by R. J. Jacobs
Hearing that was a surprise. I remembered how seriously he took every part of the game. Paolo and I had laughed.
“But she’s basically a good mom when she’s here. I just stay ready all the time because she flakes out. We split the time with Olivia. My ex lives in a condo off Thirty-First Street, maybe two blocks from your office, I think.”
It was practically across the Alleyway.
“After we split, I went back out—toward where I grew up.” Cal motioned westward, saying the name of a neighboring county near my family’s cabin.
I could imagine him on a porch on summer mornings—warm, sunlit grass rolling in airbrushed waves around him.
“It’s a ways out there, isn’t it?”
“It suits me,” he answered simply. “And Olivia’s got the best of both worlds—there are ten acres and a stream behind my house; she runs around the woods on the weekends. And then she’s close to her friends when she’s in town with her mom. That’s a nice thing about Nashville,” Cal added. “Ten minutes outside of town you can still be out in the woods.”
When he said the country road he lived on, I realized our property was less than a mile away. “We have a place out there—my family,” I said. It was the first moment I thought Cal and I weren’t basically polar opposites of each other. “Hickory Road, halfway between Cedar and Poplar.”
“Oh, sure,” he remembered. “Out by where that big oak got struck by lightning last summer. Flames a hundred feet high.”
“That’s it, that’s the place. The driveway is a hundred feet past that point. That’s our cabin. I was there … with Paolo the night of the fire. We watched it burning from the window. He was the one who called the fire department.”
Hearing Paolo’s name made Cal’s head turn, the way a dog’s ears perk toward a distant sound. “I remember that night. Really? Your place?”
“Yeah.”
It did seem like a crazy coincidence. Then again, Nashville could feel like a tiny town the longer you lived there. Revisiting that night from six months earlier felt like hearing about someone else’s dream. I pictured the embers, the shotgun over the mantel, the fear in Paolo’s eyes. I’d had a sense then that anything could happen.
Cal seemed to be considering the memory, and the idea of my family’s land. Or maybe the mention of Paolo’s name had quieted him. Beside me in the car—reflective, frustrated, anxious in the tangerine streetlight—he looked like what he probably was: a man deep into his thirties, creases cut around his mouth, life’s losses haunting his eyes. He wasn’t sitting outside the medical center out of curiosity.
Then he said, “I can’t tell if you think he’s dead.”
“Do you?”
Outside, the wind blew, and the shadow of the branch above the car moved over the dashboard. Then it was still.
Cal looked me in the eyes and spoke quietly. “Yeah, I do.”
Inside, I felt something collapse, like a small paper bag being crumpled. I knew what Sandy thought had happened to Paolo, but Cal had the objectivity of having never met with her. Cal would not tell me something untrue, I realized then. I trusted him.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “It’s what I think. It’s why I’m here. I want to find out what happened to him.”
“No, no.” I started wiping my eyes. “Don’t apologize. When I’m in a different role, when I’m a psychologist, I tell people things they don’t want to hear because sometimes they need to be told.” I thought of Marty’s words to me, years earlier, urging me to be careful and kind in dismantling a person’s supports, even if they were false.
“And I’m sorry I ever blamed you at all,” he said.
I rested my hand on his shoulder as we watched in silence then as people passed under the frown-shaped entrance. I understood Cal’s wanting to remediate the helplessness of loss. Anger comes from feeling powerless.
“What’s he look like?” Cal asked, suddenly refocusing. “Matt?”
Just as he asked, a person emerged from the far end of the parking lot, their shape visible in flashes between the parked cars and hedges. The person I was about to describe—his hair, his slouch—strode quickly along the walkway.
I grabbed Cal’s arm. “That’s him!” I pointed. “There he is.”
The building’s upward lighting cast a shadow twice Matt’s size over the sharp lines of steel and glass.
Cal sat up, turned the key, shifted the Volvo into reverse and waited until a set of red brake lights appeared through an ashy puff of exhaust at the far end of the lot.
