by Wendy Walker
The thought of this takes my breath away. Makes me gag on the food in my mouth which provokes these precious, painful memories.
The mountain had a hut near the lodge that served grilled cheese and tomato soup. People would stand in line for half an hour, sometimes longer, even in the cold and the snow, and they would eat standing up, helmets on, gloves on sometimes. It was the kind of thing that when we met someone who skied there, it would come out simultaneously—grilled cheese and tomato soup!
We stopped skiing after Annie died. I don’t know why I think of that for the first time only now. We stopped skiing, and I stopped making grilled cheese and tomato soup.
“I told you,” Alice says precociously.
I swallow it down.
“It’s delicious,” I say as though I have never had it. As though I am just a silly little animal behind the bars. As though she is my master.
* * *
Hours pass. I play with Alice. We finish her schoolwork.
And finally it’s time. Alice brings me a bag of food and some plastic bowls and dishes.
Mick has bought a small roasted chicken. He has also bought a bag of frozen peas and carrots. I place the chicken in the largest dish. I sprinkle the carrots and peas around it and add some water.
“You can put this right in the microwave,” I say. “For three minutes. Do you know how it works?”
“Yes!” Alice says. “We got the microwave from the Gas n’ Go. They got a new one so they gave their old one to us. It has instructions on the front. You can microwave hot dogs at the Gas n’ Go.”
Now I pause. Information, I think.
“You’ve been inside the gas station? I thought it was dangerous for you to go outside?”
“I haven’t been inside it. But he told me about the hot dogs when he brought the microwave home. Cause I asked him why you needed a microwave to get gas.”
Slowly, I tell myself. Ease into it.
“Well, that’s very nice that they gave him their microwave.”
I take more things from the bag. The instant Jell-O is there and I let out a sigh of relief.
My words linger inside her. I haven’t asked a question so she is not afraid to give an answer. She likes to tell me things when she feels like it. And tonight she does.
“Do you want to know a secret?” she says, in a whisper now.
Always.
“Yes,” I say.
“Dolly has eyes there.” Her face is full of mischief.
“At the Gas n’ Go?” I ask, thinking now about all the times I’ve stopped to get gas.
Every other Thursday in the months of September through November. Again at Thanksgiving and Christmas, several times during the winter and spring, though not on an exact schedule. For three years in a row, I have been making this trip to see my son. Stopping for gas many times. I’ve always been alone. When Nicole came with me, she reminded me to get gas before we left the school. She liked to fall asleep and not have to stop.
“Yes,” she says. “All kinds of people come there. They’re all heading north to get to the their kids’ schools. They all have a lot of money, so it doesn’t matter if they have to pay when they crash into his truck.”
I think about all the times I stood at the counter, buying coffee, candy for Evan, or a bottle of water. How many times I swiped my credit card. How many times my car sat parked at the pump, with my Connecticut plates. You can find plates on the Internet now. People have hacked DMV records and they sell the information. It happened to one of the parents at Nic’s old school in our town. Someone found her name and address from her plates and tried to break into her house. My car is registered to John’s company. Still, there would be a trail.
Maybe Mick works at the Gas n’ Go. Maybe he owns it. Maybe he knows the owners. He managed to put cameras there. And he has their old microwave oven.
I am stunned, but grateful for this new information.
Alice starts to laugh harder than I’ve ever seen her laugh. “One time,” she says. She laughs so hard she can barely get the words out, just like me and John that day we were skiing. “One time, this man was looking at some sodas in the back … and he.… and he … he picked his nose! Right in front of Dolly!” She laughs so hard her eyes begin to water.
“That is very funny,” I say. I think about how many times I stood right in that spot, looking for a bottle of water.
Her laughter slows quickly, as though she’s caught herself. I can see now that she’s done with this secret because her eyes glance at the camera down the hall and her face grows apprehensive.
I change the subject.
“Do you like lime?” I ask, forcing myself to remain neutral. Normal, whatever that is under these circumstances. I hold the Jell-O pack in front of her.
“No!” she says. “I hate lime.”
Yes, I think. I already know this because she’s told me before.
“I like orange,” I say. “Do you want strawberry?”
She nods.
“Okay—you bring this to the kitchen and heat it up, and I will mix the Jell-O.”
She picks up the chicken and walks carefully down the hall. When she is out of sight, I take the Jell-O and the bowls and I go to the bathroom.
I close the door and I grab the antifreeze from beneath the sink. I pour the small amount that is in the coffee cup into one of the bowls, thinking about Mick as he watched me pick out water.
I mix the antifreeze with the powder of lime Jell-O, thinking about Mick as he watched me at the register.
Then I make the orange and the strawberry and pour them into separate bowls, thinking about Mick as he wrote down my license plate number and researched my family.
Alice returns with the chicken and some plates and silverware. Then I send her back to the kitchen three times, carrying with two hands each of the bowls so they don’t spill. My life may be in one of them.
Then we eat. And we wait for Mick to come home.
