Have You Seen Me?

by Kate White

  What I’ll make, I decide, is a simple meal my mother discovered on a trip with my dad to France a couple of years before she died. Pasta with a sauce made of mashed olives, extra virgin olive oil, a dash of cream, and grated parmesan. I check the fridge and see we have a small carton of cream that, miraculously, has not yet expired. And there’s even a baguette in the freezer.

  The plan energizes me, makes me feel a little giddy. I run the olives through the blender and set a large pot of water to boil on the stove top. I pull cloth napkins from the drawer along with matching place mats. And, yup, candles.

  I switch on the pin lights in the ceiling above the dining area. As I set the first place mat, my gaze registers on the center of the table and I jerk in surprise. The orange roses that Sasha brought are no longer sitting in their vase here.

  Hugh was working at the table much of yesterday, and perhaps he moved the vase out of his way. We ate takeout on the couch last night, which means I wouldn’t have necessarily noticed they’d been displaced.

  I swirl around, letting my gaze sweep across the great room, from the kitchen island, to the small chest near one of the armchairs, to a console table against the wall.

  But the flowers aren’t anywhere. I’ve clearly done something with them—and don’t remember it at all.

  14

  With my breath caught in my throat, I tear down the hallway to the back of the apartment, checking the den, the bedroom, my work alcove, even the bathroom. No sign of the roses anywhere.

  Returning to the living area, I search once more with just my eyes. It’s as if they were never here, that I’ve simply conjured them up in my imagination. I circle to the far side of the island and pop the lid off the trash bin. And there they are, shoved deep inside, their thorny stems snapped in half so they’ll fit in the bin.

  My heart’s hammering. I must have tossed them out last night, after dinner, because there are a few pieces of uneaten spring rolls scattered beneath. Pivoting, I fling open the door to the pantry closet, and sure enough, there’s the vase. Washed. Sitting in its usual spot.

  I plop onto one of the barstools, pressing a hand to my forehead. Think, I command myself. Maybe I threw the flowers away with my brain on autopilot, planning for the next day, thinking ahead to the podcast on Tuesday. But I don’t have even the faintest memory of removing them from the vase, or trying to avoid the thorns, or rinsing out the vase afterward.

  I snatch a fresh pad of paper from a drawer and scribble down every activity I can recall from last night and today: Chinese takeout with Hugh after my meeting with Roger; a bath, bed, breakfast this morning; working at Le Pain; the appointment with Dr. Erling; Gabby. What am I missing?

  I breathe in for a count of four, hold it, release. And then repeat. The breathing technique ends up helping a tiny bit. So does resuming my focus on dinner. I turn the boiling water down to a simmer, scrape the olive paste from the blender into a ceramic bowl, heat a half cup of cream, then pop the baguette into the oven to warm. Creating this respectable meal from the little I had on hand is as close to a loaves-and-fishes-style miracle as I’ve ever pulled off in the kitchen, but I’m still too unsettled to truly relish the moment.

  Should I call Erling and tell her about the flowers? I wonder.

  I’m lighting the candles on the table when I hear Hugh’s key in the lock a little after seven.

  “What’s this?” he asks, eyeing the table.

  “I thought you could use a home-cooked meal for a change.”

  “That’s sweet, but you shouldn’t have gone to all the trouble.”

  “Honey, trust me. It’s that olive pasta dish my mother learned to make in France. Easy-peasy.”

  “Uh, okay. Give me ten or so, will you?”

  He heads to the bedroom, and by the time he returns, changed out of his suit, I’ve drained the penne and stirred it with the sauce. I’m still rattled but determined to make the evening with Hugh as pleasant as possible. After setting the serving bowl on the table, I pluck the bread from the oven and finally take my seat.

  “I was craving pasta without even knowing it,” Hugh says, heaping penne into my bowl and then his.

  I smile, pleased that he seems more engaged than when he first walked in. “Any progress on the Brewster case?”

