Little Comfort

by Edwin Hill

  “Remnants of Saturday night.”

  Angela recognized Wendy Richards from seeing her on the local news. Like Donald Ambrose, she was one of those people you knew about, even if you didn’t pay attention or care. She wore a neatly tailored gray suit and had her hair tied back in a voluminous ponytail. She strode forward, hand outstretched with an innate confidence. “You caught me between appointments,” she said. “But I’m happy to help with whatever you need.”

  Angela shook Wendy’s hand and introduced herself. “What was Saturday night?” she asked. While she might drop an “is” or say “ain’t” with Stan, that wouldn’t fly here, not in this house.

  “A party,” Wendy said with a laugh. “I get so caught up with myself. Sometimes I forget that I’m not the center of everyone’s world. Sit. Did Harry offer you coffee?”

  “He did.”

  The butler brought in a silver coffee service as if on cue and set it down on a side table.

  “Cream or sugar?” Wendy asked.

  “Really, Ms. Richards, I shouldn’t take up too much of your time.”

  Wendy nodded to the butler, who retreated without a word.

  “Have you spoken to Laura Ambrose recently?” Angela asked.

  “Twig? Of course. I saw her on Saturday. She came to the party.”

  “Her father’s worried about her. She didn’t go to work today.”

  “That’s hardly new,” Wendy said. “Mr. Ambrose worries all the time. And Twig is a flake. On everything. She shows up late, or on the wrong day, or simply forgets. She has as long as I’ve known her.”

  “Does she like working for her father?”

  “As far as I know. I don’t think he asks much of her. She’s the VP of strategy, or something ridiculous like that.”

  “Did you notice anything when you saw her on Saturday? What time did she leave the party, anyway?”

  Wendy poured herself a cup of coffee. “Are you sure I can’t get you any?”

  Angela nodded. “All set.”

  The cup rattled against the saucer, coffee sloshing over the lip. Wendy placed it down without drinking. “I saw her earlier in the day,” she said. “After her yoga class. We were supposed to meet for breakfast, but she was running late, so we caught up afterwards. She was excited to come to the party. She said it was one of her favorite events of the season. But the party was big. We had over three hundred people here. I never actually talked to her that night.”

  “But you saw her.”

  Wendy shook her head.

  “How do you know she came, then?”

  “She texted to say she was here. But then I don’t think she stayed all that long.”

  “And you weren’t worried when she disappeared?”

  “It’s not like she disappeared. She left. And no, not at all. Honestly, it would have surprised me more if she had stayed. Especially …” Wendy stopped herself.

  Angela took a moment to jot something down on her pad. “Especially what?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” Wendy said in a way that, Angela suspected, was meant to get her to stop asking, but Angela rarely let anyone like Wendy Richards intimidate her.

  “Let me decide if it’s nothing.”

  “I don’t want to make trouble,” Wendy said. “But Twig was dating someone we both know.”

  “David Winslow?” Angela said, and Wendy nodded. “Laura’s father mentioned David when we spoke earlier today. He’s in Beijing on business. He’s been there since last week. Did anyone actually see Laura at the party? Or anyone that you know of?”

  Wendy thought about it for a moment. “I think Aaron did. Aaron Gewirtzman. He’s … I guess he’s my boyfriend. He was with me all night.”

  “I’ll need to talk to him. Do you have his number?”

  “Really? I hardly think you need to worry. Twig sent me a text that same night. She said she’d met someone.”

  “Show me,” Angela said.

  “All it said was that she met someone.”

  Angela waited till Wendy took out her phone and scrolled till she found the last text from Twig. “Sorry,” she said.

  The message said something about Twig liking her men black and strong. “Slumming it in Everett, huh?” Angela said, forwarding the whole thing to her own phone. “Were there actual black people at the party?” she added, barely keeping the snark from her tone.

  Wendy shrugged. “A few.”

  “Does Laura hook up a lot?”

  “She’s not like that,” Wendy said. “She’s been upset about David, and, I don’t know. People do odd things when they’re upset.”

