Everything We Lost

by Valerie Geary

  In Patrick’s office, Lucy covered her mouth and nose, remembering how rank the inside had smelled of stale piss and dog shit. Wyatt had been right. She didn’t think it possible, but here it was, on her like the full force of a tidal wave. A memory resurfacing, and Patrick the one who triggered it.

  The three of them crammed inside the phone booth. Lucy first, then Patrick and Adam, both of them pressing against her and she was too drunk to tell whose body belonged to whom, whose hands groped her ass. They were laughing. She laughed too. To cover up her excitement, her terror. The beer had gone to her head, her stomach, had taken over, making her legs and the place between hot and soft and trembling. As of last night she was no longer a virgin, a woman now, a woman madly in love and drunk, drunk in love, and as she stood stuffed inside that tiny phone booth it seemed anything was possible. Everything was. Patrick’s hand, or Adam’s, it didn’t matter in that moment, a strong hand, a boy’s hand, pressed against the small of her back. She leaned into it, wanting it to move up and down and all over her. She was alive with the electric night, her skin on fire with want and the thrill of being out past curfew, doing things no fourteen-year-old should be doing.

  “Do it,” Patrick had said, his breath hot on the back of her neck.

  She fumbled with the receiver, dropped in dimes and quarters, listened as the phone rang and rang, as her brother picked up on the other end. She hung up that first time and the second time too, because she couldn’t stop laughing. The third time she managed to say his name, but he thought she was someone else and that sent her into a panic. She didn’t know what to do. She held the phone out to Patrick, who shook his head and then leaned in to whisper what she should say. She repeated everything exactly. Then, without warning, Adam grabbed her around the waist, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her belly. She screamed and dropped the phone. Patrick picked it up and spoke into it in a gruff and menacing voice. “Come to the observatory,” he’d said. “Wait for us there.”

  Lucy remembered how Patrick kissed her afterward, how he’d picked her up and swung her around like a fairytale princess. She remembered wanting that kiss to go on and on and on and here the memory cut off again. Here, another blank wall.

  “And after?” she whispered, her mouth gone dry with fear that Patrick was going to reveal something even worse than the phone call. “What happened after we talked to him?”

  Patrick spread his empty hands in the air. “I took you home.”

  She wanted to trust him, but people didn’t change, not in the ways that mattered, and Patrick had betrayed her more than once, enough times for her to recognize when he wasn’t telling the whole truth. A furrow formed between his eyebrows. He picked at his thumbnail and fixed his gaze a half inch above her head so he appeared to be looking straight at her, when in actuality he was staring at nothing. But whether he was lying about all of it or simply leaving parts out, she wasn’t sure. What she did know was that he wanted her to believe he’d told her everything, and he was betting on her childhood infatuation with him and her faulty memory, on the amnesic effect of alcohol and time, that by giving her this sliver of truth, she wouldn’t go looking for more.

  “We didn’t go out there to see if he’d show?” she asked.

  “No.” That same muscle in his jaw twitched again. “We didn’t.”

  He held her gaze for a moment and then added, “Making that phone call was a stupid thing to do, I’ll admit that. I’ve been living with my regret ever since, wondering if we hadn’t called him, then maybe . . .” He shook his head, scowling at his hands, unable to finish his thought.

  He didn’t have to. Lucy was thinking the exact same thing: Nolan would have never left the house, would have never even been out in the desert that night if not for them. If not for her.

  Patrick composed himself again and continued, “But last time I checked, making prank phone calls to your friends isn’t illegal. However, any detective worth his salt could easily use this phone call to implicate us as suspects. We made that call, we were the reason Nolan was at the observatory in the first place, thusly we followed him out there and did something to harm him, or at the very least witnessed what happened. Either way, it doesn’t look good. Because even if we could come up with airtight alibis and convince a jury that we were never in the desert that night, we still lied to the police. We hindered an investigation. Do you see now why it’s better for us to stick with our original story?”

  She found herself nodding in spite of her doubts. His voice was smooth and reassuring and what he said made sense in a way. He was the lawyer, after all. He would know better than anyone about these kinds of things, and there was something to be said about not muddying up the investigation with more leads that went nowhere, about not making themselves suspects if they’d done nothing wrong. Still, if it was like Patrick said and they didn’t go to the observatory, then it was possible telling the truth about their activities that night might push the investigation in a better direction. The right one.

  “Celeste went missing that night too,” Lucy said. “Did you know that? She was with Nolan. A neighbor saw them leave together in his pickup.”

  Patrick raised his eyebrows, but otherwise his expression remained unchanged.

  “Why would he have gone out to the observatory if he knew she was safe?” The thought only now forming in her mind, pounding at her temples. “If he knew it was a prank, why was he there?”

  “I don’t know, Lucy,” Patrick said with a heavy sigh. “Maybe they were together when we called. Maybe he was pissed that we punked him again and he went out there to get revenge or something. I don’t know what happened after they got to the observatory because I wasn’t there. None of us were.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “Look,” he interrupted. “You came here wanting answers, and I’ve given you all I can. I wish there was more that I could do for you. I wish I could bring him back, I really do.” He paused for a long time, almost long enough that Lucy thought she was being dismissed. Then he said, “Nolan pulled a knife on me, you know.”

