Page 89 of Finding Noah

Let's try one more.

I sucked in a deep breath and typed in Thomas Knowlen, scrolled through ten or so pages, only to find … yep, you guessed it … nothing.

My head flopped back against the headboard, and I released a quiet groan. My jaw moved from side to side, my chest puffing out with frustration.

Give it up, my mind told me. Just give it up. What the hell is the point of hunting this down anyway?

With a nod, I laid my phone on the nightstand and threw the covers back. Wincing, I got out of bed, careful not to disturb Meg, and padded across the room and out the door to the hallway, lit by nothing but a night-light in the shape of a little iron lantern.

A quick drink of water, a stop in the bathroom to take a piss, and I'll go to bed. That was what I told myself, quickly tiptoeing down the stairs and across the living room to the kitchen.

I passed the kitchen counter, where a stack of mail sat. Magazines. Catalogs. Letters. Bills. So many fucking bills, all the damn time. They poured in, they never stopped, and—

I stopped dead in my tracks.

Tommy's kitchen table and chairs had been stacked with mail. Hadn't I looked? Hadn't I glanced at the top of one of those piles?

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I leaned against the counter and ground the heel of my palm against my forehead. “Think,” I mumbled from between my clenched teeth. “Dammit, think.”

My eyes squeezed shut, and I tried to conjure up the memory of that filthy kitchen. The grime on the floor. The peeling tiles. The stacks of moldy dishes in the sink. The flies and maggots. Fuck, it had been so disgusting, so horrible. My nose burned with the sting of tears at the thought. I remembered the stench, the feeling of that floor beneath my hands.

I saw the rickety chairs. Saw the backpack. Saw the stacks and stacks of teetering mail and newspapers. And then …

“There wasn't an H,” I uttered with a gasp. “Holy shit, his name … there was no fucking H.”

Forgetting about the water, I ran to the bathroom, pissed with the light off and the door wide open, and hurried out to grab Meg's iPad from the end table beside the couch. I perched my ass on the arm of a recliner Dad had gotten rid of and opened the browser, stopping for only a moment to see that my fiancée had been searching for tips on how to get pregnant.

“Oh, Meg,” I muttered quietly, my heart aching for her, for us. “We'll get there, babe.”

We would. Whatever we had to do, we'd do it. But first …

Tomas Nolan, Massachusetts.

I scrolled a few pages of dead-end results, and then …

Obituary for Tomas Jefferson Nolan.

The article had been posted twenty years ago.

“Oh my God,” I said, breathless and scared to open the page, scared to see if a picture had been posted and to see that it was, in fact, him.

My finger shook, hovering over the link, and … dammit.

“I can't do it,” I whispered to the living room. “Oh my God, I'm such a fucking pussy. Why can't I do this?”

I wanted Dad. I wanted him to know my deepest, most horrible secret, and I wanted him to hold my hand while I opened this stupid fucking link.

“Jesus, it's probably not even him,” I said with an incredulous laugh, likely lying to myself, but … well, maybe not, right? There was just as much of a chance that it wasn't him.

I could walk around the corner. Could bang on my parents' door and wake Dad up. He would answer. But that would complicate things, wouldn't it? I'd have to explain everything, and then I'd get him involved, and … no, it didn't need to get that far. I just needed to man the hell up and tap on the fucking link.

“Do it,” I said, readying my finger again. “Come on.”

But … I couldn't.

God, the little boy in my heart was scrabbling at the walls of my chest, begging me to stop this shit. To carry on with my life and forget all of it had ever happened. But he knew as well as I did that I couldn't. It'd been twenty years—twenty long years—of trying to forget, and I couldn't fucking do it.