  “I reviewed the strategy with one of the senior partners today, and he seems satisfied that it’s the best we can do. Hopefully we can minimize the damage.”

  “How could the client be so stupid? Didn’t they realize that emails last forever?”

  “If people were smart, they’d never put anything in an email . . . but anyway, how was Gabby?”

  “Good. It was a relief to finally talk to her face-to-face about everything.”

  He nods, snapping off the end of the baguette. I sense he’s wondering how much Gabby knows about the issue in our marriage. I take care not to criticize Hugh to Gabby, but the kids’ matter has been weighing on me so heavily in the last weeks, I felt I had to share it.

  “Gabby thinks I should hire a private detective,” I add.

  He looks alarmed. “You mean to figure out where you were?”

  “Right. I checked out places online today and even sent a query to one.”

  “They can be really pricey, Ally.”

  “But it would hardly be a frivolous expense,” I say, surprised at his knee-jerk reaction. Doesn’t he want answers as much as I do?

  “No, I understand. I’m just not sure what one of these guys would be able to tell you.”

  “Many of them specialize in missing persons.”

  “I know. Our firm often uses private investigators on cases, and thanks to technology, they can turn up a lot these days. But one of the key ways they find missing people is surveillance. How would that work with you? There’s nothing to surveil because you’re home now.”

  I shrug, half chagrined, half annoyed at his response.

  “There doesn’t seem to be any harm in checking it out,” I say.

  “You just have to be prepared for the fact that there might not be much they can do—though they wouldn’t necessarily tell you that up front.”

  “I get it, Hugh, and I’m not going to give money to some con artist. But I have to figure out where I was. It’s driving me nuts.”

  “Of course—I understand. But I also think it’s important to focus on the present, how you’re doing now. I’m eager to hear what the neurologist will say on Wednesday.”

  “Speaking of not getting one’s hopes up, I hope you’re not banking too much on that. They were pretty clear at the hospital that my situation wasn’t the result of a neurological event.”

  “At least we’ll be crossing all our t’s.” He rests his fork on the rim of the pasta bowl and studies me. There’s something weirdly cool and distant in his gaze. But then he lays a hand over mine. “How are you feeling about doing the podcast tomorrow?”

  “Pretty good, I guess.”

  “Would there be any merit in postponing it a week?”

  It’s not a bad question, especially in light of what’s happened with the flowers. Maybe I should lie low for a few more days and not push my luck. And yet I can’t stand the idea of bailing.

  “It’s such short notice at this point, Hugh. It wouldn’t be fair.”

  “But will it be too stressful? I thought you were being encouraged to take it easy.”

  “I’ll be fine. I mean, it’s not like it’s super stressful for me anymore.”

  “You don’t sound a hundred percent convinced.”

  I glance down, aimlessly stabbing pieces of penne.

  “Something happened tonight,” I say. “Not anything big, but it’s scaring me a little.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You remember Sasha, the woman who came by Friday night and brought those roses? Well, at some point last night or this morning, I managed to stuff them in the garbage and wash the vase without any memory of doing so.”

  “Ally . . .”

  “
It’s like I was in some kind of mini-fugue state. I’m wondering if I should call Dr.—”

  “Ally, hold on. You haven’t forgotten anything. I tossed the flowers out.”

  I’ve been massaging my brow with one hand, my gaze still lowered, and as Hugh’s words sink in, I lift my head and stare at him.

  “You tossed them out?” I say, simultaneously relieved and baffled. “If they were in your way, why not just move them? I’m sure they weren’t cheap.”

  He shrugs. “The petals had started to drop. Gosh, I’m sorry to throw you off that way.”

  “You tossed them out because the petals were dropping?”

