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    The Last Child: A Novel
    The Last Child: A Novel
    The Last Child: A Novel
    Ebook543 pages9 hours

    The Last Child: A Novel

    By John Hart

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Winner of the 2010 Edgar Award for Best Novel

    Heralded by the Washington Post as a "a magnificent creation, Huck Finn channeled through Lord of the Flies", John Hart's The Last Child is his most significant work to date, an intricate, powerful story of loss, hope, and courage in the face of evil.

    Thirteen year-old Johnny Merrimon had the perfect life: a warm home and loving parents; a twin sister, Alyssa, with whom he shared an irreplaceable bond. He knew nothing of loss, until the day Alyssa vanished from the side of a lonely street. Now, a year later, Johnny finds himself isolated and alone, failed by the people he'd been taught since birth to trust. No one else believes that Alyssa is still alive, but Johnny is certain that she is---confident in a way that he can never fully explain.

    Determined to find his sister, Johnny risks everything to explore the dark side of his hometown. It is a desperate, terrifying search, but Johnny is not as alone as he might think. Detective Clyde Hunt has never stopped looking for Alyssa either, and he has a soft spot for Johnny. He watches over the boy and tries to keep him safe, but when Johnny uncovers a dangerous lead and vows to follow it, Hunt has no choice but to intervene.

    Then a second child goes missing . . .

    Undeterred by Hunt's threats or his mother's pleas, Johnny enlists the help of his last friend, and together they plunge into the wild, to a forgotten place with a history of violence that goes back more than a hundred years. There, they meet a giant of a man, an escaped convict on his own tragic quest. What they learn from him will shatter every notion Johnny had about the fate of his sister; it will lead them to another far place, to a truth that will test both boys to the limit.

    Traveling the wilderness between innocence and hard wisdom, between hopelessness and faith, The Last Child leaves all categories behind and establishes John Hart as a writer of unique power.

    Now with an excerpt from John Hart's next book The Hush, available in February 2018.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateMay 26, 2009
    ISBN9781429961936
    The Last Child: A Novel
    Author

    John Hart

    John Hart is the New York Times bestselling author of The King of Lies, Down River, The Last Child, Iron House, Redemption Road, and The Hush. The only author in history to win the Edgar Award for Best Novel consecutively, John has also won the Barry Award, the Southern Independent Bookseller’s Award for Fiction, the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award, and the North Carolina Award for Literature. His novels have been translated into thirty languages and can be found in more than seventy countries.

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    Reviews for The Last Child

    4.5/5

    192 ratings149 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I really liked this book. The setting and characters were so well described that I felt their fears, anguish, determination while reading.It is a mystery but also a coming of age tale about a 13-year-old hero who is both wild and good. It's also a police procedural where the line between job and personal work is blurred. It's a tale of loss and dependence on drugs, alcohol and an evil man.I highly recommend this book.
    • 5/5
      THE LAST CHILD by John HartA compelling read of loss, anger, fear, and murder. Johnny is just a child, but he is a child searching for his kidnapped twin sister and aided by a detective possessed of the same relentless need to find Alyssa. Then another young girl goes missing.The characters are clearly drawn, especially the giant of a child man. The setting is detailed and atmospheric. There are red herrings in plenty, but the plot is tightly controlled and moves along at a ever increasing pace. 5 of 5 stars
    • 4/5
      Excellent reading.
    • 4/5
      interesting ...
    • 4/5
      A page turner
    • 4/5
      Excellent thriller!
    • 4/5
      I didn’t remember reading Hart’s previous novel, “Down River” and I wasn’t immediately pulled in by the beginning chapter of “Last Child.” However, it definitely got better as it went on. When his twin sister Alyssa goes missing, Johnny Merrimon, a 13-year-old boy, takes the search for her into his own hands. He has a list of names and a map that he follows, sometimes with the help of his best friend, Jack. The list contains addresses of known pedophiles and sex offenders who might have kidnapped Alyssa. Johnny’s father has disappeared after being blamed for Alyssa’s disappearance and his mother, Katherine, is absent due to depression, alcohol, and drugs. This leaves Johnny free to pursue his search without parental interference. There are other memorable characters that slip in and out of the story: Detective Clyde Hunt who is obsessed with Alyssa’s case and with Katherine Merrimon; Isaac Freemantle, an escaped convict who is wanted for murder and being guided by the voice of God; Ken, Johnny’s father’s former boss and now his mother’s abusive lover. There are many layers to every character whose inner selves are revealed in alternating chapters until I came to care for, or at least understand, nearly all of them. At the same time, I thought Detective Hunt needed to be hit upside the head as he spends so much time on this case that his relationship with his own son deteriorates. I couldn’t understand how Katherine Merrimon could so quickly transform from a virtually comatose druggie to a clear-eyed, functioning and attractive woman.Totally unrelated to the plot, as I listened to the audio version, I was annoyed by the lack of emotion and general speech patterns of Scott Sowers, the reader. I think a different reader would have added to my enjoyment of the book in that format. That quibble aside, Hart’s writing is beautifully descriptive of the region and people of the region. He is able to convey a sense of each of his characters and manages to keep a reader guessing throughout the entire story. Even if I figured a few things out ahead of time, there were many twists that took me by surprise. I will definitely remember reading this novel and will look for any future titles by Hart.
    • 4/5
      Hart's novel was of the search for what happened to Alyssa, a North Carolina girl who disappeared. The two individuals who were conducting their separate searches for this girl were her twin brother Johnny and Clyde Hunt, a police detective who felt personally attracted to this case. There were so many tangents to this book that I wasn't sure I'd be able to follow it all, being the kind of person who usually rejects detective novels. However, I found it an engaging read in that I could never figure out ahead of time what was going to happen. I actually found the untangling of the mystery very satisfying. If I liked this book, I'm sure that my detective mystery-loving husband will like it even more than I did. He's next in line for it now.
    • 5/5
      I recently reread this book, which I never do. This book is a none stop thriller that holds you until the last page. A missing sister,a disappeared father, am mother gone to pieces and a boy who wants to find his sister and make the world right again. Add to this family dynamic a small town law enforcement officer who will not give up, a wealthy businessman who is a sleaze, the boy's troubled friend,an escaped convict, a ring of child pornographers and you have a book that gets better with each chapter. I could have read another 300 pages and still want more
    • 4/5
      Stand by Me meets Silence of the Lambs in North Carolina. The preceding description doesn't quite capture the book but comes close. Last Child contains some of the small town elements that made To Kill a Mockingbird so memorable, but no where as nuanced or refined. Levi Freemantle is this book's Boo Radley, the innocent mammoth developmentally disabled adult. I found the over the top action, over powered the book's stronger but more subtle story line. I found the writing somewhat pedestrian, the book good but not excellent. Again, I didn't need a mound of bodies to make this book interesting, instead I thought it weakened the book's impact.
    • 4/5
      There are many things to like about this mystery. The dimensionality of the characters is strong, as are their motivations and inner worlds. There are multiple villains, covert and overt. The pain suffered by the survivors of a terrible, violent crime is vividly and fully rendered. Surprisingly, a boy--the twin of the crime victim--escapes his grief by obsessively seeking the perpetrators and takes risks and experiences danger that his youth is not even able to recognize. Yet, he is the central character around which the action moves. The story is almost told in real time, and one viscerally feels the corrosive effects of an unsolved crime on the police tasked to solve it. Like a losing sports team, an unsolved major case causes locker-room arguments and doubts. Eventually, however, all is resolved, and yet this is a major weakness. Given the level of detail that precedes the conclusion, the resolution is unsatisfying and forgettable. With its slow pace, the reader spends a good deal of time in a small town in the South; and then suddenly all is understood and the town fades into memory. The book deserved a deeper, more resonant ending, one as rich as the crime reporting and the responses of family and police to new revelations.
    • 5/5
      Johnny Merrimon is a 13-year old boy whose father has abandoned the family after Johnny’s twin sister Alyssa disappeared the year before. His beautiful mother is now existing on alcohol and pills provided by an abusive “friend”. Johnny skips school regularly in order to search out clues to Alyssa’s disappearance. Detective Clyde Hunt, the detective in charge of the case, has a soft spot for both Johnny and his mother. His failure at finding any trace of the girl weighs heavily on him. This is great story filled with fleshed out characters whose motivations and weaknesses are entirely human and understandable. Your heart will break for the main character, a child whose world was turned entirely upside down and who had to grow up and get tough way too soon. The resolution to the story made sense and was well done. I'd give it 4.5 stars.
    • 3/5
      Johnny Merrimon’s twin sister Alyssa disappeared a year ago. Since then Johnny’s father has abandoned the family and his mother has slid into depression, drug use and an abusive relationship with a man who Johnny despises. The case of his sister’s disappearance is the responsibility of the small town’s lead detective, Clyde Hunt, whose own life has soured as his obsession with finding Alyssa and patching up the Merrimon family has grown. As the book opens Johnny learns something new about the case which sets of a series of explosive events.