  “What? When?” That didn’t sound like her brother at all.

  “A couple of weeks before he went missing,” Patrick said. “At the grocery store. I went over there to try and apologize for what happened at the basketball game and he nicked me right here.” He pointed at a place near his Adam’s apple, but if there was a scar, it was too faint for Lucy to see.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “He’s your brother, I get that, I do. But, Lucy, he wasn’t an innocent. Whatever happened, he probably brought it on himself.” He rose slowly from his desk and came around to her again. “But I think you knew that already.”

  He stared down at her with pity in his eyes, the same pity he’d had for her ten years ago in the parking lot of Juan’s Taqueria when she’d tried to wrap her arms around him, when she’d buried her face in his shoulder and said, “I’m scared, Patrick. I’m really scared.” She’d wanted him to whisper that he loved her and would never let anything bad happen to her. Instead, he’d sloughed her off like a tattered old rag. “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.” And when she’d started to cry, he looked embarrassed for her. “It’s nothing personal,” he’d said. “I just think you have the wrong idea about us, that’s all, and I don’t want to lead you on or anything. You’re a good kid, Lucy.” He’d left her standing alone in the parking lot, the smell of grilled meat, lard, and hot asphalt twisting her stomach, making her want to puke.

  Patrick was her first—first love, first kiss, first time wanting, first time needing, first time losing herself in someone else, first shattered heart. He would always be her first, and though that meant something to her once, she owed him no loyalty now.

  He twisted his wrist to look at his watch. “Is there anything else you need? I have some phone calls to make, and a client coming in soon.”

  Lucy stood and allowed Patrick to lead her to the door. “I appreciate you taking t
he time to talk with me. I know you didn’t have to.”

  “Anything for an old friend,” he said. “And, hey, maybe now you can finally start to put this all behind you.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” She forced a smile.

  “Take care of yourself, Lucy.” He shut the door in her face.

  13

  Marnie answered the front door in loungewear and pink bunny slippers. Her hair was pulled into a loose bun at the nape of her neck. She blinked against the afternoon sun streaming through the doorway. “Lucy? What are you doing here? We weren’t expecting you, were we?” She glanced behind her into the house. “Your father didn’t say anything about—”

  “Is he here?” Lucy interrupted, pushing her way inside.

  “You might have called first.” Marnie shut the door. “It’s the polite thing to do, you know.”

  Lucy ignored her and walked down the long hall toward her father’s office. Her sneakers were nearly silent on the travertine tile. Marnie’s bunny slippers shushed quickly after her.

  “He’s on an important call,” Marnie said. “You shouldn’t go in there.”

  Lucy didn’t bother knocking. Robert had his back to the door, his cell phone pressed to his ear. Upon hearing the door open, he swiveled slowly in his chair, a deep scowl creasing his face. “I’m sorry, Greg,” he said into the phone. “Something’s just come up. I’m going to have to call you back. Yes. Okay, great. Thank you.”

  He ended the call and set the phone down on his desk. “What is the meaning of this? Lucy, what are you doing here?”

  He didn’t sound pleased to see her.

  Marnie pushed into the doorway behind Lucy and folded her hands primly at her waist. “I told her she should have called first.”

  “I was in the neighborhood,” Lucy said, taking a seat in the high-backed chair. “I needed to see you. I needed to ask you about—”

  “It couldn’t wait?”

  “—Nolan.”

  Robert’s eyes narrowed, his lips pinched. Without turning his focus from Lucy, he said, “Be a love, Marn, and make us some coffee?”

  Marnie made a sound in protest, but Robert shot her a hard look, and she sighed and shuffled out of the room, closing the door behind her. As soon as she was gone, Lucy took a breath to speak, but Robert was faster.

  “What is going on with you lately?” he asked, laying his arms on the desk. “I’ve left several messages, which you’ve ignored. And now you show up here unannounced.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I’ve been busy.”

  He perked up a little hearing that. “New job?”

  “No, I . . . not yet . . . I’ve been . . .” She’d rehearsed what she wanted to say on the drive over from Patrick’s office, and it had all been so detailed and rational and well-paced, but this was much harder to do in person. She took a breath and let the words tumble out whichever way they needed to. As long as she got them out, that was the important part, as long as she finally got her father to start talking about the one thing they should have never stopped talking about: the shadow in the shape of her brother who followed her from room to room, city to city, who was there even when she closed her eyes.

  “I haven’t picked up the keys to my apartment yet,” she said.

  “You what? Why would you—”

  “The landlord’s holding it for me until the fifteenth, but right now all my things are still packed up in the back of my car. Since I left here, I’ve been living in a motel,” she said. “In Bishop.”

  He looked surprised. “Why the hell would you go back there?”

  “I needed to try and talk to Mom. Those pictures she has, the ones she gave to Strange Quarterly, they’re not of a UFO.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I had to tell her the truth.”

