The Summer We Lost Her

by Tish Cohen

  “The thing is, I’m hearing some things now. A pizza delivery guy, our roofer, Lyman . . . As far as I knew, a good many people relied on him when banks rejected their loan applications.”

  “Yes. He was in the business of lending for decades.”

  Matt shifted closer. “Did you ever hear about . . . any instances where his dealings were less than fair?”

  She reached for a bottle of orange juice on her desk and took a slow drink. Replaced the lid carefully and swirled the pulpy liquid. “You’re talking about the ones who couldn’t make good.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  He didn’t know what he’d been expecting. A look of confusion, perhaps. Maybe a slight squint to reassure him that what he’d suggested was too bizarre to contemplate. Or laughter. That would have been good. But Jeannie knew exactly what he meant.

  “I’d heard a few things about those mortgages, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Such as?”

  “Matt, I’m not sure this is the time, with your daughter—”

  “Please.” He sat back in his chair. “I need to know.”

  What she told him then was so foreign to him, it was like she was describing a character in a movie—the coldhearted antagonist. Everything he thought he knew about Nate was false. He wasn’t kind or benevolent. He was a calculating man, a patriarch who used his power to prey upon people on the edge of financial desperation. Worse, he would target folks to go after.

  Matt shook his head. “What do you mean ‘target’?”

  “It’s a small town. You knew who was in trouble and who could weather a dry summer or a recession. He went to those who were desperate, offered them money on his terms. But only if he wanted their properties. The farms were one thing—if the land had appeal for future development, he was in. If it was arid or too far off the beaten path, not so much. Your grandfather always wanted more shoreline. That was his drug.”

  “So he loaned these people money.”

  “He made them offers they couldn’t refuse and sat back to wait for them to default.”

  Matt felt his stomach drop. How could he have been so stupid? How could he not have known? All those years. He reached up and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “How many people know?”

  She shrugged. “Again, it’s a small town.”

  Matt stood, disoriented. He’d always believed that, by the time a person reaches midlife, there was a clear “You are here” pointer dot you could count on. His dot had just been erased. He no longer had any idea who he was. His life was built on conceit and lies.

  – CHAPTER 30 –

  Elise heard a thump and sat up in bed. Pulled on sweatpants and stepped softly into the hall. She hurried downstairs, forcing herself not to hope it was Gracie. Forced herself not to imagine her daughter had made her way up the porch steps, pulled a stool to the door, and swept the key off the doorjamb to let herself in. And that now she was sitting on the sofa bursting with questions about coyotes who steal gold medals and what the deductible would be on an insurance-covered wheelchair.

  The letdown would be too painful.

  The front door was open to the porch and light glowed from Nate’s office. Outside, Elise saw the outline of a cream BMW. Matt was back. She debated what to do, but he’d already spotted her from Nate’s desk, which he’d clearly been digging through: all the drawers were pulled open. “I need some of my grandfather’s papers,” was all he said.

  “For what?”

  He didn’t answer. Just picked up an ancient manila file folder and thumbed through it. Pulled out old documents, small scraps of paper. She watched him lay them all out on the desk and move them around like puzzle pieces. As if, in a different order, they’d make more sense. “Unbelievable.”

  She moved closer to see rudimentary sketches of property lines and hastily scrawled contracts—one on the back of an envelope. All dated, signed, witnessed. “What are they? Properties he bought?”

  “Mortgages.” Matt held one up and leaned back in the chair. The name on it was Williams. “He didn’t buy the properties. He took them. Screwed people out of their land. Turned them out of their homes.” He twisted side to side in his grandfather’s chair, stopping when he faced the wall of framed newspaper clippings. Then turned to Elise again. “And for what? If you think about it.” Matt shrugged a shoulder, motioned around the room. “So he could cruise up his stolen shoreline and feel like he was winning at life somehow?”

