Everything We Lost

by Valerie Geary

  Lucy crept to the opposite edge of the plateau from where she’d come up, quietly, quietly, to another path that Megan and Natasha had taken down to the car. She slid her feet along the ground, knowing that a misstep would take her straight off the side. Humpty-Dumpty style, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, but somehow she reached the bottom of the cliff without falling once.

  What happened next was chaos. Blue and red lights flickered in the distance. Then people were shouting, running, coming out from behind the outcrop, diving into their cars, peeling out in the dust. Lucy didn’t know what to do. She froze as people streamed around her, and then Patrick grabbed her hand, saying something, saying, “—get the fuck out of here! Come with me!” She raced with him to his car, almost there, when all of a sudden, he stopped. She ran into him. He took something from his pocket and threw it into the open window of a pickup that looked vaguely familiar, and for that brief instant—his arm flying out, his fingers opening—time slowed as her mind tried to catch up with her eyes, but then they were moving again and whatever Patrick had done was not as important as getting the hell out of there before the cops showed up. Lucy got into Patrick’s car and as she did, she thought she saw Celeste scrambling into the next car over. Nolan wasn’t with her, or maybe he was; Lucy didn’t know. And she didn’t fucking care. He could take care of himself. She was with Patrick, and he was holding her hand.

  There were many ways to go, the land flat, so many off-road tracks splintering in all directions. The blue and red lights came from the park entrance, along the main road. It was easy to drive in any other direction and disappear. There were other exits to the east. Patrick pressed on the gas. The world turned to gold dust. Lucy rolled down her window and howled.

  She should have left the party with Nolan that night when she had the chance. So much would have been different for them. Everything, maybe. She wouldn’t have ended up in Patrick’s car, for one thing, pissed off and still drunk and reeking of puke, and she wouldn’t have taken that small white pill off the tip of his finger, and she wouldn’t have done what she did after, to get his attention, to get his mind off Celeste and on to her. How easily her hand found its way to his crotch, how easy to rub him hard. He pulled over, told her to unzip his pants and finish him off, but when she tried to kiss him, he pushed her away, saying, “You smell disgusting.” Which she did, but he could have at least given her this token, this one small thing. If she’d left the party with Nolan, none of that would have happened, and she would have been better off. Nolan, too, because if she had left with him, he wouldn’t have still been there when the cops showed up. He would have never been arrested.

  Detective Williams said, “Lucky for your brother, it was his first offense.”

  They’d released him into Sandra’s custody with a warning. Lucy was home in bed when they came through the front door a little after three in the morning. Sandra was crying and talking loudly about how damn lucky he was, how if she were that cop, she would have made him spend the night in a jail cell with the perverts and druggies, scare the idiot right out of him. Nolan mumbled something, then Sandra stomped down the hallway. A door slammed. Lucy flinched and pulled the pillow over her head, which was throbbing the beginnings of a bad hangover. She heard a click as her door opened. She lifted the pillow. Nolan stood in the doorway, peering in at her. After a few seconds, he whispered, “Lucy? Are you there?”

  She whispered back, “I’m here.”

  “Good.” He started to pull the door closed, then stopped and leaned his head through the crack again. “Ibuprofen, now, if you haven’t already. And lots of water. I’ll make you blueberry pancakes when you wake up.”

  She groaned, sick at the thought of putting anything in her stomach ever again, but it worked. She did what he said, ibuprofen and water, and when she woke up he had pancakes waiting and it was the most delicious food she’d ever eaten, and the hangover she’d been expecting never materialized. During her second helping of pancakes, she started to talk to him about the party, to apologize for being stupid and to tell him what Patrick had done, but something distracted him. He got up from the table and rushed to the phone, lifting it to his ear, before setting it down again, looking bewildered. He did this three times in a row before finally drifting off to his bedroom, Lucy and his own stack of pancakes completely forgotten.

  “Those drugs weren’t Nolan’s,” Lucy said to Detective Williams, suddenly feeling defensive.

  His eyebrows arched high on his forehead. “I thought you were here to talk about his missing person’s case.”

  “I am,” she said. “I just, I think it needs to be said. Those drugs weren’t his.”