We followed him. Cal kept one car length between Matt’s and ours but never lost sight of the tail end of Matt’s American sedan, even as he turned into the parking lot of the supermarket where my mom shopped. Somewhere during that drive it had become nighttime—the late afternoon giving way to darkness. Lights atop towers washed out the parking lot in that not-quite-blue, not-quite-white unnatural color there’s no name for.
Cal seemed to know better than to ask what I was doing once we parked. I heaved closed the Volvo door, supposing he was going to wait, my cane and boot scraping along the flawless supermarket asphalt. Better I go alone, I thought, my eyes focused on the back of Matt—his gray hooded sweatshirt. Was it the same one he’d worn at the party? That seemed too coincidental to be possible, like a careless repetition in a stage production.
Maybe because I associated the store with my mother, or because he seemed to be wearing the same clothes I’d seen him in nearly a year before, we both seemed out of place. I stopped and peered inside his car, seeing nothing that looked like a computer bag. Was he carrying it with him? I supposed it was possible. Would I just grab it if he left it in a cart and run out of the store? Even I knew that was crazy, but I needed to look, anyway. I needed to watch his movements, to know what he was buying. I needed to observe this person who’d derailed my life and ended two others. Who’d killed my love.
Inside was ultra-bright. My eyes adjusted hazily; my hands turned the cold handle of a cart I grabbed as a prop. People passed as if on tracks—automatons.
I followed the back of Matt’s head, moving swiftly past orange and yellow balloons, among the impossible citrus pyramids, ignoring the sense that someone was watching me as I watched Matt, peering out from behind counters and cardboard displays.
You’re paranoid. Concentrate.
The even sobriety of Cal’s company from only a few minutes before was suddenly absent—as if I’d been tethered before and on my own I’d gone adrift. The proximity to Matt was an intoxicant, dizzying. What would I do if he turned and faced me?
I pictured the obviousness of my dawdling.
He’d moved when I looked up, half hidden by a display. I slipped into an aisle, picked up a box of something—cookies—and pretended to read it. People pushed past like the flow of water, but I could feel their curious glances. I was in someone’s way, maybe everyone’s way.
Matt moved to the next aisle, and I hurried in the direction he’d turned. Overhead lights reflected off everything blindingly, like lying in a dentist’s chair. I found the back of his head again as someone moved behind me, the way they had before. I moved, then they moved. It’s just your imagination. I wanted to look but my eyes were on Matt, who dropped something—pasta—into his cart, then a jar of olives.
I shuffled ahead, felt the movement behind me again. I saw only ordinary people. My eyes flew over the words on boxes, displays. My chest burned, but I wasn’t afraid; I was afraid he would get away. The plastic cart handle had warmed under my hands.
A shadow followed me, I was sure of it. Where was Matt? He’d turned the other way, back toward where he started. Over my shoulder, I watched him walk. Overhead, the store manager announced a special. Something on sale. Something new to try.
I got closer. When he moved away from his cart, I could see no computer bag lying there. No odd items, just things anyone would buy. Nothing different, unusual. I felt crazy. Someone ducked into an aisle. I turned and knocked into a teenag
e clerk, his expression cautious, apologetic, palms up, like he’d caused what he saw in my eyes.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “My fault.”
I circled back to the front of the store. Footsteps sounded like thunder inside my head. Thunder from a snowstorm. I’d watch him leave, then we’d follow. I’d be patient. I’d wait.
The shadow moved behind me.
When I looked back and tried to place it, it was gone.
My cart collided with Matt’s. His lips tightened, his eyes absent any spark of recognition. The package he was holding fell. Fruit—blueberries—scattered across the chalk-colored floor like marbles.
I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t breathe in. I gripped the cart like I might swing it at him. “You son of a bitch,” I said.
