The Voice on the Radio Read Free Page A

split-level had been jammed with kids: kids on the couch, kids on the floor, kids in the refrigerator, kids spending the night, kids practicing the clarinet, kids throwing balls, kids fighting, millions of kids.
    Now there was a big, clean, empty space with Jodie rattling around.
    The new house was such a good idea. What color wallpaper should go in the twins’ bathroom? Should there be sliding doors to the deck or French doors? Jodie’s parents got very involved. Paint chips became a major part of their lives, and of course, no matter what you decide on paint, and whether lemon yellow turns out to be right or wrong, it’s only paint. Paint it again if you goofed.
    After Janie, it was pretty decent to have things you could just paint over when you were wrong.
    Jodie’s brother Stephen was at college for the house event. Everybody on the East Coast had to go through a Colorado stage, and Stephen was deep in his, happy to have Birkenstocks on his feet and mountains in his backyard.
    Not only was Stephen gone, but nobody really noticed. It was natural and easy to have him out of the family. Whereas when Jennie had left to become Janie again, it had been unnatural and terrible and it had ruined their sleep and their eating and their lives.
    So last year there had been five Spring children, and then Jennie had left and there were four, and then Stephen had left and there were three.
    The twins had been thick and annoying all their paired lives, and they simply continued. There was no need to think about Brian and Brendan because they had each other and did enough thinking between them.
    Jodie felt as if she were the only child. It was quite wonderful. Mom consulted her over everything: carpet swatches and the locations of electrical outlets and the colors of bathroom sinks. Mom and Dad were so tickled, bursting out of the old, cramped place. They had refused to change addresses or phone numbers after the kidnapping, even when a decade had passed and missing three-year-old Jennie was unquestionably dead and gone.
    But Jodie’s parents had questioned. They had put their little girl’s picture on a milk carton, and the right little girl had seen it.
    After all these months, it could still chill Jodie’s bones that Janie Johnson had seen herself on a milk carton and had understood that she must be Jennie Spring.
    Jodie put aside her shattered hopes for a sister, the one whose name would match and who would be as close to her as a twin, and considered college instead.
    Stephen, now—her brother Stephen had always known he would leave; leave for good; put hundreds of miles between himself and this family. Jodie was not sure she could do that. She felt that her mother and father needed her more than they had needed Stephen. Or perhaps it was different for sons; perhaps parents yielded their sons more easily.
    But Jodie was the only daughter—Janie having quit—and Mom and Dad were frightened when she looked through college catalogs from California or Texas or Michigan. There weren’t many schools in New Jersey and if the college experience was going to count, Jodie at least needed to get out of state. So she was looking in New York and Pennsylvania. Connecticut she would skip, because
Connecticut
was the Spring family word for kidnap and loss and rage. That brought her eyes up the map to Rhode Island and Massachusetts. If she went to school in Providence or Boston, she’d be on the railroad line and could get home easily. Nobody would have to rearrange a life to come get her in the car.
    It was autumn.
    The time, for high school seniors, of looking at college campuses. Jodie Spring looked at the catalog for Hills College, and she thought, Janie’s boyfriend goes there. He’d show me around the campus. It would be cool to see Boston with Reeve.

    Were Derek Himself, Vinnie and Cal into his story? Had he pulled it off? Reeve didn’t risk looking at them. If they were laughing at him…
    Reeve had found a beat. He felt