Chapter 5 - THE GREEN BACKPACK
David did not speak.
Walter did.
“You need to explain that.”
Susan Keane looked immediately regretful.
“That came out wrong.”
David’s voice was quiet.
“Then make it come out right.”
She nodded.
Emily had returned to Aaron’s side.
Walter gestured toward the benches.
“Sit.”
Susan lowered herself onto the second bench.
Not the last one.
She clutched the folder.
“My mother cleaned apartments in David’s building.”
David remembered that.
“She helped my mother sometimes.”
“Yes.”
Susan looked at him.
“Your mother, Elaine, was sick longer than most people knew.”
David swallowed.
Cancer had been a word adults whispered as though volume affected reality.
“She didn’t want me taken into foster care.”
Susan nodded.
“That’s what my mother said.”
David looked at Walter.
Walter said nothing.
Susan continued.
“Elaine asked my mother to contact your aunt if something happened.”
“My aunt said nobody called.”
“My mother did.”
David frowned.
“When?”
“Two days after Elaine died.”
“Then why didn’t Margaret come?”
“She never received the message.”
“How do you know?”
Susan opened the folder.
Inside were photocopies of an old notebook.
Lorraine’s handwriting.
Phone numbers.
Dates.
Small expenses.
Aunt Margaret’s name appeared twice.
David stared.
“My mother called the number Elaine gave her. A man answered.”
“What man?”
“She didn’t know.”
Susan pointed to a notation.
MARGARET MOVED. DON’T CALL AGAIN.
David read it twice.
“My aunt never moved.”
“I know that now.”
Walter leaned forward.
“Who answered?”
“No idea.”
David felt old anger trying to return.
He stopped it.
Not yet.
Facts first.
“What happened after that?”
“My mother tried to keep an eye on you.”
David laughed once.
“By letting me sleep outside?”
Susan flinched.
“She failed you.”
Her directness stopped him.
“I won’t pretend otherwise.”
She looked at her hands.
“She was working two cleaning jobs. My father had left. I was sixteen and my brother was nine.”
Her eyes met David’s.
“She brought you food when she could.”
The sandwich.
The red coat.
“She told herself you were sleeping in the church shelter.”
“I wasn’t always.”
“I know.”
Susan’s voice softened.
“One night she went looking and you were gone.”
David looked toward the green duct tape in Walter’s locker.
“She found me again.”
“Yes.”
“At the terminal.”
Susan nodded.
“She had found Margaret’s address through an old Christmas card Elaine kept.”
“The envelope.”
“Yes.”
“She put it in your backpack.”
David remembered waking once in a library and thinking someone had touched his things.
He had assumed theft.
Maybe it had been Lorraine.
“Why didn’t she just wake me?”
Susan looked ashamed for a woman who had done nothing wrong herself.
“Because you had run from her twice.”
David frowned.
“I don’t remember.”
“She thought you believed she was going to call social services.”
“I probably did.”
“She was afraid if she approached you, you’d disappear again.”
Walter whispered, “So she followed him here.”
“Yes.”
Susan turned to Walter.
“She asked if you had seen him. You hadn’t yet.”
“And afterward?”
“She saw the bus pull out.”
David closed his eyes.
“She let me leave.”
“She saw the route sign.”
Columbus.
The city where Margaret lived.
“She realized you had found the envelope.”
David opened his eyes.
“Then why did Ruth write that Lorraine was the reason I disappeared?”
Susan shook her head.
“She didn’t.”
David held up the letter.
“It says—”
Susan read the final line.
Ask him about the woman in the red coat.
Then she understood.
“Oh.”
“What?”
“My mother wasn’t the reason you disappeared.”
Susan touched the folder.
“She believed she was the reason you stayed missing so long.”
David stared.
“Because of the phone call?”
“Yes.”
“She accepted the man’s word that Margaret moved. She stopped calling.”
Susan’s eyes filled.
“She carried that guilt until she died.”
Walter sat back.
“Ruth found her.”
“In 2002.”
“How?”
“Your wife put a notice in the neighborhood church bulletin asking about Elaine Bennett’s family.”
Walter looked stunned.
“She never told me.”
Susan smiled sadly.
“Apparently Ruth did a lot without telling you.”
Aaron almost smiled.
“That sounds like Mom.”
Susan handed David another photocopy.
Ruth Boone’s name appeared beside a date.
July 2002.
“She came to my mother’s apartment.”
“What did they talk about?”
“You.”
David’s throat tightened.
“Ruth told her you were doing well.”
Susan smiled.
“College. Freight business. Engaged.”
David looked down.
He had married his wife, Rachel, in 2003.
