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Nath thought that if he confessed Jack, his parents would ask: "Why didn't we know before?" Then he would have to tell his parents that Lydia and Jack used to be together almost every afternoon, and in order to cover up for Lydia , he lied to his parents at the time, saying that "Lydia went to study with her friends" or "Lydia stayed at school to study math problems after school." But the truth he should tell is "she was with Jack" "Jack took her out in the car" or "she left with Jack, God knows where they went". Not only that, but even saying Jack's name meant admitting something he didn't want to admit: Jack was a part of Lydia's life, at least for the past few months.
Across the table, Marilyn flipped through the phone book and read out the numbers; James dialed the numbers, moving carefully and slowly, turning the dial with one finger. As the calls went out, his tone became more and more doubtful: "Really? Didn't she tell you any plans? Oh, I know. Well, thank you anyway." Nas looked at her. The texture of the kitchen table and the photo album open in front of me. The page where the photo was removed left a blank space, and through the empty plastic sleeve, you can see the white border of the back cover of the album. Their mother ran her hand down the phone book, her fingertips stained gray with ink. Hannah stretched her legs and her toes touched Nas's, which made him feel somewhat reassured, but he didn't look up and closed the album. Across the table, my mother crossed another name off the list.
After dialing the last number, James put down the phone, took the list from Marilyn, crossed out the name "Karen Adler", and the letter "K" was cut off by the line he drew, turning it into two The neat "V". However, through this line, he could still see the name clearly: Karen Adler. On the weekends, Marilyn wouldn't let Lydia go out to play unless she had finished all her homework—and by the time she did, it was usually Sunday afternoon. On some of these Sunday afternoons, Lydia would go to the mall to meet friends and have her father drive her, saying, "We're going to see the movie Annie Hall, and Karen really wants to see it," James would say. He pulled a ten-dollar bill out of his wallet and pushed it across the table in front of his daughter's eyes. This gesture meant: OK, go ahead and have fun. Now he suddenly realized that he had never seen a movie ticket stub, and he remembered that when he drove to the mall to pick up his daughter, Lydia had been waiting for him alone on the sidewalk. Countless nights, he had smiled and stopped at the bottom of the stairs, listening to Lydia's voice on the phone coming from the landing: "Oh, my God, I know, right? So, what's next for her? What did you say?" But now, he realized, Lydia hadn't called Karen, Pam or Jane in several years. He thought of those long afternoons when they thought Lydia stayed after school to study, when in reality she could be anywhere and do anything. Thinking of this, James suddenly discovered that he had drawn countless cross lines on Karen Adler's name with black ink.
He picked up the phone again and dialed. "I'm calling Officer Fisk. Yes, I'm James Lee. We contacted all of Lydia's..." He hesitated, "everyone she knew in school. No, nothing. Okay, thank you." .Yes, we will."
"They're going to send an officer to find her." He put down the receiver. "They said keep the phone open and maybe she'll call back."
Dinner time came and went, but no one could eat. They just symbolically raised their forks to their mouths like people in movies, as if eating was just a meaningless ritual. The phone never rang. At midnight, James sent the children to bed. Although the children did not object, he stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched them go upstairs. "I bet twenty dollars that Lydia will call home before dawn." He said a little too wishfully, but no one laughed at him. The phone remained silent.
Upstairs, Nath closed the door to his room and hesitated. He wanted to find Jack—he was sure Jack knew where Lydia was, but his parents were still asleep and he couldn't slip out from under their noses. His mother was so jumpy that she would startle at the sound of the refrigerator turning on or off. Through the window he could see the dark Wolfe house and the empty driveway where Jack's iron-grey Volkswagen usually parked. As usual, Jack's mother forgot to turn on the front door light.
Nath tried to think. Did Lydia seem unusual last night? He was away from home for four whole days, for the first time in his life, because he went to visit Harvard—Harvard! —In the fall, he will go there to study. Before the review period - Andy, the Harvard student who hosted him, said that the so-called review period is two weeks of cramming and partying before the exam - in the last few days of school, there was a sense of excitement on campus. A restless, almost festive atmosphere. All weekend long, he wandered the campus in awe, trying to imprint it all in his mind: the fluted pillars of the vast library, the red brick buildings across from the pale green lawn, the sweet chalk dust wafting from every lecture hall. the taste of. He found that everyone's footsteps were so firm and powerful, with clear goals, as if they knew they were destined to achieve great achievements. On Friday night, Nath was lying in a sleeping bag on the floor of Andy's dorm room when Andy's roommate, Weiss, walked in with his girlfriend and woke him up. When the lights came on, Nass was startled. He blinked and looked toward the porch, where he saw a tall boy with a beard and a girl holding hands and slowly appearing in the dazzling white light. The girl has long red wavy hair. "I'm sorry." Weiss quickly turned off the light, and Nath heard them walking cautiously through the common living room and into Weiss' bedroom. He kept his eyes open to let them readjust to the darkness. He thought to himself: So this is what universities are like.
His mind went back to the time last night when he had arrived just in time for dinner. Lydia had been hiding in her room, and as they all sat down to eat, Nath asked how she had been doing during his absence. But she shrugged and stared down at the plate without even raising her eyelids. He guessed that meant nothing new was going on. Now, he couldn't even remember whether Lydia had said hello to him.