  She thought about all the Nate moments she’d endured. Would this have been easier on Matt if she’d shared with him what she knew? That Nate had put on something of a teeth-gritted display of fairness for his grandson? Had Elise’s kindness been self-serving in the long run—or, worse, an act of cowardice?

  She went around the other side of the desk and leaned down to rest her arms around her husband’s shoulders and chest. “I’m sorry. He raised you and you loved him.”

  Instead of softening into her touch, Matt stiffened. Turned away from her. She let go and his focus returned immediately to the mortgages.

  “But,” he said. “It’s not like any of this can’t be undone. I can make good on every single thing. Starting tomorrow. Or tonight. I just need to make a plan of action. . . .”

  He had deep smudges beneath his eyes and his beard had grown in nearly white. The man wasn’t sleeping. He’d lost maybe five pounds in less than a week. “Matt . . .”

  “What I have to do—I have to look up these people. Many of whom will be dead. But I can trace their ancestors.” He stopped, glanced at the phone. “I’m going to need a lawyer.”

  “You are a lawyer.”

  “Not this kind of lawyer.”

  As he stuffed various files into his backpack, she could see his hands shaking. “Matt, I think you need to rest. Take something to help you sleep. You have to take care of yourself. This land stuff—you can think about it later. Once we find Gracie. But to take on this enormous task—which has to be emotional—right now . . . it isn’t healthy. You don’t have to deal with it this minute.”

  “Gotta go.” He packed up his bag and strode through the office doorway. Started out onto the porch.

  “Matt.”

  He stopped, one hand on the knob. Behind him in the misty gloom, the chirrup of crickets was almost deafening.

  “Please stay.”

  He backed out with no more to comfort her than a quick “I’ll be at the motel,” and made his way to the car as quickly as he could. He was gone before he even backed out of the driveway.

  – CHAPTER 31 –

  Just after one in the morning, Elise jumped out of bed. She threw on rubber boots and went out back to dig up first Gunner from the wet earth, then the stag. It went against everything they’d taught Gracie about keeping buried creatures buried—a lesson badly needed when, three months after its funeral, the child dug up a blue jay who’d broken its neck flying into their sliding glass door. Her reason had made plenty of sense to her: she was making a headstone out of a brick and needed to confirm whether the bird was male or female. There wasn’t much left but desiccated bones and claws and an unholy stench.

  The guilt of having buried the two animals had been haunting Elise. Was it really such a good thing to put them in the earth to rot? Was it really any better than Gunner sitting on the hearth with a tilted head and a macabre grin, or the stag hanging over the fireplace, watching the family’s every move? More importantly, by playing God with the dog and the deer, might Elise be tempting fate into assigning something equally terrible to her daughter?

  What had she been thinking?

  Dragging the deer head up and out of the earth was arduous. The ground was wetter now—though not nearly as sodden as it would have been without the heavy canopy of trees overhead. Back in the kitchen, she scrubbed both animals clean. Neither emerged unscathed. Both had bald patches and one of the stag’s glass eyeballs fell out onto the floor. She dug through a drawer for a tube of Krazy Glue and reset it, but now it b
ulged in a way that made him look vaguely unhinged. A journeyman who’d encountered lands and storms he’d never anticipated but, man, did he come back with a story.

  Please let Gracie come back with a better story. . . .

  Unable to still herself, Elise headed out to the dock again. At the edge of the sky, a big, brilliant star shone, a tiny perforation in the blackness. It was Sunday morning now and her daughter was still missing. Rushing at her was 8:40 a.m., bringing with it a brutal shift in time reference. They would officially move from days to weeks.

  A sharp stinging on her ankle. Elise slapped hard, pulled her hand away to see her dirty fingers smeared with blood. Yet another in the constellation of bug bites that ravaged her flesh.

  “I heard that.” Cass’s voice. The swish of bushes being parted, then Cass’s wild red hair. She came along the dock, sandals flapping. Looked at Elise’s ankle. “Blackfly,” she said. “Come inside, hon. Let’s treat it before it gets itchy.”