  “So she has been hooking up lately.”

  Wendy nodded. “Don’t tell her father.”

  Angela put her pad away. “I’ll try not to, but I’ll need a list of everyone who came on Saturday. And photos. I assume you had a photographer.”

  “Are you serious?” Wendy said. “Do you have any idea who came to this party? They won’t want the cops showing up at their doors. And if the press finds out about this, they won’t let it go.”

  “Do you have any idea where your friend is?”

  “Fine,” Wendy said. “My assistant will have to get the list to you. Felicia Nakazawa. She’s not here right now.”

  “Was she at the party?”

  Wendy nodded.

  “Good,” Angela said. “Tell her to bring the list with her when she comes by the station today. Here’s my card. She can call to make an appointment.”

  *

  It was freezing out, and, according to the radio, a storm was on its way up the coast headed straight for Boston, with over a foot of snow expected after midnight. Hester turned on the ignition in the truck to warm up the raw air as she sat outside Gabe and Sam’s apartment and watched their front door. It had been nearly a week since she’d spoken to Gabe in the park, and in those few days she’d contacted a handful of foster placement agencies in New Hampshire to see what more she could learn about Gabe and the other children who’d lived with Cheryl Jenkins. The kind but firmly uncooperative social workers had refused to offer up even the tiniest scrap of information, till finally one of them asked how long it had been since Gabe had left the system.

  “Twelve years,” Hester said.

  “Then there’s nothing we can do anyway,” the social worker said. “Those records are destroyed after seven years.”

  “Why?”

  “Beats me. It’s the law.”

  Hester also called the local high school in Holderness to see if anyone there would talk to her. One of the secretaries told her they didn’t give out information about students, ever, and then threatened to call the police. Hester’s last-ditch attempt was a search on LinkedIn and Facebook for kids who’d graduated from the high school the years around when Sam and Gabe should have graduated. She’d come up with a list of about twenty students, and had written them all to see if anyone would return her message. So far, no one had.

  Now, after an hour of sitting in the truck and listening to NPR, Hester was nearly ready to pack it in. She wanted to find a way to speak with Sam, though, to learn more about him. She wanted to ask what those postcards meant. She wondered, too, what he’d thought when Gabe told him that the little woman who’d stopped by to look at their apartment knew Lila. What memories had it brought up for him? Hester rarely revisited her own past, and she suspected Sam was the same. She’d seen a part of herself in Gabe’s loneliness. She wondered if she’d see another part of herself in Sam.

  The front door to the apartment opened. Hester turned the radio down and peered over the dashboard. Sam strode down the flagstone path, seemingly unaware that anyone was watching him—and yet fully aware that anyone would watch. He moved with every bit of confidence Gabe lacked, tucking a green-and-blue scarf into his pea coat, and climbing into an old Nissan before speeding away. With her feet stretched toward the pedals, Hester made a quick U-turn and followed through Somerville, into Cambridge, and finally along the frozen Charles River on Memorial Dr
ive where a few brave souls ran in the subfreezing air. She continued to follow him across the river, zipping past Fenway Park and zigzagging along the Emerald Necklace through Roslindale and into West Roxbury, where Sam pulled into the parking lot of the VA hospital, a huge institutional building on the outskirts of town. He hurried across the lot and into the building. Hester grabbed an interlibrary loan bag from the backseat. Inside, she walked with conviction past the registration desk, and then down wide, tiled hallways littered with abandoned wheelchairs, posters for support groups, and signs for terrifying wards like Prosthetics and Respiratory Therapy. An orderly stopped her. “Are you lost, miss?” he asked.

  “Not at all,” Hester said, patting the interlibrary loan bag.

  “Keep going this way,” the orderly said. “You’ll see the library on your left.”