      Johnny’s story is beautifully depicted. The way he copes with his situation is to delve into the history and folklore of the town and his own ancestors and create a set of somewhat mystical beliefs and tasks that will, if followed properly, rescue him from the hell his world has become. This desire to actively exert some control over a life spiralling into chaos was perfectly credible in the way it combined the folly and impetuousness of his youth with a more adult maturity that would surely come to a boy who had endured all of Johnny’s horrors. His role in the book was fleshed out by his relationships with others, in particular his friendship with Jack Cross, whose physical deformity marks him as another of the town’s outcasts, and also to Levi Freemantle, an escaped prisoner who Johnny encounters at several key points in the story.

      The other heavily featured character is Clyde Hunt who I found vaguely objectionable. The obsessive cop is a staple figure of crime fiction and I am not normally put off by them but something in Hunt’s obsession didn’t ring true for me. Perhaps it is just that I have grown weary of men who view women as fragile objects to be worshiped but never really taken seriously which is essentially how Hunt behaves towards Johnny’s beautiful mother Katherine. “So you wouldn’t give a damn about this missing kid if her mother wasn’t gorgeous?” is what I’d like to have asked Hunt (if it were possible for me to converse with fictional beings).

      The beginning and the end of this book were very solid from a storytelling perspective but I got a bit bored in the middle. It’s hard to talk about why without giving away spoilers so all I will say is that I was just not engaged by the rather large (and I thought quite obvious) red herring that occupied the Police for a good chunk of time. I couldn’t help wondering what this book would have looked like 15 years ago when 200-300 pages was a perfectly acceptable length for a novel.

      Now I must admit that I found the audio book hard going due to the narration. Reading other reviews of this recording by people far more knowledgeable about regional American accents than I am it seems that Scott Sowers has mastered the Southern US accent very well (to suit the book’s small town in North Carolina setting). What is less clear is whether or not the long ‘a’ and ‘the’ that Sowers uses every single time he utters the prepositions is representative of the accent. Frankly even if making those words have syllables is reflection of the local accent I found it extremely annoying and I swear the practice lengthened the book by an unnecessary hour. However I think I can separate my enjoyment of the story from my annoyance at the narration.

