“Way ahead of you. I looked for his cameras last night, but I couldn’t find any more in the house. No pictures with clues to where he might have gone, either.”
“Oh,” Dex said, deflating a bit. “Did you check his office?”
I shot him a Come on, seriously? look and took the clean scoopers to the front of the store. Dex followed, whirling around so fast his tennis shoes squeaked against the tile floor.
“Okay, but like, how well did you look? Because Ike has lots of files. I barely had time to look around when I was at your place, but I know there’re more somewhere in that office. Plus, he has that safe. Seems more like a two-person job to go through it all.” He bounced a little on his feet as he waited for an answer.
“You’re really not going to let this go, are you?”
“What’ll it hurt to be as thorough as possible?”
“Fine,” I said, sighing. “If it will make you feel better. We’ll go through my dad’s office again. We’ll try to figure out how to open the safe.”
“Tonight?”
“No, not tonight. I have plans.”
Dex made a surprised face. “Plans?”
“Don’t act so shocked. You’re not the only person I talk to in this town.”
“So . . . you have plans with my mom, then?”
“Ha-ha. You should be excited, actually. I’m going out to go check out some of my dad’s usual camping spots to see if he’s there.”
Dex’s eyes lit up. “That’s a great idea! What time should we go?”
“Well, I sort of have plans to go with someone else.”
Dex stopped bouncing. “Someone else?”
“Micah Jameson.”
“That guy? You’re going to spend the night looking for your dad with . . . Micah Jameson?”
“Yeah. What?”
“Why would Micah Jameson want to help you find Ike?”
“Um, maybe so he can hang out with me? Or just because he’s nice?”
Dex scoffed. “Nice. Too nice, more like.”
“‘Too nice’ isn’t a thing. That’s like saying brownies are too fudgy. More is always better.”
Dex shook his head. “I don’t trust him. It’s like he needs everyone in town to like him—and that goes double for every girl in our grade. He’s just too . . . yeah, I’m sticking with ‘too nice.’ I mean, what’s he got to hide?”
“Amazing biceps?”
Dex rolled his eyes. But then he crossed his arms and leaned against the ice-cream case, looking away from me.
“Have fun, I guess. But be careful.”
“Dex, I’ll be perfectly safe with Micah.”
“If you say so. But I meant be careful going out in the woods at night. Remember the deer. And the hiker . . .”
Dex trailed off as he looked out the window, his eyebrows scrunched down.
“What is that?”
I followed Dex’s gaze through the window. The two-lane street outside the ice-cream shop was completely empty, except for what looked like a small purple heap lying in the middle of the yellow line. I moved out from around the counter and closer to the window. The purple heap was a handbag, and just a few feet away from it, sitting upright with her legs sprawled out in front of her on the pavement, was Mrs. Anderson.
My apron flapped in the breeze as I ran through the door and out into the empty street. Dex followed close behind, and the store’s glass door shut behind him with a soft hiss. We both reached Mrs. Anderson in a matter of seconds.
She looked oddly serene, sitting there in the middle of the street. Her expression was placid, almost vacant.
“Mrs. Anderson?” I asked as I knelt down to her level.
She looked at me, her eyes blinking under the shade of her orange sun hat.
“Hello, dear,” she responded with a smile. “Do you know where I’ve placed my pie?”
I exchanged a quick look with Dex, who shrugged.
“I had it just a moment ago, hot out of the oven. I used those fresh blueberries from Hank’s yard—they’re better than they are in the store, you know.”
“Mrs. Anderson, do you know where you are right now?”
Mrs. Anderson’s brow wrinkled. “Of course I know where I am,” she said. “I just don’t know how I got here!”
Dex bent down and put one hand under Mrs. Anderson’s elbow. “Why don’t we get you up out of the street?”
I bent down to lift Mrs. Anderson from the other side. Together, we walked her over to the sidewalk in front of Sweet Street. When we stopped, Mrs. Anderson looked first at Dex, then me, up and down.
“What are you both doing in your aprons? The store doesn’t open for another two hours. . . .”
