The Real Michael Swann Read online

  ALSO BY BRYAN REARDON

  Finding Jake

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Bryan Reardon

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  DUTTON and the D colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Reardon, Bryan, author.

  Title: The real Michael Swann / Bryan Reardon.

  Description: First edition. | New York, New York : Dutton, [2018]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017023211| ISBN 9781524742324 (hardcover) | ISBN

  9781524742331 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PS3618.E22535 T47 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017023211

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Also by Bryan Reardon

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introductions

  PART ONEChapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  An Introduction

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  The First Time

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Freedom

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Engaged

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Picket Fence

  Chapter 38

  Not Your Father’s Company

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  PART TWOBeing Home

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Striking the Fuse

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  The Night Before

  Chapter 12

  There Is a Price

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Not as It Appears

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  PART THREEChapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  The Real Michael Swann

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  EPILOGUEChapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To my wife, Michelle, who after twenty years deserves far more than this dedication.

  INTRODUCTIONS

  Today’s the day. Therapy, which means it is a Tuesday, or a Thursday. I close my eyes, trying to figure out which one. The emptiness frustrates me. Out of an old habit now, I touch my left temple. There is no physical reminder of what happened. Only memories; some mine, some not.

  The therapist walks in right on time. Dressed, as she always is, in a long colorful dress and warm-looking jacket, she leaves no doubt as to her profession, not in here at least. Her name is Marci Simmons. And like I said, today is the day.

  She sits across the table from me. A video screen is poised between us, ready to begin. She looks me in the eyes, which is something that only happens on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

  “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

  I nod, so she hits play.

  The video is grainy, painted in the shades of a surveillance camera—gray-green. The first shot shows the back of someone’s head as he pushes through a mass of people until he reaches the down escalator. He carries a common-looking briefcase in his left hand. Someone in a dark uniform puts a hand up, but the other man pushes past and bolts down and out of the shot.

  Next, what appears to be the same man, still carrying the case, sprints along the platform of a subway station. After that, a series of short clips show him running through the darkness of a tunnel. At one point, Marci Simmons pauses the video.

  “This is it,” she says.

  I nod again, so she continues. The next shot is hard to understand. The man runs. The camera shakes. Something comes crashing down from the ceiling of the tunnel, striking the man, knocking him off his feet. Suddenly, a wall of smoke or dust, strangely alien in the greenish tint of the surveillance camera, swallows everything.

  “That’s me?” I ask.

  This time, she nods. “Do you remember?”

  I can only laugh at that.

  * * *

  —

  This isn’t really my story. It’s hers, though I have no idea where she is. As the long days turn to longer nights, when I close my eyes I still see her face, the look in her eye, even. It’s all I have. That, and this story of hers.

  I imagine that if anyone is to read this, they would wonder how I can know everything that happened. Well, the truth is that this story doesn’t come from the words of others. Words are undependable, memories even
worse. Instead, her tale comes from my soul, from our souls. That is why I can assure you that it is nothing but real.

  On a Friday in August, a bomb was detonated under New York City. Hundreds were killed and thousands injured. It happened at a time when our country already teetered on the edge. It touched all of our lives, changing everything, changing the world. It confounded our realities, challenging every basic principle of an aging society. It caused us all to suspect those around us. Who are our friends; who are our enemies? It caused us to question our neighbors, even our families. Even ourselves. You may ask, who am I to tell this story? To that, this is my answer.

  PART

  ONE

  1

  I can see her every day. I close my eyes and she appears out of the darkness, a brightness that I simply don’t deserve. I can still picture her on that day. She wore a white tank top and capri pants, although it took me months to remember that is what they are called. She stood in the light, its beams touching the soft skin of her cheeks and the heart-stopping strength in her eyes. Her dark hair was pulled back, highlighting the lines of her face and classically long neck. She looked like a runner and a leader, a mother and a timeless beauty, at least to me. And I saw the ring on her finger, silver and simple. Her name was Julia. Julia Swann.