  “Lucy, I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”

  She explained about the UFO she and Patrick built in his parents’ garage. His eyes widened, and he sat back in his chair as if her words were physical shoves against his chest. She stopped short of telling him about the phone call she’d made luring Nolan to the observatory. She wasn’t ready to share that information just yet. Not with him, not with anyone.

  “How did she take it when you told her?” Robert asked.

  “Not well,” Lucy said, remembering the look of betrayal, how quickly Sandra fled the restaurant. “I’m not sure if she’ll ever speak to me again.”

  “Yes, well, your mother . . .” But he didn’t seem to know what to say next. He lifted his hands in a half shrug. “Did you get it out of your system, then? Do you feel better?”

  The bald eagle statue on the corner of his desk was turned at such an angle that it appeared to be staring straight at her, its eye narrowed into a thin, predatory slit.

  “What do you think happened to him?” she asked.

  Robert shifted in his chair. The leather squeaked. “Lucy, please, I don’t want to—”

  “I mean, everyone else seems to have their own theories. I want to know yours.” She had never asked him before; she had never felt brave enough to hear his answer.

  “To what end?”

  She thought it might be a rhetorical question.

  “You aren’t the least bit curious?” she asked. “He was your son. Your only son. Don’t you ever wonder? Don’t you want to know where he is?”

  “It wouldn’t change anything.” He spoke so quietly, Lucy wasn’t sure she heard him right. She leaned forward in her chair as he continued, louder now, “The simple fact of the matter, Lucy, is that your brother lost hold of reality and couldn’t figure out how to get back to us. Anything beyond that is guesswork.”

  Lucy slouched back, disappointed.

  “And I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to start stirring things up like this,” he added. “It’s not healthy.”

  “I’m not a kid anymore,” she said. “You can stop protecting me.”

  Robert tapped his fingers together and studied her a moment. She thought he was going to end the conversation and send her on her way. Instead he said, “I have a younger brother. Did you know that? Do you remember him?”

  They never had big family dinners or holiday parties with extended relatives driving from all over the country like in the movies. Sandra was an only child, and Lucy always assumed her father was too. But she remembered a conversation between her parents a little while after Nolan was expelled from school, one she wasn’t supposed to hear. They’d made a quick reference to a man named Uncle Toby, and she remembered asking Nolan about him, but getting no response. She also remembered a man with a booming laugh who would scoop her up in his arms, swing her above his head, and then tickle her with his shaggy beard, but the memory was from so long ago, so vague in her mind that she’d confused the man with her father, despite that in all the pictures of their family together her father was clean-shaven.

  “Have I ever met him?” she asked.

  Robert nodded. “When you were very young, but he went away before you really had a chance to get to know him.”

  “How come you haven’t told me about him before?”

  “It’s not something I like to talk about,” Robert said. “He’s not well.”

  Lucy sat quietly, waiting for him to continue. When he did, his voice was distant and soft, so unlike the dynamic, controlling businessman she was used to.

  “Both my parents died when I was nineteen,” he said. “First, Mother from lung cancer. She loved her Virginia Slims. Then Father, shortly after, a single bullet to the head. His grief got the better of him, and he took the coward’s way out.”

  Robert never talked much about his parents. Lucy knew they were dead, but he’d never told her how. There was a small framed black-and-white picture of the two of them on the mantelpiece in the living room, a photograph from their wedding day. Lucy never told anyone, but she always thought Nolan bore a striking resemblance to their grandfather. Same thin nose and kind eyes.

  “Anyway . . .” Robert waved away som
e emotion threatening to well up and carried on with a stricter tone. “Toby, my brother, he was twelve when Father died. I did the best I could to finish raising him, but I was barely an adult myself, and Toby . . . he had his own ideas about things. We didn’t always see eye to eye, but I took care of him. I made sure he had everything he needed. Food, a place to live, clean clothes. I made sure he did his homework. I made sure he graduated. And I found him a job.” He clasped his fingers together, his jaw tightening. “A good job too. Selling men’s shoes at a department store. But he said being inside all day like that, waiting hand and foot on rich men, he said it was making him crazy. He said he wanted to fly, be a pilot. Which he did. Somehow . . .” And here he laughed a little. “Somehow those idiots gave him a pilot’s license.”

  He cleared his throat. “Anyway, after a while he was going off, doing his own thing, living his own life, and that was good. I had my life too. Your mother, my work, and later, you two kids. We would see each other sometimes, as often as we could, but we were both grown, both making our separate ways in the world, trying to figure it out. And I thought we had. Figured it out, I mean.” He paused, the silence stretching long and thin, and then continued, “Toby was always a little different, head in the clouds, like your brother. I didn’t really think anything of it until the day he tried to kill himself.”

  Lucy squeezed the armrests of her chair. The air in the room was suddenly too heavy, too hot. But she didn’t dare move. Her father had always been such a private person, so completely unknowable, and now he couldn’t seem to stop, the words his confession, an unburdening of guilt. And Lucy would listen because he needed her to, but also because she needed to know how it ended for Toby and Robert, how it might end for her too.