Someone spotted him at the Orange Julius in the Beaver Valley Mall.

  He was with a gang of young, presumably runaway, teenage boys in a bad neighborhood in Akron.

  And then something happened that made us all catch our breaths at the end of August. A body was discovered by a couple of boys fishing on the banks of the Ohio. His corpse was tangled up in branches overhanging the churning waters. About the same height and weight as Jeb, folks around town, especially me, Mom, and Jeb’s parents were horrified, certain that Jeb had been found.

  But no.

  The body turned out to be that of Bill Humphrey, an unemployed welder. He’d been in debt. His wife had left him, taking their two kids, a boy, seven and a girl, twelve. Folks around town who’d seen the man in recent weeks gossiped about how they hadn’t seen him sober in a long time. Most likely in an alcoholic haze, he’d waded into the river one night, hopeless and not wanting to face another morning.

  The death was ruled accidental, but we’d all believed it was suicide.

  A new school year started and with it, my entry into high school as a freshman. The phrase “vanished into thin air” become one I couldn’t bear to hear. I had trouble concentrating. My grades slipped. I just didn’t seem to have an interest in anything.

  Mom didn’t bring me up to be religious. She wasn’t a spiritual person, and she raised me to think the bible and its accounts were nothing more than that—stories, fairy tales. There was no bearded man in the sky, picking and choosing who he would and wouldn’t look out for, according to her. “All we have is right here on earth,” she’d say. “Heaven and hell are with us in the here and now and the funny thing is, one day what was heaven can be hell—and vice versa.”

  From as far back as I can recall, her atheism made sense. In our tiny, rundown rental house, with its eccentric water and unpredictable heat in the winter, it was easy to imagine there was no great protector in the sky.

  But this lack of belief didn’t stop me from praying every night for months. I’d get on my knees next to my bed, clasp my hands together, bow my head, and then beseech a being I couldn’t even imagine returning to my first love. Or, if this deity was unable to fulfill my selfish wish, then could he at least make sure Jeb was okay, wherever he was.

  I never got an answer.

  Not from god or anyone else.

  As the school year went on and on, into Christmas break, Jeb’s disappearance got less and less notice. Other news stories took precedence. Conversations about Jeb were less frequent and finally, they, like him, vanished. He would never be found, I worried, neither dead nor alive. There were no phone calls. The sightings reported on the tip line fell off and then died altogether. The line was closed.

  People were done looking.

  Jeb was yet another face on a milk carton. A mystery that most likely would never be solved.

  Forgotten.

  That Christmas, my mom asked me to take a tin of her pizzelle cookies over to the Klebers. She knew their holidays would be anything but festive and wanted to make some small gesture to let them know we were thinking of them in this horrible time, when the whole world seemed to have left them behind as they celebrated.

  I’d tried to stop by frequently after Jeb went missing, but no one ever answered the door. I’d come prepared to cut their little square of grass in front of the trailer and later, ready to rake leaves, and even later, shovel snow. These acts of kindness, I figured, were for deserving people. Besides, they’d make me, in a strange way, feel closer to Jeb. But I never got the chance.

  Cookies in hand, I didn’t have much hope anyone would answer, but I got a surprise this time.

  Mrs. Kleber, Mandy to everyone in town, opened the door a crack to peer out at me. The day was heavy with the scent of imminent snow and dark charcoal clouds pressed close to the hills on the horizon.

  “Oh hi, Sammy. What’s up, hon?”

  She wore a frazzled expression. Her dark roots now traveled down to just about the tips of her ears. She had on an old, faded green sweatshirt, frayed at the bottom, moth-eaten, and a pair of men’s flannel sleep pants. Her skin was sallow and her irises floated in pale red.

  I held up the cookie tin. “Mom sent these. They’re pizzelles, Italian Christmas cookies. They’re really good.” I smiled.

  She looked down at the red and green tin as though I was offering a plate of excrement. She opened her mouth, closed it again, and then stared at me.

