Rafe had stumbled to the viewing, cut off a lock of Lyle’s blonde hair right in front of his pissed-off family, stumbled to the funeral, and then slept stretched out on the freshly filled grave. It hadn’t made sense. He wouldn’t accept it. He wouldn’t go home.
Rafe took out his wallet and unfolded the train schedule from the billfold. He had a little time. He was always careful not to miss the last train. He looked at the small onyx and silver ring on his pinkie. It held a secret compartment inside, so well hidden that you could barely see the hinge. When Lyle had given it to him, Rafe’s fingers had been so slender that it had fit on his ring finger as easily as the curl of Lyle’s hair fit inside of it.
As Rafe rose to kiss his mother and warn his father that he would have to be leaving, Mary thrust open the screen door so hard it banged against the plastic trashcan behind it.
“Where’s Victor? Is he inside with you? He’s supposed to be in bed.”
Rafe shook his head. His mother immediately put down the plate she was drying and walked through the house, still holding the dishrag, calling Victor’s name. Mary showed them the empty bed.
Mary stared at Rafe as though he hid her son from her. “He’s not here. He’s gone.”
“Maybe he snuck out to see some friends,” Rafe said, but it didn’t seem right. Not for a ten year-old.
“Marco couldn’t have come here without us seeing him,” Rafe’s father protested.
“He’s gone,” Mary repeated, as though that explained everything. She slumped down in one of the kitchen chairs and covered her face with her hands. “You don’t know what he might do to that kid. Madre de Dios.”
Rafe’s mother came back in the room and punched numbers into the phone. There was no answer at Marco’s apartment. The cousins came in from the back yard. They had mixed opinions on what to do. Some had kids of their own and thought that Mary didn’t have the right to keep Victor away from his father. Soon everyone in the kitchen was shouting. Rafe got up and went to the window, looking out into the dark backyard. Kids made up their own games and wound up straying farther than they meant to.
“Victor!” he called, walking across the lawn. “Victor!”
But he wasn’t there, and when Rafe walked out to the street, he could not find the boy along the hot asphalt length. Although it was night, the sky was bright with a full moon and clouds enough to reflect the city lights.
A car slowed as it came down the street. It sped away once it was past the house and Rafe let out the breath he didn’t even realize that he had held. He had never considered his brother-in-law crazy, just bored and maybe a little resentful that he had a wife and a kid. But then, Lyle’s grandfather had seemed normal too.
Rafe thought about the train schedule in his pocket and the unfinished sketches on his desk. The last train would be along soon and if he wasn’t there to meet it, he would have to spend the night with his memories. There was nothing he could do here. In the city, he could call around and find her the number of a good lawyer—a lawyer that Marco couldn’t afford. That was the best thing, he thought. He headed back to the house, his shoes clicking like beetles on the pavement.
His oldest cousin had come out to talk to him in the graveyard the night after Lyle’s funeral. It had clearly creeped Teo to find his little cousin sleeping in the cemetery.
“He’s gone.” Teo had squatted down in his blue policeman uniform. He sounded a little impatient and very awkward.
“The faeries took him,” Rafe had said. “They stole him away to Faeryland and left something else in his place.”
“Then he’s still not in this graveyard.” Teo had pulled on Rafe’s arm and Rafe had finally stood.
“If I hadn’t touched him,” Rafe had said, so softly that maybe Teo didn’t hear.
It didn’t matter. Even if Teo had heard, he probably would have pretended he hadn’t.
This time when Rafe walked out of the house, he heard the distant fireworks and twirled his father’s keys around his first finger. He hadn’t taken the truck without permission in years.
The stick and clutch were hard to time and the engine grunted and groaned, but when he made it to the highway, he flicked on the radio and stayed in fifth gear the whole way to Cherry Hill. Marco’s house was easy to find. The lights were on in every room and the blue flicker of the television lit up the front steps.
Rafe parked around a corner and walked up to the window of the guest bedroom. When he was thirteen, he had snuck into Lyle’s house lots of times. Lyle had slept on a pull-out mattress in the living room because his sisters shared the second bedroom. The trick involved waiting until the television was off and everyone else had gone to bed. Rafe excelled at waiting.