  On the day it happened, she sat on her back porch with two neighbors, Evelyn and Tara. Their kids played out in the yard with large and expensive water guns. Their excited screams echoed throughout the tight-knit, established neighborhood nestled in the countryside outside Philadelphia.

  “Can you believe the riots last night?” Julia asked.

  “Crazy, right? I don’t get it.”

  “Me, either,” Evelyn said. “These protests are sort of like the wrestling my brother used to watch when he was a kid.”

  Julia laughed. “Yeah, but that was fake. This is real.”

  “I think they should just arrest them all,” Tara said, her tone sharper than the others’. “They’re full of it. Screaming about promises and that damn wall! No one even seems to care that so many people are losing their jobs.”

  Evelyn and Julia didn’t say anything for a moment. They knew full well how charged this topic could be, especially with Tara. Yet Julia also knew how worried her friend was. And she wanted to give her a chance to let it out. Maybe it would help.

  “Over a thousand layoffs?” she asked, her brow rising and her glass of chardonnay tipping in her right hand. Tara nodded. Her eyes reddened as she looked away. Most of the neighborhood knew that she and her family probably would have to move if her husband couldn’t find a new job.

  “It’s just so messed up,” Tara said. “I mean, I thought he’d work there for his entire career. That’s what my dad did.”

  “Everything’s so different now,” the third mother, Evelyn Chase, added. She had short dark hair and wore coordinating Athleta running clothes.

  Julia leaned back and watched the children. Her boys, Evan, 12, and Thomas, 8, were close friends with Evelyn’s oldest, Brady. At that moment, they stood with their heads close together, like they were planning the perfect coordinated attack on the other children.

  “Is it definite?” Julia asked.

  “I think so, but they haven’t announced who’s getting cut. I guess there was a big meeting today, but I haven’t heard anything yet.”

  “Can he find something local?”

  Tara shook her head and laughed. “I doubt it. He’s a plant geneticist. The jobs, if there are any, are going to be in the Midwest.” She laughed again, but this time a tear ran down her cheek. “Can you just picture it? Me in Iowa?”

  “It’s really nice out there,” Evelyn said. “That’s what I hear. Frannie Goode moved there a few years ago and loves it.”

  “Really?” Tara asked.

  “Yeah,” Evelyn said. “You’ll be okay. It’ll be hard at first, but any change is. And you’ll see, the kids will be great. I mean, look at them. They get along with everyone. And with their sports, it’ll be great.”

  “What if they don’t make a team?”

  Julia shook her head. “Yeah, right.”

  The three of them stopped talking for a second. They sipped their wine with a practiced synchrony. The kids continued to laugh and call out as a neighbor drove by, honking her horn in greeting. The three smiled and waved.

  “She just started working at the library,” Julia mentioned, absently.

  “Karen?”

  “Yup.”

  “At the school?”

  “No, in the borough.”

  “Really?”

  Julia nodded.

  “That’s great,” Evelyn said.

  Julia’s phone vibrated. It sat on the arm of the Adirondack chair she and Michael bought when they went to the beach in June. She glanced at the screen and saw the call came from her husband.

  “I have to take this.”

  “No problem,” Evelyn said.

  Julia shot a quick glance at Tara, finding her watching the kids. It looked like her friend might cry at any moment. As she rose from the chair, phone in one hand and wine on the armrest, she touched Tara’s shoulder. Their eyes met and Julia smiled. The movement of her mouth was subtle and kind. Tara’s eyes lowered, and she placed a hand softly atop Julia’s, for just a second. As Julia walked back toward the house, the pit of her stomach lightly rolled.

  “Hi,” she answered the call.

  “Hey,” her husband, Michael, said.

  She heard thick noise in the background. “Where are you? It sounds like a party.”

  “At Penn Station. Just walking down the steps.”

  She took a breath. “How’d it go?”