  The thought of making small talk with Cass in the middle of the night held zero appeal. All Elise wanted was to curl up in bed and hide from the world. “That’s okay. It’s late. . . .”

  “A little tea tree oil. I swear by the stuff.”

  Cass took her forearm and Elise’s desperation for human touch obliterated any will to resist. There was no sound but their own footsteps as they climbed up the dirt path through Cass’s yard. Inside, Cass’s back room was crowded with cartons of her glossy new hardcover. A stack of about thirty sat on the floor, the top book opened with a black marker poised, as if she’d been signing. “I don’t even want to go ahead with the launch now. But my agent and publisher are adamant. Crazy thing is, all these Woodstock bloggers have found out about the book and it’s starting to sell like mad online.”

  Elise had no reply. She looked at the wall, at the black-and-white photos of River. In the water, on the dock. On a high, jagged cliff overlooking the lake. In jeans, no shirt, with a Batman mask. Another, hands on hips, wearing white briefs and a cape. In the water, floating on his back in a full Spider-Man costume.

  On the first step of the stairway, a battalion of green army men stood sentry. Cass climbed straight past them and motioned for Elise to follow. “Sorry about the mess. River loves his soldiers. I told him he’s a little warmonger.”

  Elise forced herself to look away. If you’re dying of thirst, the last thing you want to torture yourself with is the sight of someone guzzling water.

  “The beauty of tea tree oil is that it disinfects at the same time,” Cass said from the bathroom, where she riffled through a cabinet. “I think every blackfly bite creates a tiny infection, and if you clean it right away, you don’t get the itch or the swelling. Just something I’ve noticed over the years.” More sounds of bathroom items being shuffled. “I’m looking for a cotton pad or anything classier than TP. . . .”

  Elise peeked into River’s room: his bunk bed ran straight across the window so that the other walls could house a desk and packed bookshelves that sagged under the weight of many spines. The bunks were empty. “Where’s River?”

  “Sleepover.”

  Elise paused in front of a collage of old photos in the hall. Cass as a one-year-old with hands in a chocolate birthday cake. Cass as a tween diving from a towering cliff. Cass and her parents with matching hippie headbands. And, right in the center, wrapped in a towel on the bow of a wooden boat, a deeply tanned teenage Cass, joyous and relaxed, her hair untamed in the wind. She was sitting on the lap of an equally summery and contented Matt.

  “Here we are.” Cass held a dripping cotton pad that smelled like gasoline. She moved into what was clearly her room and motioned to the bed. Patted the red tartan duvet, which was folded down to expose sheets dotted with tiny pink roses. “Come. Sit.”

  Elise dropped to the edge of the mattress and allowed the woman to press the wet pad to her ankle while she looked around.

  The bedroom floor was strewn with kicked-off jeans, T-shirts, and tanks. A lacy black bra. But the real attention grabbers were on the walls. Black-and-white photographs again, all nudes. Of Cass. Elise stared at the rounded curve of her ass, the pinkness of her labia, and the fullness of those breasts. One of Cass swollen with motherhood, her forest child in her womb.

  A child whose whereabouts were not a question that might never be answered.

  Elise stood. “Thanks. I should go.”

  “Are you sure? You could sleep in River’s bunk bed. . . .”

  Not a chance. As Elise crossed the room, a cell phone pinged from the dresser. She couldn’t help but glance.

  At nearly three in the morning, her motel-staying husband had just texted the girl next door.

  * * *

  BACK AT THE cabin, Elise sat on Gracie’s bed, where her daughter’s tiny felt animals were still arranged around the pillow. She lay down carefully and, just the way Gracie had shown her, raised her arm and let her hand find the animal most in need of her love. Her fingers found a small frog, his legs stretched out long, as if running away from something scary. Or maybe toward something wonderful.

  It was a good sign, she thought.

  Turning onto her side, Elise coiled her body around the frog and inhaled what little remained of her daughter’s scent on the pillow.

