The Bandage on the Other Side

406 stayed lit behind my eyes, bright as a sign nobody else could see. Most kids my age probably didn’t know Montana’s area code. I did. In our house, Dad’s leaving had become a subject we studied without ever saying its name.

He had driven away in his silver car two years before, and the rooms seemed to shrink after that. Mom replaced the space he left with rules. Some were ordinary, like keeping food off the sofa. Others had no words at all, which made them harder to break.

The biggest one was about Montana. Mom acted as though the state had vanished from every map. If Dad came up, even by accident, her face went still and cold. The chill could hang around for days.

So if Aaron had been messaging a number from Montana, he had stepped right across the boundary Mom had drawn. I needed to know why.

I slid down from the armchair. The floorboards cooled my sock soles. Mom had gone shopping, and Aaron was somewhere upstairs behind his bedroom door. I guessed I had a little time before either of them came near me.

Instead of taking the stairs, I went through the kitchen to the mudroom. Aaron had brought home a canvas bag that morning, but his enormous black baseball case remained on the tiled floor. He had left it there as if it were nothing.

That trunk should have been crowded with the remains of a long summer in Florida: gloves, cleats, uniforms, the ordinary mess of daily practices. I crouched beside it and wrapped my hand around the brass zipper.

The zipper snagged. When it finally moved, it rasped loudly enough to make me freeze. I listened for footsteps overhead. Nothing stirred.

I lifted the canvas flap. The smell inside made me pause. It wasn’t the sour, damp odor I imagined would cling to gear used through a hot season. Instead, I caught dry dust, old nylon, and a trace of something like pine.

His batting helmet rested on top, almost spotless. A whole summer of games should have left marks in it, but I couldn’t find the usual scrapes or dark streaks. I pushed it aside and reached deeper.

The metal cleats were tucked below. Their spikes looked stiff and new. I turned them over, expecting the red dirt Aaron had supposedly played on to be wedged into their bottoms.

There was no red dirt. A few grains of light gray stone clung to the soles, fine as powder. It looked like the gravel spread on mountain roads when the weather turned icy.

My pulse thudded in my ears. I searched the trunk’s side compartments, moving my fingers through the pockets until they touched folded paper. I drew out a thick sheet, creased and slightly damp along its edges.

Under the mudroom’s bright ceiling light, I opened it carefully. The heading named a clinic in Bozeman: Bozeman Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center. My mouth went dry.

The paper gave Aaron’s name, then a date: August 14. Beneath that was the procedure—reconstruction of his left ACL and repair of his meniscus. The words were strange and medical, but I understood that his knee had been badly hurt.

August 14 had been a month earlier, during the weeks he was supposed to be at baseball camp in Florida. I read the date again, hoping it might change. It didn’t.

At the bottom, a line asked which adult would take responsibility for his recovery. Dad’s name wasn’t there. Eleanor Miller was written in Mom’s neat, slanting hand.

Tires crunched over the driveway gravel. Headlights swept briefly across the kitchen, and my stomach seemed to drop. Mom was home.

I folded the clinic paper and shoved it into my pocket. Then I closed the trunk, raced from the mudroom, and slid across the kitchen in my socks. I landed on the living-room sofa just as the front door opened.

“Ruby, could you give me a hand with these bags?” Mom called. Her voice sounded cheerful, but it didn’t reach her eyes. I got up and went to help, keeping the paper hidden against my leg.

At six, we sat down to dinner. It felt like watching a play from inside it: everyone had learned their parts, and I was the only one who knew something was wrong. Mom had set out the good china and linen napkins, the ones usually saved for holidays. A roast chicken, glazed carrots, and a heap of mashed potatoes filled the table.

Aaron sat opposite me in a clean gray shirt and loose flannel pants. His face looked washed-out beneath his tan, and shadows darkened the skin under his eyes. Mom cut into her chicken with careful, even strokes.

“Was the humidity hard to manage during your morning drills?” she asked. Aaron answered, “Not really. You get used to it.” His voice sounded empty. He kept his gaze on his plate, nudging a carrot around with his fork.

I sat there with the clinic paper pressing against me, proof that Aaron had surgery in Montana while everyone at the table acted as though he’d spent the summer in Florida.