“What on earth?” I said out loud.
I went over.
“It’s a metal detector,” Gene said, when I asked. He grinned. He had very white false teeth and a big straw hat. “Had it for thirty years. Doris used to say I spent more time with this thing than with her.” He laughed. “She wasn’t wrong.”
Alan took off the headphones. His face was lit up in a way I hadn’t seen in a long time.
“Grandma,” he said, “Mr. Pruitt found a coin in his backyard from 1904. A real one. It was just in the dirt. Nobody knew it was there for a hundred and twenty years.”
“That’s amazing, honey.”
“He says there’s stuff everywhere,” Alan said. “Under everything. Things people lost and never found. Rings and coins and keys and medals. He says the ground is full of lost things just waiting for somebody to bring them home.”
Gene put his big hand on Alan’s shoulder.
“Boy’s a natural,” he said to me. “Got patience. Most people don’t. Most people want to find treasure in five minutes. This one’ll sweep a field for three hours just to find a bottle cap and be happy about it.”
That summer, Alan spent almost every afternoon with Gene. They went to the park. The ball fields. The old fairgrounds. They came back sunburned and dirty with their pockets full of bottle caps and pull tabs and, once in a while, a quarter.
I didn’t think much of it. I thought it was nice. A lonely old man and a quiet boy, keeping each other company.
In September, Gene’s daughter moved him into an assisted living home in Ohio, near her family. His heart was failing. He couldn’t live alone anymore.
On his last day, he came over to our house. He was carrying the metal detector and a canvas bag.
He handed them both to Alan on our front porch.
“These are yours now,” he said.
Alan stared at him. “Mr. Pruitt, I can’t. It’s yours. It’s your favorite thing.”
“It was my favorite thing,” Gene said. “Now it’s yours. A metal detector is meant to be used. It’ll just sit in a box in Ohio.” He leaned down so his face was close to Alan’s. “You remember what I told you? About lost things?”
“They’re just waiting for somebody to bring them home,” Alan said.
“That’s right,” Gene said. “And now that somebody is you.”
He hugged Alan. Then he got in his daughter’s car and drove away.
Alan stood on the porch holding the metal detector for a long time.
He wrote Gene a letter every week after that. I mailed them for him. Gene wrote back, in shaky handwriting, until March. Then the letters stopped.
His daughter called in April. Gene had died in his sleep.
Alan didn’t cry when I told him. Just like the night his mother left. He just went very quiet. Then he went to his room and closed the door.
The next morning, he was gone before I woke up.
That was six weeks before the phone call from his teacher.
I didn’t put it together. Not then. I thought he was grieving. I thought he needed space.
Alan started leaving the house before I woke up. I’m an early riser. I’m usually up by six. But he was gone before that. When I came downstairs, his cereal bowl would already be in the sink. His backpack would be gone. He’d leave a note on the counter. Went to school early. Love you. A.
Some mornings, when he came home in the afternoon, his sneakers were muddy. Caked with mud. Even though the walk to the middle school was all sidewalk.
He looked tired all the time. Dark circles under his eyes. He’d fall asleep on the couch after dinner, sitting up, with his book in his lap.
“Are you sleeping okay, honey?” I asked.
“Just couldn’t sleep, Grandma,” he’d say.
Then he’d pull his backpack closer. It was always with him now. On the floor by his feet at dinner. On the chair next to him when he watched TV. On his bed when he slept. He’d started carrying it everywhere. Even to the bathroom.
Once, I reached for it to move it off the kitchen table so I could set down a plate. He grabbed it so fast he knocked over his glass of milk.
“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, Grandma. I’ll clean it up.”
“Alan, what’s in there?”
“Just books,” he said. “Just school stuff.”
He didn’t look at me when he said it.
That was the first time I wondered if my grandson was lying to me.
The phone call came on a Tuesday in May.
“Mrs. Carter? This is Rebecca Abernathy. Alan’s homeroom teacher at Westfield Middle School.”
