Inside, I’m shocked to find my mother, home early, sitting alone at the kitchen table.
“How was your last day?” she asks, forcing small talk.
“Fine,” I say. “I made it to all of my classes, eventually. I handed in that project. It went as well as possible, I guess. What’s up, Mom?”
“They want us to come down to the station,” she says nervously.
“They know something?” I can feel my brain pulling together pieces from memory and notes to form a complete picture.
“Yes.” Mom stands, ready to leave.
We drive in silence the twelve minutes it takes from the garage to the parking lot in front of the police station. We wait two minutes to see Captain Moeller. When we’re all settled in his office, he tells us that they have conclusive results.
I move to the edge of my seat. My mom covers her mouth with her hand, presumably to thwart an impending scream.
We wait.
Captain Moeller clears his throat.
I want to jump across the messy desk and rip the words from his voice box.
Finally, he speaks.
“The boy you buried isn’t Jonas.”
Captain Moeller’s words hang in the air; I can almost see them floating there. No one speaks. No one moves. When I can’t take the tension anymore, I ask the totally irrelevant question: “Who was it?”
“A Baby Doe, probably from another state. He wasn’t in our missing children database.”
Finally, sound comes from my mother’s mouth in the form of a gasp.
“I know, it’s terrible,” Captain Moeller says to my mom.
“So what’s next?” she asks through the fingers over her mouth.
“We reopen the search for Jonas,” Captain Moeller says.
My mom looks a little like she’s in shock. She doesn’t reply, so the captain keeps going.
“I took the liberty of having the team use the aging software on the old photo we had of Jonas. We can put that image out over the wire and get people in the area on lookout.”
“What if he’s not in the area?” I ask.
“We’ll distribute it nationally, too,” he says to me.
“Can I see it?” I ask.
“Of course,” he says. The captain rifles around on his desk for a bit and unearths a thick, worn file. I wonder how many times it’s been opened over the past decade.
Captain Moeller pages through the file and pulls out an eight-by-ten photo.
“Here you go,” he says, sliding it across the desk. My mom leans in to see but doesn’t touch. Tears silently flow down her cheeks; she’s so quiet I barely know she’s there.
Captain Moeller hands her a tissue and leaves us alone. When he’s gone, I pick up the photo for a closer look.
For some reason, a strange calm washes over me at the sight of him: my brother. My shoulders loosen and I exhale slowly.
It feels right.