Chapter Four

I stare at the baseball, which now sits on the kitchen counter. Pristinely white with red stitching, it looks brand-new.

This, I think, is a coincidence.

It has to be.

Billy is still gone. He hasn't come back. And he absolutely wasn't outside last night, roaming the cul-de-sac, despite that brief tingle of recognition I'd felt at the time.

No, this ball belongs to someone else. Some neighbor kid playing catch who overthrew, lost the ball in my yard, then lost interest after that. That's the only logical explanation. Yet I know of only one kid in the neighborhood, and I doubt he's even old enough to play catch.

Still, I grab the ball, head outside, and cross the grass to the house on the right. With any other neighbor, I'd go up the sidewalk to the front door and ring the bell. Because this is Russ, I squeeze through the hedge separating our properties, emerging like Bigfoot into the Chens' yard.

As I'd hoped, Russ is already outside, drinking coffee on the back patio. It's a perfect morning for it, the July heat being kept at bay by a soft breeze bringing scents from Mrs. Chen's garden. Rose and freesia and honeysuckle.

Russ waves when he sees me and lifts his mug. "Want some?"

"Just had a cup."

"Cool," Russ says, in that chill surfer-dude way of his. Something he acquired after I left for private school. Before that, he'd been angsty, agitated, always fidgeting.

Then again, nothing about Russell Chen bears any resemblance to his ten-year-old self. He'd been a scrawny boy. Awkwardly so. His noodle-thin limbs, coupled with his shortness, made him appear younger than he was. He still does, only now it's in a way that inspires envy. Tall and muscular, he looks nowhere near his actual age of forty. His face is free of worry lines, and his thick chest strains against a polo shirt branded with the logo of his sporting goods store.

Russ and I were friends as kids, although not like Billy and me. He was the third wheel we'd sometimes grudgingly let tag along. Then Billy was gone, and it was only the two of us, pushed together by the fact that we were neighbors and our parents were suddenly terrified to let us out of their sight.

I'll never forget the first time we hung out without Billy. He'd been missing for three weeks by then, and I tried to temporarily bury my sadness and fear by playing basketball at the hoop set up in the driveway. Russ popped through the hedge and asked if he could join me. I told him no, that I wanted to be on my own.

"I know you'd rather be with Billy," he said. "But right now, I'm your only option."

Even back then it struck me as unbearably sad for a boy to know he was no one's first choice for a friend. But I also thought it was brave of Russ to acknowledge it.

"Sure, you can play," I said.

We spent the rest of the summer shooting hoops in my driveway, and stayed in touch after I went off to private school. We remained friendly during college, although by then we had almost nothing in common. Whereas I shrank into myself, Russ expanded, both in size and social status. Star football player. Homecoming king. Even modeled for a bit after college. Yet I still made a point to hang out with him every time I returned home for holidays or summer breaks. Seeing Russ was a much-needed reminder that not every boy on Hemlock Circle left or disappeared.

The few times he did leave, he soon found himself back here, most recently after his father passed away and Russ and his wife, Jennifer, moved in to take care of his mother. That was five years ago, and they've had one child since with another on the way.

"Is that for Benji?" Russ says, gesturing to the baseball in my hand.

"It's not his? The lawn guy found it in the backyard. I thought that maybe Benji tossed it there."

"He's four," Russ says. "If he can pitch like that already, then Jen and I don't need to worry about paying for college."

Jennifer emerges onto the patio, holding a coffee mug in one hand and helping their son down the back steps with the other. "Worry about what?"

"Ethan found a baseball," Russ says. "Thought it was Benji's."

I hold out the ball so Jennifer can have a look. She shakes her head. "Not his. Benji has a ball, but it's, like, twice that big. Toddler-sized. Where'd you find it?"

"The backyard."

Jennifer lowers herself into the chair next to Russ, cradling her growing stomach. "Maybe it's from someone who came to look at the Barringer place."