  I held the tin closer to her. “Go on. Please take it.” I remembered another woman, a cheerful, brassy, loud-mouthed mother who laughed a lot, told dirty jokes, and made fun of everyone. No one was beneath her contempt and she never failed to crack me up.

  Until today.

  She reached out a hand that looked as though it might belong to a ninety-year-old—veiny, the parchment skin hanging on for dear, withered life. She took the cookie tin and set it down somewhere in the shadows behind her.

  “Thank you, and please tell your mom the same.” She moved to close the thin aluminum door. When I didn’t turn away, she asked, “Is there something else?”

  I stared and debated whether I should just leave her alone in her grief and misery. All appearances indicated that was what she wanted, heartless as it might feel on my part.

  But I couldn’t simply leave it at that. I cocked my head, met her worn-out gaze and asked, “Are you okay?”

  She sighed and for a moment consulted the dark clouds. “What do you think, boy?”

  The chill I felt was not coming from the wind whipping up out of the north. I felt heat rise to my cheeks. “Stupid question.”

  “Yeah, very stupid.” She stepped back and opened the door wider. “You wanna come in for a minute? Place is a mess, but…whatever.”

  I stepped around her to go inside the dark trailer. She wasn’t kidding about the mess. First, the place reeked of stale smoke. Every surface was covered with cast-off clothing that looked as though it wouldn’t even pass muster as a Goodwill donation. The surfaces of the end tables and coffee tables in the living room were hidden under grease-stained pizza boxes, dirty paper plates, beer cans, and overflowing ashtrays.

  I almost missed Jeb’s dad on the couch, turned toward the back and snoring.

  When I turned to Mandy, she was watching me. “Jealous of our happy home?”

  “Oh Mandy, I’m so sorry.”

  She nodded and her eyes were shiny with tears. Had no one come to offer comfort? Cookies? Support?

  This seemed like hell, a place where joy and hope went to die.

  Their trailer had always been a mess, but before it was organized chaos. There was always music, usually heavy-metal that set my teeth on edge, but I could always count on chatter and laughter to compete with the soundtrack.

  “You don’t have to stay.” She put a head to her forehead, as though an icepick were stabbing her behind her eyes. “I really wish you wouldn’t, actually. I don’t know what I was thinking.” The last sentence she murmured to herself, not looking at me.

  I got it. I wasn’t offended. I held out a hand to touch her shoulder, and she stumbled back and out of reach.

  “Please go.”

  “Merry Christmas.” I turned to the door, regretting the words immediately.

  But the only answer I got was silence.

  As I opened the door, she said, “I know.”

  I turned. “Know what?”

  “What you were to Jeb. And what he was to you. You must miss him.” Tears stood out on her cheeks as she hunted around for a pack of cigarettes on the counter.

  There was so much I wanted to say, but once she found her smokes and lit one, she looked at me like I was one more cockroach in the place. “Are you still here?” she wondered through a cloud of blue-gray smoke.

  I hurried out, heartbroken.

  The school year concluded and the humid days of another summer approached. I despaired because one day I realized I was having trouble remembering Jeb’s face or the sound of his voice.

  Life’s cruel lesson became clear to me as I celebrated my fourteenth birthday. Nothing—and no one—lasts forever.

  Or so I thought.

  Chapter 3

  Now—Sam

  I

  I stood across from him near the front door.

  This is a dream.

  This is not a dream.

  We were simultaneously two grown men at the tail-end of our forties and two teenage boys discovering our sexuality for the first time and realizing how love and lust intertwine and can be all-consuming.

  I didn’t know what to say. I wrung my hands, noticing how damp they were. I wasn’t certain where to rest my gaze. Could this really be Jeb? After all these years, it was hard, maybe even impossible, to say. This man had the same green eyes, the same lanky build and dark straight hair—even all grown up. And the pendant! A flash of memory revealed a vision of me affixing it to his damp neck in the river. I could even recall the kiss I planted on the nape of his neck.

