And Then You Were Gone

by R. J. Jacobs

  “There’s just so much I don’t understand. Can’t understand. What happened … to Paolo.” I was trying desperately not to cry, but could feel heat rising behind my eyes. “Before life can go on, I need answers. And yet, everybody seems to want me to forget. Put what happened, and him, behind me. It’s impossible.”

  Marty took a slow breath, the depth of his years of experience shining in his eyes. “That’s what’s hardest, to go forward even when something is still unresolved. Especially something of this magnitude. You can’t be captured by it, but you can’t forget it, either. Some part of life, maybe work, has to go on even while you search.”

  I knew he was right, and that I wasn’t the first person in history to have to function while I was—what? What was the word for what I was doing? It wasn’t quite grieving and it wasn’t quite obsession.

  It was reckoning with the fact that part of me had never left the lake.

  * * *

  “Thank you,” I said finally, clearing the tears from my throat. “I promise I won’t mess this up.”

  “I haven’t even offered it to you yet. You haven’t seen it yet.”

  “But in case you do.”

  “Okay,” he said evenly.

  “Okay?”

  “Yeah, okay. I believe you.” As if there were a reason to. I hardly believed me.

  “Why’s this happening? Why are you being so good to me?”

  “Don’t you think everybody deserves a second chance? Don’t answer that … I know you do. We both do. Otherwise we wouldn’t be in this type of work.”

  We went across the hall, and he opened the office door. Sunlight streaming in, gleaming hardwood floors. Its emptiness seemed like a set of possibilities. I felt like trumpets should be blaring.

  It was beyond perfect.

  Also, beyond my budget.

  Through the wavy glass, Vanderbilt’s red brick tower poked through the emergence of fall colors like a photo from a postcard. Beyond were the steel and glass edges of the medical center. I pictured the shady courtyard where I’d waited for Paolo on a wooden bench beside a statue of a girl reading, back when it seemed like his work would never stop. Four blocks in the other direction was the pale-green roof of the psychiatric hospital.

  I traced my finger along the shelving on my way back to the hallway.

  “Can I afford this?” I asked. My voice echoed against empty surfaces.

  He said a number that was more than reasonable. My hands balled with excitement.

  “So what do you think?”

  “Marty, is anyone going to trust me with a patient again? With a kid?”

  “You’re going to turn this corner. You just need a little help right now.”

  I wanted him to be right.

  “Do you remember the story you told me, way back when, about helping people?”

  His eyes seemed to shine. I knew the story he meant; he’d brought it up a dozen times. I knew the point he was making and it was well timed. “You were somewhere, a pharmacy—”

  “The pharmacy at the medical center.” I remembered clearly, because I’d been waiting for my grandmother. I’d been shopping for a card after some round of nonsense she’d gotten into. “Yes,” I said.

  He smiled warmly, fingertips pressed into his temples. “And you saw a woman out of the corner of your eye. Walking right toward the window, toward that huge pane of glass. She was looking somewhere else. She couldn’t see what was right in front of her, but you could.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She walked right into it, and it shattered. Went everywhere. You wished you could have stepped in before it broke, said something. You don’t have to be perfect to help, Emily.”

  A memory came back to me—something he’d done once. “Do you remember that magic trick you used to do? The cut string that becomes whole again?”

  He nodded. I could see in his eyes that he hadn’t done it in some time. “I used to like doing that.”

  “What made you start doing it?”

  He shrugged. “People want something mysterious, something they don’t understand. To believe.”

  “But do they try to figure it out?”

  “Some do. Some don’t. Kids want to figure it out more than adults. Grown-ups want to get lost in the fantasy. The world can be a tough place. They want a break from it.”

  I was back on the sofa’s edge again. “Will you show me?”

  He found a pair of scissors and a string in a desk drawer—a shoelace—and looped it over his hand. He raised his eyebrows as he pulled on it, turning his hand so that I could catch the way he formed a second loop, cut it, and slipped it back down.