Billy's old house has changed hands multiple times since his family moved away in the mid-nineties, with no one staying there for very long. All of them were couples without kids or families with teenagers. Apparently, no one with a child wanted to risk another disappearance. The last owners, Bob and his partner, Marcel, had lasted five years before putting it on the market six months ago. A for sale sign has been planted in the front yard ever since.

"I haven't seen anyone go near the place," I say.

Benji tugs on my arm, wanting to see the ball for himself. I kneel and hand it to him, nervous in that way I always get around anyone under a certain age. Kids strike me as being so helpless, so fragile, and Benji is no exception. Not for the first time, I wonder how Russ and Jennifer don't appear racked with anxiety every second of the day. Once, during a visit shortly after Benji was born, I asked Russ why he didn't seem nervous now that he was a father.

"Oh, I'm nervous as hell," he told me. "I've just gotten really good at pretending I'm not."

Right now, Russ is all smiles as he watches Benji try to throw the ball. It sails about a foot before plunking onto the flagstone patio, proving that it definitely wasn't Benji Chen who tossed the ball into my yard.

Having exhausted his curiosity about the baseball, Benji ambles to his father and climbs onto his lap. "What's in there?" he says, eyeing Russ's mug.

"Coffee. Want a sip?"

Jennifer playfully swats his arm. "Don't you dare!"

In that moment, they are a picture-perfect family. Father, mother, son, all enviably adorable, with another child arriving soon. A girl, Russ told me as we drank beer on this very patio two nights ago. Seeing the three of them together, at ease and happy, reminds me of what I could have had—but chose not to.

It was me who didn't want kids, although for a time I'd thought it was something both Claudia and I agreed on. I remember everything about the moment I realized I was wrong, from the ecru walls of the restaurant to the scent of the grilled salmon that had just been placed in front of me. A zingy mix of lemon and woodsmoke. I was reaching for my glass of wine when Claudia, out of nowhere, said, "I want to have a baby."

I froze, my fingers still wrapped around the stem of the wineglass, unable to respond.

"Ethan, did you hear me?" Worry had edged into Claudia's voice. She knew her words were like a hand grenade tossed into our marriage. Now she was bracing herself for the explosion.

"I heard you," I said quietly.

Claudia leaned forward, uncertain. "And?"

"You told me you didn't want kids," I said, which was the truth. After a month of dating, right before it got really serious, we decided to lay all our cards on the table. The biggest one—the make-or-break one—involved not wanting children. "We agreed on that."

"I know. We did. And I was fine with that. I really was." Claudia looked at her lap, where I assumed her hands were bunching her napkin under the table. A nervous tic that I knew so well. Until that moment, I'd thought I knew everything about her. "But for the last few years, I've started to think that maybe I do."

"What changed?"

"Me," she said. "I've changed. At least, my thinking has."

I sighed then. A sad exhalation. Because my thinking hadn't changed, although it was clear Claudia hoped it secretly had.

"You're upset," she said.

Yes, I was. But not with her. I couldn't be mad at Claudia for feeling the way she did. I was scared about what it meant for our marriage.

"I'm surprised, that's all."

"I know," Claudia said. "And I'm sorry. I should have told you sooner."

"Why didn't you?"

"I guess I thought it would pass. But the longer I've thought about it, the more I realized I want it. I can't stop thinking about our legacies. What we'll leave behind when we're gone. Right now, that's nothing. But if we had a family…"

Claudia's voice trailed off, forcing me to fill the void. "We are a family. You and me."

"No, Ethan," she said. "We're just us."

Then she started to cry, right there in the middle of the restaurant, and I knew that our marriage was in deep trouble.

I'm wrenched from my memories by the appearance of Russ's mother emerging from the house wearing a floppy straw hat and clutching a trowel caked with dried dirt. In her seventies, she still moves with effortless grace.

"Hi, Mrs. Chen," I say, just like I did when we were kids.

"Hi, Ethan," she calls back before continuing to the gladiolas waving in the breeze at the patio's edge. "Are you remembering to water your mother's flowers?"

"Yes."