  This makes no sense. Hugh does his share around the house—he helps clear the table and load and unload the dishwasher, handles his own laundry, makes the bed on days he’s not up ahead of me. But I’ve always accepted that he’s fairly clueless when it comes to “decor” stuff; that is, he would never zero in on things like pillows that require fluffing, cloth napkins that have seen better days, or flowers that need tossing. This gesture doesn’t fit with the man I know. I half expect him to cup the skin at the base of his chin with both hands and tear upward, revealing he’s a stranger wearing a latex mask of my husband’s face.

  “That wasn’t the main reason,” he admits. “I was trying to concentrate, and the smell was driving me crazy. It never occurred to me you would wonder.”

  “No problem,” I say after a moment. I allow a sense of relief to take hold, embracing the realization that another sliver of my life hasn’t been snatched away. “And it’s good to hear, of course.”

  “Again, sorry.”

  “Do you want more pasta?”

  “I do, but I better not. I’ve still got a few hours of work ahead of me.”

  “Why don’t you let me handle the dishes, then.”

  “That would be great. Chip and I agreed to go over a bunch of notes on the phone, so I’ll work in the den tonight.”

  As Hugh heads down the hall, I clear the table, noticing that he hasn’t actually finished the pasta in his bowl. Does the dish not hold the same allure for him as it does for me? Or is the stress from the Brewster case playing havoc with his appetite? Or maybe the real stress is about me. About us. About the topic Hugh doesn’t dare circle back to because of the impact it might have on me.

  I scrape the bowls, place them and the glasses in the dishwasher, and wipe the table off with a thick yellow sponge. My brain feels as if it’s foraging, rooting beneath brambles for something, but I’m not sure what. Almost instinctively, I don a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves and open the trash bin again. After hoisting out a few handfuls of congealed pasta and dropping them in the sink, I reach the roses. Sasha would be thrilled to know that even submerged in garbage, their color pops brilliantly.

  I don’t have to raise them to my nose to confirm in my mind that there’s very little aroma. I unwrapped them after all. And besides, I know from a “Best (and Worst) Valentine Splurges for Your Money” blog post I wrote last year that as the flower industry tinkered with the genetics of roses to make them last longer, they bred out the fragrance along the way.

  Gingerly, I remove a few stems and examine the blossoms. They’re a little droopy from lack of water but they’re hardly past their prime.

  Then why did my husband stuff them in the trash bin?

  My stomach twists. So much for getting back into a groove with Hugh. He’s a puzzle to me at the moment. But I can’t freak myself out now thinking about it. I toss the garbage back into the bin and head down the hall toward the bedroom. Though the door to the den is closed, I can hear the drone of Hugh’s voice, clearly reading material into the phone.

  For the next hour I sit at the desk in the alcove, reviewing notes for the podcast tomorrow, including the research Sasha prepared. Finished, I email some final thoughts to my producer, Casey. After stealing a few minutes to make a cup of chamomile tea, I catch up on financial news—the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Yahoo Finance, Fortune’s Broadsheet for women—so I don’t come across tomorrow like someone who’s been in a coma for the past week.

  I’m just about to shut my laptop when I see an email alert pop up onto the screen. It’s a response from the private detective agency I contacted.

  Yes, Kurt Mulroney, one of the two partners, has written, this is absolutely the type of case we handle. We’ve done more of these than you would expect. If you’d like to discuss further, you can call me at the number below tomorrow or even tonight. I know you’re eager to have this situation resolved.

  More of these than you would expect. Perhaps I should take comfort in the fact that there’s apparently a subset of people roaming the metropolitan area in fugue states. Hey, there might even be a support group with meetings I could attend. Blank Slates Anonymous. Obviously, it couldn’t work exactly like other support groups, where you talk about the wicked bender or food binge you’ve recently engaged in. Because you don’t remember anything.

  I’ll call him in the morning, I decide. Even though Hugh was dismissive of the idea, I see no harm in learning more about the process and finding out what this guy would charge. I jot down the number on a purple Post-it and stick it to the base of my desk lamp.

  But then without even thinking, I grab my phone and tap in the number. I don’t want to wait until tomorrow.