  At the next corner, she stopped when she saw Sam sitting in the waiting area outside the mental health ward with his back to her. He perused a magazine and periodically glanced up at the three others in the waiting area: an older couple who held hands and stared at the ever-blasting television set, and a woman in her late twenties or early thirties who wore a Celtics sweatshirt and had tied her messy hair into a ponytail. As Hester eased out into the corridor to get closer, the woman stood, pacing the hallway and peering through the windows of a swinging door.

  “Need anything?” Hester heard Sam ask the woman. “Coffee, maybe?”

  “No,” the woman said. “Thanks, though.”

  Sam showed her a page in the magazine. “Who are you waiting for?” he asked.

  “My husband,” she said. “He has PTSD, like all of them. These group therapy sessions are good, but I sometimes think they dredge up more than we can handle.” She shook her head. “We’ll get through this. My mother is with the kids. Honestly, it’s good to have a moment to veg out.”

  “I bet,” Sam said. “There’s only so much TV, right?”

  “Right!” the woman said. “If I watch another episode of The Young and the Restless I might shoot myself. Who are you waiting for?”

  “A friend,” Sam said. “I help out when I can.”

  The door to the ward swung open. A young man with cropped blond hair shuffled out, and the older couple flanked him as they left. Two more men and one woman left the ward on their own, followed by a huge man wearing a down parka.

  “Jamie!” Sam said.

  “You came,” the man said.

  “What did you expect? I told you I’d be here.”

  Another man came out of the ward, and the woman gave him a hug and then they headed off together.

  “How was the session today?”

  Jamie took a moment to answer, and then simply said, “Good.”

  “Well, good is great, right? Should we get you home to the pooch?”

  Sam turned too quickly for Hester to duck away. His eyes caught hers. “I remember you,” he said. “You came by the apartment.”

  She smiled. She’d expected him to say something about Lila or to mention her conversation with Gabe in the dog park. At the very least, she’d expected him to ask why she was following him around. “I thought I recognized you,” she said.

  “Aaron,” Sam said. “And this is my friend Jamie.”

  Jamie looked away when she said hello to him and introduced herself. Up close, she could see the shadow of a scar beneath his buzz cut, and she felt his size as he shifted from one foot to the other. He filled the entire room and seemed uncomfortable with it.

  Hester patted the library bag. “Making a delivery. I work at Harvard.”

  “Jamie here is studying video game programming at the community college.” Sam paused and looked at Hester. He took a step forward and studied her face. “Actually, he’s working on a design program and is supposed to sketch some new characters.” Sam turned to Jamie. “She has an interesting look, don’t you think?”

  Jamie nodded.

  “Could we snap your photo?”

  “Do I get a superpower?” Hester asked.

  “This is more of a thinking person’s game. You’ll be one of the thinkers.”

  “So you’re looking for nerds?”

  Sam grinned. “More like sexy librarians. Do you mind?”

  “Maybe another time, if we get to know each other. We live in the same neighborhood. You’ll have to buy me a drink one of these days.”

  “Maybe I will,” Sam said. “I’d better get you home, Jamie. You have homework.”

  “Where’s home?” Hester asked

  “Everett,” Jamie said.

  “I saw your roommate the other day. He came by the dog park. He didn’t mention it?”

  Sam shook his head.

  “He probably didn’t think anything of it. We barely said two words to each other.”

  “I bet,” Sam said. “He’s not one for small talk.”

  A few moments later, Hester hurried across the parking lot. She put the truck in gear and pulled away from the hospital. On the radio, the newscaster talked about the coming snow storm, but Hester barely listened. Sam seemed nice enough. More than nice, really. How many people would drive all the way out to West Roxbury to tote an injured vet home from his therapy sessions? But why hadn’t Gabe mentioned seeing her? More important, why hadn’t Gabe told him that Hester knew Lila? And their real names.

  At the next red light, she heard her phone beep. An e-mail had come in from one of the people she’d contacted through LinkedIn, a man named Paul who’d gone to school with Sam and Gabe. I knew Cheryl Jenkins, he wrote. I can meet with you. But come alone.