A lie. I haven't watered anything—inside or out. Still, it pleases Mrs. Chen, who nods and says, "You're a good son. Just like my Russell."

Russ cringes at the compliment, which makes me wonder if he's thinking about his older brother, Johnny. The bad son. The son who might have eventually become good if he hadn't died of a drug overdose when Russ was nine.

That was the first great loss on Hemlock Circle.

"Hey, I thought of someone else you could ask about the baseball," Russ says. "The Wallaces."

"Why?" I scoop up the ball Benji had thrown/dropped, confused why Russ thinks I should go to a house on the other side of the cul-de-sac. Especially since the only person there now is gruff Vance Wallace.

"Ashley's back. She and her son moved in last month."

"I didn't know that," I say, trying to hide the surprise flashing through me like heat lightning.

Ashley Wallace is back on Hemlock Circle.

"Your parents probably didn't mention it because they know you had a huge crush on her back in the day," Russ says, grinning.

"I did not."

"You totally did. We all did."

Jennifer shoots him a look. "Oh, did you now?"

"Did I say ‘we'?" Russ stalls with a sip of coffee. "I meant Ethan and Billy."

"He meant that none of us did," I add. "She was older."

Five years older, to be exact. Not much of an age difference now, but completely out of my league when I was ten and, despite my present-day denial, hopelessly in love with Ashley Wallace. With good reason. Ashley was fun and funny and, at that stage of my life, the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. Also, she was cool in a way a slightly dorky ten-year-old could only aspire to be. She wore T-shirts bearing the names of bands I'd never heard of but wanted to listen to. Smashing Pumpkins. Violent Femmes. Her favorite was white with black letters inside a black rectangle that simply read "NIN."

"What does that mean?" I once asked.

She half smiled. "Nine Inch Nails. They're awesome."

The next week, when my parents took me to Sam Goody and said I could buy whatever CD I wanted, I grabbed The Downward Spiral. My father stopped me before I could reach the register. Eyeing the parental advisory sticker slapped on the case, he said, "Whoa now. A bit too grown-up for you, don't you think, sport?" I didn't think that, yet I dutifully put the CD back and picked up the Forrest Gump soundtrack, not because I wanted it but because it was a two-disc set and therefore cost my parents more money. A hollow victory.

But the real reason I liked Ashley was the fact that she was nice. Not fake nice, like some of the girls at school, or condescending nice, like most of those girls' parents. Ashley was genuinely kind. Any boy my age couldn't help but fall in love with her a little.

"I guess I'll ask her, too," I say, suddenly anxious at the prospect. It's been almost thirty years since I last saw Ashley Wallace, and when it comes to people, I've found that sometimes memories are best left undisturbed.

"Good luck, buddy," Russ says with a wink.

I shake my head, wave goodbye, and cut through the yard to the sidewalk circling the cul-de-sac. I turn left, which takes me past first my house, then the old Barringer place, the route bringing forth the memory of making this same trek after I woke to find Billy gone.

In that initial confusion, with the tent zipped shut but a gash in its side, I first thought Billy had torn it open. A ridiculous notion for several reasons, but I was ten.

And once the idea was in my brain, I couldn't shake it, leading me to next come up with reasons why he'd rip his way out of the tent. The only one I could think of was a bathroom emergency. So I left the tent the proper way—unzipping the front flap, crawling outside, standing once I was on the grass—and headed indoors. The house was silent when I came inside, with my parents still sleeping upstairs and Barkley doing the same on the living room couch. Hearing the patio door slide shut woke him, setting him into a frenzy of barking that immediately woke my mother.

"You're up early," she said as she crept downstairs, a robe thrown over her nightgown.

"Where's Billy?"

My mother replied with a tired shrug. "He's not outside?"

"No."

I didn't think to tell her about the state of the tent, and how there was now a slice in the side big enough for a toddler to walk through. I was more concerned with finding out where Billy was. Worry had started to creep in, even though I didn't quite know it at the time.

"I'm going to check the bathroom," I said.

