August 2018—Atlanta, Georgia
“It’s Joshua.” Neilstopped playing with the old cell phone Alice had given him to take apart and pointed toward the TV screen. “He’s on the news again.”
She studied Neil’s face as he stared with a slightly open mouth at the flat-screen mounted on the wall. “He looks sad,” Neil said, and there was worry making his already gruff little voice sound even gruffer. “I don’t want him to be sad.”
Alice knew who was on the screen without looking. Joshua Stouder, a man close to her age, from Scottsville, Kentucky. Neil had only been five or so the first time they saw Joshua Stouder on the national news, discussing some kind of medical research his foundation was funding. He claimed it had the potential to change traumatic-injury treatments forever. It involved the use of tiny robots called nanites. Alice didn’t really understand the details, or care to for that matter, but little Neil had stood up, abandoning his blocks. He’d pointed at the screen on the wall and said, “That’sJoshua,” in a voice containing more awe than she’d ever heard him display. He’d always been a child who seemed to find everyday miracles not only to be old hat, but really kind of annoying.
At the time, she’d been startled and even found it amusing. Neil had talked of someone named Joshua for a long time. In fact, one of the first things he’d ever informed her of, when he was only about thirteen months old, was, “I want Joshua.” She’d asked him who Joshua was, and he’d stared at her like she was stupid and shrugged his tiny shoulders in a gesture that was spookily old on a baby.
As he’d continued to tell her about Joshua, usually in off-hand comments, and sometimes with a mournful sigh and an announcement that hemissedJoshua, she’d become worried that this imaginary friend of his might not be so imaginary. But she hadn’t been able to fathom where Neil might be seeing a man of that description. She was home with him during the day and kept a close eye on him when they went out. Still, she’d had a neighbor come over and add locks to Neil’s bedroom windows, just in case. Her paranoia had grown that out of control. What if someone was messing with her son? She’d worried about that endlessly, even though Neil had just glared at her in annoyance when she asked him if Joshua ever visited him when she wasn’t in the room, or came in through his windows at night.
But when she’d looked toward the screen that day when Neil was five, she’d been shocked to see a man named Joshua Stouder who did look remarkably like the person Neil had told her about. A quick internet search brought up even more evidence that was too accurate to be a simple coincidence. Not to mention, the scariest thing of all: Joshua Stouder had been involved with a nanite researcher at Vanderbilt University, a man named Neil Russell. A man who, photographs revealed, more than a little resembled her own little Neil. It was spooky, and she’d barely slept that night, she was so freaked out.
The next day, she’d asked her friend Marie, a fellow military wife, “Do you believe in reincarnation?”
Marie had laughed and said, “Yeah, and tarot cards, and astrology. Oh, and also I can tell the future by the marks on my toilet paper after I wipe my butt.”
Alice had never mentioned reincarnation to anyone after that. Still, the thought lingered. Especially because it unnerved Alice how Neil talked about Joshua as though he knew him. And some of the other things he said—things about medicine, Boston, and nanites—couldn’t be explained, but it was all information that research told her Dr. Neil Russell would have known a lot about.
Now, Alice watched Joshua on the screen again. This was the fourth time in as many days he’d been shown on the news. He wasn’t talking, though, just sitting in a courtroom looking alternately sad and angry. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his gaze rarely left the back of the defendant’s head. One Beau Allen of Bowling Green, Kentucky, who was on trial for sabotaging a Stouder Lumber truck, causing a highway accident that had killed one woman and left her husband paralyzed.
The reporters stated that Mr. Joshua Stouder was in attendance in hopes of convincing the judge to refuse to accept the defendant’s plea bargain. A dark-eyed reporter with glasses said, “Mr. Joshua Stouder is on record saying that Mr. Allen is a dangerous, unstable man who was let go from Stouder Lumber a month before the truck was sabotaged, allowing the logs to roll free onto the road. He does not believe that Mr. Allen is reformed and, should he be released, would continue to be a risk to society.”