      Overall I would recommend you read the book for one of the most believable and sensitive depictions of a teenage boy I’ve read in a very long time. I could not however recommend this particular recording and would suggest you opt for the print version of The Last Child.
    • 4/5
      Excellent book. Great character development within a small town setting. I never got bored with this story as there were always a turn of events. Totally unpredictable with no clue as to "whodunnit" until the very end. Always kept me engaged. As depicted in this story, sadly, many boys grow up way too fast in life living in dysfunctional homes with emotionally distant parents, surrounded by drugs and alcohol. Johnny, Jack, and all the other boys in this story demonstrate this. And, as also depicted in this story, there is always redemption, hope, and faith... both in people and in God.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book - right down to the last few pages where the ending took a very unexpected turn. The Last Child is a mystery with a lot of twists and turns and once I started reading it, I could not put it down! I cannot wait to read other books by this author.
    • 5/5
      A year after 12-year-old Alyssa Merrimon was abducted on her way home from the library, her twin, Johnny, hasn't given up hope of finding her. Johnny's father abandoned the family shortly after her disappearance, unable to live with the guilt of forgetting to pick her up. Johnny's mother dulls her pain with alcohol, drugs, and a man who hates Johnny. The case haunts the lead detective, Clyde Hunt. His obsession with the case drove his wife away and has alienated his son. Johnny is carrying out a methodical search for his sister since the police haven't found her. He can't afford to trust Detective Hunt, who will try to stop him from doing the only thing that matters now – searching for Alyssa. Johnny has only one friend he trusts – Jack, another damaged child.With so many characters in self-destructive spirals, the plot would seem to be predictable. Yet it wasn't. I was continually surprised by the twists the story took, and its ending was not obvious from the start. Nothing seems out of place in the rural North Carolina setting. It seems like the real small towns and communities I've driven through in that region. Johnny is an unforgettable protagonist. I understood his pain, and I desperately wanted him to find his way out of the darkness that surrounded him. I'm lukewarm about the audiobook. Some aspects of the narration were brilliant. However, the narrator's habit of pronouncing “a” and “the” with a long vowel rather than a short vowel grew from a minor annoyance to a major irritation by the end of the book. Sometimes he pronounced the words normally, and his inconsistent pronunciation just seemed to make it more noticeable.
    • 4/5
      Excellent book. Well written with strong characters. The ability to portray a child character with depth and understanding. The book ties you up, keeps you reading and worries you along to the climax.
      I have not read the author's previous book but I will. I understand there is a new book coming soon.
    • 5/5
      This is an example of the classic mystery cast in tones of The Lord of the Flies - replete with red herrings galore and ultra-shocking twists. There are times when you read a book and it just continually amazes you - not just on the level of the story itself, but as regards the author's ability to structure and express a story in such a way that it maintains tension, delivers surprises, and fills each page with insight.John Hart is one of the best novelists writing today, and each page he writes shows the skill and care with which he crafts his stories. He has written four books, I've read them all, and I can't wait for the next one.
    • 5/5
      This was just a darn good read. The book kept the reader's attention throughout, details were introduced at appropriate points, the writing is good, and the book is entertaining. A good mystery.
    • 1/5
      I expected to love this book. I like spunky child characters who bend the rules, do what's right, and get results because they don't have the hangups adults do. But this book was NOT that book. The book begins one year after Johnny's twin sister Alyssa was abducted. His mother blamed his father because he was supposed to pick up Alyssa from school and forgot. She was kidnapped as she was walking home. Johnny's father has left and not had any contact with the family. His mother is now the girlfriend of a his father's former business partner Ken. Ken is a abusive and has her strung out on drugs.The writing in this novel is so uneven that it is jarring. Parts of it are good (the first two CDs) and then the writing sounds stilted, then normal, then weird, then normal again. The dialogue is horrible, and I think Hart repeats a lot of stuff just to increase the number of pages. I got it that Hart liked Johnny's mom the first time Hart mentioned it.The characters are either flat or uneven as well. Johnny is depicted as a scared but determined child, smart enough to conduct his own investigation, but still a child. But there are segments where he comes off like a college professor, lecturing his best friend and a detective about the history of their county. Johnny's mother is supposed to be the most beautiful woman in town, and that's why Ken and Detective Hunt want to be with her. But for the last year, she's looked and behaved like a drug addict and supposedly, she's still the one the men want. There's never another reason other than beauty given for why the men want to "own" or protect her. The police chief is an idiot who just blocks his lead detective's investigation for no reason.And poor Levi Freemantle...the more than 6-foot, hugely muscled, retarded, black escaped convict that everyone assumes is a killer. Even though he's not violent, everyone assumes he is because he's big and black. Sigh...I was looking for a little more originality.I skipped a few CDs just to get to the end. I kept hoping the plot would get better.Scott Sowers narration is abominable! He starts off narrating well and then starts reading like the words don't go together. It sounds like someone gave him a list of words and told him to enunciate each one. I won't be listening to anything else read by him.I think the idea for the novel was great, but the execution was horrible. I don't get why people have given this book such high marks.
    • 5/5
      Story had me from the start. I had to read it straight through. Somewhat predictable conclusion, but enough subplots that it did not matter. Very well written and enjoyable book.
    • 4/5
      An excellent thriller, full of sub plots, twists and turns. Well written and kept me hooked to the end
    • 5/5
      Wow - seldom do I give a book a "5", but this one earned it. Couldn't put it down - great character development, and just when you think you've got it figured out, you don't . . . excellent! My first book by this author, and I will most certainly be seeking out his previous two novels.
    • 4/5
      I didn't expect to like this book. Child abductions? Bereaved parents and siblings? Cops? (I'm a dedicated fan of NCIS and Criminal Minds but am not usually interested in reading any kind of police procedural.) But I needed to read it for the Chapters book discussion at the library next week. I thought I'd probably do what I usually do with a book I'm not very interested in -- read the first few chapters, then read the last few chapters and if I'm confused do a little skimming in between. But it sucked me in and I could not put it down.I was worried that I'd be grossed out by detailed descriptions of violence against children, but there's none of that here. Instead, the author shifts points of view between Johnny, whose twin Alyssa has been missing for some time, and Detective Clyde Hunt, the lead cop on the case. Johnny is working the case, too. He's got a list of sex offenders and their addresses and he's been stalking them, hoping to find his sister. But some of them have noticed Johnny watching them.My only (minor) criticism is that the North Carolina setting isn't really explored fully. I didn't get much local color from the book at all.
    • 5/5
      When 13 year old Alyssa Merrimon vanished one day, her disappearance shattered several people's lives, especially her parents who each sought different means to blunt the grief - the mother who turned to drugs to deaden the pain and the father, who left the family to run away from the pain. Johnny, Alyssa's twin brother, believing that Alyssa was still alive began to systematically investigate the small North Carolina town and its residents for clues to Alyssa's whereabouts. Johnny began his investigation after the failure of the local police to find his sister, a fact that haunts Detective Clyde Hunt, whose obsession over this case drove his wife away and threatens his relationship with his son.

