Red, White & Dead. Laura Caldwell

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      “You should do that,” Charlie said. “Have yourself a lazy summer. Pretend you’re me, and I’ll go to work and pretend I’m you.”

      I frowned. I wasn’t enjoying the prospect of suddenly being the sloth of the family. I didn’t think I could pull off slothful with exuberance and elegance the way Charlie had. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to.

      Then I had an idea. “How about we go to Italy? Tell the radio station you can start in a month or even a few weeks.” If we could stay with our aunt and I could use my airline miles, it might be doable. Charlie loved the concept of traveling, had been talking about Europe the last year, and if I planned the trip for him, the ease of it all might just push him over the hump and get him to agree.

      “Can’t. Their other intern quit. They need me on Wednesday.”

      “Like in two days, Wednesday?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Wow.” I hardly knew what to say. “Congratulations, Charlie.” I squeezed his hand.

      “Thanks.” He smiled—that great Charlie McNeil smile that made the few freckles on his face dance and his hazel eyes gleam. If there was a famous McNeil smile, as Mayburn had suggested, it belonged to Charlie, not me.

      I turned and looked at the pond, at a dad with twin girls on a paddleboat. The girls were laughing, pointing. The dad appeared stressed and was trying to stop them from falling over the side.

      “Remember when we got to do things like that with Dad?” I gestured at the boat.

      Charlie crossed his arms and studied the family. “Not really. I don’t remember much about him at all.”

      “Really?”

      “I remember a few things. I remember what he looked like. I remember what Mom wore on the day he died. Remember that belt she had on?”

      I nodded. I could see the scene as if it were playing in front of me.

      When I was eight and Charlie five, my mother had to tell us that our dad was dead. We lived in Michigan then. It had been a magnificent, sunny fall day, and Charlie and I were playing in the leaves in the backyard. I would rake and form piles, then Charlie and I would take running, shrieking leaps and dive into them. Then Charlie would sit, and I would rake, and we would do the whole thing again.

      We had been doing that for at least an hour when my mother came out of the house. She wore jeans and a brown braided belt that tied at the waist. She walked across the lawn slowly, too slowly. She was usually rushing outside to tell us it was time to eat or time to go into town. The ends of her belt gently slapped her thighs as she walked. Her red-blond hair was loosely curled around her face, as usual, but that face was splotched and somehow off-kilter. I remember stopping, holding the rake and studying her, thinking that her face looked as if it had two different sides, like a Picasso painting my teacher had shown us in art class.

      She sat us down on the scattered leaves and asked us if we knew where our dad was that day.

      “Work!” Charlie said.

      My father was a psychologist and a police profiler. I knew that much, although I really didn’t understand what those things meant.

      “No, he—” my mom started to say.

      “The helicopter,” I said, jumping in. My father already had his pilot’s certificate and was training for his helicopter rating.

      “That’s right.” My mom’s eyes were wide, scared. The helicopter my father was flying had crashed into Lake Erie, she explained. And now he was dead. It was as simple and awful as that.

      Charlie seemed to take the news well. He furrowed his tiny brow, the way he did in school when he knew he was supposed to be listening to an adult. But when she was done, he leapt to his feet and scooped up an armful of leaves with an unconcerned smile.

      “I’m surprised you remember that,” I said to Charlie now. “I thought you didn’t really understand what was going on.”

      “I didn’t, not until later. But I remember that day. Always will.”

      We both stared at the pond. The father had gotten his twins to sit still, and they paddled away from us, all of them laughing.

      “Do you ever think you see him?” I asked Charlie.

      “Who?”

      “Dad. You know, do you ever think you see him or hear his voice?”

      “You mean, someone that reminds me of him? Not really.”

      “I do.”

      Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Charlie turn his head and look at me. “What are you talking about?”

      I said nothing for a moment, then, “I think I saw him last night.”

      “Are you serious? You think you saw Dad?”

      I nodded.

      “C’mon, Iz, don’t start losing it on me now.”

      I forced a fake laugh. “Maybe I am losing it. But last night …” How to explain? I took a breath, and in a rush, I poured out the story, leaving out the fact that I was working for Mayburn, making it sound as if I’d had some trouble with some weird dudes I met at a bar, but telling Charlie exactly how the man saved me, telling him exactly about those words—You’re okay now, Boo.

      Charlie said nothing for a while. I could tell he was thinking hard, turning over what I’d said in his mind. Charlie was the type who couldn’t be hurried, and he couldn’t be shamed into pretending to comprehend something he didn’t.

      Finally, he looked at me.

      I turned my body to face him. “What do you think?”

      He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I think this guy probably said something, and you heard it as ‘Boo.’ I think it was a stressful situation, and you wanted someone like your father to save you.”

      It was possible. I’d heard that endorphins and adrenaline could do strange things to your mind. “You don’t think it was him?”

      “Iz, he’s dead.”

      “Supposedly.”

      Charlie searched my face.

      “I know,” I said. “I feel like a prize idiot now that I’m saying this out loud, but there was something familiar about him when I saw him.”

      “You said you didn’t really see him. He had a hat on and then it was dark in those stairs, right?”

      “Yes.”

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