My heart jumped into my throat. In eight years, nobody from Alan’s school had ever called me. Not once. Not for anything bad.
“Is he okay? Is he hurt?”
“He’s fine,” Ms. Abernathy said quickly. “He’s not hurt. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” She paused. “But I’d like to talk to you about him. In person. Would you be able to come in tomorrow morning? At eight-fifteen?”
“Of course.”
“And Mrs. Carter?” She hesitated. “I’d prefer if you didn’t mention it to Alan. Not yet. I don’t want to worry him before we talk.”
I didn’t sleep that night.
Ms. Abernathy was young. Maybe thirty. She had red hair in a ponytail and big round glasses and a cardigan with little apples embroidered on it. Her classroom smelled like dry-erase markers and pencil shavings. There were posters on the walls about the solar system and the water cycle.
She sat me down at a little table in the back of the room. She’d made me a cup of coffee in a mug that said WORLD’S OKAYEST TEACHER.
“Mrs. Carter,” she said, “first, I want to tell you that Alan is one of my favorite students. I’ve been teaching for eight years. He’s one of the kindest kids I’ve ever had. He helps the other kids without being asked. He’s never been in trouble. Never.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s why I’m scared.”
She nodded. She folded her hands on the table.
“Something’s going on with him,” she said. “For the last several weeks, he’s been arriving late. Almost every morning. Sometimes ten minutes. Sometimes twenty. He comes in out of breath, like he’s been running.”
I stared at her.
“Late?” I said. “That can’t be right. He leaves the house before I wake up. Before six. He leaves me notes saying he went to school early.”
Ms. Abernathy’s face changed. She was quiet for a moment.
“School doesn’t open until seven-thirty,” she said slowly. “And he’s been getting here at eight-twenty, eight-thirty. So he’s been somewhere else. For two hours. Every morning.”
I put down my coffee. My hands were shaking.
“He’s falling asleep in class too,” she said. “Every day. Usually in second period. I let him sleep sometimes, honestly. He looks so exhausted. I asked if he was okay. He said he just couldn’t sleep.”
“That’s what he tells me too.”
“And there’s something else,” she said. She lowered her voice, even though we were alone. “The backpack. He won’t let it out of his sight. He takes it to lunch. To gym class. He changes in the bathroom stall with it. The gym teacher told me he tried to make him leave it in the locker room once, and Alan got so upset he almost cried. He said, Please, I can’t leave it. Please.“
I felt sick.
“Mrs. Carter,” Ms. Abernathy said gently. “I have to ask. Is everything okay at home?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. I mean, I think so. His mother left when he was five. It’s just been the two of us. His friend died a few weeks ago. An old man who lived on our street. Alan was very close to him.” I pressed my hand against my mouth. “But I didn’t know about any of this. I didn’t know he was late. I didn’t know about the backpack at school.”
“Is there any chance,” Ms. Abernathy said carefully, “that he’s involved with something he shouldn’t be? Older kids? I’m not saying he is. I just have to ask. Sometimes the kids who are the quietest and the kindest are the ones that older kids use. Because nobody suspects them.”
I stared at her.
I thought about the muddy sneakers. The missing two hours. The backpack he wouldn’t let anyone touch. The way he’d knocked over his milk.
Just books. Just school stuff.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I don’t know anymore.”
That evening, I confronted him.
He was sitting at the kitchen table doing his math homework. His backpack was on the chair next to him. Zipped shut. His hand was resting on top of it, the way you’d rest your hand on a sleeping dog.
I sat down across from him.
“Alan,” I said. “I need to ask you something. And I need you to tell me the truth.”
He looked up. His eyes were tired.
“Okay.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“No, Grandma.”
“You’ve been late to school. Almost every day. For weeks. Ms. Abernathy called me.”
His face went white.
“You talked to Ms. Abernathy?”
“I did. She’s worried about you. So am I. You leave the house before six, Alan. And you don’t get to school until eight-thirty. Where are you going?”