      It is a shame that this book set unread for so long in my bookcase. This Edgar Award Winner would have become a new favorite read much earlier.
    • 1/5
      I have to start by saying that I could not even finish this one. I started the book on July 24 and today is August 6 and I was only able to get through 175 of 350 pages.

      I simply did not care about ANY of the charaacters. There is a missing 12 year old girl, her twin brother, her mother who hooked up with the town sleaze ball and is now hooked on pain killers, father who left town, the detective, the twin brother's friend...and so on and so on and son. None of them were likeable or believeable.

      I did like that the chapters were short and for a short time I felt like I was making some progress.

      I can't recommend this for anyone.
    • 3/5
      This is a thriller. There's lots of danger and it all builds to a dramatic conclusion. The last child is Johnny Merriman, a twelve year old boy whose twin sister disappeared a year earlier and whose family disintegrated as a result, with his father leaving and his mother retreating into alcohol and pills. He's lost his house and he's an outcast at school, his only friend being a police officer's son whose mangled arm makes him a pariah both at school and at home, where his older brother has just received a football scholarship. He spends his time avoiding his mother's abusive boyfriend and hunting for his sister's kidnapper. His sister's disappearance has also weighed down the lead detective on the investigation, whose wife divorced him and a son he's in the process of losing as he ignores him in favor of chasing down one more tenuous lead or checking up on the girl's family. And then another girl disappears.This is a fast-paced thriller designed to entertain, and Hart does a good job keeping things moving. He also paints a vivid picture of a very specific part of North Carolina, both the landscape and history. This is also a book full of giant plot holes and convenient stereo-types, but not so much as to make the book hard to read. I was not enamored with a few aspects of the novel's treatment of women, who were either impediments and mockable, or delicate flowers incapable of strength or fortitude. But not a terrible book overall.
    • 4/5
      13-year-old Johnny is still recovering from his twin sister's disappearance a year earlier. His family has fallen apart -- his father has left and his mother lives in a haze of drug-induced semi-consciousness. His sister's disappearance is technically still an open case, but the police have no active leads. Thus, Johnny has taken it upon himself to scour the county, looking for clues in the hope that he might still find his sister alive. This is an above-average suspenseful thriller. The story has a cast of characters, the two main being Johnny and the lead detective on the case, Detective Hunt, with the action fluctuating between the two. It's a somewhat fresh perspective to see a crime case being driven by a 13-year-old, yet it wasn't wholly unrealistic and the several plot twists kept me engaged throughout the entire story. Overall, an engaging read.
    • 5/5
      It occasionally happens that I miss reading a book for a long time, and the more time that passes between its publication and my picking it up, the less inclined I am to follow through. It's a lame habit, of course, but working in the bookstore means I see new things come in nearly every day, and it's just easy to have newer books jump to the top of the list.

      I finally picked this one up,though, and had been reading it at the store when things were quiet. I got so close to finishing yesterday -- and the story was unfolding in such an extraordinary and heart-stopping way -- that I decided to just bring it on home to finish.

      Having done so just now, let me be very clear about this: YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK.



    • 4/5
      Well-paced and at times a real page-turner, John Hart's novel is definitely a good read. Some of the characters are somewhat one-dimensional, but there are twists and turns in the story that still makes it worthwhile to spend hours reading it. The main character, Johnny, is a bit beyond belief, being thirteen and tougher than most adults in the novel.

    Book preview

    The Last Child - John Hart

    PROLOGUE

    Asphalt cut the country like a scar, a long, hot burn of razor-black. Heat had not yet twisted the air, but the driver knew it was coming, the scorching glare, the shimmer at the far place where blue hammered down. He adjusted his sunglasses and threw a glance at the big mirror above the windshield. It showed him the length of the bus and every passenger on it. In thirty years he’d watched all kinds of people in that mirror: the pretty girls and the broken men, the drunks and the crazies, the heavy-breasted women with red, wrinkled babies. The driver could spot trouble a mile away; he could tell who was fine and who was running.

    The driver looked at the boy.

    The boy looked like a runner.

    Skin peeled from his nose, but beneath the tan he carried the sallow kind of pale that came from sleeplessness or malnutrition or both. His cheekbones made sharp blades beneath skin stretched tight. He was young and small, ten maybe, with wild hair that rose black on his head. The cut was jagged and uneven, like something he’d done himself. Frayed cloth hung from the collar of his shirt and from the knees of his jeans. The shoes were just about worn through. On his lap, he clutched a blue backpack; and whatever it held, there wasn’t much of it.

    He was a good-looking kid, but what struck the driver most were the boy’s eyes. Large and dark, they moved constantly, as if the boy was overly aware of the people around him, the hot press of humanity typical of a broken-down bus on a sun-blasted morning in the North Carolina sand hills: a half-dozen itinerant workers, a few busted-up brawlers that looked ex-military, a family or two, some old folks, a couple of tattooed punks that huddled in the back.

    The boy’s eyes most often found the man across the aisle, a slick-haired sales type in a wrinkled suit and sprung loafers. There was also a black man with a creased Bible and a soda bottle tucked between his legs; he seemed to catch the kid’s eye, too. In the seat behind the boy sat an old lady in a parchment dress. When she leaned forward to ask a question, the boy shook his head in a small way and answered with care.

    No, ma’am.

