by Wendy Walker
I shrug and that’s all I give him.
“Okay, you know what?” he says. “It doesn’t matter. We’ve both moved on in our boats and now here we are and that’s a good thing. I know that sounds trite, but I really believe that. Everything that matters is here right now, or coming tomorrow. And what I see here right now is an incredibly beautiful, smart woman, and I am lucky that guy was a total prick because now you’re here and not there.”
He says this with total sincerity. Not even my finely tuned skills of perception can detect an iota of BS.
It comes again, the surge of warmth like I felt before. He’s found a wormhole.
We talk more about this. About life and about mistakes and how hard it is to look forward or live in the present moment. He speaks also of his family in Boston. His mother who just died a year ago. His father who was married to her for forty-four years. He speaks of a sister and her family who moved to Colorado and I speak of my sister Joe and Mason. He doesn’t ask me if I want children, so I don’t have to lie, and the conversation keeps flowing like the water just outside, flowing into an ocean—of what, I have no idea. But I like it. I like it all.
His eyes stay on me the whole time. I can smell his skin when he leans forward to sip his beer. And then I smell the beer when he leans back. And all of it mixes together with the vodka I’ve been drinking into a brilliant cocktail of attraction.
I fight to keep it. I fight against the little things that enter my brain and go on the list of concerns I will use to build my mountain of a molehill—things I am perceiving that don’t add up. The timeline of his story between college and moving back here. His company, which doesn’t sound like any of the companies that have stayed out here in Connecticut. He says it was a hedge fund, but the larger ones have moved out of Branston. I know this because his business is my business.
There are more wrong things that I have been gathering: facial expressions, sideways questions about my past, my childhood. I can’t decide if these things are normal, because I’m not normal. My sense of perception. My mountains from molehills. My fists for hands.
I drove my parents crazy. I know I did. They told me I did. I was hard to love. Maybe impossible. Maybe I still am.
I shove this all aside. Jonathan Fields is a nice man and he leans forward for his beer but really because he wants to be closer to me. I can feel it. These thoughts are wrong. These concerns are meaningless. I gather them so I can push away nice men like Jonathan Fields who want to love me. And I do this so I can keep finding the wrong men who won’t love me.
I want to cry. I feel tears coming, but I hold them back.
Knowledge is power, right? I will stop this from happening. This is why I came home. This is my job now. To stop old me from ruining my life.
I go to the bathroom. I splash cold water on my face. I get my shit together and return to the table.
Jonathan Fields gives me a huge smile. Then he opens his mouth to start a new conversation. Only it’s not new. It’s the same one he’s been trying to have all night.
“Okay,” he says. “So why is it you haven’t been back home sooner?”
What is going on here?
Why is he so interested in my past?
He seems to know about my list of concerns. Maybe he’s trying to stop me from making it any longer. But that’s exactly what he’s doing.
“You know what?” he says. “Let’s get out of here—go for a walk by the river.”
I tell myself it’s nothing. A molehill. Not a mountain. There are no instincts I can trust. No skills I can rely upon. Just determination.
My mouth opens and out comes the word he likes so much.
“Okay.”
NINE
Rosie. Present Day. Friday, 11 a.m. Branston, CT.
Another hour passed quickly. Rosie and Gabe drove in his car to meet Joe on Richmond Street. There was a frenzied discussion about what to do next and, again, whether they should call the police. Gabe didn’t weigh in. This was their call. And, in the end, Rosie’s. It was her sister who would have to live with the consequences, one way or the other.
Joe didn’t have to say it—the impact it could have on Laura, on her emotional stability, if they dredged up her past and forced her out of the shadow of anonymity she had created.
Gabe was the only one of them who was not reeling with fear, and on his face Rosie could see something even worse—resignation. Time felt precious, but that’s all it was. A feeling. An urgency fed by the panic of not knowing. If something bad had happened, it was over. They were already too late.
Rosie made the decision, though without the conviction she’d had even an hour before when they were standing in her kitchen. They would wait.
Joe took her minivan back to the house and she took his car and followed Gabe to the waterfront, where Laura’s phone had last sent a signal. The exact location was a parking lot between an office building and a gym. But that meant nothing—people coming to the restaurants and bars parked in all of the lots, and along the streets as well.
So they walked the streets and the paths between them, stopping in apartment buildings, asking people if they recognized any of the men from findlove.com. They had narrowed the thumbnail photos down to twenty-seven. Laura had said enough about him to rule out the rest. Full head of hair, clean-shaven, fit. Still, it was a needle in a haystack, and they landed back at the street where they’d parked their cars, with nothing helpful.
Gabe laid the sheets of photos on his hood, studying the faces.
“Do you recognize any of them?” Rosie asked. Gabe sometimes talked about his cases. Most of what he did was more mundane—working out glitches in corporate computer systems. But for his other work—using IT to investigate spouses—it was, invariably, women who hired him. And it always made Rosie think of her mother.
“Funny you should say that,” Gabe answered. “The last case where I needed to sort through this shitty website was Melissa’s. Her husband was trolling for younger women under a fake profile.”
