“Can I help you?” she finally asked, more politely than I’d expected.
“I’m looking for—” I realized I didn’t know the pitcher’s first name. “Mr. Emerson’s son.”
“Mr. Emerson’s got three sons. You want to try again?”
“The one that pitches for the softball team.”
“That’s Jack. Can I ask what this is about?”
“It’s kind of embarrassing.”
She raised an eyebrow at me, as if to say, Tough shit. I was starting to get the feeling she was more than the receptionist. There were a number of framed photographs on her side of the counter, all facing away from me, but I was pretty sure if I reached over and took one I’d see it was of Jack or his brothers—her sons.
“I saw Jack pitch at a softball game a couple of weeks ago. I thought he was cute, but I didn’t have the nerve to say anything afterward. Ever since, I’ve been kicking myself. One of my girlfriends finally talked me into driving down here, so I figured I’d just do it, before I changed my mind.” I stared at my feet, trying to seem demure.
She chuckled. “That’s sweet. So you drove all the way down from—where?”
“Williston.”
The kindness drained from her face. “Williston?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you one of Caroline’s friends? Did she send you down here to give a message to him or something?”
“Caroline? Caroline Miller?” I asked, confused.
“So you do know her.”
“Everyone in Williston knows the Millers.”
“Well, you can turn around and go back to Williston and tell the Millers to leave the Emersons alone. We don’t want any more trouble with them. And my boys are done with girls from Williston, that’s for damn sure.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” I said, stepping back from the reception desk, confused. “I’m not friends with Caroline and she didn’t send me down here. I just want to talk to Jack.”
“Jack’s working.” The phone rang again, and as she held her hand over it, she gave me a pointed look. “And you’d better go.”
She wasn’t asking.
• • •
By the time I got back to Williston, I was too hungry to avoid the diner. I cringed as Owen looked up from the coffeemaker. Relief passed over his face just for a second before he reorganized his features into their normal mask of mild irritation. I kept my eyes down, went to a booth, and sat with my back to the counter and to Owen, paging through the Pullman newspaper to keep my hands busy until Jenny the waitress filled my coffee mug. Their town might be getting all the tourist money this summer, and their softball team was definitely superior, but their police blotter was a bore compared to ours. Someone sat opposite me in the booth and I sighed, assuming it was Owen. I took a sip of my coffee and made a point of not looking up.
“Hey, Finley.”
It wasn’t Owen. It was Calder.
I recoiled, my back pressed against the vinyl, as far away from him as I could get without running for the door. “What do you want?”
“I just wanted to say hi,” he said softly. “You’ve been back for a couple of weeks now and I haven’t had the chance. But I was walking by and saw you sitting here by yourself, so I thought I’d pop in and see how you were doing.”
“You really shouldn’t have worried about it,” I said.
“How’s your summer going so far?”
I wondered if he was high. I knew I wished I was. I forced myself to look at him.
He’d lost weight. His face and shoulders seemed more angular and he was pale. His eyes were set deeper in his skull. The pupils weren’t pinned, so he wasn’t on the same shit as his sister, but his irises were a muddier blue than I remembered. I’d never seen his hair so long; it reached his collar at the back, curling softly at the ends. He was clean-shaven, though, and his fingernails neatly trimmed; he wasn’t unrecognizable, and nothing about him screamed “murderer” in quite the way I’d expected.
For all of my previous bravado, I was terrified, even though I was sitting in Owen’s diner, and Owen’s diner was my safe place even when we weren’t speaking, and Owen was behind the counter, probably watching this exchange. My father was in his office down the street; I’d seen his car parked outside the creamery when I’d come in. It was the middle of the afternoon, and any minute I’d hear the cook hit the bell in the kitchen, and that would mean that my grilled cheese was ready. Maybe I’d get a to-go box and head down the street to Dad’s office; maybe he had some filing he needed me to do, and after work we would go home together and I would lock all the doors and fall asleep later with the TV on. Just because Calder had killed Betty didn’t mean he would kill me, too.
“It’s okay, I guess.” My mouth had gone dry but I was scared to take a sip of water, afraid my shaking hands would give me away. Somewhere in my head a chant was starting up: Show no fear, show no fear, show no fear.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come back this summer.”
“Yeah, I’ve been getting that a lot.”
I had known that sooner or later this day would come, that somewhere I’d end up face-to-face with Calder. I’d imagined it many times, just like I’d imagined Betty’s death, but not like this. There, I approached him, not the other way around, and I was clever and brave, and he was the one frightened of me. That I’d managed to convince myself of this—that I was some sort of threat to him—now seemed patently ridiculous and stupid, and suddenly I realized that maybe Owen had a point after all, the one about not antagonizing the person who had killed your friend, and I probably owed him an apology. And where the fuck was Owen anyway? I looked up but he wasn’t behind the counter anymore.
“Do you remember that time we found the bathtub in the woods?” Calder asked, out of nowhere.
“Yes,” I whispered.