  A summer thunderstorm had born down on us. We’d worried about making the passage from Harker’s Island to the shore without getting struck or pulled under by the powerful currents we’d been warned against.

  I wanted to protect him.

  And how did this person know my name? How did he know where to find me? Was he really who he said he was? And if not, how did he know about Jeb?

  Once the furor around his disappearance died down, Jeb had faded into tragic obscurity. He was never national news, just one of the thousands of kids who go missing every year.

  The questions could drive me insane. His presence, close enough to touch, could drive me insane. And here I was, on a quiet morning in my boring home, wanting nothing more than to sip a cup of tea and read my newest Stephen King book.

  The apple cart was truly upset.

  I worried that Marc would be home soon. He’d wonder who this stranger standing in our living room was. Jeb’s disappearance, back in the summer of ’86, was a subject I didn’t think I’d ever broached with him. The mystery loomed large through the rest of my teens, of course, but once I’d gone away to Ohio State, gotten my degree and moved to Chicago, I had to admit, my thoughts of Jeb and what had happened that summer at last faded, only revived when I faced a reminder, like Fourth of July fireworks or the curve of a slow-moving river. Or the disappearance of yet another innocent soul…

  “Could we sit down?” Jeb interrupted my thoughts. “I just want to talk. I won’t take too much of your time.”

  “Sorry. You have to understand—I’m a little frazzled.”

  “Of course.” He smiled and edged a bit closer.

  “Come on.” I led him more into the condo. He took a seat on the couch. I sat opposite, eyeing him. What do I do in a situation like this? Do I start a pot of coffee brewing? Do I breakout the blueberry scones in the pantry? The thoughts made me laugh.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. That was hysteria,” I replied honestly. “Who are you? What are you doing here? Forgive me if I’m having trouble believing who you say you are. It just doesn’t seem possible.”

  His eyes took on a faraway cast—he was thinking. He didn’t speak for a long time. Making up a story? What could his angle possibly be? Marc and I were doing okay, but we were far from rich, so financial gain was out.

  He repeated the stuff he’d said outside, as though if he said it enough, it would ring true in my ears. “I told you who I am—Jeb. Jeb Kleber. We knew each other as boys back in St. Clair, Ohio. Your mom was named Trudy. You lived in a little green-shingled house in the east end of town. You had a little dog, white, fluffy.” He cocked his head and squinched his eyes together. “Its name was, um—” He snapped his fingers and smiled. “Vanilla!”

  I covered my face with my hands. This was way too much to absorb. How could he possibly know all this stuff? And even more concerning—if he really was Jeb, why was he surfacing now? Why hadn’t he gotten in touch long before?

  My gut churned. “So where have you been all these years? What happened that night? You literally vanished into thin air.” I leaned forward. “Answer me those questions and maybe I can begin to believe you’re really Jeb.”

  “Have you heard the phrase, ‘truth is stranger than fiction?’”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “You might have trouble believing me and I wouldn’t blame you. For one, I did come back to St. Clair, many years ago. Like a lot of folks in our hometown, my dad had ended up with cancer—lung—and my mom was a wreck when he passed away, after a long and painful decline. I don’t know that she ever got over him being gone. Far as I could tell, she didn’t even want to see me. She was good with me being dead, if not buried.”

  He swallowed, and I was aware he was holding emotion back. “I guess I forgive her. She’d made peace with my death so long ago that it was too much of a shock, having me back. She couldn’t seem to quite get herself to a place where my return was normal, let alone joyful. I think it was just too much.”

  I could understand, although I didn’t voice my feelings aloud.

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Fifteen years ago or so?” He glanced down at the cracked cement at our feet. “I guess I understood—me being back was too much of a shock, especially after dad’s death so close to my return.”

  His answers weren’t setting my mind at ease. No, they were actually causing more confusion, more cognitive dissonance.

