by David Bell
But I hadn’t heard her. Or I hadn’t entirely paid attention to her. Because I kept going. I kept saying things that I felt but that didn’t really make any sense. I couldn’t stop myself.
“I keep thinking . . . what if Marissa was pregnant when she broke up with me? And what if that baby . . . what if Emily, is really mine? What if she’s my daughter?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Laurel tried to keep the shock off her face, but despite her efforts, her jaw dropped. “Honey, what’s going on with you and your stepson, Andrew?” she asked me.
“No progress,” I said. “I can’t really see him. But you haven’t answered my question.”
“I am answering your question.” She sounded calm, teacherly, and her voice was soothing as she laid out the facts. “You have some holes in your life, holes that are crying out to be filled. You’re single. You see a girl who reminds you of the love of your life, and you go a little crazy in the head.”
“You really think Marissa was the love of my life?” I asked.
“Don’t you?”
“I do. I guess I always have, even when I was married to Gina. But you know how that is. People think two twenty-year-olds couldn’t possibly be in love or know they belong together. I’ve wondered that myself. Am I just hung up on that time in my life? The freshness. The freedom. How beautiful Marissa was. How hungry we were for each other.”
“I believe it’s possible for young people to fall in love that way, but only you can know for sure. Gina’s great. I really liked her. But I didn’t get the feeling the two of you were . . . meant for each other, I guess. It felt like a nice marriage between two good people. But nothing that was destined in the stars.”
“That sounds about right.” I sighed. “You met my dad a few times, didn’t you?”
“Sure. Good old Henry.”
“Indeed. When he was dying, I mean when he was really at the end, I went to see him in hospice. He could barely talk. I was married to Gina at the time, but it wasn’t going great. No one knew that, only Gina and I. I sat there in hospice, holding the old man’s hand, and he opened his eyes and he looked at me. He said, ‘You know something, Nicky . . .’ He hadn’t called me Nicky since I was about six.”
“Cute.”
“Don’t get any ideas.” I felt sad at the memory of my dad. His hand in mine, his big, strong hand, the life fading away. “He said, ‘You know how you can tell if you’re meant to be with someone? If you don’t know anyone better than the person you’re with. Or if you can’t even imagine anyone better than the person you’re with.’ Then he closed his eyes again. He and I never talked about marriage or women or love. We had never talked about anything personal. Never. He just came out with that out of the blue.”
“It was on his mind,” Laurel said.
“Yeah. It’s funny. I never really thought my parents were in love, but I do know one thing. They know us better than we realize they do.”
“True,” Laurel said. “So how did you answer your dad’s question? Who did you imagine?”
I didn’t hesitate. “Marissa every time. Even when I was married to Gina. Even now.”
“So there you go,” Laurel said. “Maybe you can know when you’re twenty. I met Tony when I was twenty-five. That’s not much older, and I knew right away. Your dad was a wise man.”
“He was.”
“Look, you’ve been through a divorce,” she said. “You’re middle-aged. You’ve found yourself in the middle of your life, lost in a dark forest.”
“You’re really quoting Dante to me?” I asked.
“That’s what college taught us. The humanities, remember?”
“Is this supposed to make me feel better?” I asked.
“It happens,” she said. “We all lose our way sometimes.”
“You don’t seem to,” I said. “Ever.”
“Do you remember sophomore year of college when I had that perm?”
I pictured it. Laurel’s hair had looked ridiculous, even though beneath the artificial curls she had remained pretty. We all were beautiful then. We were young. “Okay,” I said. “Fair enough.”
“And you’ve lost that kid,” she said. “Andrew. He was like a son to you. Hell, forget that. He was your son, right? You felt like he was your own?”
“I did. I don’t know any other way to think of it.”
“So you have this one chance encounter in a grocery store, and it brings all these memories back up. Beautiful memories. Painful memories. What if I were with Marissa? What if we’d had a kid together? It’s brutal to think about it, Nick.”
“This is turning into therapy,” I said.
“Wait until you get my bill.” Laurel looked at her watch. “Try to do something else with your life. Get outside yourself. Volunteer more. Try Internet dating. Get a dog.”
“I have a dog.”
“That’s right,” she said. “I forgot.”
“He’s kind of quiet, so that happens.”
“You’re still young,” Laurel said. “You can still have a great future. You can even get married and have a family.”
“You think?”
“Of course.”
“That’s nice to hear. You know, I do still want to get married again. And I’d love to have a kid with the right person. I guess I’d like to think that if it can happen once, maybe . . .” I scooted forward in my chair. “Thanks. I know you have work to do.”
“I’m sure you do, too.”
“I do.” But I didn’t stand up. I sat on the edge of the chair, leaning forward just a bit. “I do want to know something else, though. Why did Marissa do it? Why did she break up with me out of the blue and leave school? I went and talked to Heather Aubrey about this, and do you know what she said to me?” I took a deep breath. I didn’t know if I could give it voice.