“Mrs. Anderson, it’s noon,” I said.
She shook her head. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and showed her the time. Mrs. Anderson gave a small gasp, then put one hand up to her temple. “Well, I . . . I don’t . . .”
“Can we call someone for you?” I asked. “A doctor, or maybe the sheriff?”
Mrs. Anderson blew a raspberry, her lips smacking wetly. “And what’s that moron going to do, write me a ticket?”
Dex and I both stifled a laugh.
“I just need to get home, I think. Lie down for a bit.”
“Why don’t I take you?” I said.
“I don’t want to trouble you—”
“It’s no trouble. Dex, do you mind watching the store on your own?”
Dex shook his head. “Of course not. I’ll see you tomorrow, Mrs. Anderson. Take care.”
He went inside, and I handed Mrs. Anderson her handbag. We started to walk slowly down the street, my arm still locked under her elbow.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” I asked as we passed the post office.
Mrs. Anderson took a moment before responding. “I was taking my morning pie out of the oven,” she said. “And I thought I should bring it to . . .” She gave an angry sigh. “Oh, I can’t remember.”
“That’s okay.”
But Mrs. Anderson’s mouth stayed firmly bunched up, and she continued to shake her head in frustration as we passed by the buildings at the end of Main Street. When we neared the corner, I saw a black car idling at the curb across the street. It had tinted windows, and its engine was so quiet you could barely tell it was on. It was the same car I’d seen in front of my dad’s house the other day.
The sun bounced off the car’s shiny exterior, nearly blinding me. Just as I shielded my eyes, it peeled away from the curb and maneuvered into the road with a squeal.
“Mrs. Anderson, do you know whose car that is?”
“What, dear?”
“Never mind. It’s gone now.” I turned back to the sidewalk in front of us. “You’re still on Waterbury, aren’t you?” I asked, raising my voice.
“Yes, but you really don’t have to walk me all the way home.”
“I don’t mind. It’s not that far.”
Mrs. Anderson smiled and patted my hand with her own. “You remind me of your father. He was always so sweet.”
I swallowed, caught off guard. “I don’t think that’s how most people would describe him,” I said.
Mrs. Anderson surprised me by laughing. “Oh, I’m sure he’s lots of other things, too. But he’s always had a soft heart.” She loosened her grip on my arm as we turned onto Waterbury and started to pass by the one-story houses that lined the street. “He comes over to rake my yard in the fall, and shovel my driveway every winter.”
I blinked, surprised. “I forgot that he did that.”
“People forget small kindnesses,” Mrs. Anderson said. “They’re often the first things they forget.”
A familiar bubble of anger rose up inside of me at Mrs. Anderson’s gently chiding tone. First Dex and Cindy, now Mrs. Anderson—why were people so intent on telling me what a great guy my dad was? I was the one he had forgotten about to go on a last-minute camping trip to hunt down aliens or whatever—didn’t I have a right to judge? To be eve
n a little pissed off? And who cared if he was the type of person who shovels his neighbors’ sidewalks? He was also the type of person to leave his own daughter in the lurch.
“My dad has a way of making you forget his kindnesses,” I finally said. “He’s pretty good at it, actually.” I heard the sharpness in my tone a moment too late. I instantly regretted snapping at Mrs. Anderson, whose arm still rested, frail and light, above mine.
But Mrs. Anderson just smiled and kept walking. “Oh, I’m sure he does,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Anderson, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay, dear,” she said. “I don’t offend that easily. Besides, you’re right. Your dad can be kind, but he can also be a bit of an asshole.”
My eyes widened as Mrs. Anderson chuckled, her voice sweet and cracking and old. “It was true when he was a little boy, and it’s true now. Good parts and bad . . . Oh! Maybe it was banana bread?”
“Mrs. Anderson . . . ?”
“They were going soft yesterday—I saw the dark bruises. I’m pretty sure I used them up, but then I remember picking blueberries. . . . Anyway, your mom was the best thing that ever happened to your dad, and also the worst.”
“Uh, I’m not sure I follow. . . .”
