Mike had insisted I take some paid leave from the garage, an offer I’d ungraciously refused. “What am I supposed to do all day if I’m not here?” I’d snapped, throwing my hands in the air as he gave me a pained expression, no doubt unsure how to handle my misplaced anger and volatile mood swings. I’d stayed late at the garage that night, reorganized the files, archiving the old client records and making sure the new ones were color-coded and alphabetized—things I’d wanted to get around to eventually, but which took on a sudden and immediate urgency.
I knew it was an attempt to keep at least one part of my life under control. I needed to be busy, it helped me avoid sleeping. The night before I’d dreamt I was in the ocean, the skies blue, the sun hot, a perfect summer day until the clouds darkened and the waves picked up. I’d seen Jack’s bloated body floating beneath the surface, his face a mass of rotting, half-eaten flesh, his beautiful features almost unrecognizable. He’d held out a putrid arm as his blue lips mouthed, “Help me, Lily.” I’d woken up screaming and shivering, unable to get back to sleep.
It was lunchtime now, and after Mike shooed me out the door, insisting I take the afternoon off because the bags under my eyes were as big and black as the tires he sold, I headed to the grocery store for a few supplies. As I wandered around, picking up milk that would turn sour and food I swore I’d eat but which would mostly end up in the garbage, my cell rang.
“Lily,” Sam said. “How are you doing? Do you have any news?”
He’d called daily, and this was the way each of our conversations started. I sighed, rested my elbows on the handlebar of my shopping cart. “Nothing.”
“God, this is so stressful, and I can only imagine what you’re going through. It’s so unfair, Jack was...uh...I mean, is, such a great guy.”
Ignoring the slip, I forced the lump in my throat back down, and exhaled quietly, counting to three. “I know... How are things with you? Where are you?”
“Company HQ in Chicago. That’s the other reason for my call. I got a promotion.”
My heart ached. Sam’s life was moving forward, and while I was happy for him, all it did was illustrate how much mine would never be the same again. I ordered my lips to move into a smile, hoped it would be enough for Sam to hear the gesture in my voice. “How fantastic. Congratulations.”
“Yeah, thanks. VP of national business development. I can’t quite believe it even though it’s been in the works for a month. I would’ve mentioned it before, but it was top secret.”
“This is good news, isn’t it? You don’t sound very happy.”
“Oh, yes, I’m thrilled. More than that, but, uh, the job’s here, in Chicago.”
“Don’t tell me they’ve turned you into a Cubs fan?”
He chuckled. “You know my heart will forever belong to the Orioles, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance, that’s for sure. Actually, before I came here for the final negotiations I’d already decided if I got the job it would mean a permanent move for me.”
It took a while to reach the depths of my messy brain, but Sam’s message finally got there. “You’re selling your house? But you love this area. It’s where you grew up.”
“I know, but things...well, they change. I’m getting older, the amount of travel really is insane. Between us, there’s talk of our HQ relocating to California, in which case I’ll be closer to my daughter. There’s no point keeping a place on the East Coast I’ll never get to anymore.”
I closed my eyes, pressed the phone to my ear. “I guess you’ve made up your mind then, haven’t you? And I suppose you need me to clear out Jack’s things?”
“There’s no rush,” he said quickly. “I’ll put it on the market within the next month or so and have the place staged professionally. The apartment above the garage is a huge selling feature, apparently.”
“But what about Jack?”
“Like I said, there’s no rush—”
“But he’s not going to be very happy when he comes back and finds you’ve sold the place, is he?”
“Oh, sweetheart...”
The sympathy in his voice made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I knew that tone, the veterinarian had used it when I was eight, and our dog, a fluffy, happy-go-lucky Collie we’d named Pebbles had got run over. I’d insisted she’d be fine, the vet should operate. Neither the doctor nor my parents had agreed.
“You don’t think he’s coming home,” I said, my voice a few degrees cooler.
Sam let out a breath. “I want to believe it, truly, but it’s been almost a week...”