He moved his cart ahead, shaking his head, pushing mine aside. I turned, reached for his collar, ready to rip him around.
A hand was on my shoulder. I nearly swung.
A manager in a cheerful green polo. A tidy name tag. “Whoa.” He laughed a quiet, halting laugh. Now he looked nervous, too. “Everything okay?”
The clerk I’d run into a minute earlier was beside him. They’d talked about me, I could tell. “Let me help you with this.” The clerk was leaning down, scooping the berries into one hand. He looked happy to not be alone with me.
“Are you having some trouble this afternoon? There … anything we can do to help out?” He could see the tears forming in my eyes. Rage.
The shadows seemed washed away.
“Can I get you something?” the manager asked. He meant coffee, a place to sit. He wanted to get me out of the store.
Breath flooded me as I braced myself on my cart. I had screwed up … again.
I turned toward the door and ran.
TWENTY-ONE
Back to the Volvo. The parking lot was a swarm of headlights.
Cal pushed open the car door.
“There wasn’t any laptop bag in his car,” I said.
“I know. I looked, too.”
“And I just made a scene. I saw him. Ran into him. He saw me.” I pounded a fist against my thigh, bit my lip with anger.
“It was worth trying,” Cal noted, encouragingly. “If it would have been there, it could have been easy. Just taking it.”
“He didn’t even have it with him. The whole thing seemed stupid. What was I going to do, just grab it and run? Basically steal it? I’ve never stolen anything in my life.”
“So, where to now?” Cal asked.
“Drive by his place?”
“Roger that.”
When we got there, Matt’s blinds were drawn the way they had been before, touched by only the occasional flick of a shadow.
“What about a diversion?” I said. “Like faking an emergency, pulling a fire alarm or something so that he’d run out and I could run in.”
I knew it sounded crazy. Cal blinked at me patiently, seemingly aware that I hardly meant what I was saying. After an hour, he drove me home to Mom’s.
Even trying to control my voice, it echoed off the living room hardwoods. Andy’s paws clicked across the floor as he trotted between us. I’d left the TV on in the kitchen as I’d rushed out, and the steady drone of electronic voices carried through the house.
“Silver made it sound—”
“I know,” Cal said evenly.
“Should we just assume he carries it with him every other time? Every night except this one? I don’t get it.”
“If I were him, I’d be getting rid of things, not buying soda or chips or whatever. I’d be covering my tracks. I’m just saying, we don’t know much about how this research happens. Would Matt really be working on it at home?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I know it takes a lot of funding and time—a hell of a lot of time.” Andy brushed beside me as the clock in the living room chimed. “I mean, it’s not as though the virus is brand-new.”
“Paolo told me about your father,” Cal said. When I hesitated, he shifted in the chair. “Sorry. He told me after that first night. The first American case of H1-N24, right?”
Right, I thought. It made sense Paolo would have mentioned it.
“Do you remember him?”
Cal’s directness made my head swivel.
“Yes.” I was quiet for a second, then heard myself continue. “He was tall, with kind eyes,” I said, discovering that I didn’t mind talking about the memories. “He had a calm voice—it was always comfortable to be around him.” My fingers began working the bottom hem of my shirt. “Later, he was away a lot, traveling. Far away. Africa. My mom told me he was doing important work.”
“That must have been nice to know.”
“I resented it, honestly. After the news came, I used to say I hoped I never did anything important at all. I thought doing something important meant you went away. Of course, then I end up dating a guy doing important work.”
And then he went away.
“On H1-N24,” Cal said.
“Of all things,” I said.
Cal gestured in the direction of the kitchen. “Okay if I get some water?”
“Oh, God, of course.” I pulled out a glass, started filling it from the refrigerator dispenser. “There’s food, I think, if you’re hungry.”
“Just water’s fine,” Cal said. “But I could eat if you have something.”