    His words rose like smoke, and the lady settled back, blue-veined fingers on the chain that held her spectacles. She looked through the window and her lenses flashed, then went dark as the road sliced into a stand of pine with shadows that pooled green beneath the limbs. The same light filled the bus, and the driver studied the man in the wrinkled suit. He had pale skin and a hangover sweat, unusually small eyes and an edginess that scraped the driver’s nerves. Every minute or two, the man shifted in his seat. He crossed his legs and uncrossed them, leaned forward, then back. His fingers drummed one knee of the ill-fitting suit and he swallowed often as his gaze drifted to the boy, then flicked away, drifted again and lingered.

    The driver was a jaded man, but he ran things clean on his bus. He refused to tolerate drunkenness or debauchery or loud voices. His momma raised him that way fifty years ago and he’d found no reason to change. So he kept an eye on the boy, and on the drawn, shiny man with eager eyes. He watched him watch the boy, saw him push back against the greasy seat when the knife came out.

    The boy was casual about it. He pulled it from a pocket and folded the blade out with a single thumb. He held it for a moment, visible, then took an apple from his bag and sliced it in a sharp, clean motion. The smell of it rose above the travel-stained seats and the dirt-smeared floors. Even above the diesel stink, the driver caught the sharp, sweet tang of it. The boy looked once at the man’s wide eyes and slick, washed-out face, then folded the knife and put it back in his pocket.

    The driver relaxed and watched the road, uninterrupted, for a few long minutes. He thought that the boy seemed familiar, but the feeling passed. Thirty years. He settled his heavy frame deeper into the seat.

    He’d seen so many boys.

    So many runners.

    Every time the driver looked at him, the boy felt it. It was a gift he had, a skill. Even with the dark shades on the driver’s eyes and the big curve in the face of the mirror, the boy could tell. This was his third trip on the bus in as many weeks. He sat in different seats and wore different clothes, but guessed that sooner or later somebody would ask him what he was doing on a cross-state bus at seven o’clock on a school day. He figured the question would come from the driver.

    But it hadn’t happened yet.

    The boy turned to the window and angled his shoulders so that no one else would try to speak to him. He watched reflections in the glass, the movements and the faces. He thought of skyscraper trees and brown feathers tipped with snow.

    The knife made a lump in his pocket.

    Forty minutes later, the bus rocked to a stop at a one-room gas station depot lost in the great swath of pine and scrub and hot, sandy earth. The boy made his way down the narrow aisle and dropped off the bottom step before the driver could mention that nothing but the tow truck sat in the lot, or that no grown-up was there to take possession of him, a thirteen-year-old boy who could barely pass for ten. He kept his head turned so that the sun seared his neck. He rocked the pack onto his back, and the diesel cloud rose; then the bus jerked and was rolling south.

    The gas station had two pumps, a long bench, and a skinny old man in blue clothes stained with grease. He nodded from behind smudged glass but did not come out into the heat. The drink machine in the shade of the building was so old it only asked for fifty cents. The boy dug into a pocket, fingered out five thin dimes and purchased a grape soda that came out of the chute in a cold glass bottle. He popped the top, turned in the direction from which the bus had come, and started walking down the black snake of dusty road.

    Three miles and two turns later, the road diminished, asphalt gone to gravel, gravel gone thin. The sign had not changed since the last time he’d seen it. It was old and abused, feathers of paint lifting to show the wood beneath: ALLIGATOR RIVER RAPTOR PRESERVE. Above the letters, a stylized eagle soared, and on its wings, the paint feathers rose.

    The boy spit chewing gum into his hand and slapped it on the sign as he passed.

    It took two hours to find a nest, two hours of sweat and sticker bushes and mosquitoes that turned his skin a bright, splotchy red. He found the massive tangle of limbs in the high branches of a longleaf pine that grew straight and tall from the damp soil on the bank of the river. He circled the tree twice, but found no feathers on the ground. Sunlight pierced the forest, and the sky was so bright and blue that it hurt his eyes. The nest was a speck.

    He shrugged off the pack and started climbing, bark rough and raw on his sunburned skin. Wary and afraid, he looked for the eagle as he climbed. A stuffed one sat on a pedestal at the museum in Raleigh, and he remembered the fierceness of it. Its eyes were glass, but its wings spanned five feet from tip to tip, its talons as long as the boy’s middle finger. The beak alone could take the ears off a grown man.

    All he wanted was a feather. He’d love a clean, white tail feather, or one of the giant brown feathers from the wing; but in the end, it could be the smallest feather from the softest patch, a pin feather, maybe, or one from that downy soft place beneath the shoulder of the wing.

    It didn’t really matter.

    Magic was magic.

    The higher he climbed, the more the branches bent. Wind moved the tree and the boy with it. When it gusted, he pushed his face into the bark, heart thumping and fingers squeezed white. The pine was a king of trees, so tall that even the river shrank beneath it.

    He neared the top. This close, the nest was as broad as a dining room table and probably weighed two hundred pounds. It was decades old, stinking of rot and shit and rabbit parts. The boy opened himself to the smell, to the power of it. He shifted a hand, planted one foot on a limb that was weathered gray and skinned of bark. Beneath him, pine forest marched off to distant hills. The river twisted, black and dark and shining like coal. He lifted himself above the nest and saw the chicks, two of them, pale and mottled, in the bowl of the nest. They opened splinters of beaks, begging for food, and the boy heard a sound like sheets on the line when the wind got up. He risked a glance, and the eagle dropped from a perfect sky. For an instant, the boy saw only feathers, then the wings beat down and the talons rose.

    The bird screamed.

    The boy threw up his arms as talons sank into him; then he fell, and the bird—eyes yellow bright, talons hooked in his skin and in his shirt—the bird fell with him.

    At three forty-seven, a bus rolled into the parking lot of the same one-room gas station depot. Pointing north this time, it was a different bus, different driver. The door clattered open and a handful of rheumatic people shuffled out. The driver was a thin, Hispanic man, twenty-five and tired-looking. He barely looked at the scrawny boy who rose from the bench and limped to the door of the bus. He didn’t notice the torn clothes or the near despair on the boy’s face. And if that was blood on the hand that passed the ticket over, it seemed clear that it was not the driver’s business to remark upon it.