  *

  Hester managed to wedge the truck into a parking spot on the outskirts of Harvard Square and cut across the Yard, along the shadowy paths lined with snowdrifts, past clusters of students on their way to finishing papers and exams. And even though she was in a hurry, in the middle of the Yard she stopped at the serious, marbled entrance to Widener Library and thought about going in to say hello to her coworkers. If she went inside, if she smelled the close air heavy with old paper, if she asked about research or students or who was working on what project, she’d never want to leave.

  She heard a familiar voice calling her name. It was Kevin, the head reference librarian. He tripped down the steps toward her, tossing one end of a blue-striped scarf over his shoulder before pulling her in for a bear hug. “The undergrads are relentless,” he said. “Relentless and anxious and rude and ill-prepared for the end of the semester. They’re nightmares. Every one of them.”

  Kevin and the library and the other librarians and the whole world that they existed in was Hester’s and Hester’s alone, a world that she didn’t have to share with Morgan or Kate. It was good to be reminded, even momentarily, that that world was still there. They talked for a few minutes. He told her about one earnestly impatient sophomore who needed articles on Laotian immigration and language acquisition, and didn’t understand why she couldn’t have them in a half hour. “The best of the day,” Kevin said, “maybe the best of the year, was this pair of giggling girls who wanted to research the history of the dildo.”

  Hester laughed. “I hope you told them you’d work on that one together,” she said.

  “Do you think I’m a fool?” Kevin asked. “I made an appointment with them on Monday!”

  Hester glanced at her watch. “I should get going,” she said.

  “No,” Kevin said, clutching both of her hands. “Come to lunch with me instead.”

  “I wish I could, but I’m meeting someone.”

  “Where have you been?” Kevin asked. “It’s like you dropped off the face of the earth.”

  There were a lot of people whom Hester hadn’t reached out to since Kate had come to live with her. She didn’t know if they’d understand how hard it had been or, frankly, whether they’d want to hear about it. She’d hated listening to people talk about their kids. “It’s intense. The kid thing.”

  “A lot of us have been through it.”

  “Sometimes it feels like I’ve lo
st control of my own life, even if I probably shouldn’t say that out loud.”

  “You can always say it out loud to me—and anyone else who’s ever had a kid. We’ve all felt that way. And we miss having you around. Come to the holiday party. It’s on Wednesday, the day after the students leave.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Don’t try,” Kevin said. “Just do. And if you have to bring the kid, so be it. You won’t be the only one.”

  “I will,” Hester said, giving the man a hug and then dashing away through a wrought iron gate and onto Mass Ave.

  She headed down a side street and into the subterranean John Harvard Pub, with its brick walls and warm lighting. There, she took a stool at the bar and waited, checking her phone periodically for any updates from “Paul.” She’d tried to find out what he wanted to tell her, to no avail. Now, she wondered whether he’d even show up, but ten minutes after she’d arrived, and two beers in, a man stopped at the hostess stand and looked quizzically toward her. He was about the same age as Sam and Gabe, though reedy and unformed, as though he hadn’t quite graduated from adolescence. He had greasy hair that poked from beneath a knit cap and a wispy beard that clung to his chin. Hester nodded, and he came over.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said. “Paul, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  When Hester pointed to the stool beside hers, he perched on the edge of it, as though he wanted to be able to flee at a second’s notice. She tried to chat him up, but he glanced warily toward the door and barely seemed to hear her questions. He worked at Verizon as a sales rep. He lived in Alston with five roommates and a cat, and he’d left New Hampshire “as soon as he possibly could,” which seemed to be a theme. Beyond that, Paul didn’t share much.

  “Are you expecting someone?” Hester finally asked.

  His eyes shifted from the doorway to her. “Are they coming too?”

  “Who?” she asked.

  Paul pursed his entire face together and nodded. “You know.”

  “But I don’t.”

  He picked up the menu and leafed through it. “Are you buying?”

  “Sure,” Hester said. “As long as you start talking a bit more. Time is money, you know?”