I glanced inside the refrigerator at the nearly bare shelves, angling the door so Cal couldn’t see their emptiness. All that remained was what Mom had left—two sticks of butter, a carton of now-questionable orange juice, and some chardonnay from who-knew-when. Hypomania turned me into a bachelorette. And not the reality-TV kind. I’d last eaten when? I couldn’t quite remember. A banana. I’d definitely eaten a banana earlier that day.
Nutrition, I thought. Something I’d get back to.
“A little short on food at the moment,” I said, placing the glass in Cal’s hand.
I began to follow him back toward the living room when the TV caught my eye. Nashville’s skyline appeared on the screen, then an empty field, then highlighter-yellow police tape. Some of the footage I’d seen before. The burn case. National news now. A description of burning skin, temperatures, speculation about someone’s unthinkable possible motives.
I saw Allie’s text in my mind. The word serial.
My mind still whirring about running into Matt, I turned up the volume, listening. My jaw clenched as I fixated on the screen. The same gravel-voiced anchor who talked about flooding in Asia and wildfires in California was now describing wooded areas around Middle Tennessee, tire marks, a state bureau of investigation. The apocalyptic strangeness of a celebrity news anchor saying the names of nearby streets and neighborhoods, talking about a possible serial killer among us.
“This crazy world,” I said, unable to stop looking at the TV screen. “The guy in the woods they found burned—they’re talking about it on the cable networks now.”
In the living room, Cal was quiet.
“Cal? There’s something else I haven’t told you. You might think it’s crazy. There was an image on Paolo’s camera.”
No reply.
“An image from Gainer Ridge. Do you know that place? It was where that body was found.”
More silence. When I walked into the room, I realized Cal had begun pacing the floor.
“Cal?”
“Sorry, I don’t like watching that stuff.” His voice sounded shaken, angry even.
The news? That case?
Then I got it.
I found the remote, clicked off the TV, and found Cal standing at the end of the couch. He looked ashen. Around us was the faint buzz of sudden silence. I took his hand. He eyed the door like he was going to run.
“Let’s sit down,” I suggested.
Cal nodded in agreement, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead. “Sorry,” he said, “I’m okay.”
Circumstances change, but the triggers, and our responses to them, tend to linger. Same respons
e, different setting; difficult to unlearn. It’s what kept the person alive before.
I squeezed his hand, which was now cold. “Afghanistan, right?”
Cal reached for the glass of water. “It just happens sometimes. Even a word here or there. A sound, a smell.”
I’d heard before of news programs, specific images, as triggers. We’d been talking about the Marines an hour earlier, I realized, part of me wondering if I should have remembered somehow and been more sensitive to what he’d told me.
Cal reached down and softly touched Andy’s head. His solitary job and hobby, his country home, all began to make more sense. No alarms, no surprises.
We sat until he felt calmer.
His voice returned to sounding the way it had earlier in the evening. He sipped at the water, hand shaking slightly as he returned it to the coffee table. “I can’t believe I’m saying this to a psychologist. My ex asked me to get help for years.”
“I can help you get to the right person,” I offered, the tiny vocal fluctuations separating personal and professional lives having dissolved. “I know—believe me, I really know—it’s not easy.”
“Okay, thanks.” He raised his hand to stop me. “Another time. We have to focus.”
He was right.
I pointed at his wrist. “What’s your watch say?”
“Seven o’clock.”
Thirty-six hours, I thought.
Think.
My phone chirped, and he jumped, then sank back into the couch. I turned it over, recognizing the caller immediately.
I squeezed Cal’s hand. “I’m sorry. I really should take this.”
“Go.”
“You’re okay for a minute?”
He waved me off.
A second later, I was shivering on the front porch, Allie’s voice in my ear. The light bulb had burnt out beside the front door. In its absence, shadows spread around my feet like puddles of ink. The night chill reawakened me. Seeing her number made the other half of life come rushing back—I was under investigation. I pictured Allie wearing her expression from earlier, after I’d pushed too hard, asked too much.
