Free The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard

thing to him then, while Beth got up and wandered into the bar. She could see the bartender scan her denim shirt, which was still damp and stained where Ellen had sponged away the vomit. But the bartender, a Hispanic guy with an elaborate mustache, gave her the vodka and tonic she asked for.
    “Rosie!” Bill bawled when Rosie came back down into the hall, carrying the sleeping Kerry, leading Jill, who was holding Vincent’s hand and carrying his football and overnight bag. “What’s going on, sweetie? What’s all this?”
    “Give Grandpa a kiss, Vincenzo,” Rosie told Vincent, and Vincent, who was ordinarily shy at first around Bill, turned up his face to be kissed. Bill picked Vincent up and embraced Angelo.
    “Ange, what’s this? Where’s the baby?”
    Beth slammed the drink. She didn’t feel a flicker of tipsiness, or even nausea—the liquor descended tenderly, like hot chocolate. She began to grow small again. Her father was not rising to the moment; it was his habit to act as if the world perplexed him. Beth was sure it did not; it was only Bill’s way of getting someone else to manage. When her mother was dying, Bill stood in the hospital hall, his face collapsed in a frown, while doctors explained that Mrs. Kerry needed dialysis, and even that, perhaps, would not clear the—
    “Wait,” Bill had told them. “This cyst, if you remove this cyst, why then…?”
    There was an almost comic quality to the combination of unlucky breaks and Bill’s bewilderment at each of them. Did we say two weeks? she imagined the doctors telling her father. We meant two days. Every palliative surgery, every new regimen of antibiotics intended to drive off the deepening infection revealed another complication, another mass of necrotic tissue, another absence of function. The doctors continued to probe and prop and confer. Bill continued to ask them when Evie would be cured, not how much time was left. Beth and her brothers, Paul and Bick, floundered, pitying Bill for his vacuity, hating him for it, wanting him to take charge of them as he did a squad at an industrial fire, wanting to take charge themselves and shake him, tell him, “Dad, she’s dying.”
    But the train of Evelyn’s illness kept careening downhill; and still, Bill was perplexed when Evelyn died. “She doesn’t look like she could be filled with poison,” he told Beth at the funeral parlor. “Does she? Does this figure?”
    He looked at Beth this same way now. As if she would clear matters up for him.
    “We got an unidentified. Elmwood Hospital,” one of the stocky younger officers called. Everyone stopped. Candy Bliss was across the lobby like a sprinter, taking the phone. “Yes, a boy…. No, I don’t think so.” Shes canned the room for Beth. “Can Ben speak Spanish?” Beth shook her head and the detective asked her, an instant later, as if inspired by a random thought, “How about Italian?”
    “Just swear words,” said Pat. No one laughed. Pat said then, “He speaks English. Sesame Street English.”
    “We’ll call you back,” Candy Bliss said.
    The child was older, she told Beth. He’d been hit by a car riding a bike; he was in stable condition. Had to be four or five at least. And Elmwood was ten miles away, easy. But he did have auburn hair. Beth looked up at her. Candy Bliss pressed a forefinger between her eyes. “Jimmy!” she called. “You saw Ben, right? Take a run over there and look at this little boy, okay? What’s the harm?”
    Jimmy was already grabbing for his coat.
    “Who are all those people calling?” Beth asked.
    “Mostly other departments, calling back to tell us what they’ve been hearing, that’s all,” said Candy Bliss. “Later, when…well, if we have to inform the press, we’ll get a whole ton of calls from everyone, including Elvis, saying he’s seen Ben.”
    “Cranks.”
    “Aliens. The Easter bunny. And genuinely lonely people who watch reality TV shows.”
    “And what if one of them