“Sorry…” Rosie said. Gabe and Melissa liked to forget this little fact about how they met.
“No, don’t be. You know, it’s okay to sleep with your client as long as you marry her.” Gabe gave her a wink and Rosie managed a smile. But the levity slipped away quickly.
“Some of these guys have been on here for years. This one”—Gabe pointed to a man with a seductive smile, holding a fish at the end of a line—“he was on here two, three years ago—before Melissa’s case. I remember this stupid fish.”
Rosie looked at the picture. “We should cross him off the list. Laura would have mentioned the fish. She would have found it ridiculous.”
Gabe took out a pen and put an X through the photo.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “She would have psychoanalyzed the hell out of it—a pathetic attempt to convey success, manliness, dominion.”
“It’s a curse and a blessing—how she sees through everything and everyone.”
Gabe’s face returned to resignation. “Except herself,” he said. “She never understood why she did the things she did.”
Rosie began pacing the sidewalk, arms folded around herself, squinting from the sun, which was almost directly overhead. She checked her phone. It was eleven.
“The restaurants should be open now,” Gabe said. “Most of them serve lunch. The staff will be setting up.”
Gabe had read her mind.
Rosie stopped talking and looked at the massive complex lining the water. “I’ve only been to the park. Mason doesn’t have the patience to sit at a restaurant.”
Gabe pointed to a street off to their right.
“We’ve been down here. Melissa and I. Young crowd—younger than we are. Except for the divorced men. They come here to shop at these places—like kids in a candy store. They’re all pretty much on one block. There—two streets down.”
Gabe started walking. “We should get started.”
They went to three places before getting a l
ead. It was at a bar that served food, very bad bar food—but enough to keep people from leaving when they got drunk and hungry. The atmosphere was dark and it smelled of stale beer. They spoke to the bartender, who had just opened up.
He glanced at the photos, reluctantly at first, until Rosie told him that her sister was missing. His eyes focused harder then, returning to each photo to study the men.
Then a smile came and left in an instant.
“Yup,” he said, pointing at one of the men. “This guy—he’s a regular.”
The photo was attached to the screen name here4you.
“Why did you smile when you saw him? What’s funny about it?” Gabe asked.
The bartender paused, glancing at Rosie, then looking away as though he didn’t want to see her expression change when he answered the question. Instead he looked only at Gabe.
“This guy … comes in during the week. One, maybe two times. Never on the weekend. Thursdays are his favorite.”
“So he was here last night?” Rosie asked. She looked at Gabe, wide-eyed, then back to the bartender.
“Every Thursday.”
Rosie frantically pulled out her phone and found a photo of Laura. She was in their backyard pushing Mason on the swing.
“Was he with this woman? Do you recognize her?”
The bartender leaned in close to see the picture, then shook his head. “I don’t know.… There are so many people who come and go every night. Maybe.”
Gabe was suddenly frustrated, standing taller with both hands on the bar. “How are you sure you saw this guy, then? If there are so many people coming and going?”
The bartender leaned back defensively. “I know the guy because he’s a regular. Sits in the back corner. Gets the drinks at the bar. Pays cash. Leaves a shitty tip.”
“Does he ever come in with a woman? A date?” Gabe asked.
“Yeah—that’s what I’m saying. Comes on the weekdays. Usually with a different woman.”
“A different woman each time?” Rosie asked.
The bartender nodded. “Yeah. All different ages, races, thin, not so thin, short hair, long hair. He doesn’t have a type. Doesn’t seem too picky, either.”
Rosie gasped. “God, it’s him! It’s got to be!” she said.
“Hold on.” Gabe pointed to the man’s picture again. “You’re sure? This man?”
“Oh yeah. See that smug smile? How it curls up more on one side? Wears it every time,” he said. “Cheap son of a bitch. Never even orders as much as a french fry.”
“You got a name?” Gabe asked.
“No. Like I said. Pays cash and sits in the back. But wait…” He scratched his head as though ushering a memory. “A few weeks ago he went to the bathroom and this chick he was with called over a waitress and bought a round with her credit card. We had a laugh about it. First time we got a decent tip from a table he was at—but only because the woman was the one who paid.”
“Is she here? That waitress?” Rosie’s eyes were scanning the place, but it was empty.
The bartender shook his head. “She works nights. I can try to reach her. You got a number or a card or something? If she can remember what night, what they were drinking, we might be able to find the slip. It would at least give you the name of one of his dates.”
Gabe pulled a business card from his wallet. He wrote Rosie’s cell phone number on the back and handed it to the bartender.
“Try us both; it doesn’t matter,” he said. “As soon as you hear from her.”
“Will do,” the bartender said. “And text me that picture of your sister. I’ll get it to everyone who worked last night. I really hope you find her. If it’s any consolation, he seemed harmless. Just another asshole working his game.”
“Thanks, man.” Gabe shook his hand, but Rosie couldn’t wait. She was walking fast, back to their cars on the street. Gabe grabbed her arm and stopped her.
“Hey,” he said. “This is good news. Laura was here last night. We know from her phone records. This has to be our guy. And now we can find him … and then find Laura.”
