Alek’s a sweet kid, mostly.
Not really a kid, she supposes; he’s eighteen but seems younger. Some kids grow up faster when they’re neglected, but she guesses it was only emotional neglect in Alek’s case: all his other needs were met so that maybe kept him a bit childish, needy. Valerie knew his mother in high school – it wasn’t like they were friends; they didn’t hang out then or when they had their kids – but she was needy too, Laura Lane that was. Whatever void she thought marriage to Reid “Red” Howard might fill apparently remained empty and one day, when Alek was nine, Laura packed her bags and was gone, leaving the boy bereft. Then there was a series of housekeepers and private tutors who didn’t stay long; it wasn’t like Alek was especially bad, but his need for attention and reassurance were constant and if that wasn’t met… well, Reid had told her that as a kid Alek would make a lot of noise; as a young teen his silence was positively apocalyptic. No one lasted, their nerves shredded one way or another; no one until Valerie.
Alek’s father could have sent him to university anywhere, even Ivy League, but had kept him at home to attend the small one with no real reputation in the next town over. There’s nothing wrong with it, per se, but not so much to recommend Addison U either (oh, it’s got “University” in its title, but it’s really just a college). There’s a pretty campus, solid syllabi, decent teachers, no big scandals so far, small class sizes, and a relatively low-level drug problem. Kids who go there do so mainly on one-year transfer programs to Syracuse or Cornell or Princeton. Of course, more than one girl from a disadvantaged background attends there on the Laura Lane-Howard Scholarships Reid set up in the wake of his wife’s leaving.
Alek doesn’t seem to mind. Reid handed down the black Mercedes C-300 Coupe for him to drive, and he doesn’t need to over-extend himself to achieve at Addison. He doesn’t seem to want to go anywhere else; the boy’s without ambition.
An easy ride is fine if your life doesn’t change, Valerie thinks. But life does change, as she knows all too well. It changes when you’re not looking, or even when you are looking but you’ve got your hands full with other stuff. At some point Alek’s going to find life kicking his ass to the curb with a vengeance. Deprived of a mother’s love, with an absentee father, the kid’s so desperate for affection and attention that he applies girls to his ego like they’re nicotine patches.
But he’s not a bad kid, she thinks, for all that. He’s just coping the way he knows how, following a need the only way he thinks he can. She suspects he doesn’t like that echo of emptiness most folk experience in their lives. Some recognize it, embrace it; some ignore it, flee from it. Some days Valerie thinks she hears the sad chimes of his hollowness dueting with hers, just when she thinks she’s got it beat. Truth is, the boy’s an anchor for her and she hadn’t realized how badly she needed one.
She pours a cup of coffee, breathes the aroma deeply as it fills the kitchen in a way that seems too big to come from such a small receptacle. It’s magic, she thinks: the smell of it, the ritual of making, the effect it has on the senses. Strange that something so bitter can make you so content. She sits down and sorts the letters into piles. She opens the bills first; they’ll get paid with the credit card Reid gave her. She pushes the pink envelope to the corner of the table for Alek to find when he gets home later tonight.
Valerie eyes the pink rectangle, wondering idly about the latest. She’s always kind of amazed when the boy looks at her like she’s some sort of witch every time she says, “What’s this one’s name?” Like he’s some great man of mystery. Lord, sweetheart, she thinks, for a smart boy you are dumb. She could tell him he’s predictable, and only the names change. She could tell him she sets her watch by him. But she doesn’t.
When she first moved into the Howard Estate, Valerie would sometimes meet the girl for coffee and whatever cake grief required after the inevitable happened: Alek lost interest in the she-of-the-moment. Valerie’d listen to the crying and/or ranting; she’d nod then tell the girl how life was likely to be. There’s no great harm in Alek, she’d say, but he’s a heedless boy. You don’t want a heedless boy; they never notice what you need, or if they do they probably won’t give it to you unless they can see an advantage in it for themselves. And heedless boys become heedless men, unless they get taught hard lessons early on.
