“We could take a break,” Jared suggested, looking at me.
“I’m all right. I’ve worked through all this with my therapist and drank through it many times over.”
The new round came with a fresh bowl of walnuts. Jared started to work on those nuts, and I joined the cracking action as well. We ate the nuts in silence like two buddies who didn’t need to fill pauses with unnecessary chat. After I’d finished a couple, I felt I was ready to continue.
“Well, when I went upstairs looking for him, I couldn’t find him in all the usual spots. And just when I thought that, perhaps, he had finally found a new one, I saw him from the window running through the garden. I figured he’d changed his mind and didn’t want to play anymore, so I went to my room.”
“You saw him running away?”
“Well, I was on the third floor and was considering checking the attic, which Charlie was a bit afraid of, when I saw him running fast towards the main gates. I screamed, ‘That’s not fair!’ or something to that effect, thinking it was odd for him to break our rule about hiding only in the house.”
Jared stopped eating the nuts and gazed at me.
“When exactly was that?”
“Thirteenth of July.”
There was a moment of silence. “Was that the last time you saw him?”
“Yes, it was.”
“When did you realize that he was missing?”
“It was much later in the evening. I felt strange that he hadn’t shown up for dinner, which we usually had by ourselves when our parents were preoccupied with their guests. I asked the staff. No one had seen him. Then I thought perhaps he’d gone to see our parents. It was a bit unusual but at that point I was running out of options.”
If only I had started looking earlier instead of sitting in my room, checking out my secret stash of adult magazines.
“I remember the summer parties your parents organized,” Jared said. “They were amazing. So many people in nice outfits walking around the park, carrying tall champagne glasses, and chatting with each other.”
“Some of those events were nice, I suppose,” I said, remembering myself being bored at them.
“But you couldn’t find Charlie there.”
“Right,” I said and took a sip from my glass. “It was getting dark, and we started to get really nervous. Everyone, even some of the guests if I remember correctly, was out looking for him. I told everyone where I’d seen him running to and we all went to comb the park. My parents called the police and then the whole thing became this massive search operation that lasted for a month and then some.”