“I know you’re thinking the same thing I am,” Rosie said, pulling her arm away. “It’s why I haven’t called the police. It’s why you haven’t made me.”
“Rosie…”
“No—we have to stop. We have to think this through.”
“There’s nothing to think through. We found Jonathan Fields. He’s a harmless womanizer.”
“Gabe…” She looked at him with dismay. It was not possible that he was forgetting. “She didn’t get back in my car. The parking tickets—one right after she got to Richmond Street. And one in the morning. There are only two things that could have happened last night.…”
“I know, Rosie. You think I don’t know? We’ve stayed in touch—but it hasn’t been easy having her back. Seeing the pain that’s always there—and Melissa, she doesn’t want me anywhere near your sister, because even she knows, just from the stories she’s heard, the things that can happen around her.”
Gabe was angry and it was unsettling. Rosie could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen him lose his composure.
He calmed himself before continuing. “I can almost see her last night—that look in her eyes as she falls in love with him. And I can see the rage as she finds out that he’s a con artist. I know them all—every one of her faces—and I know where they lead her.”
“Then you know…” Rosie said, pleading. “If this guy was a player, a liar, and if Laura found out, it wouldn’t matter how harmless he was.…”
But Gabe wasn’t listening. “She always said that word—‘love’—as though it were an object. Something that could be held and touched. She spoke of it as though it wasn’t all around her, from you and Joe and Mason—from all of us, and from all of those men who tried to love her. It isn’t like that. I’ve tried to tell her. When I met Melissa … it just grew, and it took work. I tried to tell her.”
Rosie wanted to scream.“So did I—a million times. How it’s sometimes work. Just getting up every day and deciding that you are going to love this person even though it’s not sweeping you off your feet. It’s like she’s been on a desperate search her whole life—it’s on her face in that picture, the one on the computer. Even back then…”
Gabe shook off the frustration and closed his eyes tight. And for that brief moment, Rosie knew exactly what he was feeling.
“Look at what followed—what happened to her first real boyfriend,” Rosie said. “What if it happened again? With this man, Jonathan Fields?”
She paused briefly before saying the rest, all of her thoughts fusing together. Becoming simple. Becoming clear.
“The thing is, Gabe, I’m not worried about what he might have done to her. I’m worried about what she might have done to him.”
Gabe nodded, growing solemn again.
“Let’s get back to the house,” he said. “I know how to find this guy. That’s all we can do now.”
They got in their cars. Pulled away from the curb. And drove away from the harbor.
TEN
Laura. Session Number Seven. Three Months Ago. New York City.
Laura:… maybe I’ve just been unlucky in love. Isn’t that a song? Or in a song? There’s another expression.… What is it? “The heart wants what it wants.”
Dr. Brody: But if that heart is broken, it will want the wrong things.
Laura: Cheery … but … are you saying that’s me? My heart is broken?
Dr. Brody: It’s just a euphemism, Laura. Hearts don’t break.
Laura: Obviously. But people do, don’t they?
Dr. Brody: In a manner of speaking. When do you want to talk about it?
Laura: Talk about what? I tell you everything.
Dr. Brody: About what really happened that night in the woods …
ELEVEN
Laura. The Night Before. Thursday, 9 p.m. Branston, CT.
We walk on the path along the water. The air is perfect, neither hot
nor cold against the skin. It smells of salt and seaweed. The smell of the ocean. It is blissful.
And it fills me with despair.
I tried to explain this to the shrink, how a perfect night provokes the longing so hard and fast that it feels as though it will explode right out of me. Perfect nights were made for lovers.
We stroll together, me and Jonathan Fields, taking in this perfect night with its air and its smells. And the desire to be past this moment, and the ones that have to follow so that maybe we will stroll as lovers and not strangers—the desire to be in love on this perfect night that is screaming out for lovers—rises all the way to my throat.
I hold my breath to keep it inside.
My cheeks flush and he notices. But we continue to stroll. I make myself exhale and take a new breath and it begins to pass.
Jonathan Fields. I like the way he strolls, his hands in his jean pockets. The button-down shirt tucked in. He’s rolled up his sleeves and I can see the hair on his forearms, light brown. He’s not like a bear or anything. It’s that masculine thing again. I don’t know why I like it so much. Rosie likes it too. That’s why she fell for Joe. He was a guy from the day he was born. A dude. I’ve wondered if Dick was like that and maybe that’s why we are drawn to the same men. I can’t remember, not even a little bit, about whether our father had hair on his arms or his chest, and whether he strolled the way Jonathan Fields strolls now, with a little swagger and a little nonchalance. Confidence, maybe. Or, maybe, arrogance.
We walk for a while, looking at people, laughing when we see others who seem to be on a first date, as though we are better than they are because at least we recognize the absurdity of it, the awkwardness. We smell the air and take in the anticipation of where we will go next. And what we will do there. I can tell he’s thinking about it. His face changes with the thoughts, though I don’t think he is aware of it.
But I am. I am aware of everything.
And I have not forgotten about the car or the woman in the bar or the holes in his story. I have not forgotten that we are not lovers on this perfect night that screams out for them.