  I rose and moved to the window overlooking our street, Wolcott. Down below, things were relatively quiet for an urban neighborhood. I always loved our view—on the corner was a large Victorian turn of the century house with a big wraparound porch. Other turn-of-the century apartment buildings, now condos, stood north and south on our block and several adjoining ones. The trees lining our street were mature, ancient, most of them maples. It would be almost bucolic if it weren’t for the cars crowding both sides, bumper to bumper. When it was nearly impossible to find a parking place in a neighborhood, bucolic flew out the window.

  That was Chicago for you.

  Down the street a ways, I spied our little silver Prius pulling into a coveted spot. I murmured, “My husband’s home.” I watched as it tapped bumpers with the car in front of it and behind it, which was the giveaway that my husband Marc had gotten back from the gym. How would I explain this man in our house? Would Marc think he’d caught me at something? The thought was laughable. We were well past jealousy. We’d done the whole checking each other’s phones and internet histories, and unfounded suspicions early in our relationship. After more than a decade together, we’d finally learned to trust and have faith in each other.

  Marc got out of the car and leaned across the seat to grab the blue and gray backpack he used as a gym bag. I didn’t turn away as he made his way up the street, so much about him familiar—the slight limp from a skateboarding accident when he was a teenager, the dark, wavy hair now salted, the reflection of the sun on the lenses of his tortoiseshell-framed round glasses. He looked fit and trim in his jeans and tank top, a man much younger than fifty-three. At least in my eyes…

  I felt more than heard Jeb leave. There was a disturbance in the air behind me, almost as though a draft had managed its way inside, despite our windows being shut against the heat.

  When the back door of the kitchen squeaked open and then closed, I turned.

  Jeb was gone.

  I wondered for a moment if he had ever really been here. But he had—whoever he was, whatever intent he had.

  I’d been about to ask him what he was doing in those years when I’d believed he was missing, if not dead. Why hadn’t he gotten in touch with me before? Why had my mom not mentioned his return? It was hard to believe she didn’t know about it—in St. Clair, everyone knew everyone else’s business. Even though more than a decade had passed—if he’d returned when he claimed—it would have been big news, spreading like proverbial wildfire. Trudy would have been on the phone to me the minute she got wind of it.

  The front door opened, and I turned as Marc entered.

  He read the look on my face like a page in a book. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’d tell you, but I’m not sure you’d believe me.”

  He cocked his head. “What?” He came more fully into the open living area and set his backpack down on the floor. He brushed a hand through his hair.

  I gave him a peck on the lips. “Have a seat? You want some iced tea?”

  He sat. “Okay, with lemon, if we’ve got it.”

  I moved to the refrigerator and pulled out the pitcher. As I was pouring tea, I prepared to spill some different tea. “I have something to tell you,” I said without looking at him. “Suspend your disbelief.”

  II

  “And this happened when you were, what, thirteen?” Marc lowered his glasses to peer out at me over the top of the frames with concerned brown eyes.

  I nodded. Next to him on the couch, but not looking at him, I’d poured out the whole story of my first love and his odd disappearance on Independence Day, 1986. Stranger, I let him know that a man claiming to be Jeb Kleber had just been in our home fewer than twenty minutes ago. And then, at last, I met his gaze, fearful of what his reaction would be.

  “This is crazy,” Marc said. “This is like some Lifetime movie kind of shit, ripped from the headlines, as they say.” He grinned, but there was little mirth in his expression.

  “Tell me about it.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments. We sipped our iced tea, looking out at the trees, the leaves whispering in the soft breeze. It was bright and sunny, a perfect summer day when we should have been east, at our neighborhood beach, which was walking distance from our condo. It was a time filled with birdsong, human chatter and laughter, music escaping from car windows, the hum of bees.

  All of these normal things served to make what had just occurred even more surreal.

  And then Marc asked, “What are you gonna do about it? Call the police?”