“Fine. I’ll get his things. Make the place all nice and tidy so you get the maximum amount of dough seeing as that’s what’s most important to you.” My words were glacial now, and I hoped they cut him as deep as I meant them to.
“Please, Lily, you don’t need to do anything yet, I—”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s fine. I’ll take everything to my place and when Jack gets back, he’ll stay with me. And, Sam?”
“Yes?” he whispered.
“Fuck you for giving up on him.”
I silenced his protests by hanging up, and when he called back, I switched off my phone. Fueled by anger, I abandoned my quest for pointless food, picked up a roll of packing tape and asked the store clerk for their entire collection of empty boxes.
Once I got to Jack’s apartment my anger and frustrations had subsided a little, but not enough for me to change my mind about collecting his things. If I didn’t do it now, and as more and more days passed, I wasn’t sure when I’d find the nerve.
As I walked up the stairs with a few boxes in my hands, I stopped midway. Jack’s front door was ajar.
I threw the boxes over the banister, ignoring them as they crashed to the ground, and took the rest of the steps two at a time.
“Jack,” I shouted, bursting into the apartment.
I was met with complete silence, and it took my brain a while to click into gear and process what my eyes were seeing as I walked through the hallway. Jack’s things strewn across the floor. Clothes and shoes, pillows and bedding, utensils and broken glass. It looked like a tornado had torn through the place. Get out, my brain screamed at me. Get out now!
I backed away, my feet sliding across the floorboards as they tried to gain traction. Someone had been in here, gone through all of Jack’s things. Had they already left? What if they were behind me, coming back up the stairs? There was no noise aside from the beating of my heart, but that didn’t mean I was alone. I retreated to the front door. Once outside, I leaped down the stairs and pulled out my phone, dialing Heron and whispering a silent thank-you when she picked up after one ring.
“Someone broke into Jack’s apartment,” I blurted before she had a chance to say more than hello, and as I relayed what I’d seen upstairs, she told me to make sure I was safe, and they’d be right over. A car arrived within a few minutes, lights flashing, sirens blaring, and Heron ordered me in no uncertain terms to stay outside while she, Stevens and the team secured the area. I stayed on the sidelines, watching the officers from a distance, shivering. It didn’t take long for them to confirm there was nobody in the apartment. Whoever had broken in was gone.
“Could you follow me, please?” Stevens said, approaching me after what felt like hours. “It would be helpful to know if anything’s missing.”
I nodded and silently followed him back up the stairs, my throat running dry, my pulse beating in my neck from the mere thought a stranger had been here not long ago. Jack’s possessions were still in total disarray, and as my fear changed to anger, I had to work hard to keep it in check as we moved from room to room and I took in the carnage. I knew the cash from the cookie tin hadn’t been stolen because I’d taken it home with me, and from what I could tell, Jack’s clothes were all accounted for, and there wasn’t anything missing from his bedroom or the kitchen. The bathroom never
had much in it anyway, and the small TV he’d bought secondhand had been left untouched on the cabinet in the living room.
I looked around, almost as if it were the first time I’d visited, a tingling sensation settling somewhere in the middle of my spine. If I’d noticed it before, I hadn’t paid much attention, or perhaps brushed the thought off as inconsequential, but Jack didn’t have many personal things. No devices other than his pay-as-you-go phone, and apart from a few magazines and books, and the photograph of us we’d snapped one day at the beach, and which I’d framed, there wasn’t much else in the living room, or the others. For someone who’d lived in an apartment for close to two years, the decor was decidedly sparse.
“I don’t think anything’s missing,” I said quietly.
“When were you last here?” Stevens said, making notes as I answered. “Do you have any idea who might have broken in?”
I was about to open my mouth to say no when I remembered the man who’d come up the stairs to Jack’s place the other night, and the blue Dodge Charger that had creeped me out. Stevens made more notes as I showed him the photos and recounted what had happened, and I couldn’t help feeling he wasn’t taking it very seriously. “I told Sam I’d remove Jack’s things,” I said after he asked me what I’d come here for, and had to try hard to keep the irritation from my voice as I explained about Sam’s intentions to sell.
