Everything We Lost

by Valerie Geary

  It surprised her when Patrick showed up a few minutes later at the back door. He knocked and made silly faces against the glass. She let him inside and they sat down on the couch together.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She didn’t want to cry in front of him so instead she started talking about the weather, how hot it was this year compared to last, and then seeing the bored expression on his face, she changed the subject to the new Star Wars movie. Patrick wouldn’t stop talking then. He said the movie was a shit storm of awfulness compared to the original trilogy, and then he told her about the BMW his parents bought him last month for his sixteenth birthday. “You want to go for a ride sometime?” She said yes, she’d like that. Then he asked her about starting high school. “Are you nervous?” She was, a little, but tried not to show it. He told her to come find him on the first day. He’d show her around, introduce her to people. He’d make sure no one gave her any shit. As they talked, Patrick moved closer to her. Their knees touched. He smelled spicy, a hint of cloves or something like that, something delicious. Then he started rubbing her back, and she tried to think of something cute and clever to say, but all her brain could come up with was, he’s touching me, he’s touching me, he’s actually touching me.

  She wanted it to go on forever. Patrick’s hand on her back. Patrick beside her. Patrick coming to her defense, making sure she was going to be okay. She’d liked him for a long time before this, a little-girl crush she never expected to blossom into anything interesting, and yet Patrick was here, looking back at her with the bluest blue eyes she had ever seen, eyes that made her feel finally real. They might have kissed right then if Nolan hadn’t come stumbling through the back door. When Patrick pulled away from her, Lucy felt herself disappear again.

  That day in July, that blistering-hot day. That was when it all started to fall apart.

  Lucy stepped back from the locked gate and her eyes swung to where the Milky Way pinwheeled, stars exploding from its center. She had forgotten what it was like out here. How bright the stars, how they seemed to go on forever. The weight of the universe, the vastness of it, the eternity, so much space, too much. It settled on her chest, a crushing pressure under this too-thick blanket of night. She couldn’t catch her breath. Her heart beat too fast. She was unraveling, coming undone and starting to drift. She would fly up to the stars and disappear among them and no one would come looking for her. No one even knew she was here. She was a speck. A speck among specks. A single tiny thread in the infinite fabric of the cosmos. She didn’t matter. Sandra didn’t matter. Neither did her father. The reporters, this place, Patrick, what happened to Nolan, her memories—compared to the expansive sky, none of it mattered. Only it did matter; it mattered to her.

  She squeezed her eyes shut until the spinning sensation stopped, then she turned to go back to the front of the house where she would ring the doorbell like a normal person, and then what? She hadn’t thought that far ahead. What would she say to Sandra? What could she possibly say after nine years of silence? Hi, Mom. Mom was too familiar. Just hi. Hi, I know it’s been a while, but I was hoping . . . Hoping what, exactly? For an apology? To be invited in for a cup of tea and a nice cozy chat? For a chance to explain?

  Words seemed impossible tonight. But maybe she’d feel differently if she came back in the morning, after a good night’s sleep and a strong cup of coffee, maybe in daylight when there weren’t so many shadows to contend with, and so many stars looking on.

  She made it halfway across the backyard when a security light snapped on. She froze in place, blinking against the white-hot brilliance.

  A man called out to her from the direction of the sliding glass door. “Who’s out there?”

  Lucy raised her arm to block the light. The man who stepped onto the back patio was dressed only in boxer briefs and a white tank top, but he was big, over six feet tall, and had a wooden baseball bat propped on one shoulder, both hands gripping the handle, ready to swing.

  “I was looking for Sandra Durant?” Lucy called to him, trying to sound as nonthreatening as possible.

  “No one here by that name.” His voice was a low growl.

  “She’s about fifty? Short blond hair. Sandra? Durant?”

  “I said there’s no one here by that name. Now get the hell off my property or I’m calling the cops.”