  “It went great,” he said. She heard the tone he used. It had recently become more recognizable in the way it sounded, as if his words were meant more to convince himself than anything else. “I think it did. The questions were pretty standard. I think I did really well answering them. The HR rep took me to lunch. You would love her. She’s got two kids just a little younger than ours.”

  Julia touched her belly and looked out the window. “Did you like the offices?”

  “Definitely.”

  “The people?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “Pretty much?” she asked.

  “I mean, it was—”

  “Huh.”

  The world outside took on focus when one of the boys screamed. She saw her younger son, Thomas, holding his forehead. His shaggy blond bangs nearly swallowed his thin fingers. But she saw his eyes wide—with pain or anger, she couldn’t tell.

  “Gotta go,” she said.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, Tara and Evelyn are here. I think Thomas hit his head or something.”

  “Bad?”

  She laughed. “Probably not.”

  “How’s Tara doing?” he asked.

  She sighed. “Doesn’t look good. She’s pretty sure they’ll have to move.”

  “That sucks,” Michael said.

  No one said anything for a moment.

  “Yeah.”

  Thomas pushed open the door into the kitchen. His cry echoed through the phone connection.

  “Whoa,” Michael said. “Take care of him. I should be home in about three hours, assuming the train’s on time.”

  “Love you,” she said.

  “Love you, too.”

  Julia hung up just as Evan came through the back door and reached Thomas. He bent and spoke softly to his little brother, a hand on the smaller boy’s shoulder. In moments like that, Julia noticed so much of his father in Evan, with his red-blond hair and blue eyes. He was a baseball player, like his dad. In the moment, her son’s maturity caught her off guard.

  “They’re growing up so fast,” she whispered.

  With a smile, Evan returned to th
e kids outside and Thomas came to Julia. He was no longer crying, but she took him in her arms and kissed the top of his head. The coarse hair there smelled of the sun, and a surprising heat touched her lips.

  “What happened?” she whispered, holding him tightly.

  His words stuttered like a chronic cough. “Brady hit me in the head.”

  “On purpose?” she asked.

  “Probably.”

  Julia turned her head, resting her cheek on the warmth of her son’s head and fighting back the urge to laugh. A wide smile crossed her face and she rubbed his back.

  “Guess what I bought yesterday?”

  His sobbing stopped on a dime. “What?”

  “Those popsicles you like with the cream inside.”

  He pulled back and looked up at her. “Can I have one?”

  “Only if you bring some out for everyone.”

  His bare feet danced on their porcelain-tiled floor. “Okay.”

  “Is your head okay?”

  “Yeah!”

  The feeling Julia had in that moment was hard to describe. She had it often, but mostly at the oddest of times. Silently listening from the other room as her boys discussed something trivial with the absolute earnestness of the young. The way Evan’s brow furrowed when he worked on his math homework. Or when Thomas stomped around the house in his father’s size-thirteen shoes. In a way, that feeling, a flutter high in her midriff, might be called a physical manifestation of pure love. Yet it seemed at once more and less than that. It felt primal to her, utterly undeniable but far too fleeting. The rest of the day she never truly thought about it, yet its absence lurked, waiting for life to slow down just enough for it to flare up once again.

  Regardless, it felt simple and good. She tousled his hair and opened the freezer. She was about to hand the box to him, but she stopped. Feeling light for no particular reason, she dug through the popsicles until she found a red one, her favorite. She took that for herself before handing the box to Thomas.

  “Remember, share,” she said.

  “I will.”

  “And start with the adults.”

  Julia followed Thomas out. He scurried over to Evelyn and Tara and offered cream-filled popsicles with the utmost politeness. The two women thought to protest. With big smiles, they saw Julia, her lips already a deeper red and a childish sparkle in her eyes, standing behind her son. Giggling, Evelyn took a purple one, Tara a green. The three women shared popsicles and chardonnay as they watched their children play under the hot summer sun.