Asher doesn’t panic at first, when he finds Justin’s bed empty. His stomach drops a bit when he doesn’t find him on the porch. And he’s not in the courtyard or the pool, either. By the time he rushes back to pound on Evona’s door, terror is rising through his torso, the same as when Justin disappeared during the flood and then that first day in Key West, when he awoke exhausted on the beach and thought the boy had run off. But this time he knows that Justin has left intentionally, that Justin is headed back to Tennessee. He should’ve listened to him last night when he said he needed to see Zelda and Lydia. Did he find a bus leaving in the middle of the night? He could’ve pocketed a dollar here and there over the last few weeks, saving up. Who knows what a clever boy like Justin could do. Asher’s mind feels cloudy but he knows he last checked on Justin around one-thirty. Almost six hours ago. Who knows how far he could have gotten by now. He could be anywhere.

Evona questions him, sleepy-eyed but completely awake, while they look everywhere, even inside Bell’s house. They look under Bell’s house, where Shady likes to hide out. But of course he is not there. He is not anywhere.

If he is gone, then Asher deserves it. This is how he made Lydia and Zelda feel, after all.

Time slows. Asher feels like he is moving underwater by the time he decides there is nothing else to do but get on the Vespa and go looking the streets for him. And just as he is taking off, there is Luke, and Shady and Justin.

Later, on the porch, while Justin is eating breakfast with Evona, Luke tells him what he already knows.

“This is no life for him, Asher. You have to take him back.”

Asher nods. So weary that this one motion of his body wears him out.

“You’re going to have to face up to what you’ve done, brother.”

I know it, Asher thinks, but he can’t make his mouth move to say the words.

“You did what you thought was right, to stay with him. But you just have to pay for your mistakes and go forward,” Luke says. He puts his hand on Asher’s shoulder and shakes him. “Hey. Are you alright?”

After a moment Asher nods. “It’s just that I’m so tired.”