It happened on a gray Saturday, the summer before our junior year, when Calder and Betty were still a normal, happy couple and I was the welcome trespasser hanging out with them nearly every day. It had rained all that week and we had exhausted our collection of movies and board games; even though there was still a damp, achy chill in the air, we were so relieved the rain had stopped that we’d made straight for the woods, trailing crumbs from our cherry Pop-Tarts and shivering. We had no plan or agenda beyond simply being outside and together, and we hiked farther in than we ordinarily would have had the patience to do.
I still remembered that walk with unusual clarity—Betty leading the way, the occasional skip in her step, me following Calder, his red rain slicker in sharp relief against the lush, loamy green—and how abruptly it ended when we came upon a bathtub, a real claw-foot, cast-iron tub, just sitting under a tree in the middle of the woods. It was rusty and filled with several inches of dirty rainwater.
Betty was delighted—she immediately wanted to climb inside, and I had to convince her not to, remind her that she would be miserable hiking home in wet clothes, and I would be miserable listening to her complain the whole time—and Calder had a number of theories about the bathtub’s origins, but something about the whole thing unsettled me deeply, the way I imagined seeing a UFO might. The tub had no business being there, there was no explanation for where it had come from, yet we were looking at it just the same.
I didn’t know why Calder had brought up that day in particular, but it only disconcerted me further, that he’d chosen an incident that already made me inexplicably uneasy.
“Wasn’t it weird,” he went on, “how we were never ever able to find it again?”
The bell dinged in the kitchen, and a few moments later Jenny brought me my grilled cheese, for which I had lost all appetite. Still, I forced myself to pick it up and take a bite, the bread turning to a dry paste in my mouth, melted cheddar burning my tongue. Show no fear, show no fear, show no fear. Now swallow.
We never did
find the tub again, as Calder said. We had looked, tromping through the woods again a few days later, this time with a small entourage in tow: friends of his from the lacrosse team, friends of his from the drama club who seemed to mostly tolerate Betty. Most of the guys carried forties or six-packs of beer, yet glared every time I lit a cigarette.
“You’d better not start a fire out here,” one of them warned me, a particularly simian member of the group, thick-necked, brown hair shorn into a crew cut. All the lacrosse guys had nicknames, and his was Stupo.
We wandered around in circles all afternoon. The boys got buzzed and hit on the theater girls like they were doing them a favor; the theater girls stuck together in a tight clutch and only spoke to one another in stage whispers; Betty and I were far behind the others, her arm slung loosely around my waist as we tried to decide if she should visit New York for Halloween or Thanksgiving. Only Calder moved seamlessly among and between, talking team rivalries one minute and Shakespeare the next, falling back to plant a kiss on Betty’s palm and then sprinting back to the helm of the whole party. We never came across the bathtub, despite his insistence that we had followed the same path, and I for one was silently grateful. I hadn’t actually wanted to see it again.
“So what?” I said now.
“I was thinking about that tub the other day. How easy it is for things to get lost in the woods. Like Cassie. She’s out there somewhere. Who knows if she’ll ever find her way home. Poor Gemini’s so upset he won’t eat. “
“I know how he feels.”
“You mean well, I get that, but you’re making trouble for no reason, Finley,” he said, to my bafflement. Then he leaned forward, and I stiffened. “Betty killed herself. Maybe nobody else will say it to you that bluntly, but that’s what we all know happened.”
“And how do you ‘all know’ that?”
“Because she was miserable. It was obvious to everyone. I bet it was even obvious to you.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“I miss her too, you know,” Calder said. Then he got up and walked away.
As soon as the door closed behind him, Owen came over to the booth, leaned in, and put a hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
I shrugged him off. “What the hell took you so long?” I tried to throw some money on the table—I think I had some idea about storming out—but Owen took my shaky hands in his and I, to my horror, dissolved completely into tears. He froze for a moment, not sure how to proceed, and then, like he had seen someone do it in a movie once, he put his arms around me and pulled me close so I could sob into his chest. “Where were you?” I managed.
“I’m so sorry, Fin, I was out in the alley having a cigarette. I’m sorry. He left as soon as he saw me come back in.”
“I’m so stupid, O, I’m so fucking stupid.”
He was, in his own way, too good to lie. “I know.” He reached across me and pulled a fistful of napkins from the dispenser, then tried to use them to blot away my tears. I let him rub the scratchy paper against my cheeks a few times before I pulled away.
“You were right. Okay? I was wrong and you were right.”
“Look,” he said. “Why don’t I close up early? Give me a few minutes and we’ll get out of here.”
“Can you do that?” I asked.
“It’s my diner. I can do whatever I want. Besides, it’s not like we’re slammed at the moment.”
I lifted my head from his chest and looked around. There was nobody there but us. For some reason, that got me crying all over again.
When I was done weeping, and Owen had sent Jenny and the cook home, and after he finished counting out his meager tips, we got ready to leave. I was still shaking and starving; that one bite of grilled cheese was all I’d managed to choke down. So when he offered to take me back to the cabin and make me something to eat, I agreed, not thinking past food or the comfort of being around someone I’d known my whole life, someone who seemed fairly invested in my continued well-being and physical safety.