Stevens shook his head. “You’ll have to wait until we finish processing the place. I’ll let you know when we’re done.”
I was being dismissed, and so I muttered a goodbye and stepped into the hallway. The door to the closet was open. There had been nothing of value in there, sentimental or otherwise. It was where Jack kept an ironing board I’d seen him use once, along with a multitude of cleaning supplies and a box filled with shoe polish and old rags. I was about to walk by when I spotted a book on the floor, a dusty copy of a novel called Creep by Jennifer Hillier. At first, I assumed it belonged to Sam, something he’d forgotten, and which Jack either hadn’t seen in the closet, or hadn’t passed along. Except when I bent over, picked up the book and opened the front cover, right there, stamped on the first page, was a rectangular black-and-white bookplate with the words Yarmouth Public Library, Maine.
My palms turned clammy as I recalled Jack telling me how he’d moved from England to the States when he was a teenager, not long after his mother committed suicide. He’d also told me he’d lived in Maine for a while, somewhere near Portland. When I’d shared this information with Heron and Stevens, they’d said they’d “look into it” but as far as I could tell they’d done nothing, concentrating their investigation on the surrounding counties instead. It wasn’t surprising. There had to be a thousand men named Jack living in Maine, we still had no clue if it was his real name or when he’d left that state, and besides, police manpower was limited.
I hesitated, wondered if I should give the book to Stevens, but didn’t trust him enough to actually follow up, decided I could do a little research of my own before sharing all the info with Heron, with whom at least I had a bit of a rapport. Feeling like a thief, I stuffed the novel under my jacket and walked back to my car before driving straight home. Once behind closed doors I grabbed my phone, ran a search for Yarmouth and discovered it was a town in Cumberland County about twelve miles north of Portland.
I could barely stop the excitement as I dared to imagine the tiniest of cracks in the door that led to Jack’s identity opening before me. If the library could tell me who had borrowed the book, I might have his real name. I’d know more about him. I found the number for the library, my finger hovering over the screen, my brain fighting my heart on whether to make the call and take a step closer to uncovering the truth or turn my back and walk away. My brain won the battle, and I hit the call button, pressing the phone against my ear and keeping my left hand by my side in case it developed a will of its own and tried to hang up.
“Yarmouth Public Library, this is Mary speaking.”
My words tumbled out. “Hello, I have one of your books. I think it’s overdue.”
“Let me help you,” Mary said. “What’s your library card number?”
“Uh, I’m not sure.”
“Not to worry. What’s your name?”
I opened my mouth, almost blurted Lily Reid but my brain took charge, warning me if I told Mary I didn’t have an account, she’d cite some privacy laws and shut me down. I went with a different angle and let out a sob without having to try very hard. “The book’s called Creep. It was my brother’s favorite. He must have borrowed it before he passed away...”
“Oh, my Lord,” Mary said, clicking away on her keyboard. “You poor thing.”
Another sob escaped my lips. I was an utter piece of shit for manipulating a kindly librarian, but with the possibility of a detail about who Jack was dangling in front of me, I wouldn’t let one little lie stop me. It wasn’t hurting anyone.
“Here we go, yes, there it is,” Mary said. “We only had one copy and, my goodness, it was overdue. Maya Scott borrowed it over two years ago, and...” Her voice shifted, became hesitant. “Didn’t you say it was your brother’s?”
I hung up before she had the opportunity to call me out any further on my lies, and blocked the library’s number in case she phoned back. Excitement traveled from my toes to my fingertips, and everywhere in between. I had a name. Maya Scott.