  He offered her a stiff smile. “It doesn’t really matter anymore, does it.”

  He opened a manila folder sitting on the desk in front of him and ran his eyes over the top sheet. “Detective Mueller seemed to be under the impression that your brother may have run away from home.” His eyes snapped up to her again. “Do you have any reason to believe something else happened that night?”

  The only thing she could manage to say was, “It’s been ten years.”

  He stared at her, his expression unreadable, but even so making her nervous. She rubbed her thumbs together and reminded herself that she’d come voluntarily. She could walk out of here anytime she wanted. She wasn’t a suspect. She’d done nothing wrong, despite the fact that Detective Williams was looking at her as though she had.

  “You understand,” he said, “that without any new leads, no new evidence, no suspects, not even a body . . . you understand, there’s not much more we can do. Your brother’s case is what we call ‘cold.’ ”

  “Which means what exactly?”

  “That the evidence we have is slim to none. The leads have long dried up. So all we’re left with are theories, possibilities, guesses. And, I’m sorry to say it, Lucy, I really am, but a case doesn’t get very far on theories.”

  “I see.”

  Again that stiff, half smile.

  “So his file,” she said. “The evidence. It’s just what? Collecting dust in the basement?”

  He closed the manila folder and laid his hands on top of it. “Something like that, yes.”

  “Is that it?” Lucy leaned in for a closer look, reaching for the corner of the folder that was visible beneath his spread-wide fingers. “Is that Nolan’s file? I’d like to see it. I’d like to know what steps were taken, who Detective Mueller talked to.”

  If she could just see the file all laid out in front of her, then maybe something would spark in her mind. She would remember something new about that night or see a connection everyone else had missed.

  “I’m afraid it’s not possible.” Detective Williams moved the folder out of reach. “Letting you see the file would compromise the investigation. Such as it is.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He opened his desk drawer, slipped the folder inside, and then slammed the drawer closed again. “Lucy, I’m wondering, why the sudden interest in your brother’s case?”

  “I need a reason?”

  “Seems odd, is all. The notes indicate you went to live with your father a few months after the case was opened and after that, silence. You’ve had ten years to come by, or call us up, to find out how things are going, but you didn’t. So.” He spread his hands open on the desk. “Why now?”

  Lucy stared down at his palms, following his life line, or was that his love line, his skin creased with the passage of time, lines blurring until they disappeared. She asked, “Why not now?”

  He was quiet for a long time, though the silence was not uncomfortable, and this, Lucy realized, was how he got people to talk. By lulling them into a state of calm, making them believe they could say anything, and he would listen without judgment, without shame.

  “Was there something you remembered?” he asked. “Something that you wanted me to add to the file?”

  She could tell him now. Come clean about the too-many hours f
rom that night that were missing from her memory, tell about her bloodied knee and constant nagging guilt, about the alcohol and about Patrick. But then, what did she really know about any of it? Nothing, and so there was nothing to say, nothing to add to the file. Maybe when she remembered—if she ever did—maybe then, when she had no doubts, she would come back and tell him the whole thing from beginning to end.

  Again her gaze caught on the missing children posters hanging across the room. She scanned their faces once more just to be certain.

  “He would have called me,” she said, more to herself than Detective Williams. “He would have written a letter, an email, at least.”

  Detective Williams nodded, but said nothing else.

  Lucy stood. “Thank you for your time. I know how busy you are.”

  The phone on his desk flashed red, indicating he had new voice mails. Paperwork teetered in stacks and boxes around his feet. He shrugged without comment, and then walked with her to the station entrance where he handed her a business card with his cell phone number written on the back. “If you remember anything about that night, anything at all, whether or not you think it’s relevant to the case, please call me immediately.”

  She stuck the card in her purse and left.

  9

  Stuart Tomlinson still lived on Skyline Road in the same house across the street from Lucy’s childhood home. As a girl, she went to great lengths to avoid him, checking each time before she left the house to make sure he wasn’t outside watering his zinnias or drinking tea on his front porch. If he did happen to catch her outside, she would walk quickly away from him with her head down, pretending she didn’t see his arm noodling to get her attention, didn’t hear him calling, “Hello, Lucy! Yoo-hoo! Hello!”