He didn’t answer. He looked down at his math homework.
“Is somebody hurting you?” I asked. My voice cracked. “Is somebody making you do something? Older kids? Anybody?”
His eyes went wide.
“No!” he said. “No, Grandma. I swear. Nobody’s hurting me. Nobody’s making me do anything.”
“Then where are you going?”
He opened his mouth. He closed it.
“I can’t tell you,” he said finally. “Not yet. Please. Just a little longer. I promise it’s not bad. I promise I’ll tell you soon.”
“What’s in the backpack, Alan?”
His hand tightened on top of it.
“Please, Grandma,” he whispered. “Please trust me.”
I looked at my grandson. Thirteen years old. Thin and pale and exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes. Holding on to a backpack like it was the last thing he had in the world.
I wanted to trust him. I wanted to so badly.
But I’d worked in a school for twenty-eight years. I’d seen good kids get pulled into terrible things. I’d seen quiet kids carry secrets that ate them alive. I’d sat in the principal’s office with parents who said, Not my child. My child would never.
“Okay,” I said.
He let out a breath.
But I didn’t trust him. Not that night. And I hated myself for it.
The next morning, he made a mistake.
He overslept. For the first time in weeks. He’d been so tired. I heard his alarm going off at five-fifteen, beeping and beeping, and I lay in bed and listened to it and thought, Let him sleep. Let him sleep for once.
He finally woke up at six-forty. I heard him crash out of bed. I heard him run to the bathroom. I heard the shower start.
I went downstairs.
His backpack was sitting beside the kitchen table. On the floor. Right next to his chair. In his rush, he’d left it there.
I stood in the kitchen doorway and looked at it.
I want to tell you that I didn’t hesitate. That I marched right over and opened it because I had to know. That’s not true. I stood there for a long time. I thought about everything I’d taught him about privacy. About trust. About how you don’t go through other people’s things.
Upstairs, the shower was running.
I hated myself for touching it.
But I opened it.
I unzipped the main pocket. His math textbook. His history textbook. His binder with the stickers of planets on the front. A bag of pretzels. A pencil case.
And underneath the books, at the very bottom of the bag, there were six small cloth pouches.
They were little drawstring bags. The kind you get from a jewelry store. Dark blue velvet, soft and worn. Each one was tied shut with its drawstring.
And each one had a little white tag tied to the string. With a name written on it. In Alan’s careful handwriting.
ELLIE.
JAMES.
R.D.
LILY.
The fifth one said GRANDMA.
The sixth one said MOM.
I stared at them. My heart was pounding.
I picked up the first one. ELLIE.
Something hard shifted inside it. Something small and heavy.
My hands started trembling.
I loosened the string. I tipped the pouch over my palm.
A ring fell out.
It was a woman’s wedding ring. Gold. Thin and worn, with a tiny diamond in the center. Old-fashioned. The gold was scratched and dull, like it had been somewhere rough for a long time.
I held it up to the light from the kitchen window.
There was engraving on the inside of the band. Faint. Almost worn away.
Tom & Ellie. June 9, 1962.
I put my hand over my mouth.
I opened the second pouch. JAMES. A small metal tag on a chain. A military dog tag. Old. Tarnished. Stamped with letters. WHITLEY JAMES R. A long number. T41. A blood type. O POS.
I opened the third. R.D. A heavy gold ring with a red stone in the center. A class ring. Around the stone, raised letters. WESTFIELD HIGH SCHOOL. On one side, the year 1974. Inside the band, two initials. R.D.
I opened the fourth. LILY. A tiny silver bracelet. A child’s bracelet. So small it would only fit a little girl. A flat silver plate in the middle, engraved in curly letters. LILY. And on the back, very small: Love, Mommy & Daddy.
I was standing in my kitchen with four pieces of someone else’s jewelry in my hand. Wedding rings. Dog tags. Class rings. A little girl’s bracelet.