"The one upstairs is empty," my mother said, which made me head down the hallway past the kitchen to check the first-floor powder room. It, too, was empty.

While I did that, my mother had stepped outside, presumably to make sure I wasn't mistaken and had somehow overlooked Billy sleeping in the tent beside me. A sign even she wasn't thinking clearly in that moment.

"What's this?" she said when I joined her in the backyard. She was by the side of the tent, peering through the sliced fabric the exact way I had done minutes earlier, only from the inside.

"I think Billy did it."

Unlike me, my mother knew the damage to the tent hadn't been the work of a ten-year-old boy. "Ethan, run over to the Barringers' and see if Billy is there."

That made as much sense as anything else. It certainly seemed reasonable that Billy would go home to use his bathroom instead of ours. Or that he'd had trouble sleeping in the tent and opted to return to his own bed.

For reasons I'm still not sure about, I went back into the house and left through the front door instead of simply slipping through the hedge into the Barringers' backyard. I suspect that, deep down, I knew something horrible had happened, kicking off an avoidance of our backyard that persists to this day. That's how I found myself tracing the curve of the sidewalk, turning up the walk bisecting the front yard, and hopping up the three steps to the front door.

Mrs. Barringer answered the door. Seeing me there, without her son, sent a hand flittering to her throat.

"Where's Billy?" she said.

"He's not here?"

"No, Ethan. He's not with you?"

When I shook my head, fear sparked in Mrs. Barringer's eyes. Seeing her silent panic made clear the unnerving fact I'd been trying to suppress since waking up in the tent.

Billy was gone.

Thirty years later, he's still gone, as is his family; the house they once occupied now stands empty. I pause on the sidewalk, struck by how utterly abandoned the place feels. It's not surprising no one wants to buy it. The shutters have been faded by the sun and the windows are as dark and empty as the eyes of a corpse. The only sign of life is the flowers lining the front walk. Bright and in full bloom, it's clear they're the work of Mrs. Chen, Hemlock Circle's expert gardener. She probably couldn't bear the sight of unattended plants and took it upon herself to care for them.

After one last look at Billy's house, I continue to the next one on the cul-de-sac—the Van de Veer residence.

Fritz Van de Veer and his wife, Alice, were the first to settle on Hemlock Circle after it was built in the late eighties. They were soon followed by the Wallaces, the Patels, the Chens, and my family. Of the six original houses, only the Barringer place has been home to more than one family. First the Remingtons, who spent three years there before they got divorced and moved away, then the Barringers, then several other families who came and went. That turnover, while normal for most neighborhoods, is unusual in a place like Hemlock Circle, where few people ever leave.

Make no mistake, it's weird that five out of the six families living on the cul-de-sac when Billy vanished remain here thirty years later. Even the Barringers, who had every reason to leave, stayed a few years after their son's disappearance. The night before they left for Florida, I asked my parents why they had stayed here for so long. Why everyone had stayed.

My father cited the diverse neighborhood, its cleanliness and quiet, its excellent schools and low crime rate, what happened to Billy notwithstanding. Situated a stone's throw from Princeton and halfway between New York and Philadelphia, its location made it one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the country.

Despite the way he talked, I know the real reason that's kept every family here all these years. No one wanted to be the first to leave, lest it make them appear suspicious. Now that my parents have finally felt comfortable enough to move, I wouldn't be surprised if others did as well. Especially Vance Wallace, who lost his wife to cancer a few years ago and, until Ashley moved back in, had lived in that big house all alone.

To get to the Wallaces', I must pass the Van de Veers'. As I do, I spot Fritz Van de Veer rounding the house, a garden hose in hand. Even though he's watering flowers, Fritz looks like a businessman on Casual Friday. Pressed khakis. Crisp white shirt tucked in to show off his still-trim figure. The only sign that he's been retired for years are his sneakers, which are the same gleaming white as his shirt.

