The Last Place You Look

by Kristen Lepionka

  I forced a smile. “I’m glad he was kind to you,” I said. “It’s good to hear.”

  “But you want to talk about Mallory.”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  He nodded slowly. “I’m going to need a beer for that. You want one? Or maybe it’s too early.”

  It was four in the afternoon, and not too early by a long shot. “No, a beer sounds great,” I said.

  He heaved himself out of his beat-up recliner and shuffled off to the kitchen. “Mallory and I met at this bonfire party,” he said. I heard the refrigerator door open and close and when Joshua returned, he handed me a bottle of Miller Lite. “She told me she was the same age as me. I was twenty-two then. She looked it, and she sure acted like it. I didn’t know she was only seventeen till she and her mother were on my doorstep with an ultrasound photo.”

  “So her age wasn’t the only surprise.”

  “Nope,” Joshua said. “And I was not pleased. But I wanted to do right by her. Take care of her. That’s why we got married. She didn’t want that, but her parents did, and I did. She wanted to, you know, get an abortion. She didn’t want to be a mom, she said she’d be awful at it. I thought she’d change, the first time she held Shelby, like maybe all that mothering stuff is supposed to kick in automatically.” He took a long swallow of his beer. “Long story short, it didn’t. We were married for about a year, all told, and it was not an easy year. But I was doing my best, for Shelby.” Here he smiled, and some of the gloom vanished from his face. “Light of my life.”

  I remembered how Danielle had described Mallory in middle school: wild. “How about Mallory?” I said. “Was she doing her best?”

  Joshua shook his head. “She couldn’t handle it. She didn’t like staying home with the baby, she didn’t like cooking, cleaning. She didn’t even like me all that much, I don’t think.”

  “She felt stuck,” I said, and he nodded.

  “She started using drugs again right after Shel was born, started staying out all night.” He finished his beer and set the empty bottle on an end table next to a Wendy’s cup. “I knew she was sleeping around, but I didn’t know who. I was barely keeping it together though, between work and being here by myself with Shelby every night. So we never really had the conversations we should have had. The last time I saw her, we had this stupid fight about the dishes, of all things. She never did the dishes, and I mean, never. And I snapped at her about it, I told her, I’m supporting you, can’t you even wash your own fucking dishes?” Joshua shook his head. “It was not me at my best.”

  I felt for him, having to live with the fact that Mallory left the house that night because of a fight that he started. “What happened then?” I said.

  “Well, she told me to fuck off and said she was leaving and never coming back. But that was nothing new, really. The difference that time was that she really didn’t come back. I started calling her friends, but nobody’d seen her. So that’s when I reported her missing.” He clenched and unclenched his jaw for a few beats. “Shit, I still get so worked up, thinking about it. Sorry.”

  “No, no, it’s okay,” I said. “I understand.”

  “I kept thinking that she’d come back, she had to come back. She was just blowing off steam somewhere. But it turned into months,” he continued, “and I convinced myself that she just ran out on us and that was all. I had so much rage inside me, I think that’s how I kept it together. And when the police—when your dad came to tell me, that they found her? I fell apart hard. She had a good heart, under all her attitude. She had a good heart, and she was so beautiful.” He stood up, roughly pressing the heel of his hand against his eye. “Here, I got some pictures.”

  He crossed the small, messy room and took a photo album down from a shelf stacked high with VHS tapes and random knickknacks. He smiled faintly. “This one. This is right after Shelby was born.”

  I took the album from him. Mallory, looking exhausted but happy in a hospital gown, clutching a pink-faced, sleeping infant to her chest. She had a big, crooked smile and long blond hair cut into blunt bangs across her forehead.

  Just like Sarah Cook.

  Then I turned the page and drew in a breath as I saw a snapshot of a younger, thinner Joshua Evans posing with a crossbow in the woods, a camo ball cap perched on his head. I jerked my hand away like the page was hot. “Are you a big hunter?” I said.

  “What? Oh, no,” Joshua said. He glanced down at the album. “I used to go out with my brother, but I’d really just watch. Not my thing.”