  Sandra didn’t like Stuart either. “What the hell is he doing over there?” she asked, whenever they saw him returning from one of his junkyard trips, his car laden with boxes of what, from a distance, appeared to be other people’s garbage. Bits and bobs and knicks and knacks. Once he brought home a whole box of doll heads. No bodies, just heads. One of them fell out of the box and rolled into the gutter in front of the Durants’ house. Nolan picked it up and added it to his collection of meteorites on top of his dresser.

  “He’s a creeper,” Lucy told Nolan when he asked her once why she didn’t like Stuart.

  “But why?” Nolan pressed her. “Because he doesn’t act the way you think he should act?”

  She struggled then, as a child, to explain precisely what it was about Stuart that she didn’t like. A middle-aged, single man, he mostly kept to himself, never had raucous parties, never even played loud music. He kept his house in good repair and even started mowing their aging neighbor’s lawn after she broke her hip. He never said anything inappropriate to Lucy, never made any improper advances, unless she counted the time he told her he’d found a litter of kittens in his garage, and did she want to come and play with them? She’d declined, thinking it was some kind of ploy to get her alone, and hurried off to wherever she’d been going, but a few weeks later there was Stuart, going door to door with a box of kittens, trying to find them new homes.

  Maybe it was the combed-over hair or his ferret teeth or his too-pale skin that was almost translucent, or his bulging fish eyes that came to rest on her far more often and far longer than was socially acceptable. Maybe it was that, like a vampire, he never seemed to sleep. Lucy could see his house from her bedroom window, and on several occasions she’d woken in the middle of the night to all his lights blazing. A few times she even saw him rocking in his front porch swing, well past midnight, his eyes fixed on their house, on her bedroom window it seemed, though she couldn’t be certain. None of these things were proof of misbehavior. They added up to nothing, really, except an unsettled, nervous feeling in Lucy’s stomach.

  But even now, as an adult, she had to talk herself into getting out of the car and going up to his front door. She knocked and then glanced across the street at her old house. The new owners had removed every inch of grass in the front yard, replacing it with a landscape of river stones and small, decorative shrubs and grasses. Lucy was too distracted to notice this change the other night, but she guessed they’d done it because of the dead spot. A perfect circle right in the middle of the lawn that, despite extra water, fertilizer, and new seed, refused to grow. It appeared in the middle of the night shortly after their father moved to LA. A disturbing brown patch in the center of their once-perfect green, almost as if the grass had been singed by something. No amount of coaxing, pleading, or professional help managed to return it to its former glorious state, and after a while, Sandra gave up on it.

  Lucy knocked on Stuart’s door a second time and then rang the doorbell.

  A few seconds later, that high-pitched voice from her memory, the one that made her skin shrink, called out, “Just a second!”

  She suppressed the urge to run and instead followed Stuart’s voice around the side of the house to a detached garage turned workshop. The hinged front door was open. Classical music drifted from somewhere inside. Stuart sat on a tall stool, hunched over a table that stretched across one wall of the shop. A swinging-arm lamp shone a bright beam over his work space, leaving the rest of the shop dim. Stuart’s fingers worked delicately inside something that looked like a jewelry box. Near his elbow was a row of tiny plastic paint pots and every so often he swung his hand around, dipped a small brush into one of the pots, and then returned to the jewelry box. The workshop smelled of wood chips and glue and freshly mixed paint. Lucy stood outside the threshold, watching him a moment. Then she cleared her throat.

  Stuart jumped and knocked a jar to the floor. It clattered and rolled, but didn’t break. He blinked at her in confusion, his eyes huge and cartoonish behind a pair of magnifying lenses.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I just . . .” She trailed off.

  His expression changed then into one of recognition. He removed the lenses, set them on the workbench, and then slid off the stool, taking a step toward her, his lips spreading into a delighted smile. “It’s you. Only you’re so much older now. So much . . . bigger.”

  Lucy shifted under his gaze, which wandered lazily over her body, taking in all the ways she’d changed.