  Lucy moved slow and sideways toward the open gate that led into the front yard, keeping the man and his bat in her sight line until she was through. Then she shut the gate behind her and broke into a trot, hurrying down the driveway to her car. She pulled a U-turn and sped away from the house where she grew up, the house that apparently now belonged to strangers.

  She drove in circles awhile. Bishop hadn’t changed much in the years she’d been away. Semitrucks and cars passing through to someplace else still clogged the main highway through the center of town. Even at this late hour, the sidewalks were crowded with tourists who used Bishop as their kicking-off point for backpacking and climbing trips. To the west, the Sierra Nevada mountains loomed. The White Mountains and the Inyos rolled to the east. Owens Valley was trapped in between. To the north, a thin, winding highway climbed, then disappeared into even more mountains. To the south, the land flattened but was no more welcoming. The lush river basin surrounding Bishop too quickly gave way to barren desert scrub and Death Valley beyond. There was no easy way out of this place.

  The light ahead changed from green to yellow. Lucy slowed the car to a stop and glanced over at a dark-haired boy collecting abandoned shopping carts from the parking lot of Bishop’s Grocery. His head was lowered, his shoulders hunched as he strained to push the weight of the carts. It couldn’t be Nolan, it wasn’t possible, but even so Lucy wanted to see the boy’s face. It suddenly seemed the most important thing in the world. She started to roll down the passenger window. A car behind her honked. The boy looked up. Not a boy, a man twice her age, with a stiff mustache and a wad of chewing tobacco tucked inside his cheek. The man turned his head to one side and spat. The car behind her honked a second time. The light had been green for a while. Lucy pressed down on the gas.

  The headache from earlier today was returning, hammering its way into her skull. She stopped at the next motel she came to and rented a room for the night, charging it all on her credit card. She grabbed a pair of pajamas, her toothbrush, and her laptop from the boxes in the trunk, but left everything else packed away.

  In the motel room, she took two ibuprofen and then ran a search for Sandra Durant in the White Pages. She didn’t find anything useful. Not even the old address on Skyline Road. Sandra’s name was all over the Internet, in articles about Nolan’s disappearance and in UFO forums, but no one seemed to care about her physical whereabouts. Either that or she deliberately went to great lengths to keep the information private. Lucy searched for over an hour and found nothing about where Sandra was currently living or how she could be reached. She looked up the Skyline Road house on a real estate website and discovered it went into foreclosure eight years ago and was purchased by the new owners shortly after that.

  Though Lucy always imagined her mother dying in that house waiting for Nolan’s return, she wasn’t surprised by the foreclosure. Two months after Nolan went missing, Sandra lost her job at the hospital. She’d gone to work drunk and nearly killed a patient with the wrong dose of medication. Lucy left Bishop shortly after that, but even when she’d been living with her mother, even with child support checks coming in, and alimony, and the hospital paycheck, they were always short on cash. Without the paycheck, without the child support, Lucy didn’t know how Sandra would have been able to keep up with the bills.

  She pulled up the Strange Quarterly article again and scrolled down to the photograph of Sandra and Wyatt. They stood in front of a nondescript gray brick building with no business or street signs, no mailbox numbers, no notable landmarks or details, no clues of any kind that would help Lucy determine where the picture was taken. Her eyes caught on the email addres
s at the end of the article. She typed fast and then hit Send, the email disappearing off her screen before she had a chance to change her mind.

  Dear Mr. Riggs,

  My name is Lucy Durant. I’m in town for a few days and was hoping to speak with my mother, but I’m having trouble tracking her down. I think you might be able to help me?

  She only had to wait a few minutes for his reply.

  Can you meet at Riley’s Bar in an hour?

