by Nicole Baart
How could she be at a dead end already? “I would think that would be a difficult thing to keep secret,” Jess mused more to herself than to Peter.
“Agreed. Though . . .” He stopped, and Jess felt her heart stutter.
“Yes?”
“Well, he was gone from time to time. I mean, we all take time off, but Evan was really particular about, well, everything. He didn’t miss work unless he was on his death bed.”
His choice of words was thoughtless, and Peter’s little gasp told Jessica that he knew it. But she wasn’t offended. Instead, her mind was racing. She knew exactly how much vacation Evan had used. Jess kept their books and it was a detail she had meticulously recorded. Other than scheduled vacation days, Evan had taken exactly three days off for pneumonia in the last two years—at least, pre-separation. The only way she had convinced him to stay home was by appealing to his common sense. “You’re going to get your patients sick,” she said. And he had finally agreed.
“When was he gone?” Jess asked Peter, writing ABSENT in bold on the top of a clean sheet of paper.
“I don’t know exactly. A handful of times. The reason it seemed strange to me was because it was so last-minute. Evan was supposed to come into work, and when he didn’t, Dr. Murphy and I had to pick up the slack.” Peter seemed to hear himself say the words and he rushed to explain. “Not that we minded or anything. It was fine. It was just surprising that he was gone.”
“Of course. Do you know how many times this happened? One or two? More?”
“I’d say half a dozen times. I wondered if he was home with Max or Gabe or something, but he never gave us an explanation. He was just gone.”
“And you don’t know where he went or what he was doing?”
“No. And then, of course, he was gone the entire week before he died.”
Jess had written “6+?” on her paper and she circled it a few times in frustration. “Was he secretive? Did he seem different somehow?”
Peter sighed. “I don’t know, Jess. Sometimes it’s tempting to look back and try to find meaning in every detail. More often than not, it’s just not there.”
But Jess wasn’t buying it. Not this time. Under normal circumstances she tended to agree with Deputy Mullen: the simplest answer was the right answer. Jess liked straight lines and smooth edges and things that could be neatly categorized and filed away in their proper place. Her careful containment strategies seemed naive and ineffectual now. And she was just starting to understand that maybe she had been approaching this wrong from the start. Jess hadn’t been skeptical enough. She hadn’t asked enough questions or fought for answers when her inquiries couldn’t be satisfactorily addressed. She wasn’t about to make that mistake again.
“Do you remember Cody De Jager?”
Peter made a sound in the back of his throat. “I can’t discuss Evan’s patients with you.”
“So he was still seeing Evan?”
“Jess—”
“Look, I’m not going to make anything of it; I just want to know if he’s still in Auburn. I haven’t seen him in a really long time.”
“As far as I know, he’s still around,” Peter said reluctantly.
“And cleaned up?”
“On again, off again. You know how it is. You don’t think he has anything to do with . . .” Peter trailed off. “Wait. I don’t want to know. What are you doing, Jess?”
“Just trying to get my head around everything,” she said, standing up. The blanket fell away and pooled at her feet. In its absence she was suddenly cold. She marched into the kitchen, fighting a full-body tremble, and spread her folder out on the counter. Pawing through her junk drawer, she changed course. “Evan had to have gone somewhere, right? Maybe that’s when he conducted his interviews. He left work and—”
“Look, Jessica. I’m a bit out of my depth here,” Peter cut in. “If you have questions, I think you should direct them to the authorities. I was just Evan’s friend.”
Jess emerged from the depths of the drawer triumphant, crowded key chain in hand. She was barely listening to Peter anymore. “You’re right,” she said distractedly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
“No bother. I’m always here for you. And Jess? I might be overstepping my bounds here, but may I ask you a question?”
“Sure.” Jess tucked her finger through the key ring and palmed the keys so they wouldn’t jangle. Abandoning her notebook, she hurried through the house, grabbing her coat off the chair where she had thrown it and tossing pillows in search of her purse.
