All This Life

“I have all the information, and we’ll be in touch,” the cop says. “We’ll also reach out to the FBI, talk about opening a missing person file with them.”

“He might come back here to find me,” says Paul.

The cop turns and walks to the building’s front door. “You’re right; we’ll be in touch.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s a lot,” says the cop. The door is open, and he’s marching through. “Normally, in these circumstances, the child hides in a familiar place. Go home and be thorough with your search. We’ll be in touch.”

The door slowly shuts and Paul is alone. He turns in another circle, screaming, “Jake! Jake!”

He texts his son again. This one says: Let me know that you’re okay, please.

He even calls him, though he knows there’s no chance that Jake will answer. “It’s me. Where did you go? I’m worried. Please. I’m at the therapist’s still. I’m waiting for you. I can pick you up wherever you are. I’m not mad. Only concerned. I want to help. Please let me help. I will meet you anywhere. Please call. Or text. I love you. We love you, your mom and me. We are here. Please call.”

OF COURSE, JAKE isn’t in a closet or hiding behind the water heater or buried in a pile of laundry, but Paul does his due diligence anyway, inspecting his condo from top to bottom, both floors, and once that turns up nothing, he knows his son hides in the computer.

Paul hasn’t gone to his ex’s — the place he used to live, where his alimony and child-support payments still fund the mortgage — but he’ll get there. He’s not dismissing the cop’s advice. It’s just that since Paul knows where his son spends the majority of his time, why not look there first?

Of course, that’s part of why he’s not champing at the bit to go to his ex’s, but the main deterrent is the barrenness. It’s one thing to be in his own empty apartment, because that’s how a newly divorced bachelor is supposed to live. There’s supposed to be a dearth of any intimacy. The walls should be stark white. The cheap carpet should have a constellation of pizza crumbs, so many of them that walking barefoot is like reading Braille with your feet. There aren’t any throw pillows on the couch. There isn’t a couch. The kitchen cupboards are packed with the slimmest essentials, olive oil and tinfoil. Paul hates all the vacant cupboards, but the idea of buying baking spices or casserole dishes seems devastating. The refrigerator is merely a brief cooling station for his pale ale, and there’s a whole shelf dedicated to half-finished burritos. There isn’t one vegetable on the premises.

Going over to his old house, to wander unaccompanied through all those memories, is too much. He’ll do it. Of course, he’ll do it. He’ll make it over there soon, for Jake’s sake.

Fact of the matter is that Paul doesn’t want to search inside the computer for him, either, but that somehow seems easier, and if that’s the wrong word here, it seems less bloated with the past, the prowling memories talking shit to him from inside the house’s walls. The failure of the marriage haunting, rattling chains, slamming doors. At least looking for Jake online didn’t have that ghastly baggage. Because he’d never done it before, and that now seems like another failure.

He had told his boy on his voicemail that Paul would meet him anywhere, and that claim will be challenged as Paul goes hunting for TheGreatJake. Paul has to let go of his disdain for social media. This is the only place he can find his son.

The site he hears Jake talk about the most is Twitter, and that’s where the manhunt will commence. Paul opens the page and makes an account, choosing the humdrum username Paul_Gamache.

And he’s in; he’s a part of this; he’s plugged in.

Of course, that doesn’t mean he knows what the hell he’s doing. Paul Googles various things on how to work the user interface, how to track down specific people, and it stuns him how easy it is to navigate, how effortless it is to find the single person you need to locate, and thirty seconds later he’s found TheGreatJake.

He clicks follow.

He follows him.

He is following his son.