  I nodded with relief, realizing that even if he’d said yes, it didn’t make any sense to think Joshua was my camo-coated visitor. He had no visible piercings, for one, and for another, he didn’t know I existed until thirty minutes ago.

  “Can I look through the rest of this?” I said.

  “Oh, sure, yeah,” Joshua said. “I’m going to change clothes before Shelby gets home, she should be here soon.”

  He left me to page through the rest of the album. Mallory looked progressively unhappier as time went on; she got dangerously skinny and her eyes grew dark hollows beneath them. I wondered if my father had looked through this same album, and I wondered if it had imparted secrets to him that it wasn’t sharing with me. I set it down on the end table when I heard a key in the lock behind me.

  The front door opened and two laughing teenage girls stepped inside. “I can’t believe you didn’t even get cookies and punch,” the blond one was saying, hefting half a dozen plastic grocery bags onto the floor, “isn’t that the whole point of those things?”

  Her friend said, “It wasn’t even a ceremony. We just had to fill out a stupid survey.” Her hair was dyed a reddish-violet color that seemed to glow. “Like On a scale of one to ten, how frequently did he ogle all the girls in class?”

  Their animated conversation expired when they saw me.

  “Um,” the blond girl said. Her hair was pulled up into a messy ponytail, and she wore a Batman T-shirt under a faded green military jacket. Her friend was tall and willowy and she was dressed thrift-store glamorous: a mahogany-colored leather trench with a patchy ermine collar and a lacy black dress over jeans. The two of them exchanged glances.

  Joshua came back into the room. “Hey, Shel.” He gave the blond girl a squeeze around the shoulders. “Uh, this is Roxane?” he said, sounding a little nervous. “She’s a private investigator. Her dad, uh, her dad was one of the detectives who worked on your mom’s case way back when.”

  Shelby looked from her father to her friend to me. It was clear from her expression that she found this explanation very weird, which I guessed it was. But she gamely smiled and held up a hand in greeting. “Hi,” she said. Then she glanced over her shoulder at her friend, almost cracking up. “This is Veronica.”

  “That’s a cool name. One ‘n’ or two?” Veronica said.

  I laughed. “One,” I said.

  She nodded approvingly. “I like it with one.”

  Shelby locked the door and grabbed the groceries. “Come on,” she said, “we need to get this going if we want to eat before two in the morning.”

  “Shel’s quite the little cook,” Joshua said, “aren’t you?”

  Shelby restrained an eye roll and started carrying the bags through the living room and into the kitchen. Veronica shrugged and followed her.

  “She just started working at the Olive Garden, over by the mall,” Joshua said. “Four nights a week. She’s a hostess for now, but I’m telling you, she’s going to be the head cook in no time, right, girl?”

  “Maybe,” Shelby said. She smiled from behind the pass-through, the kind of smile that said she had no intention of ever being a cook at an Olive Garden. “Vee, can you start pressing the tofu?”

  “Veronica doesn’t eat meat,” Joshua told me. “And Shel’s worried about my cholesterol. So she makes a lot of veggies, a lot of that tofu stuff. It’s pretty good, actually. You ever had it?”

  “Tofu? Yes,” I said, and the girls in the kitchen g
iggled.

  “Dad, literally everyone has had tofu,” Shelby said.

  Joshua waved her off. “Quit eavesdropping, brat,” he said. Then he turned back to me. “I got real lucky with Shelby,” he said, his voice lower. “She’s a good kid, she’s never been anything but. And it’s always been just me on my own, after Mal left. I’ve done my best but it’s not like I had a good example for a dad or anything. Shelby’s great, though. Good grades, real responsible.”

  I thought it was interesting that he still said left, rather than died.

  “I was so afraid that, you know—that some of Mallory’s wildness was hereditary or something. God, that sounds stupid.”

  “No, I get it,” I said. I remembered that last conversation I’d had with my own father, the way he’d said he was glad I turned out more like him. Be nice but not too fucking nice. I found myself blinking hard all of a sudden. “So were there ever any leads?” I said, to change the subject. “Any suspects.”

  Joshua shook his head. “Not that Frank ever told me about,” he said. He tried to take a sip from his beer bottle, but it was empty.