“Are you seeing someone?” Peter paused for a moment. “I mean, a counselor? Therapist? Pastor? Do you have someone you can talk to?”
Jess stopped, one arm through her coat. “What?” She hadn’t heard him. Or hadn’t been paying attention. She spied her purse half hidden beneath the coffee table and snatched it up.
“It’s my professional opinion that you need someone to talk to, Jess. Mental and emotional health is equally as important as physical health. If not more so. You’ve just experienced an incredible loss. I hope you’re working through it with someone who can help.”
It wasn’t the first time that Jess had been told she needed counseling. And while she wasn’t averse to the idea, she hadn’t gotten around to setting up any appointments. “Thank you,” she said, adjusting the phone so she could stick her other arm in the coat sleeve. “I’m not. But I will be.”
“I’m glad to hear that. And Jess?”
“Yeah?”
“We’re praying for you, Leslie and I. And I mean that very sincerely.”
“Thanks, Peter.”
There was a lump in her throat when she hung up, but Jess didn’t have time to fall apart now. Taking the stairs two at a time, she rushed to Max’s room and rapped lightly on the door with her knuckles.
“It’s open,” came the muffled reply.
“Hey.” Jess stuck her head in, zipping up her coat with one quick snip. “I have to run out for a minute.”
“Now?” Max looked up from the science textbook he had splayed open on his bed. A notebook rested on his knee and one hand clutched a black, felt-tipped pen. His favorite.
Jess felt a rush of affection for her prickly, brilliant son. “Yes, now. I won’t be long.”
“Where are you going?”
“Forgot something at school,” Jess lied. “Gabe is asleep in my bed. Just comfort him if he wakes up, okay? Tell him I’ll be home soon.”
“Fine.” Max’s attention was already back on his textbook.
“I’ll leave your door open so you can hear him if he gets up.”
“Sure.”
Evan’s keys were heavy and unfamiliar in Jess’s coat pocket as she pulled out of the driveway. Her key chain held exactly four keys: car, house, school, classroom. But his had always been a cacophony of jangling silver, each toothy wedge of metal biting back a little secret. Jess really had no idea why he needed so many keys, and she certainly didn’t know what they were all for. But she was about to find out.
It took her four tries to find the key to the front door of his town house. It had a golden cast and seemed unnaturally bright. New. Jess hated it for a moment, detested this small, inanimate object that signified the distance between them, the steps he had taken to set up a life apart from her. But before she could be sucked under by regret, Jess turned the handle and stepped over the threshold into Evan’s apartment.
She had never been here before. In the driveway, yes, but not inside the town house where Evan had spent the last several months of his life. It was cold and stale and empty, skinny with loss. Lonely. Jess fumbled against the wall by the door, patting the wall in search of a switch and the promise of light.
When she finally found it, the pale wash of color didn’t offer the respite she was hoping for. Jess was standing on a small square of tile just inside the front door. There was a bare hook on the wall beside her and a plastic tray for shoes that cradled a pair of lace-up work boots. The
laces were frayed, the black soles rimmed white with salt from winters past. For some reason, the thought that they would never be used again, that Evan would never lace them up to head out and shovel the driveway in the blue predawn of a December morning, made Jess suddenly, furiously nauseous.
She lurched onto the carpet, trying to decipher where the bathroom would be in a two-story town house with a cookie-cutter layout. A narrow staircase rose into the darkness to her left, and to her right there was a cramped living room that opened onto a galley kitchen. No sign of a bathroom, so Jess stumbled past a threadbare couch into the kitchen, where she stood heaving over the sink, fingers curled around the rim of the cold, stainless steel bowl.
This was why she hadn’t come before. This was why she had avoided Evan’s apartment like the plague, knowing that she could put it off because his lease was paid up through the year. Someday, she had told herself, believing that someday might never come. Maybe she could have a crew come in and clean everything out so that she didn’t have to face it. Maybe her father would offer to do it for her. But now that she was here, she knew that could never happen. The space was hers to excavate.