“Lorraine cried for an hour.”
Susan reached deeper into the folder.
“She gave Ruth something for you.”
A photograph.
David recognized his mother immediately.
Elaine Bennett stood outside their old apartment building.
Thirty-nine years old.
Thin.
Smiling.
David was beside her at twelve.
His green backpack hung from one shoulder.
Lorraine stood on the other side wearing the red coat.
David touched the image.
On the back was a message.
I’m sorry I stopped looking too soon.
He could not speak.
Walter looked away.
Aaron rubbed one hand over Emily’s hair.
Susan continued.
“Ruth promised she would get it to you.”
David looked up.
“She didn’t.”
“I suppose not.”
Walter stood.
He went back to the old locker.
“There may be more.”
They emptied the cardboard box onto the maintenance table.
Photographs.
Cards.
Receipts.
A funeral program for Ruth Boone.
A grocery list.
A child’s red mitten.
At the bottom was a thin cloth pouch.
Walter frowned.
“I’ve never seen that.”
Aaron picked it up.
Inside was a stack of folded bills.
Mostly fives and tens.
And a ledger.
On the first page:
LAST BENCH FUND.
Ruth’s handwriting.
David looked at Walter.
“You had a fund?”
Walter appeared genuinely surprised.
“No.”
Aaron opened the ledger.
Names.
Dates.
Amounts.
Ticket destinations.
At the bottom of each page, contributions appeared.
R.B. — $5.
W.B. — $10.
J.C. — $2.
M.K. — $8.
Sometimes strangers had contributed.
Terminal workers.
Drivers.
One line caught David’s eye.
1994.
D.B. — $18.
He frowned.
“That’s impossible.”
Walter leaned closer.
David pointed.
“I was fifteen.”
Aaron flipped pages.
Then found a note folded into the ledger.
Walter opened it.
His face changed.
“What?”
David asked.
Walter handed it over.
Ruth had written:
David mailed Walter eighteen dollars for Christmas.
Walter refused to keep it.
So I started this.
If one boy insists on paying us back, then the money will buy the next ticket.
David stared at the ledger.
The eighteen dollars had returned after all.
Not to Walter.
Forward.
He sat down.
For years he had imagined repayment as a circle.
One kindness.
One debt.
One return.
Ruth had turned it into a line.
Someone helped David.
David unknowingly helped someone else.
Then someone else.
And someone else.
Emily leaned over the ledger.
“Who’s Tasha?”
Walter looked.
“Page?”
“Six.”
Walter smiled.
“Girl headed to Dayton.”
“What happened to her?”
“No idea.”
Emily frowned.
“You didn’t check?”
Walter shook his head.
“Helping somebody doesn’t mean owning what happens next.”
David looked at him.
Another lesson.
Still arriving thirty-three years late.
Susan stood.
“I should go.”
David looked up.
“You came for the hearing.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She glanced toward the red notice.
“My mother volunteered here after Ruth found her.”
Walter blinked.
“What?”
“Three winters.”
Susan smiled.
“You worked days then.”
Walter shook his head in disbelief.
“She never told me who she was.”
“She asked Ruth not to.”
“Why?”
“She was ashamed.”
David looked at Susan.
“And you want to save the terminal because of her.”
“Partly.”
Susan hesitated.
“There’s a shelter coalition trying to lease part of the building.”
David’s attention sharpened.
“To do what?”
“Overnight warming space. Travel assistance. Family transportation.”
Walter looked at the folder.
“You have a proposal?”
“Yes.”
David immediately said, “I’ll fund it.”
Walter groaned.
Aaron laughed despite himself.
Susan blinked.
David caught himself.
“No.”
He exhaled.
“Sorry.”
Walter pointed at him.
“Learning.”
“Painfully.”
Susan smiled.
“The city rejected the proposal.”
“Why?”
“Because Bennett Transit Holdings already purchased the land.”
Everyone looked at David.
He reached for the red redevelopment notice.
The terminal.
The last bench.
The ledger.
The shelter proposal.
Everything had converged inside one building his company planned to destroy.
Then Aaron’s phone buzzed.
He checked the screen.
His expression changed.
“What?”
Walter asked.
Aaron looked at David.
“The public hearing isn’t next month.”
He turned the phone around.
A city notice filled the screen.
“It was moved.”
David read the date.
Tomorrow.
Six p.m.
Aaron continued.
“And according to this, demolition permits can be issued immediately afterward.”
Walter stared toward the old terminal walls.
Thirty-three years of tickets.
Ruth’s ledger.
The bench where David once slept.
May you like
One day.
That was all they had left.