The phone behind the counter rang as we were about to walk out the door.
“Shit,” Owen said. “I have to get that. I forgot I was expecting a call.”
“Seriously? Now?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, squeezing my shoulders reassuringly as he sprinted toward the phone. “This’ll just take a second.”
I stood by the door hugging myself as he picked up the receiver; I looked up and down the street to make sure Calder was gone.
Owen’s side of the conversation didn’t give anything away; it was all “yes” and “no” and “okay, fine.” I figured it was either his connection or another girl. I was still trying to decide which one was preferable when he hung up.
“Come on,” he said, putting an arm around my waist and leading me out the door. “Let’s go.”
We got into his truck and I numbly fastened my seat belt. My stomach rumbled audibly, but I couldn’t feel a thing.
“Are you okay?” Owen asked me.
“I don’t think so.”
He lit two cigarettes and passed me one. “Look, I have to run a quick errand on the way home.”
I didn’t answer, took a drag instead. I couldn’t feel that either.
He drove farther out of town than I expected, passing the turnoff to his cabin. Wherever we were going, it wasn’t on the way home. I didn’t care. I searched the sky outside my window for a break in the clouds and came up empty.
“What did he say to you?” Owen asked. “Did he threaten you?”
“I’m not entirely sure.”
“Fuck,” he said.
“I’m not exactly in the mood for an ‘I told you so,’ in case that’s where this is going.”
“It’s not, I swear.”
He finally pulled into an unpaved driveway carpeted in wet, green leaves, so narrow that branches scraped against the side of the truck. Then he stopped, but didn’t kill the engine.
“I need you to do something for me, okay?” he said softly. “Get down.”
“What?”
“Crouch down in your seat. This guy can be pretty paranoid and I don’t want him to see you.”
So it had been his connection on the phone. “Are you sure you don’t want me to crawl into the truck bed? You can cover me with a tarp.”
“I’m serious, Finley. I’ve got enough to worry about right now. Just do it.”
“Fine,” I said, slumping lower in my seat.
“That’s not enough. I need you to curl up under the dash.”
“Christ, Owen.”
“And keep your goddamn voice down.”
I unbuckled my seat belt and did as he said, folding myself up and wedging myself in the space underneath the glove compartment. The floor mat was filthy, my jeans immediately covered in dirt and ash; I tossed a crumpled beer can into the back of the cab. “Hurry up, okay?”
“Don’t move, and don’t make any noise. I mean it. This guy has, like, a sixth sense or something. If he knows I brought someone to his house, he’ll lose his shit.”
Satisfied that I was hidden from view, Owen finished pulling into the driveway. From my vantage point on the floor, I could see that the canopy of trees had opened up. Raindrops started falling on the truck’s roof. I hugged my knees to my chest and thought about Owen’s cabin, a whiskey for my nerves, falling asleep on the couch listening to the rain, his ratty old quilt wrapped around me.
“I’ll be right back,” Owen whispered, not looking down at me.
“Hopefully before my legs start to cramp.”
The truck shook when he closed his door. I massaged my calves, trying to keep the blood moving, and wiggled my toes so my feet wouldn’t fall asleep. I needed to talk to Serena, make sure she was okay, see if Calder had tried to contact her, too, warn her that he might. Just the thought of Serena did something else to my bl
ood altogether, and suddenly I could feel my stomach again, that warm flush low in my belly and between my legs. Could I convince her to let Betty’s death go? Did I want to? What else could we do? There was no evidence that Calder had killed her, no way to prove he’d done it. And on top of everything, his father ran the town. Maybe I should hunker down, spend the rest of the summer picking berries and eating ice cream and letting Serena’s mouth wander all over my body.
I pressed my face against my thighs and listened to the rain pummel the windshield and thought about Betty, how the summers were ours and he’d stolen this one from us, this one and all the others to come, and our late-night dorm room conversations and our fights over how to decorate our West-or-East Village apartment. I’d never have another new Betty story to tell, I’d only have the old ones to recycle over and over. Sometimes I had trouble remembering her voice. How much longer until I needed a photograph to remind me what she looked like? I thought about the crucifix that nestled in Serena’s collarbone, and what Serena had said, that she believed in God because otherwise she’d never get to see Betty again. I wished I could do the same. As it was, I could only hope to see her in my dreams, dreams that left me feeling like the shit had been kicked out of my heart. I wanted her ghost to haunt me forever, as much as I wanted to put her to rest, as much as I wanted Calder to suffer.
The windows of the truck were rolled up, but I could hear muffled voices. Whoever Owen was talking to, he was incredibly long-winded; full minutes seemed to go by between Owen’s familiar monosyllabic responses. Something about the first guy’s voice was familiar, too; I couldn’t place it, but I could feel the face that went with it trying to emerge from my subconscious. Despite all Owen’s warnings, I slid out from under the dash, hands on the bottom of the passenger seat, pulling myself up just enough so I could peek out the windshield.
A Good Idea Page 13