  5

  Riley’s was quiet for a Friday night. At the bar, an older man sipped a pint, his eyes fixed on a television hanging in the corner. Footage of a college football game flickered across the screen. A couple sat whispering together in a dimly lit booth on the other side of the room. The man would say something and the woman would laugh and toss her hair so it draped across his arm. Someone was playing pool in the back. Balls clattered across the table. The bartender had his back to the whole place and was drying tumblers with a towel. Lucy had never been inside this particular bar, so maybe it was always this empty, or maybe everyone who normally came out drinking on a night like this had stayed home to sleep off their New Year’s Eve hangovers. Whatever the reason, she was glad for the near-empty room; this reunion was going to be awkward enough without a crowd of strangers listening in.

  Lucy arrived a few minutes early, but Wyatt was already waiting for her at a booth near the front door. He looked exactly like his picture. Same slicked-back hair and stern expression. Same stiff posture. He recognized her as soon as she walked in and rose to greet her, reaching to shake her hand. “You have no idea how thrilled I was to get your message. It’s an honor. Truly.”

  “Where is she?” Lucy’s eyes darted toward the restroom near the back of the restaurant.

  “Sandra?” He shook his head. “She’s not coming.”

  Lucy tensed, and as if he sensed her pulling away, he rushed on, adding, “I asked her. But she thought it might be better if you and I talked first. Just the two of us.”

  He gestured for Lucy to sit down.

  She stayed standing. “She doesn’t want to see me.”

  “No, it’s not . . . she’s just . . . she’s nervous, I think. She isn’t sure if she can trust you.”

  Lucy bit down on her bottom lip. This wasn’t how she’d imagined it. She’d come all this way and Sandra couldn’t be bothered, had sent this man, this stranger to deal with her instead. It hurt, a paper-cut slice to her heart, but maybe it was what she deserved.

  “Let me buy you a drink.” Wyatt gestured toward the bar.

  “I don’t drink.”

  “A club soda, then?”

  There was something about the way he tugged at the sleeves of his shirt, trying to pull the cuffs down around his knuckles, that made him appear vulnerable, something kind in his eyes, and Lucy felt herself softening toward him, being drawn in despite her misgivings. She slid into the booth. “Club soda is fine.”

  “With lemon?”

  “If they have it.” She didn’t care either way.

  He went to the bar and returned a few minutes later with two tumblers of club soda, lemon slices bobbing like yellow boats between the ice cubes and fizz. He slid one of the glasses across the table to her. She wrapped her hands around it and waited for him to speak first. He sipped his drink. When he smiled, dimples creased his cheeks and wrinkles formed on the bridge of his nose. All the hard angles of his face diminished, making him look younger, and Lucy liked him better for it.

  “So how do you know my mother?” she asked, finally breaking the silence. “I mean, how did you meet?”

  “She contacted me through my website about a year and a half ago,” he said. “She was having trouble sleeping, holding down a job, not getting much of anything done besides drinking and falling apart. She went online trying to find answers and found her way to me. We exchanged emails for a few months. She was reluctant to share her real identity at first, which is completely understandable considering the circumstances, but once she did, I asked her if we could meet in person.” He leaned his elbows on the table. “I knew your brother from before.”

  This made her sit up straighter and look at him more closely. She tried to recall his face ten years younger, tried to put Nolan and him together in the same room, but her memory was coming up blank. She thought she’d known all of Nolan’s friends; there weren’t very many to keep track of, especially in those last few months.

  Wyatt seemed to understand because he shook his head. “I don’t think you and I ever met. He was a member of a group I ran . . . still run, actually . . . a group for people who are interested in studying extraterrestrial phenomena and discussing what it means for humanity’s future.”

  Lucy lifted the glass to her lips. The club soda was so cold it made her teeth ache and burned her throat going down. Nolan had invited her to go to a UFO Encounters meeting once, when they were still getting along. He’d shown her the flyer. She thought it was a joke.

  “Sandra came to me for help,” Wyatt continued. “She’d been through something incredible, an experience that her previous knowledge and limited vocabulary could not explain. I was able to help her understand what had happened to her. And now she’s putting her energy into much more productive endeavors.”