Not all men, Valerie’d say, but enough of them to make life fucking difficult.
“You make your choice,” she’d tell them. “Do you want to be the one to teach him those hard lessons? Coz I can tell you now, he’ll listen but he’ll start thinking of you as his mother, and trust me: no man wants to sleep with his mother. Those that do are not the ones you want to sleep with. Or do you want a man who’s already had his lessons taught him by someone else?”
She’d never had one of those girls decide she wanted to be the one to teach Alek his lessons, although one did accuse Valerie of being an enabler. When she’d finished laughing, Valerie said, “What’s enabling about encouraging a girl to walk away? If I tell you to stay and fight, to bang your head against a wall trying to force someone to love you, what the fuck kind of favor am I doing you? Enabling is sending a battalion of girls back over and over again like cannon fodder because they think they’re going to win. You keep going back then what’s he going to learn about consequence? Enough women walk away, maybe he’ll wake up to himself.”
She’d shaken her head and finished with, “One day you might have kids and you need to remember that you’re the one who teaches your son how much shit a woman will put up with.”
Eventually, though, she got exhausted by the stream of girls and told Alek to stop bringing them home until he found one he thought he wanted to marry. Really though, she knew somewhere deep down that fighting to force anyone to make better decisions was a lost cause.
Valerie likes to think that her daughter wouldn’t have needed that sort of advice. Valerie likes to think her daughter would have been too smart to put up with that kind of juvenile shit. Valerie likes to imagine her life in Mercy’s Brook if Lily hadn’t gone, although “likes” probably isn’t the right word. It’s more like mental cutting. She doesn’t pull her own hair, tear at her cuticles; she doesn’t drink or smoke or do drugs; no, Valerie’s self-harm is imagining better days that’ll never ever come.
Lily would have graduated high school; she’d have gone on to university in New York or Boston. She’d have decided on being a doctor, lawyer, architect: she had all the choices in the world. Maybe she’d have come home to Mercy’s Brook; maybe she’d have settled elsewhere and Valerie would have gone to visit. Maybe Chase would have come too; maybe Chase wouldn’t have started drinking if their daughter hadn’t disappeared. Maybe Valerie wouldn’t have started an affair with the man who ran the drugstore. Maybe if they’d had some answers about Lily’s fate the other stuff wouldn’t have happened.
Or maybe it all would have happened anyway.
Valerie rubs a hand over her face and yawns. She’s not sleeping well; the dreams have come in force. They always do around this time. Even if she didn’t look at a calendar, she’d still know the date was on the horizon for the physical and psychic effects its forward march caused. It’s not helped this year by the sense of helplessness that’s crept over her. Every avenue seems to have closed down, not a clue left behind as to what happened to Lily.
Sighing, she reaches for the sole envelope with her name on it. She examines again the familiar old-fashioned handwriting, a style learned under threat of a ruler to the knuckles. Valerie’s about to slide a long nail under the edge of the flap and begin the delicate process of working it open when the doorbell rings.
* * *
Alek lied about the late lecture, and he’s surprised he got away with it. Normally Valerie knows his schedule like the back of her hand, but she’s been tired lately and when she’s tired, she gets distracted. Alek turns left instead of right, heads around the outskirts of Mercy’s Brook instead of through the middle so there’s less chance o
f being seen.
Valerie nicknames his various girlfriends after weather phenomena with a weary boredom. Hurricane Suzie. The French Tempest. Cyclone Elaine. He asks her every time how she knows he’s got a new one and she just gives him the look, which is part of why he lied about tonight.
As Alek pulls up out front of Carrie’s place, the butterflies begin their dance in his tummy. It’s a big house, but there are more bodies rolling around inside this one than his: both parents, three sisters, four brothers, and a grandmother. A proper family lives here. A proper family who, according to Carrie, are all out today. The house isn’t as big as the one he came from – not as much money here as Reid has to throw about – but Carrie’s not one of the scholarship students either. She lives ten minutes out of town, twenty minutes from his home, and situated well off the main road, so he doesn’t worry about anyone seeing him here. It’s early days yet, and one thing he’s learning is not to advertise his latest infatuation too soon, and not just because Valerie will make fun of him.