My grandson had been leaving the house at five in the morning. Muddy. Missing for two hours. Coming to school exhausted, guarding a backpack full of other people’s rings.
I thought of every terrible thing I’d ever heard about at school. Kids breaking into houses. Kids stealing from old people. Kids pawning things for money. Older kids using younger ones to do it.
I thought of Ms. Abernathy’s voice. Sometimes the kids who are the quietest and the kindest are the ones that older kids use.
I felt sick.
Upstairs, the shower turned off.
My hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped everything. I didn’t know what to do. Put it all back? Call someone? Call the police?
Then I saw the fifth pouch.
GRANDMA.
I didn’t want to open it. I was terrified of what might be inside.
I opened it anyway.
I tipped it into my palm.
A ring fell out.
A plain gold band. Not fancy. Scratched and dented and dull, like it had been buried in sand and stones for a very long time.
I turned it over with my shaking fingers. I tilted it toward the window.
Inside the band, there were three words. Worn. Faint. But still there.
Always, Frank. Evie.
I couldn’t breathe.
The kitchen tilted. I grabbed the edge of the table to keep from falling. My vision went gray at the edges. I sat down hard in the kitchen chair with my husband’s ring in my palm, the ring I’d lost in the sand at Lake Merriam twelve years ago on the Fourth of July, the ring I’d searched for until my fingers bled.
I covered my mouth with my other hand.
That’s how Alan found me.
He came down the stairs with his hair still wet and his shirt on inside out. He stopped in the kitchen doorway. He saw his open backpack on the floor. He saw the pouches on the table. The wedding ring. The dog tag. The class ring. The little silver bracelet.
He saw what was in my hand.
His face went completely white.
“Grandma,” he whispered. “Grandma, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I wasn’t done yet. I wanted it to be a surprise.”
I couldn’t speak. I just held out my hand, with the ring in my palm.
Alan came across the kitchen slowly. He knelt down on the floor next to my chair. The same way I knelt down next to him in the hallway eight years ago, the night his mother left.
“I found it on Saturday,” he said quietly. “At the lake. At the little beach. By the floating dock.” His voice was shaking. “I’ve been looking for it for six weeks. Every morning. Before school. That’s where I’ve been going. That’s why I’m late. That’s why my shoes are muddy. The sand by the water is all mud in the mornings.”
“Six weeks,” I whispered.
“Since Mr. Pruitt died,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about what he said. About lost things. About how the ground is full of them, just waiting.” He swallowed. “And I thought about your ring. You told me the story. When I was little. About Grandpa and the Fourth of July and the floating dock. You said you looked until your fingers bled.”
I was crying now. I couldn’t stop.
“You always look at your hand,” Alan said. “Your left hand. When you think nobody’s watching. When you’re sitting on the porch, or at church, or when you’re tired. You look at the place where your ring used to be. I’ve seen you do it my whole life.”
I put my hand on his wet hair.
“Mr. Pruitt told me that lakes are the best places to find things,” Alan said. “Because people swim and their fingers get cold and things slip off. And the sand moves around every year, so sometimes things that were buried come back up near the surface. He said you have to go early. Before the people. When the beach is empty and the sand is wet.” He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “So I went. Every morning. At five-thirty. I rode my bike to the lake. I swept the whole beach with the detector. Inch by inch. Back and forth. Every morning before school.”
“Alone? In the dark?”
“It’s not dark at five-thirty in May, Grandma. It’s kind of pretty, actually. There’s mist on the water. And herons.” He almost smiled. “Mr. Pruitt would’ve liked it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want you to get your hopes up,” he said. “If I didn’t find it. I didn’t want you to think about it again and be sad.” He looked down at the ring in my hand. “And because I wanted to surprise you. For your birthday. It’s in two weeks. I was going to put it in a box with a bow. I was going to wait until I found…”
He stopped.
“Until you found what?” I asked.
He looked at the sixth pouch. Still sitting on the table. Still tied shut.
MOM.