Who was she? Jack’s previous girlfriend, perhaps? Unless...no. No. Did he have a wife and kids in Maine? He’d told me he’d never married, but was it true? What if he’d abandoned them to get out of alimony payments? As the last few days had passed, I’d figured in time—lots of time, and then some—I might accept I’d been going out with a liar, but with a cheater and a deadbeat dad? He’d seemed so sincere, faithful and committed. Had my rose-tinted glasses been Coke-bottle thick?
I clutched the library book to my chest, understanding the damn thing hadn’t provided me with answers. If anything, I had more questions than before. I couldn’t tell Heron or Stevens about this, couldn’t stomach her looks of sympathy and his thinly veiled amusement at how I’d been played.
My heart sank. I wanted to go back to the apartment, get all of Jack’s belongings and set them on fire, watch them burn. He’d lied to me. About everything. I’d never know who he truly was because—and this time I allowed myself to finish the thought—he wasn’t coming back. Jack had drowned. He was gone. I’d never, ever see him again, and in that moment, I hated him. Detested him for putting me through this. If he’d trusted me enough to share his secrets, if he’d told me the truth about who he was, I’d either have walked away when we met, or stuck with him, leaving me free to mourn the man I’d loved. Sam had been right about one thing: it was unfair, it was all so completely unfair, and, damn it, I wanted and deserved to find some answers.
In no time at all I was on social media, hunting for profiles, and after another while I’d found two women in Maine named Maya Scott. As I had no idea what the person I was searching for looked like, I selected the first profile. I scrolled through her posts, from which I determined she was around forty, had a profound dislike for cottage cheese and loved to bake anything with chocolate. I watched videos of her three cats called Skippy, Zippy and Boo, fast-forwarded through her daughter’s multiple piano recitals because they only showed her hands, and made a start on the photos. I took my time, zooming in on each one, trying to determine if the back of a head or a half-cropped-out arm belonged to Jack. An hour went by, and still nothing.
The first profile exhausted, I selected the next, soon realizing this one wouldn’t take nearly as long. This Maya Scott enjoyed her privacy, and most of what she shared wasn’t set to public. She hadn’t posted for quite some time, either. Then again, neither had I.
I flicked through her limited posts and clicked on the link to her photo albums. Again, most of them weren’t accessible, but when I scrolled down, a picture she�
�d added a few years ago made me gasp. I slid a finger across the screen and zoomed in. It was a photo of a dark-haired girl, wide-eyed and slim, dressed in a black-and-yellow-striped bikini, and with a huge grin on her face. The man next to her wore dark sunglasses, and had slicked his wet hair off his forehead, but the shape of his chin, his nose, and the beauty spot next to it, were unmistakable. I’d know him anywhere. Jack.
Heart pounding, I went back to her profile, searching for clues about where she lived, where she worked, but found none. I almost threw my phone against the wall in frustration, but as I scrolled back through the pictures and posts, a more recent one caught my eye. She’d been tagged in a photo with a group of people, all dressed in black pants and wine-red shirts, standing in front of a modern building by the ocean. Their bodies obscured the sign behind them, and the unhelpful caption read Best Resto Crew! Undeterred, I focused on the top left part of Maya’s shirt and zoomed in enough to make out the silver writing.
The Cliff’s Head.
In comparison to Maya Scott, the restaurant was easy to locate. I found it nestled away in a coastal town called Newdale, up the coast from Portland, not far from Yarmouth. Not far from the library. Fingers crossed and heart pounding harder than I ever thought possible, I dialed.
“The Cliff’s Head,” a woman said.
“Hello, I’m looking for Maya Scott.”
“This is she.”
Her voice was deep, a little husky, and I couldn’t speak—didn’t want to—in case it turned out to be a dead end, a mistake, a misunderstanding. I cleared my throat in an effort to psych myself up for the conversation, but she spoke first, an audible smile in her voice.
“Hello? Can I help you make a reservation?”
“No, thanks. I, uh, my name’s Lily Reid. I—I’m looking for Jack Smith.”
A long pause, then, “We don’t have anyone who works here named Jack.”
You Will Remember Me Page 12