“This is a small town, Alek. It’s kind of stuck in time, a very particular time with a set of very particular expectations,” she’d said a few weeks ago at dinner. “You start seeing a girl, taking her out in public – and sweet Jesus, I am not telling you to sneak around like you’re ashamed – but out in front of everyone? Meeting their parents, for the love of God? Once it’s in the open, child, you don’t get to enjoy anything in private. Everyone’s watching, and every girl with dreams that revolve around a white dress and a charge card she doesn’t have to make payments on is looking at you like you’re the prized hog at the fair.”
“Hog? Well, as long as it’s the prized one…”
They’d laughed, but then she’d gotten serious again. “Ask yourself how much you’re going to have to apologize for, Alek Howard. Think before you do something dumb, that’s all I’m asking.”
Now, he’s sitting in the driver’s seat. In his backpack is a box of chocolates, Fair Trade and expensive, the kind Carrie likes; buying them seemed like a good idea at the time, but now… he’s not sure about taking them in. Is it too much or too little, or should he just turn up empty-handed and see what happens?
It’s only been a week, jeez. He used to think he was being generous – if his father had taught him nothing else it was generosity – but Alek’s wondering if it sends the wrong signal. Creates too many expectations, too soon. Valerie’s voice is in his head nowadays. Shit, he can’t even give a girl a box of chocolates without second-guessing himself.
How much are you going to have to apologize for?
The front door to the house opens and there’s Carrie hanging in the doorway, all that long dark hair, wide-set dark eyes, slow smile, and tanned skin.
Alek grabs the backpack. He’ll see how things pan out.
* * *
“Mornin’, Valerie.”
Sheriff Obadiah Tully is a barrel on short, skinny legs. His uniforms are specially made, but even personalized tailoring isn’t a silver bullet, not with his eccentricities of form. Valerie thinks it unfair that Tully shouldn’t have to worry about being beach-body ready; she’d love for him to be afflicted with just a small degree of the self-doubt that comes with being female. But nope, he just hitches his utility belt where it hangs under the awning of his gut with a peacock flourish.
“Sheriff. What brings you to my door?”
“Well, not exactly your door is it, Valerie?” Tully’s never quite got over his pique at that.
As Tully’s investigation into Lily’s disappearance went nowhere, Valerie’s complaints got louder and louder, while her husband got drunker and drunker. Tully got vengeful. Obadiah took it upon himself to sometimes tail her when she drove home late at night, or follow her up and down the aisles at the supermarket, making sure she knew he was there. He’d convinced both the State Police and the FBI that Lily Wynne had run away from home; under his telling, the honors student became a hellion with a turning of the tongue.
Then Chase Wynne emptied their bank accounts and left Mercy’s Brook.
Then the bookstore where Valerie worked closed and she was out of a job.
Then the house had to be sold and things looked pretty grim.
That was when Reid Howard stepped in – almost a year to the day after Lily’s vanishing – and offered her a job and a home and a child, of sorts. Tully wasn’t brave enough to keep tormenting her after that, so it made Valerie wonder just what the hell Shitheel Tully was doing here now.
“Is there something I can help you with, Obadiah? Or are you just here to exchange pleasantries?”
“I just thought you might like to know that Lucius Anderson passed.”
“Passed what? Wind? Passed: that is the stupidest term I’ve ever heard.” Valerie’s blowing smoke to cover the effect of the news, but unease and not a little sadness are making her stomach churn. She swallows, thinking of the last time she spoke with Lucius – well, argued with him. She thinks of the envelope on the kitchen table, the distinctive handwriting. “What happened?”
“Home invasion,” says Tully. He pushes the hat back on his forehead, showing the receding gray hairline and the indentations where the band is too tight.
“Home invasion? Around here?” Her disbelief is clear, and it’s not like the Sheriff should expect anything else, but still he draws himself up, a bantam rooster puffing his chest like he’s about to do battle.