But first, he told me about the others.
He’d found them all at the lake. In six weeks of sweeping that little beach every morning, inch by inch, the detector had beeped a thousand times. Mostly bottle caps. Pull tabs. Coins. Fishing lures. A rusty old car key. A toy car. A spoon.
And four other things. Four things with names.
“Mr. Pruitt said when you find something with a name on it, you have to try,” Alan said. “He said it’s not yours. It’s just borrowed. It belongs to somebody who misses it. He said you have to try to bring it home.”
The first one he found was the dog tag. In the third week. Buried deep, under the sand near the old lifeguard stand.
“I looked it up,” he said. “James R. Whitley. He was in the Army. During Vietnam. I found him on a website that lists soldiers.” His voice got quiet. “He died over there. In 1969. He was nineteen.”
I put my hand over my heart.
“He was from here, Grandma. From our town. He went to Westfield High. There’s a picture of him in an old yearbook at the library. He was on the swim team. They used to practice at the lake.” Alan looked at the dog tag. “I think he lost it before he went to Vietnam. Swimming. And then he went over there without it. And he never came home.”
“Oh, honey.”
“He has a sister,” Alan said. “Still alive. Her name’s Margaret. She’s seventy-eight. She lives on Cherry Street. I found her in an obituary for their mom. I’ve been trying to figure out how to give it to her. I’ve walked past her house four times. I didn’t know what to say.”
The wedding ring was next. Tom & Ellie, June 9, 1962. He’d found it in the fourth week, near the floating dock. The same place he’d find my ring two weeks later.
“I couldn’t find Tom and Ellie at first,” he said. “There are a lot of Toms. But then I went to the library. Mrs. Kessler at the front desk helped me. We looked at old newspapers from 1962. Wedding announcements.” He swallowed. “Thomas and Eleanor Bishop. They got married at St. Mark’s. There was a picture of them. She had a big white dress and he had big ears.” He almost smiled. “Tom died in 2010. Ellie’s still alive. She’s eighty-four. She lives at Maple Grove. The nursing home. On Hadley Road.”
The class ring came the same week. Westfield High School, 1974. R.D.
“I don’t know who R.D. is yet,” Alan said. “There are three people with those initials in the 1974 yearbook. Robert Dunleavy. Rachel DiMarco. Ronald Dale. I’m still working on it.”
And the little silver bracelet. LILY. Love, Mommy & Daddy. He’d found it in the fifth week. In the shallow water, near the swim ropes.
“That one’s the hardest,” he said. “There’s no last name. No date. Just Lily. There must be a thousand Lilys.” He looked at the tiny bracelet. “But she must’ve been really little. Maybe four or five. And her mom and dad must have bought it for her. And she lost it in the lake. And I bet she cried. I bet she cried so hard.”
He didn’t say anything else for a moment.
“I keep them all in the backpack,” he said. “Because they’re not mine. They’re borrowed. And I was scared if I left them in my room, something would happen to them. Or I’d lose them again. And then nobody would ever bring them home.” He looked up at me. “That’s why I take it everywhere. That’s why I couldn’t leave it in the locker room. I’m sorry I scared you, Grandma. I’m sorry I lied about the books.”
I couldn’t say anything. I pulled him up off the floor and into my lap, even though he’s too big for it now, all elbows and knees. He let me. He put his head on my shoulder like he did when he was five.
“You thought I was stealing,” he said quietly. Into my shoulder. Not a question.
I could have lied. I didn’t.
“For about five minutes,” I said. “I’m so sorry, Alan. I was so scared. I didn’t understand.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “It looked really bad.”
“It’s not okay. I should have trusted you. You asked me to trust you. And I didn’t.”
He pulled back and looked at me. His face was wet.
“You’re the only person who ever stayed, Grandma,” he said. “You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to stay.”
Then I looked at the sixth pouch.
MOM.
“Alan,” I said gently. “What’s in this one?”
He went very still.