  Since he seemed more or less comfortable with me by now, I decided to steer the conversation toward my actual case. “Do you know if she was friends with a guy named Brad? Brad Stockton?”

  He tipped his head to the side. “That name sounds familiar but I’m not sure—wait, that’s the kid who killed his girlfriend and her parents, isn’t it?” He leaned forward. “Why? Do you think they were friends?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but they would have been in school together.”

  “Damn,” Joshua said softly. “She never talked about him, but I didn’t really know her friends that well.” Joshua rubbed his eyes again. He didn’t seem to want to know more about the connection between Mallory and Brad, so I didn’t press it. I wasn’t completely comfortable voicing my theory even to myself. “Shelby, hon, that smells great.” Then he looked at me. “You oughta stay for dinner.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to intrude,” I said. My phone began buzzing in my pocket: the Unknown caller. I rejected the call and put the phone away.

  “No intrusion at all,” he said. “I mean, a good-looking woman like you, I’m sure you got plans on a Friday night. But if you don’t.” Then he pressed his hand over his mouth, his eyes sad and strained and desperate for something, company or attention or just some kind of reassurance. “Christ, that was embarrassing. Sorry.”

  My phone started ringing again, but I ignored it this time. Realizing I was not all that keen on spending another evening alone in my apartment, I leaned forward and touched his arm. “Hey, no,” I said. “You’re sweet. I’d love to stay.”

  Relief flooded through his features. “There’s plenty, right, Shelby?”

  “Sure,” his daughter replied.

  So we ate around their small dinette table in the kitchen. Unlike the living room, the kitchen was spotless and I wondered if that was Shelby’s doing. She had made fried tofu and spicy green beans. I told her it was the best meal I’d had in a while, which was true. “I can barely microwave a frozen dinner,” I said. “So this is great.”

  “You don’t cook?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “It’s so rewarding, though.” Shelby wrinkled up her nose. “Rewarding, that’s a majorly uncool word.”

  “Shelby makes this chocolate cake,” Joshua said. “You’d swear it had a dozen eggs in it, it’s so rich. But it’s vegetarian.”

  “Vegan,” his daughter corrected. “Vegan baking is so cool. Orange juice and vinegar cause a chemical reaction to make it rise.”

  “Science cake,” Veronica said. The girls looked at each other quickly, faces reddening with restrained laughter. Shelby was plain-looking at first, but she had a sparkle in her green eyes. Veronica, with her hair and eccentric clothes and jangly jewelry, was glamorous in a slightly desperate way. They both seemed like good kids, though, plucky with outsider charm.

  “Have you ever been to the Angry Baker?” I said. “It’s downtown. They have a bunch of vegan baked goods. I go there all the time, it’s right by where I live.”

  “Why is it called angry?” Shelby said. “Are they, like, mad in there?”

  “No, they’re very nice,” I said.

  “We should go there sometime,” Shelby said to her father, and he nodded.

  Veronica said, “That’s so cool that you live downtown. I’ve always wanted to live downtown. I’m applying for the Fashion Institute of Technology for college, it’s in New York, in Manhattan. Which is like one giant downtown. And Shelby could move there eventually too and open a vegan restaurant and it would just be the best.”

  Shelby nodded. But there was something wistful in her face at the thought of her friend going that far away for school. That was when I noticed how Shelby looked at Veronica, a slightly lingering glance, a flutter of pure happiness in her eyes when Veronica looked back. It reminded me of the way I looked at Catherine when I first met her, all those years ago. A hopeful, hopeless crush. Veronica seemed oblivious to it, and went on talking about her plans to be a fashion designer. Shelby caught me looking at her and blushed faintly. But I smiled, a silent understanding passing between us.

  TWELVE

  I had known Catherine since high school myself. She was lovely and odd, the darling of the art department and on the fringes of several social circles, and I was a nearly silent B student with a reputation among teachers for being a troublemaker, courtesy of Andrew, that I didn’t entirely deserve. Catherine and I had barely spoken to each other until the end of our junior year, even though alphabetical order dictated that she sit in front of me in several classes. Walsh, Weary. I spent a lot of time staring at her blond curls or the slender line of her neck and trying to decide if what I felt when I looked at certain pretty, aloof girls was envy or something else altogether. But then one day she turned around and met my eye and said, “I had a dream about you. Well, it was about your brother. But you were in it.”

