The Last Good Day of the Year Read Free

thought maybe it had all been a terrible nightmare. I reached for my sister, but she wasn’t there. Turtle was gone. I didn’t know it yet, but she was never coming home.

Chapter Two
    Summer 1996
    I didn’t realize how poor we were, not until the fact became an important plot point in the media’s approach to my family’s narrative. People say the news doesn’t care about missing kids unless they’re rich, white, and cute. I guess even if you can’t claim all three of those, having one of them in spades can still be enough to hold people’s attention. When a journalist from National Public Radio did a story on Turtle and our family back in 1990, he described our appearance for listeners by observing that if Hollywood ever made a movie based on us, they’d have a tough time finding actors good-looking enough to play our parts with any accuracy.
    But we were poor back then, whether I knew it or not, and we’re still poor today. I’ve been holding on to all these memories of home for ten years, clinging to the version of my childhood that’s easiest to manage. Everything about our old house is
sort
of the sameas I remember it, but it’s different in a million little ways that add up quick: the ceilings are lower, the windows and rooms are smaller, the kitchen linoleum is a seamy array of ugly black and white squares instead of the shiny checkerboard floor of my memories. It was a dump back then, and it’s still a dump now; the only real difference is that it’s older. My mind has done its best to Photoshop those early years, to make what was dull and bleak more shiny and hopeful by polishing the memories with so much nostalgic wax.
    Our place in Shelocta was at the end of a cul-de-sac. We were the last of a four-unit block of town houses. The Mitchells lived next door; the Souzas were on their other side, followed by Ed Tickle and his daughter, Abby, and Ed’s girlfriend, Darla. If Remy was like my brother, then Abby Tickle was Gretchen’s sister. They were best friends.
    We moved almost a year to the day after my sister was taken, and it always seemed to me that the idea was to never, ever return. I guess plans change. When my dad lost his job in Virginia last winter, my parents couldn’t afford to pay our rent anymore. They’ve never been great with money.
    The move back here is supposed to be temporary. It was the only choice we had; we couldn’t afford to go anywhere else. Since my parents couldn’t manage to sell the house on Taylor Street, even at a steep discount, they’ve been renting it out for the past nine years. But the last tenant disappeared in January after failing to pay his rent for the third month in a row. On February 1, I woke before dawn to the sounds of my mom’s Toyota getting towed away by a repo company. Two weeks later, on Valentine’s Day, my fatherfell asleep in our old station wagon while it was parked in our garage with the engine still running. The doctor at the emergency room told us he’d nearly died from asphyxiation. My dad insists the whole thing was an accident. Nobody believes him.
    So here we are, once again. It’s the last place any of us wants to be, and the only place left for us to go.
    Mike Mitchell taps on our kitchen window with his beer can while I’m unpacking a box of silverware. The clock on our stove reads 11:39 a.m. I wave him inside and call downstairs to the basement for my parents.
    â€œLook at you, Sammie. All grown up.” His mustache is foamy with Michelob.
    â€œHow old are you now?” he asks.
    â€œI’m the same age as Remy.”
    â€œThey have the same birthday, you dolt!” My mother gives him a hug; he wraps his arms around her and leans back, lifting her entire body a few inches off the floor. “It’s so good to see you.” She looks around. “Where’s your beautiful wife?”
    â€œSusie’s on her way