“What did she say?” Laurel asked. She sounded skeptical.
“She said that on the night Marissa died people saw her out at a bar, Razer’s, and she was with another man. An older man. Heather implied they were having some kind of romantic relationship, that they were dating. And that’s why Marissa dumped me out of the blue, because she was involved with this other man. Some old guy.”
While I spoke, I stared at the carpet, and when I looked up, Laurel was eyeing me and not saying anything. I watched her for a moment. She clearly knew something she wasn’t saying.
“That story’s bullshit, right?” I asked. “It’s just Heather telling me something to make me feel bad. Isn’t it, Laurel?”
“I agree that Heather probably just wanted to hurt you,” she said. “Or, more accurately, she wanted to give you a bad impression of Marissa.”
“But? You’re acting like you know something.”
She didn’t say anything.
“What is it, Laurel? It’s a lie, isn’t it?”
Laurel looked unsteady. “It isn’t. I know because I was in Razer’s that night, late, and I saw Marissa with that man.”
“Were you with Heather?” I asked.
“No, Heather wasn’t there. Not with me. I was with some other friends. I liked Razer’s because students rarely went there, but we walked in and we saw Marissa. My friends didn’t know her, but I did.”
“Well—”
“I’d met her parents when they visited once,” Laurel said. “That man wasn’t her dad. And Eastland is a small campus. I’d been the student representative to the faculty senate. I knew most of the professors, at least by sight. I didn’t recognize this man. I don’t think he was a faculty member, and even if he was, why would she be in a dive bar with him late at night?”
“But if they were trying to hide whatever they were doing, why go out in public?” I asked.
“Who says they wanted to hide it?” Laurel asked. “Look, did you ever go to Razer’s?”
“Rarely. M
aybe two or three times.”
“Right. Most of us went to places where students hung out. It’s a fluke I saw Marissa there. And we didn’t stay long. There were bikers there. Townies. We didn’t stay.”
I tried to steady myself by placing my hands on the armrests of the chair. “So all of my friends knew about this, but no one told me?” I asked.
“Think about it, Nick,” she said. “Marissa died that night. Why would any of us tell you something like that right after the fire? The two of you had broken up, and then she died. You were devastated. A lot of people were torn up over her death. Marissa had a lot of friends, Nick—she was a wonderful, warm person. People were just trying to protect your feelings. I know it must really suck to hear about this now, but we were thinking of you.”
“But what Heather said isn’t true. She said they were acting . . . intimate. As though they were really involved with each other. That’s not true, is it? If she wasn’t there . . .”
Laurel pressed her lips together, and then she said, “I’m only telling you this so that everything is out in the open. You seem to want to know it all, and maybe that’s for the best. But when I saw them, they were holding hands across the table. And it looked like Marissa had been crying. I don’t know what it means. I didn’t talk to them. Believe me, I may not have dated much in college, but I recognized the signs. Those two people were involved with each other.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
I was at my desk, compiling a case report. A landlord in a building mostly occupied by residents on welfare “forgot” to pay the water bill, leaving seventy-five people high and dry for a day and a half. Despite the grim event, I’d lost myself in the problem solving, a good feeling. Then my cell phone rang.
“What are you doing right now?”
“Laurel?” I asked.
“You heard me,” she said. “What are you doing?”
It was just before noon, and I’d spent the previous evening at home trying to forget everything I’d been told about Marissa over the past couple of days. No matter how hard I tried, I kept seeing her in Razer’s, that dark, shadowy bar. I could see her in my mind’s eye, sitting at a table, her hand entwined with that of an older man. Handsome. Graying. Distinguished.
Who the hell was he? And why was he haunting my imagination twenty years later?
“I’m working,” I said.
“Are you hungry?” Laurel asked.
“Kind of. Do you want to go to lunch?”
“Meet me out front in ten.”
She hung up.
* * *
Laurel drove away from downtown, and we headed east toward the interstate, passing restaurants on every block. Seventies music played on the car stereo, and Laurel hummed along with it, her head bobbing slightly. Then she entered an on-ramp.
“Do I get to know where we’re going?” I asked.
“I’ve been thinking of you.”
“Thanks.”
“Seriously,” she said, turning the music down. “We’ve been friends a long time. I hated to see the way you looked yesterday when we were talking about Marissa and that guy in the bar. I know it hurts, even after all these years.”
“You were right to tell me.”
“But I hated to do it.” She reached over and patted my knee. “You’re a good guy. You deserve good things. And I know what you need.”
“Can you really tell me what I need?” I asked. “I’ve been trying to figure that out for years.”
“By the way, did you call the lawyer? Mick Brosius?”
“I did,” I said.
“What did he say?”
“He seemed like a nice guy,” I said. “Kind of young. I met with him this morning, and he looked like he should be in high school.”
She flicked the blinker on and changed lanes. “You’re getting old. What did he tell you?”