  “I don’t know if you remember me.” She wasn’t sure why she said this, when clearly he did. Nerves. She wanted him to stop looking at her like that, like she was something delicious, some sweet treat to devour.

  His tongue darted over his lips, then finally, he lowered his gaze, bending to pick up the jar that had fallen on the floor. He set it on the workbench next to the glasses and reached for a rag, wiping his fingers one by one. “I was beginning to think I’d never see you again, Lucy.”

  She smiled, trying to be polite. “Well, here I am.”

  “Yes, here you certainly are.” He walked to the wall of the garage and turned on the overhead lights.

  He looked exactly the same as he had ten years ago, as if no time had passed at all for him. Same cornhusk hair slicked over his bald spot and pasted down with gel. Same pale, see-through skin. Same bulging eyes that kept shifting back to her, landing in different spots on her body, as if trying to memorize the place of everything, how she was put together. He was wearing stiff khakis and a pastel pink polo shirt, over which he’d tied a white linen apron. Paintbrushes and X-Acto knives poked up from the apron pocket. A small splattering of red paint the only blemish against the white.

  “So,” Stuart said. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  She cut right to it, not bothering with small talk. “I was hoping you’d speak with me about the night my brother disappeared. About what you saw.”

  “Yes, of course.” He didn’t seem at all surprised that this was why she’d come.

  He gestured with his arm, spreading it wide and inviting her inside the workshop, then went and grabbed a second stool from another part of the room, setting it down near the one he’d been using. Lucy perched herself on the
edge of one stool, and Stuart settled comfortably back onto his. He laced his fingers together in his lap. His smile fixed, his shoulders stiff. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d ever been this close to him, close enough to see the flecks of yellow in his brown eyes, and to smell the baby powder scent rising off his skin.

  She looked away from him, trying to gather her racing thoughts and calm her quick-beating heart. She studied the room instead, taking in the small table saw, the stacks of uncut wood and nearby scrap piles, the paint cans and jars of glue, piles of cardboard and what looked like foam. Pages clipped from magazines and calendars, photographs of natural settings and abstract art covered the walls. Boxes on the floor overflowed with magazines as well as bits of paper and metal bobs, miniature dolls and furniture, old pillows and clothes, other things she couldn’t decipher. Detritus, bits of other people’s lives. A large oak wardrobe crouched in the far back corner of the garage, a handsome piece of furniture, intricately carved and polished to a shine. It looked out of place among the rest of it, a rich man squatting in a poor man’s hovel.

  Stuart noticed her looking at the wardrobe. “It was my great-grandfather’s. Brought over from Germany before the war.”

  “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “Your brother used to come over and polish it for me.”

  Lucy didn’t remember that.

  “I paid him ten dollars.” Stuart tapped his thumbs together. “He did other things for me, too. Raked leaves, washed windows. Stuff that I could have done myself, of course, but he was such a nice kid. I always liked him. And after your father left, well, he seemed so lonely. And sad. He liked the company, I think, more than the money I gave him.”

  After their dad left, Nolan changed. He became more and more withdrawn. He had nightmares. He’d walk through every room of the house with a bewildered look on his face, like he was trying to find some favorite, misplaced toy. He’d stopped eating for a while, too. Or rather, he’d eat, but then a few hours later, he’d be in the bathroom throwing up. She remembered he had to stay home from school for a few weeks, how jealous she was that he got to spend all day on the couch watching television, their mother waiting on him, worrying over him. The doctors couldn’t find anything physically wrong. They said he just needed time to adjust, and they were right. After a while, Nolan started eating again. Then he went back to school and things went mostly back to normal for a while. Lucy had been upset about their dad leaving, too, but it wasn’t like he was dead and they would never see him again. They would visit on holidays and sometimes during spring break, and they could call him on the phone whenever they wanted, even though most of the time he was too busy to talk for long. A lot of kids’ parents were divorced, and no one made a big deal out of it. If anything, it was better because you got double the presents on your birthday and Christmas. Lucy tried to explain all this to Nolan once, but he just said, “I was an accident, you know. I’m not even supposed to be here.” She’d been too young at the time to understand what he was talking about.