  “Mulroney,” he answers. He has a deep voice, tinged with what sounds like a Bronx accent.

  “It’s Ally Linden calling. Thank you for getting back to me so quickly.”

  “My pleasure. We’d love to be able to assist you.”

  “Is this really something you specialize in?”

  “I wouldn’t call it a specialty—we do a wide variety of work—but we’ve handled similar cases.”

  “How have you managed them?”

  “What I generally like to do first with a prospective client is meet for a free consultation and discuss our procedure in person. I’ll take you through everything—and there’s no obligation whatsoever on your part.”

  I hesitate. He sounds professional enough, though he’s surely practiced at the kind of patter that encourages people to bite.

  “You were a detective with the NYPD?”

  “That’s right. Seventeen years. Gold shield.”

  “I suppose that kind of training helps in your current line of work.”

  “Yes and no,” he says with a chuckle. “It trained me to be a great detective, that’s for sure. But on the other hand, cops get in the habit of rolling in loud and visible, and this line of work generally calls for a low profile.”

  I like the way he put it.

  “Would we meet in your office?” I ask.

  “Like a lot of P.I.s, I work out of my home, since so much work is done via computer these days. For meetings I usually suggest a coffee shop. What area would you be coming from?”

  “The West Sixties, near Lincoln Center.”

  “I live pretty close—on West Ninety-Seventh Street. There’s a diner I like on the corner of Ninety-Ninth and Broadway or I could come down your way. Whichever works best for you.”

  I prefer the idea of meeting on his turf, to gain a better sense of him.

  “Why don’t we meet at your diner? Does ten A.M. tomorrow work?

  “Absolutely.”

  Mulroney provides the address for the imaginatively named Broadway Diner, a place I’ve surely passed but can’t place in my mind. He explains that he’s five eleven, with dark hair trimmed very short, and that he’ll be wearing a black blazer.

  “Thanks,” I tell him. “I’m five seven, by the way, with long light brown hair and hazel eyes.”

  My guess is that he already knows this. He’s probably googled me, has learned what I do for work and who I’m married to, has maybe even figured out my exact address. But hey, that’s what he does for a living.

  After signing off, I lean back in my desk chair and exhale. I’m glad I took this step. Even if there’s no obligation, I suspect I’m going to end
up hiring him—and he’ll dig up answers for me.

  Still, I can feel my pulse racing a little. Because there’s fear seeping out from beneath my relief.

  What if Gabby’s theory is wrong? What if in the two days I was gone, I didn’t witness another person being hurt? What if nothing bad happened to me, either?

  What if instead I did things that were incredibly foolish? Or wrong, even? Things I’ll totally regret once I learn what they are?

  15

  When I show up at the diner the next morning, I find that it’s a retro-feeling, old-style diner with red vinyl booths, thick white coffee mugs, and about four hundred items on the menu. I guess it’s appropriate enough. Somehow, I can’t quite picture sitting down with a private eye at a hipster café where they serve avocado toast topped with cumin salt and chia seeds.

  Though it’s ten o’clock, the diner is still half full of people finishing breakfast, and the air is ripe with the smells of pancakes, syrup, and bacon. I glance around and don’t see anyone resembling Mulroney’s photo. After hanging my coat on the hook attached to the end of a booth, I slide across the cushion and take a few deep breaths. This all seems so surreal to me, like I’m playing a part in a movie from the 1940s.

  I never even had the chance to tell Hugh I was coming here. When I’d wandered down to the den later last night, I found him asleep on the love seat, his long legs draped over the arm.

  “Uh, sorry,” he said, as I’d nudged him awake. He glanced bleary eyed at his watch. “Christ, I knew I shouldn’t have lain down.”

  “Why don’t you come to bed, honey,” I urged.

  “Yeah, maybe I’d better. I’ll have to get a really early start tomorrow.”

  And he did, leaving before I was awake. A note from him on the island counter promised he’d be home early tonight.