The apartment was sad, but it bore traces of Evan like scars. A mug he loved had been turned upside down on the drying rack. It was a camper’s mug, tin with a handle, green flecked with white. He had bought it for himself at an outdoors store, a hopeful purchase more than a practical one, because he wasn’t afforded many opportunities to camp. How many years had Evan sipped coffee out of that mug? And draped over the back of one of the chairs huddled around a small round table was his favorite sweatshirt. It was thick and oatmeal colored, emblazoned with a Patagonia label on the chest, right above where his heart would be.
This place didn’t smell like him, it didn’t hold his essence, but there were hints of him everywhere, and when Jess’s stomach finally stopped convulsing, she found herself wanting to touch everything. Maybe if she ran her fingers over the places he had been, the things he had touched, she’d find fragments of him still hiding. Waiting for her.
But that was foolishness.
Jess had come for a reason. She stuffed her feelings down deep and began to systematically search the small apartment. It had been too painful for her to come before, but now she pushed through those barbed emotions and forced herself into every room, every closet, every nook and cranny.
On the main floor there was a kitchen, living room, spare bedroom, and bathroom. Everything was neat and impersonal, secondhand or bought without regard for color or pattern or theme from the home goods section at Target. A striped comforter fought with curtains in a faded plaid, and the lone pillow on the narrow twin bed was tucked in a peach-colored pillowcase. Clearance rack finds, no doubt. Evan had always been frugal.
Jess assumed that the bedroom on the main floor was for the boys when they spent the weekend. In the top drawer of the dresser she found a handful of extra clothes. Boxers and socks, a pair of pajama pants with emojis that were obviously for Gabe. If Jess knew her sons, Gabe slept in the bedroom (or with Evan) and Max took the couch. He had always been able to sleep anywhere, anytime. Still, the thought of her boys curled up wherever they could find room, nestled under dusty afghans or on sagging mattresses, made her heart constrict.
The bathroom was equally vacant. Beneath the sink was a stack of extra toilet paper rolls and a bottle of toilet bowl cleaner. Nothing more.
A thrill of urgency gripped Jessica, and she hurried up the shadowed staircase. It was even colder upstairs—if that was possible—and smaller than she imagined it would be. A tiny landing offered Jess two options: a door to the right and another to her left. A second bathroom was behind the door on the left, and that meant Evan’s bedroom was the only room yet to explore in the dismal apartment. Jess found the light switch and illuminated a scene that closely resembled everything she had already observed.
The bed was topped with a comforter in an indistinct brown. Taupe or tan or beige. Jessica could never tell the difference and she was certain Evan couldn’t either. But it was made, corners pulled tight and the hem an even foot above the floor. Under the window stood an old nightstand, thick with varnish and boasting turned legs that screamed 1980s. One lamp, one empty glass on a coaster, one dog-eared paperback. And against one wall there was a closet with bifold doors that were cracked open just an inch.
Jess started there, pulling back the hollow core doors to reveal a closet that smelled and looked exactly the same as it had for their entire married life. Evan arranged his shirts by color so that his wardrobe was a lopsided rainbow—it leaned heavily toward neutrals, with just a handful of primary colors thrown in. And the scent was pure Evan, the same cologne he had been wearing for years—sandalwood and cool water. Jess choked back a gasp, barely resisting the urge to bury her face in his polos and dress shirts, to inhale what little remained of her husband.
But Jess was also starting to feel a familiar disappointment. Evan’s apartment was so organized and impersonal that there was simply no room for mystery. This was not a place where a riddle could be solved, and there wasn’t even the barest hint of what Evan had been up to—why he had been absent at work and taking notes on female convicts and disappearing into the Minnesota wild on dark autumn nights. None of the things that Jessica had discovered made sense against the backdrop of his so-called home. No, this wasn’t a home. This was a place to exist.