Hannah's room is in the attic. She leaned on the edge of the bed and took out a book from the bedside. In fact, this book is Lydia's - "The Sound and the Fury", advanced English, not suitable for fifth grade reading. She had stolen this book from Lydia's room a few weeks ago without Lydia noticing. Over the past two weeks, she'd begun reading it cover to cover, a little each night, savoring the words like cherry Lifesaver candy in her mouth. Somehow the book seemed different tonight. It wasn't until she turned to the place where she saw it the day before that Hannah understood why: Lydia had drawn out some words in the book, and in some places scrawled class notes, finishing "Order and Chaos, the Fall of the Southern Nobility." After the words "values", she didn't write anything on the following pages. Hannah flipped through the rest of the page—clean, no notes, no scribblings, no blue writing jumping out to interrupt the black type. She reached the point where Lydia's handwriting had stopped, and found that she didn't want to read any more.
Last night, Hannah was lying on the bed looking at the moon, and found that it was slowly floating across the sky like a hot air balloon. Although she couldn't see that the moon was moving, if she moved her eyes away for a while and looked out the window, she would find that Its location has changed. She even thought the moon would get caught in the big spruce tree in the backyard. After a long time, she was almost asleep when she suddenly heard a low crashing sound, almost thinking that the moon really hit the tree. However, she looked outside and saw the moon hiding behind a cloud. The luminous watch in the room showed that it was already two o'clock in the morning.
She lay still and listened, not even wiggling her toes out of habit, and the sound sounded like the front door closing. The front door wasn't easy to close, so I had to press my hip against it to get the lock. There's a thief! she thinks. Through the window, she saw a figure walking across the front lawn. It didn't look like a thief, just a small figure disappearing in the darkness, fading away. Lydia? A picture of life without her sister immediately emerged in her mind: Hannah would have the best seat at the table, sitting there with a perfect view of the lilac bushes in the yard outside the window, and the large bedroom downstairs. Belongs to her. When eating, everyone will pass potatoes to her first, her father will tell her jokes, her brother will confide secrets to her, and she will also get the brightest smile from her mother. At this moment, the figure walked into the street and disappeared so quickly that Hannah felt like she had never seen it.
Now, in her room, Hannah stared blankly at the mess of words on the page. It was Lydia, she was sure of it now. Should she speak out? If told, the mother would be very disappointed, because Hannah watched her sweetheart Lydia walk away. How would Ness react? She remembered that Nath had been frowning all night and biting his lip so hard that he didn't even realize it was bleeding. He will definitely be angry too. He would say, "Why didn't you run out and chase her?" "But, I don't know where she went." Hannah said into the darkness, "I don't know where she went."
On Wednesday morning, James called police again. Q: Any clues? A: We tested all possibilities. Q: Whatever you find, can you let us know in time? A: We still hope that Lydia can return home on her own. We will follow up on this matter and, of course, will keep the families of the missing persons informed.
James listened and nodded—even though he knew Officer Fisk couldn't see him nod. After hanging up the phone, he sat back at the table without looking at Marilyn or Nath or Hannah. He didn't need to explain much, they could tell from his expression that there was no news.
It seems that the best way is to wait. The children did not go to school and stayed at home. The magic of television, magazines and radio pales in the face of fear. The sun is shining brightly outside and the air is fresh and cool, but no one recommends that you sit on the porch or in the yard. Even doing housework may be a hindrance. If you use a vacuum cleaner, some clues may be sucked away; if you pick up the books on the floor and put them away, you may destroy some suspicious clues. So, the whole family can only wait. They sat around the table, not daring to look at anyone, and could only stare at the patterns on the table, as if they were huge fingerprints or a missing person's route map that could provide answers.
A passerby spotted a small boat floating on the lake in calm weather Wednesday afternoon. The lake used to be Midwood's reservoir several years ago before the water tower was built. Nowadays, a circle of green grass grows around the lake and becomes a swimming pool in summer. Children stand on the small wooden pier and jump into the water. People hold birthday parties or picnics by the lake. The boat's mooring line may have been untied by a park ranger who didn't pay attention when mooring the boat, or it may have been a harmless joke. No one cares about such small things. Someone notified the police and also told the park manager. It wasn't until late Wednesday night or early morning that a police officer linked the floating boat to the disappearance when he checked the patrol records of that day. So he called the Li family and asked if Lydia would play on the boat in the lake.
"Of course not," James said. Lydia refused - refused - to learn to swim. James joined the swim team as a teenager and taught Ness how to swim when he was three. But for Lydia, he taught her too late. When her daughter was five years old, James took her to the swimming pool for the first time. He stood in the shallow water and waited for his daughter to come over. The water had not yet reached his waist. Lydia didn't want to go into the water at all. She lay on the edge of the pool in her bathing suit and cried. James finally had to give up and had to promise his daughter that he would not force her to jump into the water. Because he waited too long, the top half of his swimming trunks had already dried. Although Lake Midwood is very close to home, even now, in the summer, Lydia only dares to walk into the ankle-deep water to wash the dust off her feet.
"Of course not," James repeated again, "Lydia can't swim." It wasn't until he finished speaking into the receiver that he understood why the police asked. While he was on the phone, the whole family shuddered, as if they had already guessed what the police would find.
At dawn Thursday morning, police drained the lake and found Lydia.
①Because the "Son of Sam" killed all dark-haired women. —Translation annotations (the annotations in this book, unless otherwise stated, are all translation annotations)
②Stan is Stanley’s nickname.