  “Like what?” Lucy did nothing to hide the cynicism in her voice. She twirled the melting ice in her glass. A fresh set of bubbles burst to the surface.

  “Well, she has a job, for one thing, working full-time as a waitress at the casino.” Wyatt leaned over the table. “And she’s helping me now, too. We’re working together to try and find out what really happened to your brother that night in the desert.”

  This was not the kind of conversation she wanted to be having. Not in so public a place with a stranger who somehow seemed to know more about her own family than she did. Not anywhere with anyone actually. Yet this was why she’d come. To set the record straight. Or try anyway.

  “So do you think he was abducted by aliens, too?” she asked, her tone flat and noncommittal.

  “It’s where the evidence seems to be pointing us at this time.”

  “And what evidence is that again?”

  “Have you seen the pictures?” He started to reach into a messenger bag sitting on the bench next to him, but Lucy gestured for him not to bother.

  “I saw them,” she said. “That’s why I’m here, actually. That article . . . It should have never been published. Sandra shouldn’t have given you permission to use those pictures.”

  He seemed intrigued by this. “Why not?”

  “It’s irresponsible,” she answered. “It’s going to slow the investigation and damage what little reputation my brother has left.”

  “Your brother cared more about the truth than his reputation. He would want us pursuing whatever avenues are available. Besides, the so-called investigation is at a standstill anyway. I don’t see how the article is going to slow it down any more than that. In fact, it might even speed things up a bit, get things moving again.”

  “In the wrong direction.”

  He fell back against the vinyl seat, a stunned expression on his face.

  “You don’t believe.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I never have,” she said, and then, “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

  “Sandra never told me. I was working under the assumption . . .” But then he shook his head like whatever he’d been about to say no longer mattered.

  Lucy wasn’t surprised Sandra hadn’t told him. Sandra probably didn’t know. She stopped paying close attention to her children, and Lucy especially, after her divorce. One day in middle school, after a particularly disgusting cafeteria lunch, Lucy decided to stop eating meat. She came home and told her mother she was a vegetarian now and Sandra said, “That’s nice, dear,” then two hours later served her a ham and cheese sandwich for dinner. When Lucy wiggled the ham from between the bread slices and set it to one side of her plate, Sandra stared at her in surprise. “Since when did you stop eating meat?�
�� Later, Nolan and Lucy had laughed about it in her bedroom, mimicking their mother’s startled sparrow voice and comically overwrought facial expressions.

  “Look,” Lucy said to Wyatt, who studied her intently. “I just, I need to speak with Sandra. Can you help me or not?”

  Wyatt rubbed his hand across his cheek, and the hem of his long-sleeved shirt inched up, revealing a dark sliver of ink on his right wrist. Lucy gestured to see the tattoo. Wyatt pushed the sleeve up to his elbow and held out his arm for her to see. She leaned over the table, twisting for a better look. Inked on the soft underside of his forearm, about an inch up from his wrist, was a stereotypical alien face no bigger than the circumference of a silver dollar. It was outlined in black, the skin inside shaded a rich blue-gray. Just a head, no body. Bulging cranium, narrow chin, a tiny mouth, huge and hollow eyes that gave it an otherworldly and shell-shocked expression. Eyes that sent shivers up Lucy’s spine and made her stomach turn. She sat back in her seat. Air released from the cushions in a huff.

  “What do you think?” He turned his arm to admire it now, and the corners of his mouth curved up, his chin lifting with pride.

  Lucy hesitated a moment and then reached for her purse, talking as she dug around for enough loose change to pay for her club soda. “You know what’s funny is that you seem like a reasonable man. Sane even.”

  “I’m as sane as you are,” he said.

  “So you must be doing all of this . . .” She dropped the change onto the table and gestured to his tattoo. “For what? Money? Attention?”

  He tugged his sleeve down and drew his arms close to his body. “Why is it that one belief held by the majority of a population is accepted as normal, no matter how strange its tenets? While another belief shared by the minority is considered to be delusional and dangerous?”