  Then, he pulled it, straight.

  Back to one piece.

  He handed me the shoelace to inspect. The tension in my arms and legs relaxed, and I felt the urge to repay Marty for his kindness. He was right; the trick was insanely simple. No one would believe he’d cut it and put it back together unless they really wanted to.

  Later, he walked me out into the hallway. I noticed another small flight of stairs at the end of the hall. I couldn’t imagine the building had a third floor. I pointed with my chin. “Where do those go?”

  “Oh. That’s the rooftop. I sunbathe up there in the summer,” he added, without a hint of shame.

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m sure the medical center staff appreciates that.”

  “Damn right.” He laughed himself, his eyebrow impishly raised. “They probably do.”

  TEN

  The air turned lighter as autumn advanced, and the clouds began to look high and wispy, like cotton shredded across a rough surface. Mom drove me out to the farmhouse. I found the family’s black Ford truck sitting patiently beneath a scatter of pine needles. I heaved into the familiar seat and pulled the creaking door that could only be closed with a slam. I put my hand around the ripped knob of the stick shifter and pressed in the clutch with my boot. I couldn’t believe it started, but it hummed; the smell of dust and cut grass reminded me of learning to drive. I gave a thumbs-up to Mom and watched her turn toward the road. With a fingernail, I scratched at the dried ketchup around the corners of the dome light, then chugged home. On the way to have the Breathalyzer installed, I ground the gears at every stop.

  Three days later, Mom came into my room.

  “I’m so sorry, honey. Aunt Carol’s fallen. I should really go be with her.”

  In a flurry, I canceled the lease on my apartment and had my things moved into Mom’s house. I’ve heard people mostly describe being overwhelmed by their possessions, but it was surprising how little I owned. Most of it fit nicely into Mom’s basement.

  As she pulled away, I waved from the porch, Andy nestled beside me. Part of me was sorry to see her go, but another part was relieved at the space from her oversight. As well intended as Mom was, she obviously wanted me to feel a way that I didn’t, and to accept what I couldn’t—that Paolo’s disappearance had been accidental and that somehow his body hadn’t yet been recovered. Watching her taillights crest the slight rise at the end of her street, I knew her leaving meant more freedom to continue looking into what had happened. Even if it made no sense to anyone else in the world.

  * * *

  The licensing board called. They’d approved Marty as my supervisor—a pinpoint of light that flooded my whole life. Hope returned like the familiar smell of your own home after a long time away.

  I celebrated by exercising my credit card—at the mall, at a used furniture store, then later at a consignment shop, where I literally walked into the couch and end tables of my dreams. Normally, when I bought three or more things at once, a kind of mania circuit breaker popped inside me, a warning to slow down. But when I thought back to the way I’d spent money in my twenties, I knew this was nothing. These things, I reminded myself, I would actually use.

  I rode shotgun beside the delivery driver, the wind singing in through the open window, goosebumping the skin on my arms. He sang along to a country station and fli
rted with me, telling me my hair was shorter than his but that he liked it.

  Marty sent me a few referrals and I put up an ad on a popular website. And, miraculously, it seemed, my phone began to ring. My calendar wide open, I scheduled three appointments for the following week.

  I popped open the lids of my storage bin and ran my fingers over the nubby edges of Lego bricks—the solid classic colors and the newer pastel bricks that look like candy—then lugged them to the truck bed. In another bin, I found boxes of crayons in their worn, natural state, and the singular smell of Crayola reminded me of the joy that came from having the coolest job on earth. I got to play with kids and help make their lives better at the same time.

  Even being broken myself, I got to help kids heal.

  Sweat beaded my forehead. Paperwork, confidentiality agreements, clipboards, pens, I thought. Remember. Remember. That stuff was all up to me now. The licensing board. I took a deep breath.

