Some days Asher is alone throughout the day and spends his time memorizing everything, fearful of the day he may not have this freedom anymore. Sometimes when guests are getting their breakfast or having their free wine in the evenings he watches them. He thinks how lucky they are to be living their lives without being on the run. Yesterday Asher watched a woman stick her hand down the front of a man’s pants during wine time. He led her off to their room with her hand still in his britches. He saw a man slip his hand inside his girlfriend’s bathing-suit top and cup her breast and she laughed and then leaned in and kissed him on the mouth. Today in the pool a woman slapped her boyfriend’s face, and then took off on her scooter in her wet bathing suit. Asher studies on how things like this have never happened to him in his own quiet life. Until he kidnapped his own child, of course. He feels he has had two lives: Before and After.

Bell is often at her desk, holding her papers up very close to her eyes because her glasses don’t work right and she doesn’t want to go to the eye doctor to get new ones. But Evona and Asher are always moving, Evona singing while she works (My love is like a red red rose). Asher works nonstop. He thinks if he works hard enough he’ll burn all the worry and sadness out of himself.

Asher limits seeing Evona to suppertime at Bell’s. When he doesn’t see her it’s easier to not think about the way she makes him feel something he’s never felt before.

Asher can sense that this kind of happiness and peace isn’t possible for much longer. His comeuppance is coming. Sometimes he thinks he can almost hear it, a hum that increases in volume throughout the day, becoming loudest at night when he is desperate to fall asleep.

Luke would be able to tell him what to do. If Asher could just find his brother, that’d make everything alright. But he’s done everything he knows to do. Asked everyone he can, driven every street on the scooter, looking into every face.

15

15

The Everything

The morning before the day when everything starts to unravel, the dog finds a very long and very old iguana that has died under the porch.

Shady crawls halfway to it and is frozen in his barking, unable to tear himself away from his discovery. Justin maneuvers under the porch and finds the lizard lying a few feet from Shady, who is crouched down on his belly with his paws parked in front of him, a low growl in the back of his throat between deep barks. Justin hooks one of the iguana’s claws with a stick and drags it out.