    The boy let go of the ticket. He pulled himself up the stairs and tried to hold the pieces of his shirt together. The pack he carried was heavy, stuffed near to bursting, and something red stained the seams at the bottom. There was a smell about the boy, one of mud and river and something raw; but that, too, was not the driver’s business. The boy pushed deeper into the gloom of the bus. He fell once against a seat back, then moved all the way to the rear, where he sat alone in the corner. He clutched the bag to his chest and pulled his feet onto the seat. Deep holes punctured his flesh and his neck was gashed; but no one looked at him, no one cared. He clutched the bag tighter, felt the heat that remained, the broken body, like a sack of shattered twigs. He pictured the small and downy chicks, alone in the nest. Alone in the nest and starving.

    The boy rocked in the dark.

    He rocked in the dark and wept hot, bitter tears.

    CHAPTER ONE

    Johnny learned early. If somebody asked him why he was so different, why he held himself so still and why his eyes seemed to swallow light, that’s what he’d tell them. He learned early that there was no safe place, not the backyard or the playground, not the front porch or the quiet road that grazed the edge of town. No safe place, and no one to protect you.

    Childhood was illusion.

    He’d been up for an hour, waiting for the night sounds to fade, for the sun to slide close enough to call it morning. It was Monday, still dark, but Johnny rarely slept. He woke to patrol dark windows. He rattled the locks twice a night, watched the empty road and the dirt drive that looked like chalk when the moon rose. He checked on his mom, except when Ken was at the house. Ken had a temper and wore a large gold ring that made perfect oval bruises.

    That was another lesson.

    Johnny pulled on a T-shirt and frayed jeans, then walked to the bedroom door and cracked it. Light spilled down the narrow hall, and the air felt used up. He smelled cigarettes and spilled liquor that was probably bourbon. For an instant, Johnny recalled the way mornings used to smell, eggs and coffee and the sharp tang of his father’s aftershave. It was a good memory, so he drove it down, crushed it. It only made things harder.

    In the hall, shag carpet rose stiff under his toes. The door to his mother’s room hung loose in its frame. It was hollow core and unpainted, a mismatch. The original door lay splintered in the backyard, kicked off its hinges a month back when Ken and Johnny’s mother got into it after hours. She never said what the argument was about, but Johnny guessed it had something to do with him. A year ago, Ken could never have gotten close to a woman like her, and Johnny never let him forget it; but that was a year ago. A lifetime.

    They’d known Ken for years, or thought they had. Johnny’s dad was a contractor, and Ken built whole neighborhoods. They worked well together because Johnny’s dad was fast and competent, and because Ken was smart enough to respect him. Because of that, Ken had always been pleasant and mindful, even after the kidnapping, right up until Johnny’s dad decided that grief and guilt were too much to bear. But after his dad left, the respect disappeared, and Ken started coming around a lot. Now he ran things. He kept Johnny’s mother dependent and alone, kept her medicated or drunk. He told her what to do and she did it. Cook a steak. Go to the bedroom. Lock the door.

    Johnny took it in with those black eyes, and often found himself in the kitchen, at night, three fingers on the big knife in its wooden block, picturing the soft place above Ken’s chest, thinking about it.

    The man was a predator, pure and simple; and Johnny’s mother had faded down to nothing. She weighed less than a hundred pounds and was as drawn as a shut-in, but Johnny saw the way men looked at her, the way Ken got possessive when she made it out of the house. Her skin, though pale, was flawless, her eyes large and deep and wounded. She was thirty-three, and looked like an angel would look if there was such a thing, dark-haired and fragile and unearthly. Men stopped what they were doing when she walked into a room. They stared as if a glow came off her skin, as if she might rise from the ground at any moment.

    She could not care less. Even before her daughter vanished, she’d paid little attention to the way she’d looked. Blue jeans and T-shirts. Ponytails and occasional makeup. Her world had been a small, perfect place where she’d loved her husband and her children, where she’d tended a garden, volunteered at church, and sang to herself on rainy days; but no more. Now there was silence and emptiness and pain, a flicker of the person she’d been; but the beauty lingered. Johnny saw it every day, and every day he cursed the perfection that graced her so completely. If she were ugly, Ken would have no use for her. If she’d had ugly children, his sister would still sleep in the room next to his. But she was like a doll or something not quite real, like she should be in a cabinet with a lock on it. She was the most beautiful person Johnny had ever known, and he hated that about her.

    Hated it.

    That’s how much his life had changed.

    Johnny studied the door to his mother’s room. Maybe Ken was in there, maybe not. His ear pressed against the wood, and breath caught in his throat. Normally, he could tell, but sleep had dodged him for days, and when he finally crashed, he crashed hard. Black and still. Deep. When he did wake, it was with a start, like he’d heard glass break. That was at three o’clock.

    He stepped back from the door, uncertain, then crept down the hall, and the bathroom light hummed when he flicked the switch. The medicine cabinet stood open and he saw the pills: Xanax, Prozac, some blue ones, some yellows. He picked up a bottle and read the label. Vicodin. That was new. The Xanax bottle was open, pills on the counter, and Johnny felt the anger fill him up. The Xanax helped Ken come down after a night with the good stuff.

    That was his term.

    The good stuff.

    Johnny closed the bottle and walked out of the bathroom.

    The house was a dump, and he reminded himself that it was not really theirs. Their real house was clean and kept up. It had a new roof that he’d helped to install. He’d gone up the ladder every day of spring vacation, passed shingles to his dad, and held nails in a tool belt that had his name scratched into it. It was a good house, with stone walls and a yard that boasted more than dirt and broadleaf weed. It was only a few miles away, but felt farther, a different neighborhood with cared-for homes on big, green lots. The place was steeped in memory, but the bank owned it now. They gave his mother some papers and put a sign in the yard.