  I didn’t ask how she knew my brother. He’d graduated two years earlier. But everyone knew Andrew. “What was the dream?” I asked instead.

  “We were in the library,” she said, “and he was trying to get me to help him hide a bunch of butterflies. But they kept flying all over.”

  “As they do,” I said.

  The corner of her mouth tipped up. “As they do. And you were watching but you didn’t say anything.”

  “Weird,” I said.

  “Definitely,” Catherine said, and started to turn away. Any of the few other times we’d talked, it had been circumstantial—do you have a pencil, what page are we on. This was different, electric almost immediately. I didn’t want the conversation to end.

  “Everything in a dream,” I said quickly, “is supposed to be you. That’s one theory, anyway. For interpreting.”

  Now she leaned against the back of her chair, her arm touching the top of my notebook. I looked down at it without meaning to and she caught me looking but didn’t move her arm, just said, “What do you mean?”

  “You’re the butterfly,” I said, “and the library, and Andrew, and me.”

  She nodded like she liked the sound of that. “But what’s the interpretation?”

  “That’s up to you. It’s whatever it would mean to you, for you to be a butterfly.”

  “Or you.”

  “Or to be me.”

  But then class started, and she turned away and the moment was over. We’d talk a little before class after that, though, and she’d tell me about her dreams each morning; she told me about her family and how her father’s mistress lived in their basement, though her parents were still married, an arrangement that struck me at the time as modern and practical, unlike my own father’s sneaking around. She was absent a lot, and each day I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding when she walked into the classroom. On the last day of school that year, she turned to me and said, right before she walked out of the room, “I fina
lly figured it out. The dream, about the butterflies.” Then she tossed a folded sheet of paper onto my desk. “To be you,” she added, smiling slyly, “would mean I feel underestimated.”

  Her phone number was written on the paper. I probably fell in love with her right then.

  We got close fast, an undefinably intense friendship that quickly evolved into physical contact, her hand brushing mine, eyes flashing as if daring me to move away. She told me she had kissed a girl once, just to see what it was like, when she was at an art camp in Maine. And what was it like? I asked, of course, and then she showed me, and there was no going back.

  Nothing about being with Catherine was easy, nor would it ever be. Even at age seventeen she was already committed to the story lines that would define her forever: she had a boyfriend but it was for some practical reason and he was generally inconsequential to her actions; she didn’t make plans and she didn’t extend invitations; she would routinely keep you waiting for hours or forever, but just as often she would be unexpectedly kind; no one had ever broken up with her; she always stayed friends with her exes and kept them around her in a harem of sorts, ready and waiting and all too eager to be summoned when she was lonely or bored.

  And it was all still true. I should know. She had been spiraling toward me and then away from me for half my life, on and off and off and on, disappearing to move to Chicago or New Orleans or Los Angeles. After grad school, she said she was going to be traveling in Europe for a few months and she’d write me. I didn’t hear from her for three years and when she got back in town, she was married to a composer from Montreal and they bought a house in Bexley and she was so happy, but it only lasted for so long. It only ever lasted for so long. I knew better. But when Catherine was looking at me, I felt like the only other person on earth. It was all too easy to forget that the best anyone could hope to be was a character in a dream she had about herself.

  * * *

  I left the Evans house and pulled out onto Providence Street. Before I reached Clover, I caught a flash in my rearview mirror: another car starting up and edging away from the curb. My pulse quickened as the car behind me mimicked my left-hand turn toward the freeway, keeping a fair distance between us. But I only made it a few blocks east before my rearview mirror lit up red and blue. “Oh, come on,” I muttered. Three run-ins in as many days. This was getting old fast, although part of me was relieved that it was just a Belmont cop and not someone with a hunting knife. But between the police down here, these phone calls, and Camo Jacket sneaking around my apartment, it felt like the universe was trying to send me one hell of a message.