“You know there are meth labs back in the woods. There are folk passing through our little town who’re happy to do ill. You should know that better than anyone, Valerie Wynne.”
“What would some meth-chef want in Lucius Anderson’s home? He didn’t keep anything there, not when he had an entire drugstore filled with medicines.”
“Well, maybe some meth-chef wouldn’t know that?”
“Isn’t it something you should be figuring out?”
“You know, I’m only here as a kindness, seeing as how he meant something to you. Or maybe he didn’t.”
“Whatever passed between me and Lucius is none of your business.” Valerie’s hand on the doorframe is shaking, and she can feel cold sweat breaking out under her arms, down in the small of her back. She clears her throat, thinks of the letter inside again. “Look. I’m sorry, Obadiah, I don’t want to pick a fight with you. I’m just… shocked. I’m shocked, is all.”
He shuffles back a few steps as if surprised by her conciliation, then nods. He narrows his eyes and asks in an offhanded manner, “You hadn’t spoken to him recently? Lucius? He didn’t mention anything to you?”
And Valerie sees where this has been leading. “Like if he was afraid of anyone? Or he’d seen someone hanging around outside at odd hours? Like that?”
“Yeah, like that.”
She shakes her head. “Obadiah, you know things didn’t end well between me and Lucius.” And truly they had not for he’d thought she would fall into a marriage with him after Chase left. “I’m the last person he’d confide in.” But she thinks of seeing him in the supermarket last week, how he looked like he wanted to say something but then turned away. She shrugs, makes a peace offering of her hand, which Tully takes in surprise. She hopes she hasn’t laid it on too thick. “Will you keep me informed? I did care for him, no matter what happened.”
She closes the door before he’s at his car. She doesn’t hear if the engine starts or not, if he leaves the estate. She’s got other things on her mind.
Valerie’d never thought Tully had anything to do with Lily’s disappearance; she’d never thought he might be covering up for someone; she just thought him incompetent and spiteful, and she’d never kept that opinion to herself. Now, she leans against the door, feels the wood solid at her back as a wave of nausea washes over her.
In her dreams, Lily calls for her, Lily in her black, sequined prom dress and the pretty red high heels, Lily with her dark hair swept up in a stylish chignon because the girl always had her very own tastes. Lily who disappeared the day before her prom on her way h
ome from the shoe store on Main Street where she’d gone to get those gel pads to stop her feet slipping out of those red silk shoes.
In reality, Lily’d never got a chance to wear that dress or shoes for real, so the memory Valerie has is of the test run at home when she and Lily experimented with makeup and hair. When Lily perfected her stride in those high heels, pacing along the hallway upstairs until she got the sway just right.
But still, that’s the Lily who haunts Valerie’s dreams, although sometimes it’s Valerie’s own face she sees in place of her daughter’s.
Back in the kitchen Valerie sits at the table before her knees give way. In front of her are the now-cold coffee and that envelope. Lucius Anderson had told her one afternoon as they lay side by side, naked and sweat-covered, that he’d been taught penmanship by his strict grandfather, that other kids laughed at him because no one else made their letters just-so.
Valerie thinks Lucius must have mailed the letter just before he was killed. She wonders if Obadiah Tully suspected something of the sort. She tears open the envelope, slides the single white sheet of paper out and unfolds it.
In the same elaborate handwriting are the words “Security camera, Anderson’s Drugstore”, then: “I’m sorry”. That’s all, just those words in the middle of the page and she draws a blank as to the meaning. Then her brain kicks along and she turns the thing over; the breath falls out of her.
In black and white print, ink jet because her sweating fingers smudge the edge of the image: there’s a familiar black Mercedes C-300 Coupe heading down Main Street. The date stamp is the same day Lily Wynne disappeared, and the time shows a good hour after everything closed and the strip was deserted because folk had homes to get to and meals to prepare.
And Valerie leans closer and closer because the photo’s been taken on an angle that means she can see straight through the windscreen, can see clearly the driver’s head and the passenger’s.
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