Free Remember Me Like This by Bret Anthony Johnston

Justin’s room, beneath the Christmas and birthday presents that had accumulated over the years. Continuing to shop for him, to buy gifts like wallets and CDs and books, was an exercise in faith. It was easier than not shopping.
    His room was the only space not consumed by his absence, and with the exception of the bins and presents, it still looked much as it had when he’d left for the last time: the lumpy high-top shoes cluttering the closet floor, the fishbowls of rocks and shells atop his dresser, the plaid comforter that had, just months before he vanished, replaced the one with the cartoon airplane print. (Laura still had the airplane one packed away in a box.) A Blue Angels poster commanded the wall beside his bed, and above his desk hung his honor roll ribbons and the print of a car he’d made with a potato inart class; he’d given the potato prints as gifts that Christmas—Eric’s was on his desk at school, Cecil’s was in his office at the pawnshop, Laura’s was framed on her nightstand, crowning the stack of overdue marine biology books from the library, and Griff’s was tacked among the skateboarding photos. Sometimes, if his parents were out, Griff stole into his brother’s room and tried on his clothes, charting how long Justin had been gone by how fully he’d grown into them. He’d even taken a couple of his T-shirts and kept them in his room; every week he transferred them from one secret place to another. If his mother came in to clean or put up folded clothes or just to snoop, he didn’t want his brother’s shirts to blindside her.
    Laura had known about the shirts since the day Griff had taken them. She sneaked into Justin’s room daily and had immediately noticed the drawer Griff hadn’t completely closed. She struggled with the knowledge, wondering if he’d so poorly covered his tracks because he subconsciously
wanted
her to confront him. Her son, about whom she knew everything and nothing. Some days she sat on Justin’s floor and wept, others she lay on his bed with her knees clutched to her chest. The room comforted and tormented and confused her with its permanence. One night, after almost two years of sneaking in, she told Eric how she sometimes buried her face in Justin’s closet, how she pressed her nose into his hanging shirts searching for a shred of fabric that still held his scent. She expected Eric to balk, to try pacifying her with a wretchedly upbeat speech, but he did neither; instead, he admitted the same habit. She felt disarmed. And at once she understood that she’d only confessed in hopes of starting a fight. But that he’d been sneaking in, too, that he’d sought shelter—or was it oblivion?—where she had, seemed a kind of communion, a renewal. They made love that night, the first time since their son had disappeared. Initially, the sex seemed another renewal, but soon it turned too raw and desperate, too obviously freighted and inadequate. They’d wandered directionless ever since, stumbling into separate and skeptical lives.
    And so, in a tight, boxy room at the police station in Corpus, when the deputy said a fifteen-year-old boy who matched Justin’s description had been located at the Tradewinds Flea Market, Eric went under a wave. The simplicity of the logic, the absurd and easy ordinariness of the scenario, displaced him. A vendor had thought the boy resembled the picture on Justin’s flyers, so she alerted a security guard. He’d been with an adult male, a man who was at present being interviewed by detectives. The deputy said the FBI was coming in from Houston, and the sheriff had a team searching the man’s apartment. The boy, he said, was undergoing a medical exam.
    All of it left Eric feeling blunted, saturated to the point of numbness. He told himself to focus. He and Laura were sitting in folding chairs, while the deputy leaned against a steel desk. Laura’s hair was greasy in its ponytail, her eyes wet and worn out. She looked pale, woozy,