“You can open it,” he said. “But it’s not done. It’s not ready. I don’t know what to do with it.”
I untied the string. I tipped it into my palm.
It was a locket.
A small gold heart on a thin gold chain. The chain was broken. One link was snapped. The heart was dented on one side, and the gold was scratched and dull.
I knew it immediately.
I gave it to Melissa on her twenty-first birthday. Before Alan was born. It had been my mother’s. Inside, there used to be a tiny photo of my mother and father on their wedding day.
When Alan was born, Melissa took out my parents’ photo. And she put in a picture of Alan. A tiny one. Cut out from his first newborn photo at the hospital. His little red face. His squinting eyes.
She wore it every day for a while. When he was a baby.
I hadn’t seen it in years. I didn’t even remember when she stopped wearing it.
“Where did you find this?” I whispered.
Alan didn’t answer right away.
“Not at the lake,” he said finally. “At the park. Riverside Park. By the creek. In the gravel by the parking lot.”
I stared at him.
“The night Mom left,” he said. “When she drove away. In the rain. I didn’t go back to bed right away. After you tucked me in. I got up and went to the front window. I wanted to watch her go.”
His voice was very quiet.
“She didn’t go to the highway right away. She drove down to Riverside Park. At the end of our street. I could see her car lights from the window. She parked by the creek. And she sat there for a long time. With her lights on. In the rain.”
I had never known that. Not in eight years.
“Then she rolled down her window,” Alan said. “And she threw something. Out the window. Toward the creek. I saw it go. It caught the light from the street lamp. It was shiny.” He swallowed. “Then she drove away.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“I didn’t know what it was,” he said. “For a long time. I thought about it sometimes. What she threw. I thought maybe it was her keys to our house. So she couldn’t come back.” He looked down at the locket. “Then, two weeks ago, after I found your ring, I thought, maybe I can find it. I went to the park after school. I swept the gravel by the creek where her car was parked. For four days. And on the fifth day, the detector beeped. Right at the edge of the creek. Under some rocks.”
He reached over and gently opened the dented gold heart with his thumbnail. It stuck a little. Then it popped open.
Inside, behind a tiny cloudy piece of plastic, there was a photograph.
A baby. A newborn. Red-faced and squinting. Wrapped in a hospital blanket with blue and pink stripes.
Alan.
“It’s me,” he said. “In there. It’s me.”
He looked up at me.
“She threw me out the window, Grandma,” he said. Very quietly. Not angry. Just sad. “The night she left. She threw me in the creek.”
I held my grandson in the kitchen chair until the school bus went by. And then until the next one went by. And then for a long time after that.
I called Ms. Abernathy. I told her Alan wouldn’t be at school that day. I told her I’d come in tomorrow and explain.
“Is he okay?” she asked.
I looked at Alan, sitting at the kitchen table with the six pouches lined up in front of him. ELLIE. JAMES. R.D. LILY. GRANDMA. MOM.
“He’s the best boy I’ve ever known,” I said. “I’ll tell you everything tomorrow.”
That afternoon, we sat on the back porch together. He held the locket. I held Frank’s ring. We didn’t say much.
“Why did you want to find it?” I asked finally. “The locket. After what she did. Why did you go looking?”
He thought about it for a long time.
“Because it’s a lost thing,” he said. “Mr. Pruitt said every lost thing belongs to somebody who misses it.”
“Do you think she misses it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe not. Maybe she was glad it was gone.” He turned the locket over in his hand. “But maybe she does. Maybe she’s sitting somewhere in Arizona sometimes, and she remembers she threw it in the creek, and she feels bad. And she wishes she could get it back.”
He looked at me.
“I don’t want to keep it,” he said. “It’s not mine. It’s hers. Even if she threw it away. Mr. Pruitt said you always try to bring it home. Even if you don’t know if they want it.”
“And if she doesn’t want it?”
He shrugged.
“Then at least I’ll know I tried,” he said. “At least I won’t be the one who threw it away.”
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