When the house finally went silent and dark, Rafe pushed the window. It was unlocked. He slid it up as far as he could and pulled himself inside.
Victor turned over sleepily and opened his eyes. They went wide.
Rafe froze and waited for him to scream, but his nephew didn’t move.
“It’s your uncle,” Rafe said softly. “From the Lion King. From New York.” He sat down on the carpet. Someone had once told him that being lower was less threatening.
Victor didn’t speak.
“Your mom sent me to pick you up.”
The mention of his mother seemed to give him the courage to say: “Why didn’t you come to the door?”
“Your dad would kick my ass,” Rafe said. “I’m not crazy.”
Victor half-smiled.
“I could drive you back,” Rafe said. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and put it on the comforter by Victor. “You can call your mom and she’ll tell you I’m okay. Not a stranger.”
The boy climbed out of bed and Rafe stuffed it with pillows that formed a small boy-shape under the blankets.
“What are you doing?” the boy asked as he punched the numbers into the tiny phone.
“I’m making a pretend you that can stay here and keep on sleeping.” The words echoed for a long moment before Rafe remembered that he and Victor had to get moving.
On the drive back, Rafe told Victor a story that his mother had told him and Mary when they were little, about a king who fed a louse so well on royal blood that it swelled up so large that it no longer fit in the palace. The king had the louse slaughtered and its hide tanned to make a coat for his daughter, the princess, and told all her suitors that they had to guess what kind of skin she wore before their proposal could be accepted.
Victor liked the part of the story where Rafe pretended to hop like a flea and bite his nephew. Rafe liked all fairy tales with tailors in them.
“Come inside,” his mother said. “You should have told us you were going to take the car. I needed to go to the store and get some—”
She stopped, seeing Victor behind Rafael.
Rafe’s father stood up from the couch as they came in. Rafe tossed the keys and his father caught them.
“Tough guy.” His father grinned. “I hope you hit him.”
“Are you kidding? And hurt this delicate hand?” Rafe asked, holding it up as for inspection.
He was surprised by his father’s laugh.
For the first time in almost fifteen years, Rafe spent the night. Stretching out on the lumpy couch, he turned the onyx ring again and again on his finger.
Then, for the first time in more than ten years, he thumbed open the hidden compartment, ready to see Lyle’s golden hair. Crumbled leaves fell onto his chest instead.
Leaves. Not hair. Hair lasted; it should be there. Victorian mourning ornaments braided with the hair of the long-dead survived decades. Rafe had seen such a brooch on the scarf of a well-known playwright. The hair was dulled by time, perhaps, but it had hardly turned to leaves.
He thought of the lump of bedclothes that had looked like Victor at first glance. A “pretend me,” Victor had said. But Lyle’s corpse wasn’t pretend. He had seen it. He had cut off a lock of its hair.
Rafe ran his fingers through the crushed leaves on his chest.
Hope swelled inside of him, despite the senselessness of it. He didn’t like to think about Faeryland lurking just over a hill or beneath a shallow river, as distant as a memory. But if he could believe that he could pass unscathed from the world of the city into the world of the suburban ghetto and back again, then couldn’t he go further? Why couldn’t he cross into the world of shining people with faces like stars that were the root of all his costumes?
Marco had stolen Victor; but Rafe had stolen Victor back. Until that moment, Rafe hadn’t considered he could steal Lyle back from Faeryland.
Rafe kicked off the afghan.
At the entrance to the woods, Rafe stopped and lit a cigarette. His feet knew the way to the river by heart.
The mattress was filthier than he remembered, smeared with dirt and damp with dew. He sat, unthinking, and whispered Lyle’s name. The forest was quiet and the thought of faeries seemed a little silly. Still, he felt close to Lyle here.
“I went to New York, just like we planned,” Rafe said, his hand stroking over the blades of grass as though they were hairs on a pelt. “I got a job in a theatrical rental place, full of these antiqued candelabras and musty old velvet curtains. Now I make stage clothes. I don’t ever have to come back here again.”