  – CHAPTER 32 –

  Matt had dodged Garth’s calls all night and knew he had a slew of messages waiting. Very likely Wolfe’s offer was in, and there’d been more than one local news story about real estate prices dropping as a result of Gracie going missing. Garth was probably in a panic to accept the offer while it was still on the table. There was a lot of money at stake for Garth too.

  One thing at a time.

  He cracked open the twist top of his six-dollar bottle of wine and looked around the motel room for a glass. The Saran-wrapped plastic cup would do. He poured. Sipped and grimaced. Engine oil would taste better.

  The clarity he’d had since moving to the motel was remarkable. It was as if the fog had lifted and he’d sprung into action, knowing exactly what he needed to do. It was after 3:00 a.m. and he didn’t have the slightest inclination to sleep.

  Music thumped quietly from his iPhone—Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” He turned it up and poured more wine as he surveyed the notes he’d been studying for hours, spread out on the fake wood table in the corner of his room. To-dos.

  First thing in the morning, he would e-mail Barrans to tell him that he wouldn’t be accepting the partnership. Nor would he be coming back at all. At this point, all he could determine was where he didn’t want to be.

  What his future would contain would be his daughter. And this baby. He would get Gracie back, along with full custody of both kids. He’d handled enough divorce cases to know his chances were good.

  Was that banging on the door? He looked through the peephole to see nothing but insects buzzing around the eerie yellow light in the covered walkway. No, the banging had been on the wall. Matt banged back. His music wasn’t that loud.

  Next on the list was to call Dorsey. Tell him to update Matt simultaneously with Elise from here on. Then there was Cass’s book launch. And after that, he’d spend the day systematically researching his grandfather’s former debtors. Figure out a way to make restitution with each and every one of them. Matt had never questioned his identity before. He’d had the good fortune not to need to—or so he’d thought. He was born of decent people. The First Family of the Adirondacks.

  Fucking joke of a lifetime.

  He had to atone; it was that simple. And fast. It would lead to his daughter. You did good shit, good shit happened.

  Not until these land investigations were complete would he speak to Garth.

  He refilled his plastic cup. Toasted his newfound drive.

  There was one more person on his to-do list. He picked up his phone and stared at the text he had sent about twenty minutes prior: “I left Elise.”

  * * *

  * * *

  TEN MINUTES LATER, Cass was in the door
way, a bottle of wine, a pillow, and a red tartan duvet in her arms. “I refuse to sleep on motel bedding,” she said. She looked around at the nearly empty wine bottle, his notes, the untouched bed he should have been hunkered down in. “What’s going on here, Sorenson?” She picked up his wet towel. “It’s three thirty in the morning. . . .”

  He grabbed her and kissed her deeply, the door closing with a thump. His pelvis mashed hard into hers as he pressed her against the wall. Cass pulled away long enough to throw her duvet cover over the polyester bedspread, then tugged a shirtless Matt on top of her. “You okay, buddy boy?”

  He kissed her again, then sat up to rub his jaw. “I can’t lie still.”

  “You are way strung out,” she said, leaning up on one elbow. She patted the duvet. “Come back. Let’s pull your energy earthward, wind you down. Let me give you a little massage. I’ll make you sleep like a baby.”

  “I just need to send a quick e-mail.” He jumped up and went to the table—his master control center. He opened up his laptop and started to type his Dear John letter to the man who’d offered him a piece of the law firm.

  “Can’t it wait until morning—actual morning? You need to rest.”

  He shook his head as he typed. “No. I have to quit my job.”

  “Wait, stop!” She crawled across the bed and leaned over his computer, pulled his hands away. “You’re not thinking straight. Don’t make a decision like that right now . . . hyper and drunk and”—she started to smile, looking at him in his underwear—“unbelievably hot.”

  “I’m not drunk.”

  “You’re still unbelievably hot. Plus, you need to sleep.”

  “I’ll be able to sleep once I send this.” He held up a finger to hush her for a moment and focused on his screen. He needed to word his resignation very carefully.

  * * *