, the scarecrow himself—Mr. Stitch.

Eli chooses scarecrow. Painted centipedes skitter across his cheeks, twisting stitches winding over his smooth skin. I don’t like it. Something about it—I don’t know—unnerves me. He looks like a doll. A Cabbage Patch Kid. Can’t he pick pumpkin, like all the other kids?

I notice a mother in a burgundy sweater walking with her own family. She’s staring at me. When we make eye contact, she smiles. I can’t help but turn as she passes, just to see if she keeps looking. Why is she looking at me like that?

“You’re looking pretty proud of yourself,” Tamara says, snapping me back.

“How’s that?” Truth is, as a matter of fact, yes, I am feeling rather proud of myself. I can’t help but replay what Elijah said back in the Jeep: Please, Dad…?

“You two are going to conspire against me, aren’t you? Boys against girl?”

“You set down the ground rules and I’ll enforce them, I promise. I got your back.”

Eli quickly fills up on funnel cake, dusting his chin and cheeks until he looks like the ghost of a scarecrow.

“He’s beginning to trust you,” Tamara says. “Open up.”

“You okay with that?” I ask. Have to ask. It doesn’t take a mind reader to sense she’s thinking back to the years when it was just the two of them. She single-handedly raised Elijah—and now here I am, infiltrating their family dynamic and insinuating myself into their routine.

She swears she doesn’t miss the single-parent period of her life. The struggle to make ends meet. The pity from other parents. Poor you, the married mothers all coo. She doesn’t miss the coffee-shop gossip at all. But after carrying the weight of her family on her shoulders for years, it’s been dizzying to suddenly have somebody else help. I have to keep reminding her that she doesn’t have to do this alone anymore. This is about us, I always say. We’re in this together.

A chill seeps into the air. I’m wearing a red-and-black flannel jacket, which I zip up to keep the encroaching cold away.

Tamara slows her pace, staring at my chest. “Where’d you get that?”

“Get what?”

“The jacket.”

“This? I found it.”

“In the garage?” She won’t stop staring—not at me, but the flannel.

“Yeah.” I spin around, arms out, modeling it for her. “What do you think?”

“It looks nice on you,” Tamara manages to say.

Someone else is staring at me. A silver fox of a father volunteering at the cotton candy machine weaves a pink web around a paper cone for a group of kids. He grins as we pass. The salt-and-pepper bristles across his chin glisten with pink sugar crystals. Why is he looking at me?

“Richard?”

Do I know him? I’ve seen him before…But where? Why does he look so familiar?

“Richard.”

That’s when it dawns on me. It’s Eli’s biological father. Hank. But it can’t be. Can it? I’m just imagining it. I’ve seen pictures of him buried in shoeboxes in my studio, so I know what he looks like. But as far as Tamara and I know, he lives in Richmond, two hours away.

“Rich.”

I snap back. “What?” Tamara hasn’t noticed Hank yet—it’s him, isn’t it—and I’m not sure I want her to. I’m suddenly second-guessing myself. Of course it’s not him. Why would he be here?

Tamara’s face has dropped. Oh no, she saw him, too. She spins around once, twice, three times. “Wait…where’s Elijah?”

I scan the crowd around us. He was just behind us, eyeing the goldfish game not two seconds ago. I swear I saw him leaning over the railing of the game, peering into the dozen glass bowls holding their foregone fish, each one swirling in their own foggy body of water. Where did he go?

“Elijah?” A question desperate for an answer. Then it becomes a demand. “Elijah!”

The contours of his name sound strange to me. There’s uncertainty in her voice. Fear. It only grows worse the louder she shouts.

Until it becomes an absolute scream. “ELIJAH!”

Other carnival-goers slow down, loosely gathering around us. I sense their awkwardness, and I know they’re wondering if they should ask us if we need help. I smile gratefully but shake my head to ward them off. It’ll be faster if we just start looking for him.

We agree to separate. She’ll find a volunteer and I’ll backtrack. Surely somebody has seen him. He couldn’t have gone far. That’s what people say in these moments, right?

He couldn’t have gone far.

He was right here a second ago. That’s what they always say. He was right here. A kid doesn’t just disappear into thin air.

What if…? The gnawing thought creeps into my mind. I shake it off, but it refuses to quiet itself. What if somebody took him?

That doesn’t happen. Not here. Not in our town. Not where everybody knows everybody else. Impossible. That’s why people move to a place like Danvers in the first place.

To be safe.

These swirling thoughts have already occurred to Tamara. It was probably the first thought that popped into her head: Somebody’s taken my baby. Moms always imagine the worst. Somebody’s taken my baby boy. My parental instincts haven’t fully kicked in yet. I mitigate. I try to assess with a calm, cool head. What’s the more likely scenario? That Elijah simply got distracted