Alice hoped that Joshua’s testimony would take place in the judge’s quarters, or else Neil would insist that they save it to the computer so that he could watch it over and over. She had practically memorized the interview Joshua had given to a show calledLouisville Nowabout the Neil Russell Foundation and its research into nanites. It was a simple little piece, but Neil had watched it at least a hundred times, and Alice had nearly lost her mind.
Neil had discovered the interview through some search protocols he’d installed on the computer to notify him when Joshua Stouder appeared in print, on film, or anywhere online. Jim would have killed her for letting Neil use the computer at all, but she couldn’t stop Neil from being who he was, and so she just tried to minimize the damage. Neil was so dang smart, though, that ‘the damage’ was surprisingly nonexistent.
Alice tried to comply with most of Jim’s wishes with regard to Neil. She felt like she owed him that much for stepping in after Marshall’s death, providing a home and income for her, and being a father for Marshall’s son. And Jim clearly felt that shedidowe him given how often he’d brought all that up in their arguments over the last six years.
He’d accused her of pretty awful things and a lot of ulterior motives whenever he’d been drinking. But the truth was she’d married him in desperation, and he’d married her out of some misplaced desire to be the hero. He hadn’t been able to save Marshall from the IED, but he’d saved Marshall’s girlfriend and baby from poverty. His motivations had been good. His execution less so. And the reality was they weren’t a good fit as a family.
She’d told Jim that once when Neil had been three years old, and it hadn’t been a pretty scene. She was still humiliated to think that the neighbors had probably overheard the way he yelled at her, the things he’d said.
Especially about Neil.
Neil had been a strange child from the beginning. He was never chubby or darling, but always kind of scrawny and somehow indignant abouteverything, as though he was furious that he’d even been born into the world. Sometimes Alice felt guilty about that, even though she didn’t know why. It wasn’t like she’d give him up for anything, but it’d always seemed so clear to her that he had somewhere else he’d rather be. Though, given that he was a kid, Alice had no idea where that was.
Then he’d been…well, precocious wasn’t even the word for it. He’d spoken his first sentence at barely one year, and he never went back after that, sounding like a strange, abrasive little professor trapped inside the body of a tiny child. It unnerved most people and infuriated Jim. “Tell that kid to shut the hell up!” he’d told her one night. “I don’t need a fucking brat lecturing me.”
She hadn’t known what to do. There was no way she could ever ask Neil to be anything other than what he was, but Jim had hated being humiliated by a child. And of course, that was the way he saw it, which was just ridiculous, but there it was. She was relieved when Jim was deployed again and dreaded each of his returns.
She still felt the cold hand of panic grip her whenever she remembered Jim’s last two-week visit home. He’d punched a hole in the wall and grabbed her arm a lot harder than she wanted to admit, all because six-year-old Neil had taken apart the new touchscreen mobile device that Jim’s mother had bought them for Christmas. Neil had managed to pry it open and was investigating the circuits when Jim walked in and found him.
“Do you have any idea how much this cost?” he’d yelled.
Neil had stared up at him, his tiny face unwavering. “I can fix it.” He’d sounded so certain, calm, yet totally irritated with Jim.
“Alice!” Jim had screamed. “Look at what your son’s done!”
Alice had tried to placate him, saying, “Just give it to him, Jim. He can put it back together.”
“Put it back together? He’s ruined it.”
Then Jim had grabbed Alice’s arm and jerked her. She’d seen Neil stand up out of the corner of her eye, and she’d shaken her head at him. He’d stared at her with unblinking, intense eyes and looked like he might step forward at any moment. That was the last thing she wanted.
“Fuck!” Jim had yelled, and punched the wall, leaving a hole behind. He’d stomped out of the house, taking the touchscreen mobile with him.
“Idiot,” Neil had assessed in his little gruff voice. “I was going to fix it.”