Jess swiped her palm against the carefully aligned shirts, mussing the fabric and scattering the hangers so that they were no longer a perfect inch apart. The shout of metal on metal was startling, and Jess fell back a little. But as she did, she realized that there was something crammed on the floor of the closet. Crouching down, she reached into the depths of the gloom and pulled out a gym bag.
As long as Jessica had known Evan, he was not the gym-going type. He ran occasionally, but mostly he went on long walks with her and cut the lawn with a push mower and chased his boys. He worked long hours on his feet and ate healthy and didn’t smoke. At different times (usually January of each new year) they both claimed that they needed to put themselves first and get in shape, but besides halfhearted bursts of passion between the constant hum and press of a frantic day-to-day life, they never managed to carve out the time.
But when Jessica pulled back the zipper, there was a pair of new tennis shoes, gym shorts, and a couple of mesh-fabric T-shirts. Even soap on a rope in a container so it wouldn’t make his clothes slimy, as well as a travel-sized shampoo. Evan was going to the gym. Regularly, it seemed. And according to the plastic card attached to the carabiner on the strap of the Adidas bag, he was a member at Eclipse Fitness. Below his printed name Jess read: OPEN 24 HOURS FOR ANYTIME WELLNESS.
A quick glance at her watch told Jessica it was past ten. But Max was home with Gabe, and if she remembered correctly, Eclipse was only a couple of miles away. A detour on the way home wouldn’t hurt anything.
And maybe, just maybe, Evan had chosen to hide his secrets somewhere a little farther from home. Like in a nondescript gym locker.
* * *
River Han
New Message from Evan Chamberlain
October 12, 2018
River,
Thank you so much for the information you have provided and the time you have taken to talk to me. I am so grateful. I also appreciate the introduction to Francesca.
I have done as you requested. The name on the ID is Sam Nelson. Please tell Francesca I will be there next Friday. It seems unnecessarily clandestine to me, but you can tell her I promise that this conversation will be off the record.
Gratefully,
Evan
* * *
Evan Chamberlain
New Message from River Han
October 13, 2018
She’ll be ready.
River
Ariana G.
20, Caucasian, 2-year degree (secretarial)
Natural redhead, chin-length. Freckles, unnaturally blue eyes.
Ex-boyfri
end knows.
DUI/CW, 49m, 2yr pp
CHAPTER 24
JESSICA HAD NEVER been to a twenty-four-hour gym before. But Eclipse Fitness was welcoming enough. The entire front of the building was bright with windows, and behind the frosted glass exercise machines were lined up like sentinels. They were empty now, or almost. A towel was thrown over a rowing machine near the end of one row, and at the back of the well-lit facility Jess could just make out a burly figure lifting weights. He seemed to be alone. But Jess wasn’t about to be deterred.
The front door was locked, and there was no one behind the reception desk. Thankfully, Jessica had grabbed the carabiner with Evan’s tag, and when she held it beneath the magnetic pad near the door, it blinked green. The door clicked open.
Inside, Eclipse Fitness smelled exactly like Jess expected it to: of rubber and dryer sheets and old sweat. Music was blaring from speakers that dotted the ceiling, a playlist that was curated to stimulate and inspire if the throbbing, rhythmic bass line was any indication. The man at the back of the wide-open space didn’t even glance up when Jess let in a draft of cold air. He probably appreciated it, considering the dark patch of damp that was spreading across the front of his tank top.
Jess shouldered her purse, grateful that no one was going to pepper her with questions but uncertain about where to start. From her vantage point near the door, there was no bank of lockers, no place at all, really, to hide. She wandered down the first row of equipment, away from the free weights and the mat where the lifter still huffed and puffed. She walked past the room where classes were held, toward the men’s and women’s locker rooms, and—jackpot!—two walls full of lockers.