So we can have our dessert.
28
Day fifteen
“Where are we going?” Reyes asked.
He’d done what she’d requested the second she’d jumped in his car—drive!
Nic was breathing hard. She managed to get out one word.
“Laguna.”
“Okay,” Reyes said. “But I thought you wanted to go to town hall—to look up that property.”
Nic shook her head no. Then she said more words. “I need to get out of Hastings. I need time to think.”
Reyes jerked his head back quickly. “Okay. Here…” He placed his hand on her back. “Lean forward—head between your knees. You’re hyperventilating.”
Nic leaned down and rested her head in the palms of her hands. When her mind cleared, she pulled out her phone and studied the photo—making sure she was right.
Then she told Reyes.
“Kurt Kent and Edith Moore,” she began. “They know each other. They met in a car outside the hospital where she works.”
Reyes looked at her quickly, then back at the road. “Whoa!” he said. “Slow down. Start from the beginning.”
Nic told him about her father’s PI. How he’d gone to Schenectady to look into Edith. How he’d followed her from the moment after they’d met with her in Hastings.
Reyes pulled over then, parking on the dirt shoulder just before the entrance to the Gas n’ Go.
He motioned to see the photo.
Reyes looked at it closely. “Damn. That’s Kurt, all right.”
The phone rang. Nic took it back, picked up the call.
“Dad—I’m fine. I’m with the police.”
She listened patiently then as he told her to come home, to get the hell out of there, to let the PI handle things from here. She agreed to everything, though she had no intention of going home without her mother. She would get out of Hastings, as far as the casino. But that was all.
Kurt was a liar, and he had tried to cast doubt on Reyes’s story and his intentions. He’d tried
to implicate Watkins in her mother’s disappearance. The truth was, Reyes could have fallen into her bed last night. But instead, he’d turned around and left.
She hung up the call, then looked at Reyes.
“This is what my father thinks. And the PI,” she began. “After my mother went missing, Kurt knew to wait until all the other calls led to nothing. Until everyone stopped calling in tips and the case got cold. Then he had his girlfriend, or whatever she is to him, come out of the woodwork with this bullshit story about passing through town the night of the storm.”
Reyes continued the story.
“And now—whenever you happen to find your mother—Edith Moore is first in line to collect the cash. That’s what I feared when we found out she was lying about being in New York.”
“And how could she have seen the letters on my mother’s purse? From across the street and through the rain?”
“Shit,” Reyes said. “I can’t believe I missed that. I was so focused on trapping her in the lie about her E-ZPass records.”
Nic nodded but then felt her face tighten.
“What?” Reyes asked, leaning forward, reaching for her hand.
“What if he knows where she is? What if he’s known all along and he waited for the other leads to die down so that now he could lead me to her?”
Reyes squeezed her hand tighter and smiled. “Well, who cares, right? If he helps you find your mother, that’s all that matters! We can go after the little prick later. I think we have to play this out—pretend you don’t know a thing about it and let him lead you to her however he plans to do it.”
Nic pulled away.
“What if it’s not that? What if he knows where her body is? And that’s why he knew it was safe to wait. That no one else would find her and that she…”
“Stop,” Reyes said. “Don’t let yourself go there.”
But Nic had to say it out loud.
“No one else would find her because she’s dead.”
Reyes reached in his pocket and took out a piece of paper. It was a copy, white on one side and folded in quarters. He held it out for Nic.
“What’s this?” She took the paper and unfolded it. It was some kind of invoice, something billed to the police department.
“I wanted to close the door on the truck with the missing taillight. I wanted to close the door on the chief. Move on to another truck. Another theory. Maybe the property with the fence.”
Nic looked closer at the receipt. It was for thirty-seven dollars and change. Billed from an auto parts store in Waterbury.
The item on the invoice was listed only as a number.
“That number,” Reyes explained, “it’s for a taillight bulb and cover—fitting a Chevy Silverado.”
Nic grabbed her phone and pulled up the photo of Chief Watkins’s truck.
“Watkins drives a Silverado,” she said, staring at the photo of the truck that may have picked up her mother. “You think he fixed it himself?”
“Yeah. Which means he knew someone saw him, saw the truck that night. Otherwise he’d have gone to the auto body shop right in town. And he didn’t drive that truck the whole time you and your father were here searching for your mother. I didn’t think much of it, but…”
“Now it fits.”
“Which means,” Reyes continued the thought, “that Edith Moore probably did see your mother that night. She told her boyfriend she was going to New York to meet friends. Then came to see Kurt—maybe they’re lovers. The storm rolled in and she knew she had to get out of it so she didn’t get trapped here. She waited until the last minute, then drove toward Route 7.”
Nic picked it up from there. “She saw Chief Watkins pick up my mother, but she thought nothing of it. Then the next time she saw Kurt, he mentioned the missing woman and she told him what she saw.”