    This was one of Ken’s rentals. He had about a hundred, and Johnny thought this was probably the worst, a crappy dump way out on the edge of town. The kitchen was small, with green metal and scuffed linoleum that turned up in the corners. A bulb burned above the stove and Johnny turned a slow circle. The place was disgusting: butts in a saucer, empty bottles, and shot glasses. The mirror lay flat on the kitchen table and Johnny saw how white powder residue caught the light. The sight of it spread cold in his chest. A rolled-up hundred dollar bill had fallen to the floor. Johnny picked it up, smoothed it out. He’d not had a decent meal in a week and Ken was snorting coke with a hundred.

    He picked up the mirror, wiped it off with a wet towel, and hung it back on the wall. His father used to look in that mirror, and Johnny could still see how he worked at his tie on Sundays, his fingers large and stiff, the tie unforgiving. He only wore his suit for church, and he’d get embarrassed when he caught his son watching. Johnny could see it: the sudden red flush and then the reckless smile. Thank God for your mother, he’d say, and then she’d tie the knot for him.

    His hands at the small of her back.

    The kiss and the wink that came after.

    Johnny wiped the mirror again, then straightened it, tweaked it until it hung just right.

    The door to the front porch moved stiffly, and Johnny walked out into the damp, dark morning. A streetlamp flickered fifty yards down the road. Headlights crested a distant hill.

    Ken’s car was gone, and Johnny felt a shameful, sweet relief. Ken lived across town in a big house with perfect paint, large windows and a four-car garage. Johnny took a deep breath, thought of his mother bent over that mirror, and told himself that she was not that far gone. That was Ken’s deal, not hers. He forced his hands to unclench. The air was scrubbed, so he concentrated on that instead. He told himself that it was a new day, that good things could happen; but mornings were bad for his mother. There was a moment when her eyes opened, a flash before she remembered that they’d never found her only daughter.

    Johnny’s sister.

    His twin.

    Alyssa was born three minutes after Johnny, and they’d been as similar as nonidentical twins could be. They had the same hair and face, the same laugh. She was a girl, yeah, but from twenty feet it was hard to tell them apart. They stood the same, walked the same. Most mornings, they woke at the same time, even in different rooms. Johnny’s mom said they’d had their own language when they were small, but Johnny didn’t remember that. He remembered that for most of his life, he’d never been alone; there was a special sense of belonging that only the two of them had ever understood. But Alyssa was gone, and everything with her. That was truth, unavoidable, and it had carved the insides out of his mother. So Johnny did what he could. He checked the locks at night and cleaned up the mess. Today it took twenty minutes; then he put on coffee and thought about the rolled-up bill.

    A hundred bucks.

    Food and clothing.

    He made a last check of the house. Bottles, gone. Signs of drug use, gone. He opened windows to let the outside in, then checked the refrigerator. The milk carton rattled when he shook it. One egg in the carton. He opened his mother’s purse. She had nine dollars and change. Johnny left the money and closed the purse. He filled a glass with water and shook two aspirin out of a bottle. He walked down the hall and opened his mother’s door.

    The first raw light of dawn pushed against the glass, an orange bulge beyond the black trees. His mother lay on her side, hair across her face. Magazines and books covered the bedside table. He made room for the glass and placed the aspirin on the scarred wood. For a second, he listened to her breathe, then looked at the stack of bills Ken had left by the bed. There were some twenties, a fifty. Maybe a few hundred dollars, wrinkled and smudged.

    Peeled off a roll.

    Discarded.

    The car in the driveway was old, a station wagon that Johnny’s father had bought years ago. The paint was clean and waxed, tire pressure checked every week, but that was all Johnny knew how to do. Blue smoke still belched from the pipe when he turned the key; the passenger window did not go up all the way. He waited for the smoke to turn white, then put the car in gear and rolled to the bottom of the drive. He was nowhere close to having a license, and looked carefully before edging into the road. He kept the speed down and stayed on the back roads. The nearest store was only two miles away, but it was a big one, on a major road, and Johnny knew that people there might recognize him. He added three miles to the trip and went to a small grocery store that catered to the low end of things. The gas cost money and the food was more expensive, but he didn’t really have a choice. Social Services had already been to the house twice.

    The car blended with those already there, most of which were old and American. A dark sedan rolled in behind him and stopped near the entrance. Sunlight mirrored the glass and a lone man sat faceless behind the wheel. He did not get out, and Johnny watched him as he walked to the store.

    Johnny had a great fear of lone men in stopped cars.

    The cart wobbled as he went up one aisle and down another. Just the basics, he decided: milk, juice, bacon, eggs, sandwich bread, fruit. He bought more aspirin for his mother. Tomato juice also seemed to help.

    The cop stopped him at the end of aisle eight. He was tall and broad, with brown eyes that were too soft for the lines in his face, the hard angle of his jaw. He had no cart, stood with his hands in his pockets, and Johnny knew at a glance that he’d followed him inside. He had that look, a kind of resigned patience.

    And Johnny wanted to run.

    Hey, Johnny, he said. How you doing?

    His hair was longer than Johnny remembered, same brown as his eyes, shaggy and curling over the top of his collar with a bit of new silver threaded in at the sides. His face had thinned out, and some part of Johnny recognized that the year had been hard on him as well. Big as the cop was, he looked pressed down, haunted, but most of the world looked like that to Johnny, so he wasn’t sure. The cop’s voice was deep and concerned. It brought back so many bad memories that, for an instant, Johnny could neither move nor speak. The cop stepped closer and brought with him the same thoughtful expression that Johnny had seen so often, the same look of gentle worry. Some part of Johnny wanted to like the man, to trust him; but he was still the one who let Alyssa fade away. He was still the one who lost her.

    I’m good, Johnny told him. You know. Hanging in.

    The cop looked at his watch, then at Johnny’s grubby clothes and wild, black hair. It was forty minutes after six on a school day. Any word from your father? he asked.