We reached the base of Mrs. Anderson’s yard and started to walk her up her gravel driveway. A row of pink roses lining her lawn were just starting to drop their petals, and she stopped to look at them.
“Or maybe it was apple pie. That does make more sense . . . but then what did I do with the bananas?”
Mrs. Anderson looked up at me as if she expected an answer. I shrugged helplessly, and she smiled. She opened her front door, which was unlocked, and stepped inside.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “I set my DVR up to record The Price Is Right.”
“Well . . . okay, Mrs. Anderson. See you later.”
“Bye, dear.” Mrs. Anderson started to close the door, but then stopped just before I turned away. She looked at me, her eyes clear and blue. “Try not to stay too angry with him, okay? Summer’s so short.” She gave a vacant smile. “Summer. That’s right. Yes, it was definitely the blueberries. But it’s best not to think too much about it.”
She shut the door in my face with a loud click, leaving me alone on her porch among the dying roses, feeling a chill run down my spine even in the midday heat.
Twelve
I SPENT THE rest of the afternoon pacing around the house, feeling uneasy. I couldn’t get Mrs. Anderson’s words out of my head. It wasn’t just her repetition of that one phrase that kept popping up all over town—it’s best not to think too much about it—but also what she’d said about my dad. And then there was seeing that same black car driving slowly by again. I knew there had to be some reasonable explanation for all of these things, but I couldn’t see it yet. It was like a puzzle with too many pieces missing, and I didn’t know where to start looking to fit everything together.
But when Micah pulled into the driveway in Kevin Abnair’s truck, my unease was replaced with resolve. I didn’t know where to go next to find the missing puzzle pieces. But at least I could start looking for my dad.
Three hours later, my resolve was starting to fizzle out. The sun had already set behind the trees by the time Micah and I made it to our last stop, one of my dad’s favorite camping spots at the far end of North Lake.
North Lake wasn’t the biggest lake in town (that would be the actual Bone Lake, which our community was named after). But it was the deepest. If you swam out to the middle and looked straight down, all you could see was blackness stretching beyond your own legs. It looked like it went on forever, a bottomless hole. Dad loved it.
But when we got there, I found no hints of Dad. No tire tracks, no sign of a recent campfire.
“Sorry to drag you all around the woods for nothing,” I said as Micah maneuvered the small truck through a dirt road at the edge of North Lake and parked at a patch of the narrow, rocky beach that was lit up by moonlight. The spot was familiar in a deep-down way; I’d spent many childhood nights out here with Dad, staring out at the water and waiting for a lake monster to rise up from its depths. I’d imagined how it would happen so many times, it practically felt like a memory—how the dark object would bubble up from the surface, breaking the water into small waves. First its glossy head, then its humped back, dripping water down shiny scales. Then the hollow eye sockets, the claws, the teeth. Even now, unable to help it, my eyes scanned over the water, looking for a ripple.
“I wouldn’t say it was for nothing,” Micah said, pulling my attention back to him with an easy grin. “Besides, this looks like the perfect spot to stop and eat, doesn’t it?”
I forced myself to smile back, pulling my gaze away from a lake that I now knew was filled with nothing but seaweed, amoebas, and empty beer cans.
“Yeah, perfect.”
We sat on a blanket in the open bed of the truck and unwrapped the food we’d brought with us—potato chips, packaged cheese slices, and rolled-up lunch meat from me, and homemade leftovers from Micah.
Micah looked down at my contribution and laughed. “Not much of a cook, huh?”
“Hey, these turkey slices didn’t come prerolled, I’ll have you know. I put many precious seconds into putting this together.”
Micah laughed, and I picked up a piece of the pie he’d brought. “And you don’t expect me to believe you made this?”
“Much as I’d like to take credit, you’re right. This is pretty much all my mom.”
I bit into the pie and nearly sighed with how good it tasted—I hadn’t realized how much the days of hamburger buns and chips had deprived my taste buds of home-cooked food until that moment.
“Well, tell your mom she’s an amazing cook,” I said, wiping berry juice off my chin.