“He said to keep my mouth shut and not speak to the police unless he was there,” I said. “Then he told me not to worry. I always worry when people tell me not to worry.”
“Just listen to him,” she said. “Do what he says.”
Traffic was light, the lanes ahead clear. “You said you were thinking of me? And you know what I need?”
“Yes,” she said. “You need proof. Once and for all you need proof that the part of your life involving Marissa is over. That’s what we’re doing today.”
“We’re not going to a cemetery to dig her up, are we?” I asked.
Laurel turned her head a little, giving me a look that said she didn’t share my sense of humor. So I remained quiet. I knew Laurel well enough to know that when she set her mind to something, she finished the task. She would have been an excellent life coach or drill instructor. So she made a dogged investigator, and I just sat back and let her drive me to whatever she had in mind.
We went two exits and ended up in a modest subdivision six miles from Eastland. The houses looked to be about twenty years old and smaller than the new ones being built even farther out. Laurel’s GPS told her where to turn, and we parked in front of a home with white siding and black shutters. An Ohio State flag fluttered limply in the light breeze. The yard was immaculately cared for, even in late winter. So much so I wondered if someone came out and painted the grass green once a week.
Laurel turned the car off, but we didn’t get out.
“Is my lunch inside?” I asked.
“I still have a lot of contacts with the police, as you know,” she said.
“I remember your days as a cop.”
“I got the name of the detective who investigated the fire. He’s retired now, but he agreed to talk to us.”
“I don’t need to do this.”
“If you have any questions, you can ask him. He’s sharp.”
“Look.” I reached over and rested my hand on her arm. “I appreciate this. I really do. You’ve always been a good friend. But I don’t need to do this.” I saw a small coffee splash on my pants leg, and I scratched it off with my fingernail. “I know I said some crazy things yesterday. I implied that Emily might be my child. I don’t really think that. I was sad and feeling sorry for myself. I don’t need to rehash this. Can you just call this old guy and let him get back to his retirement? I’ll buy you lunch.”
Laurel shook her head. “It’s sweet of you to say those nice things about me. But we’re going in.”
* * *
Nate Denning no longer looked like a cop, if he ever had. He resembled a good-natured math teacher, the kind of guy who was eager to help you understand the quadratic formula or story problems. He greeted us at the door wearing jeans, a polo shirt, and a kitchen apron tied over the top of his clothes. He apologized for being slow to answer the bell, saying he’d just put a cake in the oven.
“My wife still works,” he said. “People think it’s funny, but I’ve taken up baking in my spare time. And I have a lot of spare time.”
We walked through an orderly living room and then sat at his kitchen table. Nate carried a little gut around his middle and wore a pair of glasses on a chain around his neck. I placed his age in the early sixties as he offered us coffee, which I accepted and Laurel turned down. The kitchen felt warm and smelled like a bakery, making it a strange place to discuss the deaths of four young people.
Once we were settled, I apologized to Nate for disturbing him. I said we really didn’t need to pick his brain, that Laurel was just being an overly concerned friend. Nate told us he didn’t mind, that he liked to think about old cases sometimes just to keep his brain active.
“It’s more interesting than crossword puzzles.” He sipped his coffee, and then his face grew serious, his brown eyes turning sad. “I understand your girlfriend died in that fire back in ninety-three.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“I remember that case very well,” he said. “I was the lead for the police,
but, of course, a fire investigator from the state handled the bulk of the work.” He shook his head. “Four kids that young. It happens every once in a while, especially on a campus. Kids die. Accidents. Fire. Drinking. It’s no good.” He looked at me, his face sincere. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“It was a long time ago,” I said.
“Whoever said time heals was lying,” Nate said.
“What do you remember about the investigation?” Laurel asked. She was sitting on my left, her legs crossed and one hand resting on the table.
“That four kids died,” Nate said. “That we had to notify four sets of parents about the worst thing they could imagine. I’ve never felt like cops need to make a lot of money, but when you have to do one of those notifications, then you’re really earning your pay.”
“So you used dental records to prove who died?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” Nate said. “It can be tough to identify remains found in a fire, especially back then. We didn’t have DNA to rely on like we do now. Fires are messy things. Buildings fall in. Firefighters tramp through debris. The temperatures get too high. Things get burned or crushed beyond recognition.”
I looked over at Laurel. Her face remained impassive.
I asked Nate, “So what did you do then?”
“As I recall . . . we were able to use dental records for two sets of remains. For the other two, well, you rely on different things. Who was supposed to be home and in what part of the house. If there were no missing-persons reports filed after the fire, then it’s easy to assume the four kids who died were the four who were supposed to be there. No one else was reported missing from campus, so it was a safe bet we had our four victims.”
I hated to hear those words, to hear Marissa referred to as a “victim” or her body described as “remains.” It sounded dehumanizing, and I started to get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as Nate spoke. The coffee tasted bitter, and I pushed the mug away.