Fritz is soon joined by his wife, Alice, who's clad in a floral sundress and sandals. She's as slender and elegant as the last time I saw her, which might have been more than a decade ago. Like her husband, her hair is a shade of beige that refuses to betray her age. Not quite blonde, not quite gray. Standing side by side, the two of them give off distinct Pat Sajak–and–Vanna White vibes.

I step closer to their yard, stopping next to the hedge separating their property from the old Barringer house. "Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Van de Veer," I call out, sounding like I'm thirty years younger and not the same age they were when Billy was taken. Such formality can be forgiven. As the only couple on Hemlock Circle without children, Fritz and Alice rarely entered my childhood orbit. Other than appearances at our annual Fourth of July party, I can't remember another time in which the Van de Veers were at our house. Nor can I recall ever setting foot in theirs.

Then again, after Billy, the general mood of Hemlock Circle changed. The neighborhood grew more somber, less friendly. Russ's parents stopped celebrating Chinese New Year with an open house, and Ashley's halted their Memorial Day pool parties. The Patels still celebrated Diwali, but only with close friends and family. Even my parents stopped their Fourth of July picnic, opting instead to take me on vacations to national parks and notable historical sites.

"Ethan, hello!" Alice squeals as her husband waves with his hose hand, sending a stream of water arcing across the lawn. She dodges it on her way to the sidewalk, where she presses both of her well-manicured hands to my cheeks. "It's been ages since we last saw you. Hasn't it been ages, Fritz?"

Behind her, Fritz nods. "It has."

"Now you're all grown up! You must be, what now, thirty?"

"Forty," I say.

"No!" Alice says, gasping then giggling. "Oh, that makes me feel positively ancient."

She gives my arm a playful swat that might be seen as friendly but could also be considered flirtatious. For clarification, I look to Fritz, who offers none. Instead, he says, "I see you've been making the rounds this morning."

"What do you mean?"

"Going from house to house," Fritz says, again gesturing with the hose, the water splashing first toward the Chens', then the old Barringer place, before stopping in the direction of the Wallace house next door.

"Oh," I say, a bit unnerved. Has Fritz Van de Veer been watching me? If so, maybe he also saw who tossed the baseball into my yard. I hold it up for him to see. "Just trying to find the owner of this. It was in my yard this morning."

Alice briefly eyes the ball. "Strange for something like that to show up."

"Have you seen anything else strange recently?"

"Can't say I have," Fritz says before turning to his wife. "Sweets, could you go inside and pour me a glass of lemonade? I'll be there in a sec."

At first, I'm not sure what surprises me more—that Fritz calls his wife "sweets" or that he can't get his own damn lemonade. What ends up surprising me the most is when Alice dutifully nods, gives me a wave goodbye, and heads inside.

"I assume you have seen something strange," Fritz says once she's gone. "Otherwise you wouldn't be asking."

I debate how much to tell him, knowing there still might be a logical explanation for what I saw last night and that the ball in my yard might have nothing to do with the garage lights flicking on and off at all the houses on Hemlock Circle. Deciding it's too complicated to share, I simple say, "No, Mr. Van de Veer."

"No need to be so formal, son. Call me Fritz."

"Fritz," I say, the name feeling weird as it springs off my tongue. "I'm just getting a feel for the neighborhood now that I'm back."

He nods in a way that makes me think he doesn't believe me. "You plan on staying a while?"

"Maybe. I haven't decided yet."

"It'd be a shame if you didn't," Fritz says as he aims the hose at a hydrangea bush dominating the corner of his yard, its blue blooms quivering in the water's spray. "This place wouldn't be the same without someone from the Marsh family living here. I was sad to see your parents go. They settling in okay?"

"They are, yes."

"Good to hear," he says. "Next time you talk to them, give your mother my regards."

Fritz cuts the water and starts gathering up the hose. I nod goodbye and resume heading to the Wallaces', my encounter with the Van de Veers already fading from my memory. Since I didn't see much of them when I lived here as a kid, I suspect we'll have even fewer interactions now that I'm back. It isn't until I reach the Wallaces' front steps that I realize something odd about the conversation.

Why did Fritz Van de Veer mention my mother but not my father?