“That could have been the next day or a few days ago. Look, Kurt Kent may be a loser bartender, but I don’t see him plotting such a complicated crime. It could be that everything Edith Moore said is true, except for the small detail that she was here visiting Kurt before the storm.”
“What about the purse? And the letters?”
“She could have seen them. We can’t know without recreating the scene.”
“And Watkins?” Nic asked now.
“I know…”
“What did he do with my mother?”
Reyes started the ignition and pulled away from the curb.
“Let’s find out,” he said. “First, we get your car. Then we find the chief and ask him straight up what’s going on.”
Nic felt a wave of relief.
Reyes was right about everything. Kurt Kent was not a bad man. Edith Moore was just lying to her boyfriend, that was all. Maybe she had come forward as soon as she found out about Nic’s mother—or maybe she waited to make sure she was the one to get the reward money. But either way, it didn’t mean they knew where her mother was. Only what Edith Moore had seen.
It was Watkins with his truck. The broken taillight. No way that was a coincidence.
Edith Moore saw her mother get in that truck. Watkins’s Silverado.
Watkins was the one who knew where her mother was.
Reyes was smiling now. “You feel better? Your breathing has slowed.”
Nic smiled back. “I think she’s alive. I think Watkins drove her somewhere. Helped her leave. I don’t even care that she walked away, or why she did it.”
Reyes patted her knee. “I know. And we will get her…” He stopped speaking but Nic could tell he was holding something back.
“What?” she asked.
“I found something else. On your father’s credit card statements.”
“Just tell me.” Nic braced herself for what she knew was coming.
“There are some hotel charges. Local ones, in your town.”
Nic stared out the window, feeling the traces of hope leave her. “I knew, but I still didn’t believe it. Not completely.”
“There’s one other charge that I can’t explain. At a gas station near West Cornwall.”
“That’s just south of here. When was that?”
Reyes didn’t answer. And then he didn’t need to.
“The same day. The day she disappeared,” Nic said.
“Look, maybe it was her—the charges are on the same statement.”
“But then she wouldn’t have run out of gas,” Nic said. “If she’d filled up in West Cornwall, she would have made it well past Hastings coming home.”
Reyes was silent again. He’d come to the same conclusion.
“This can’t be right,” Nic said.
“I can call them, find out the exact time of the charge.”
Nic closed her eyes, hard. This couldn’t be happening. Her father couldn’t be involved.
“Do you want me to call?” Reyes asked.
Slowly, but with conviction, Nic nodded.
Yes.
29
Day fifteen
We lie on the floor. I am on my side of the bars. Alice is on the other. She wanted to sleep near me even though we are not allowed to sleep together anymore, so I told her to get some blankets and cushions from the sofa. I showed her how to make a pillow bed and she liked it very much. Of course she did. My kids used to love pillow beds. When we would go to a hotel, all of us, as a family—oh, that was another life—we would share a room. Me and John in one bed. Two kids in the other. And the third on a cozy bed between them, made from cushions or extra pillows—whatever we could find in the room.
The trick is to tuck a sheet tightly beneath them so they don’t come apart.
Evan usually chose the pillow bed. Even as he grew too big for anything we could make, he would sleep on the bound pillows, arms and legs hanging off the sides. He didn’t want to sleep with one of his sisters. Girls were yuck. Thankfully, I wasn’t recognized as being a girl. These memories flow now, freely and with the semblances of joy. Leaning over to kiss him goodnight, he would pull me to him with both arms and h
ug me tight. Still a little boy inside, but with the strong arms of a big boy. He needed me. And it was blissful. Even as the memory retreats to the other side of the line, the joy lingers. But it does not last. This night has ended in disaster.
Alice sleeps soundly in her pillow bed, even though I have untangled her arms from my waist and moved beyond her reach.
It is not far enough.
I let the feeling flow through me, still and silent, because Alice has left the hallway light on for Mick and now Dolly can see my face.
It is probably for the best. I don’t know what I might do if these feelings are set free.
We waited for Mick for a long time. We waited until we had watched all of her shows on the iPad and grown bored and tired.
“I want my Jell-O,” she’d said then.
I told her it was okay. She could bring us our Jell-O but she should leave the one for Mick, the lime Jell-O, in a place where he would see it. Maybe he would want dessert when he finally came home.
I can still see her face as she told me, “No!”
It was Coy Face, speaking with defiance.
Then she said, “I threw it away.”
“What? Why?” I asked, because it was all I could think to do. The hatred surged. Pulsated. Took over every inch of me and crawled over my skin, making me shudder.
“Because he didn’t come home so he doesn’t deserve Jell-O,” she said.
“Alice—that’s not nice!” I was so close to reaching through those bars and shaking her, violently. “Go and get it right now—out of the garbage and bring it to me!”
It was a ridiculous request. The Jell-O would be scattered among the remnants of the chicken and coffee grinds from the morning and who knew what else. Still, I needed it. I needed her to bring it to me.
But then she said, “It’s not in there. I can’t even stand the smell of it.”
“What did you do with it?” I asked, my mouth bone dry.