  I spent the next morning sipping coffee, going over the forms I planned to use. It was slow work, tedious—I actually had to read it all—but it was also satisfyingly responsible. When I was in college, I’d told girls on the soccer team, with pride, that I hadn’t cracked a book until junior year. I don’t know why I felt happy to say that, looking back, except that it was my way of owning that I couldn’t sit still. At thirty, it was still hard.

  Sometimes I was astounded I’d managed to get through grad school.

  I did my best to decorate my new office. I repurposed a jar of buttons from Mom’s closet, hauled up hardcover books, arranging them in neat stacks on lower shelves. A vase from Mom’s kitchen found a home, as did a basket of well-loved wooden toys. I unzipped Paolo’s photography case and held the cool weight of his camera like a sacred relic, imagining that the smooth plastic and glass had absorbed his love. I pictured the fish in the lake, invisible, all just below the surface. I put the case and accessories in my desk drawer, then set the camera itself on a high shelf near the window, pointed outward, as though it might enjoy the view.

  A feeling that wasn’t quite anger or despair played in my heart—a single note that was the breath in my chest. I picked up the camera, powered it on, and clicked back through the stored images. He had startling talent—an eye for creating perfect images that I’d envied since we’d met.

  Then, I stopped cold. Something about its shape, the strips of sunlight slicing through a canopy of branches … I stepped backward.

  I opened my laptop and pulled up a news station’s website, then clicked on the icon for the story Mom had been watching before the accident. When the image of Gainer Ridge emerged, I clicked pause, and the screen froze.

  I set the camera beside my laptop so that the screens were side by side.

  The image on the camera’s tiny screen matched the one on my computer. They were nearly identical.

  Had Paolo been there the week he disappeared?

  Could that be possible? He had shot everywhere in Tennessee, but there? And on that date? Gainer Ridge was so far out of the way, and so little known, getting there would require a person to have that specific intention. The photo was one of the last he’d stored. I looked back and forth between the images a half dozen times to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. If the picture hadn’t been taken at Gainer Ridge, it bore a starling resemblance.

  I thought back to the newscaster’s words on that day: “Potentially the first murder to be recorded in that county in the last five years.”

  It had happened so close to when Paolo disappeared.

  I tried sorting through the haze of buzzing confusion in my mind for any memory of him mentioning being there. I reached for my phone, called Allie, paced the office as her phone rang. The old hardwood floor had a slight give beneath my footsteps. When the call went to voicemail, I wondered if she’d let the call go because of the awkwardness between us after the questioning two weeks earlier.

  “Hey, it’s me,” I said. My voice was jumpy, abrupt—which wouldn’t surprise Allie, surely. “Call me when you get a chance?”

  I turned out the light and leaned against the door frame, my stomach unsettled. Night had come quickly, and the furniture looked peaceful in the dark—like large, slumbering animals beginning their dreams in the emerging streetlight.

  Just as I turned to leave, my phone lit the dusk.

  Allie.

  “Oh my God, how are you?” she asked when I answered the phone. “You were in an accident?”

  Too much had happened since I’d stood in her office the day I was questioned. I told myself I’d catch her up on the basics later—though she’d probably heard about the DUI charge, so I’d leave that out.

  “What can you tell me about the Gainer Ridge case?” I asked, closing the office door.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m your best friend, and you know I’d tell you.”

  “You know I’m not officially telling you any of this,” she said.

  I thought back to her on the soccer field, always so fastidious in spotting threats, a perfect defender. “Allie, I keep secrets for a living. Team rules. This stays between us. I promise.”

  Maybe she felt guilty for how uncomfortable I’d been at the station. Whatever the reason, she told me everything, and I closed my eyes as she talked, vivid images in my mind.

  * * *

  The murder happened sometime in late September, though no one was sure exactly when. Days had passed before the body was discovered, several of them rainy, which was strange for that time of year in the middle of Tennessee. The body itself was burned so badly that the first people to find it—three teenage boys looking for a place to drink beer and fire rounds from a pistol—didn’t understand right away what it was.