“Oh, she knows,” Micah said. “I only wish she wouldn’t make so much. She gets into this mode sometimes where she makes three meals a day like she’s cooking for a family of four, instead of just . . . us.”
Micah shrugged one shoulder, like this was no big deal, but his eyes were faraway as he took another bite. I struggled to find the right response.
“My mom’s kind of the opposite,” I finally said. “She hates cooking. For her, going to the grocery store is like getting a tooth drilled. She uses our oven as another place to store books.”
“So what do you eat?”
“We order in, mostly. There’s this vegan restaurant on our block that my mom loves.”
Micah made a face. “Vegan? As in, no meat?”
“As in, no meat or cheese.”
Micah’s eyes widened. “Oh man,” he said, pushing a Kraft Single in my direction. “Here. You need this more than I do.”
I laughed, and in that moment my whole body felt like it could just float up out of the truck bed. It wasn’t just that I was enjoying hanging out with Micah; it was also that he seemed to be enjoying hanging out with me. It felt partially unbelievable and partially intoxicating to have the full wattage of his attention focused solely on me. Well, me and pie.
“I know, right?” I continued, wanting nothing more than to stretch this conversation—this whole night—out for as long as possible. “This whole last semester I thought if I never saw another piece of spinach again, I’d be happy. But I’ve only been here a few days, and already I kind of miss it.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever missed spinach.”
I looked down at the corn I was slowly picking at and gave a small shrug. “Well, maybe I just miss her.”
As soon as I said the words, I knew they were true. I wondered if maybe these past few days alone had gotten to me more than I’d thought. Because I did miss Mom more than usual—I missed her steady presence, her way of centering things. I even missed the dumb kale juice in the fridge.
“I know what you mean,” Micah said, his voice low. He got that faraway look again, and I saw clearly how I could swing the conv
ersation back to something light—like the pie, or the fact that Kevin’s truck smelled like someone had doused the whole thing with Axe body spray.
Instead, I put the corncob down and leaned a bit closer to Micah.
“You mean . . . your dad?”
Micah sucked in a breath, and I felt a small pang of guilt. I really hadn’t planned to steer the conversation to Micah’s dad, not tonight. But even though I’d asked out of concern, I couldn’t deny the trickle of anticipation running through me at the thought that I might finally get some answers about Hal Jameson.
But instead, Micah shook his head. “No, I meant my mom, actually.” Then he was the one playing with his food, picking small bits off a piece of fried chicken without eating it. “She hasn’t really been the same since . . . well, since everything happened. I mean, she’s okay most days, but she’s not like she was before.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
Micah shrugged again. “It was a long time ago, but she just can’t get over what happened to my dad, not really. The football helps, though.”
“Football?”
“My games. They like, give her something to look forward to? Sometimes they’re the only reason she gets out of her pajamas at all.” Micah’s hands moved on from the chicken and started crumpling up a napkin in his lap. “It’s nice to be able to give her that, especially after . . .”
“After what?”
“Well, I don’t know if you remember, but after my dad died, people weren’t exactly . . . nice to us.”
“What do you mean?” I kept my focus on Micah, ignoring how my fingers itched for my notebook and pen. And there was the guilt again, that my first instinct was to get Micah’s words on record. I moved my hand under my thigh so I was almost sitting on it, as if I could hide what I wanted to do with it—not just from Micah, but from myself, too.
“Just that . . . you know my dad died in an accident at the plant?” Micah continued.
“Yeah,” I said softly, my heart beating faster.
“Well, everyone blamed him for what happened. He used to drink sometimes, and they said he did it on the job. . . . I never believed it, but that didn’t matter to anyone. Human error, they said, which basically meant it was his own damn fault. And that was it, case closed. Anyway, then the plant shut down and everyone lost all those jobs, and suddenly people weren’t really sad about my dad anymore. He was, like, a pariah. No one even talked about him.” Micah shook his head, and I could see he was still angry about it, after all these years. “You know I didn’t even have friends until I joined peewee football? No one would look at me.”
The Truth Lies Here Page 10