    No. Johnny tried to hide the sudden shame. No word.

    I’m sorry.

    The moment stretched, but the cop did not move. The brown eyes remained steady, and up close he looked just as big and calm as the first time he’d come to Johnny’s house. But that was another memory, so Johnny stared at the man’s thick wrist, the clean, blunt nails. His voice cracked when he spoke. My mother got a letter once. She said he was in Chicago, maybe going to California. A pause, eyes moving from hand to floor. He’ll come back.

    Johnny said it with conviction. The cop nodded once and turned his head away. Spencer Merrimon had left two weeks after his daughter was grabbed. Too much pain. Too much guilt. His wife never let him forget that he was supposed to pick the girl up, never let him forget that she would not have been walking down the road at dusk if he’d only done what he was supposed to do.

    It wasn’t his fault, Johnny said.

    I never said it was.

    He was working. He forgot the time. It wasn’t his fault.

    We all make mistakes, son. Every last one of us. Your father is a good man. Don’t you ever doubt that.

    I don’t. Sudden resentment in Johnny’s voice.

    It’s okay.

    I never would. Johnny felt the color fall out of his face. He could not remember the last time he’d spoken so much to a grown-up, but there was something about the cop. He was old as hell, like forty, but he never rushed things, and there was a warmth to his face, a kindness that didn’t seem fake or put on to trick a kid into trusting him. His eyes were always very still, and some part of Johnny hoped that he was a good enough cop to make things right. But it had been a year, and his sister was still gone. Johnny had to worry about the now, and in the now this cop was no friend.

    There was Social Services, which was just waiting for an excuse; and then there were the things that Johnny did, the places he went when he cut school, the risks he took when he snuck out after midnight. If the cop knew what Johnny was doing, he would be forced to take action. Foster homes. The courts.

    He would stop Johnny if he could.

    How’s your mom? the cop asked. His eyes were intent, hand still on the cart.

    Tired, Johnny said. Lupus, you know. She tires easily.

    The cop frowned for the first time. Last time I found you here, you told me she had Lyme disease.

    He was right. No. I said she had lupus.

    The cop’s face softened and he lifted his hand from the cart. There are people who want to help. People who understand.

    Suddenly, Johnny was angry. No one understood, and no one offered to help. Not ever. She’s just under the weather. Just run down.

    The cop looked away from the lie, but his face remained sad. Johnny watched his gaze fall to the aspirin bottle, the tomato juice. From the way his eyes lingered, it was obvious that he knew more than most about drunks and drug abusers. You’re not the only one who’s hurting, Johnny. You’re not alone.

    Alone enough.

    The cop sighed deeply. He took a card from his shirt pocket and wrote a number on the back of it. He handed it to the boy. If you ever need anything. He looked determined. Day or night. I mean it.

    Johnny glanced at the card, slipped it into the pocket of his jeans. We’re fine, he said, and pushed the cart around him. The cop dropped a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

    If he ever hits you again . . .

    Johnny tensed.

    Or your mother . . .

    Johnny shrugged the hand off. We’re fine, he repeated. I’ve got it covered.

    He pushed past the cop, terrified that he would stop him, that he would ask more questions or call one of the hard-faced women from Social Services.

    The cart scraped against the counter at the register, and a large woman on a worn stool dipped her nose. She was new to the store, and Johnny saw the question in her face. He was thirteen but looked years younger. He pulled the hundred from his pocket and put it faceup on the conveyor belt. Can you hurry, please?

    She popped gum and frowned. Easy, sugar. Here we go.

    The cop lingered ten feet behind, and Johnny felt him there, eyes on his back as the fat lady rang up the groceries. Johnny forced himself to breathe, and after a minute, the cop walked past. Keep that card, he said.

    Okay. Johnny could not bear to meet his eyes.

    The cop turned, and his smile was not an easy one. It’s always good to see you, Johnny.

    He left the store, visible through the broad plate glass. He walked past the station wagon, then turned and lingered for a moment. He looked through the window, then circled to check out the plate. Apparently satisfied, he approached his sedan and opened the door. Slipping into the gloom, he sat.

    He waited.

    Johnny tried to slow his heart, then reached for the change in the cashier’s damp and meaty hand.

    The cop’s name was Clyde Lafayette Hunt. Detective. It said so on his card. Johnny had a collection of them tucked into his top drawer, hidden under his socks and a picture of his dad. He thought, at times, of the number on the card; but then he thought of orphanages and foster homes. He thought of his disappeared sister and of the lead pipe he kept between his bed and the wall that leaked cold air. He thought that the cop probably meant what he said. He was probably a good guy. But Johnny could never look at him without remembering Alyssa, and that kind of thinking required concentration. He had to picture her alive and smiling, not in a dirt-floored cellar or in the back of some car. She was twelve the last time he’d seen her. Twelve, with black hair, cut like a boy’s. The guy who saw what happened said she walked right up to the car, smiling even as the car door opened.

    Smiling right up until somebody grabbed her.

    Johnny heard that word all the time. Smiling. Like it was stuck in his head, a one-word recording he couldn’t shake. But he saw her face when he slept. He saw her looking back as the houses grew small. He saw the worry bloom, and he saw her scream.

    Johnny realized that the cashier was staring, that his hand was still out, money in it, groceries bagged. She had one eyebrow up, jaw still working a wad of gum.

    You need something else, sugar?

    Johnny shied. He wadded the bills and stuffed them into his pocket. No, he said. I don’t need anything else.

    She looked past him, to the store manager who stood behind a low glass partition. He followed her gaze, then reached for the bags. She shrugged and he left, walked out under a sky that had blued out while he shopped. He kept his eyes on his mother’s car and tried to ignore Detective Hunt. The bags made rasping sounds as they rubbed together. The milk sloshed, heavy on the right side. He put the bags in the backseat and hesitated. The cop was watching him from a car that angled out, less than twenty feet away. He gestured when Johnny

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