  They said they’d stopped talking when they found the place; something had quieted them, but they couldn’t tell just what—it was as though God, or someone, looked down on what they were doing. They described a kind of emotional residue around the place, too, something that couldn’t be touched with hands. Birds and insects must have known it, too; the only sound in the clearing had been the impartial creaking of pines in the scarce midday breeze.

  “There was still evil in the ground,” one boy had told the police.

  They kicked the ashes around with their boots, not understanding that they were destroying evidence, leaving semicircular footprint trails as they speculated. One suggested that it had been a lightning strike, until, backing up, he stepped on a jawbone.

  Apparently, they’d hesitated to file a report because they had been carrying alcohol. By the time they arrived at the police department the following morning, it had rained again, further diluting what they’d scattered.

  A first-year deputy, just out of the academy, followed them down the two-lane highway to where they’d been. He parked on the slick roadside behind their SUV and tromped through the woods behind the boys. That day’s temperature had been in the mideighties, and their backs and arms must have been heavy with sweat as they crossed the empty fields and penetrated the deeper woods. When they came to the clearing, the deputy later said, they all stopped walking simultaneously. His report said that the boys were “bug-eyed” when they returned to the place, and that despite not being a crime-scene expert, he could detect the odor of accelerant—maybe gasoline—when he crouched to the ground.

  The three of them circled the body. He told them to get no closer. He made the calls.

  Thirty minutes later, three more cars were parked behind his. An hour after that, there were ten more. The deputy followed the boys home, then returned to help block off the road in both directions, angling orange barricades across the steaming asphalt.

  The crime scene became archaeological by noon. A medical examiner and a team of forensics experts arrived with cameras and wooden dowels. Some of them wore surgical masks. The team tied a clear garbage bag around a pine tree and filled it with empty plastic water bottles within three hours, occasionally squinting upward at the news helicopter that periodically circ
led overhead. I imagined its shadow seemed like that of a large, predatory bird.

  They found no tire tracks near the scene; whoever had come there had walked. Brass bolts glittered like seashells in the circular ash pile. They turned out to be the hardware of a wooden chair. It had burned almost completely beneath the victim, signifying a fire with a particular level of heat. It had been set to destroy.

  Later, evidence of restraint was determined. Bits of plastic zip ties were uncovered, likely having been tightened around the victim’s wrists and ankles. If something had been placed over the victim’s mouth, it had burned.

  Beyond the burned area was the evidence that puzzled the investigators most: circular indentations in the dirt, forming a tight triangle with points approximately twenty inches apart. They crouched over them, careful to keep sweat from dripping onto the ground.

  By late afternoon, the deputies made initial estimates about the distance between the burn site and the road. The initial report estimated half a mile, though some uncertainty was noted. Several paths could have been taken.

  The media only ever learned half the story. Just enough that the whole city seemed to ask itself: who would do such a thing?

  * * *

  When Allie finished, I thanked her before we hung up.

  I thought I heard traces of … something in her voice. I puzzled over it like reading a pattern of scratches on flatware.

  On the way out of the office, I noticed the second stairwell again—the one that led to Marty’s sunporch. I caned down the hall and turned the brass doorknob, which clicked anciently against my palm. Stepping up toward the rectangle of milky night sky, I could hear the breathing of street noise. Up top was a rectangle of tar paper, like I’d pictured, the size of a small garden. I stepped softly, as if my boot in the wrong place might push through the flat surface.

  The cool air stroked my cheeks. I could see why Marty wanted to sprawl out there—the view was perfect, as if the city had been designed around that particular spot. The reddening leaves of Centennial Park led toward Vanderbilt’s stately bricks. Steam rising from the medical center looked like the exhalation of a giant, while red and white lights blinked where its roof met the sky. With my index finger, I counted floors until I found the corner where Paolo had worked, then turned to the stairwell as my phone began to play its chime.