Only Ever Her

by Whalen, Marybeth Mayhew

  “You looking for someone to rescue you?” he asks, his tone joking, but still she is uncomfortable being here, with him, like this.

  “N-no,” she stammers.

  “Why don’t you like me?” he asks, and she could swear he has somehow moved closer, but maybe it’s just his words that press up against her.

  “I—I do,” she says, and she can tell by his smirk that he thinks she is lying, but he goes along with it, nodding a few times as he fixes her with his clear green gaze until she has to look away again.

  “Well, I better get going.” He hitches his thumb in a direction to the left of them. “Dad’s waiting.”

  She nods mutely, expecting him to mosey off. But he continues to stand in front of her. “I’m glad you like me, Ace,” he says, using a nickname he gave her the first week she worked there. “Laurel Haines, Ace Reporter,” he called her, reminding her too much of that annoying kid he used to be.

  He leans forward and, with a surprising quickness, plants a kiss, light and warm, on her cheek. She looks up at him, but he is already walking away. She watches his back for a moment before reaching up to cover the spot on her cheek where his lips landed. She reminds herself that he has been drinking. The kiss was probably a joke—one that she doesn’t appreciate, much like when they were kids. She watches as he turns a corner, and the sound of his cleats clacking across the marble floor fades away. She prepares to leave, and as she does, she spots a sign opposite where they stood—a sign that she could not see but he’d been staring at the whole time. She rolls her eyes as she reads it:

  PLEASE REMOVE GOLF SHOES WHEN INSIDE THE CLUBHOUSE.

  Kenny

  They are nearly done packing when there is a knock at the door. His girlfriend raises her eyebrows at him. “Expecting someone?” she asks.

  He freezes, a pair of boxers in his hands. He shakes his head, raises his eyebrows to match her quizzical expression. He is going for a nonchalant look, but he’s not sure he’s pulling it off, his heart knocking hard inside his chest. He doesn’t like unexpected guests on his doorstep on the best days, but he really doesn’t like it today. The knock sounds again, louder this time. In a way, he’s been waiting for this moment since his mother called. He’s made his decision: he will admit nothing.

  “Want me to get it?” she asks. She is surprised by the visit but not deterred by it. She is thinking that they will get rid of whoever it is and proceed with their trip. But something tells him it is not going to be that simple. He casts about for a good explanation for the knock—a salesman (if salesmen are ever good explanations), a child looking for a lost dog, a neighbor asking to borrow a cup of sugar.

  “I’ll get it,” he says, hoping for the best. He wants to open the door to find a small person on his threshold with buckteeth and freckles, asking if he’s seen Spot.

  But when he opens the door, there is no time to look down, because he is eye to eye with a man in uniform. A cop who asks if he knows Annie Taft and if he has seen her or has any knowledge of her whereabouts.

  His girlfriend sidles up to him, her eyes widening when she sees the two uniformed police officers there. “Is something wrong?” she asks. He wants to tell her to go back inside the house, wants to keep her from hearing what the officers are saying. He doesn’t want the inevitable questions about Annie that she will pepper him with after the policemen are gone.

  “It’s . . . nothing,” he says. “They’re just . . . looking for someone.”

  “Ma’am,” the other officer says, turning his gaze from Kenny to her. “Do you know Annie Taft?”

  The girlfriend looks confused. “Annie Taft?” she repeats. “Nnnnn. No.” But when she says it, she sounds unsure. Though Kenny knows she is just unsure about what is going on, it makes her sound guilty, like she’s lying.

  “She doesn’t know her,” he says to them. There is impatience in his voice.

  “But you do, Mr.—” The cop glances down at a little notebook he is carrying. “Spacey?” He looks up.

  Kenny nods, acknowledging his last name. He’s always hated it; it just gave the kids at school more fodder. “I knew her from school.”

  She was the only one who was nice to me when I first moved here, he thinks but does not say. In a flash, he sees Annie in seventh grade. Annie, who was smart and pretty and popular. Annie, who had a tragic story that he’d already heard before she ever spoke to him. He does not know how he knew her story; he really didn’t have any friends who would’ve shared it with him. It was as if, in Ludlow, the story of Annie’s tragedy floated in the air like a child’s balloon, bobbing along the streets of both town and country, eventually making its rounds to every house. Annie, who became the best friend he ever had and the great love of his life, was as much a part of the atmosphere in this town as oxygen.

  He looks at his girlfriend. “I knew her a long time ago,” he explains to her, as if the cops aren’t even there. “We were kids. She . . .” He sees Annie, with a mouth full of metal that would shape her smile into the head-turner it became. But he liked her smile before all that. “She stood up for me when I was new in town and some kids took to picking on me. They were her friends, and once she told them to lay off, they did. She did a nice thing for me back then. That’s all.”

  He turns back to the officers and realizes he is still holding the boxer shorts. He is afraid this makes him look even more suspicious. He suppresses a grimace, considers tossing the underwear over his shoulder just to get rid of them. If he walks inside to set them down, that might seem like an invitation to the cops to follow him. He’s heard you don’t have to let cops in unless they have a warrant, so he has no intention of throwing open his door, of saying, Come on in, fellas. Cops are like vampires; they have to be invited in, but once you invite them in, they have the power.

  “And you haven’t spoken with her recently or heard from her?” the cop presses.

  He grips the boxer shorts tighter. “No,” he says. Later, they will learn that he has lied. But he cannot tell the truth in front of his girlfriend. It is a Pandora’s box of questions that he cannot afford to open. He thinks of her decision to work from home this morning instead of getting an early start to Charleston. He thinks of this and regrets agreeing to it.

  The cops trade looks. The one standing in front of him peers over his shoulder into the apartment, wanting, he knows, to get inside. He wonders what evidence against him they could gather. Annie’s DNA is most assuredly there, in every room. For now, he is the only one besides Annie who knows this. And he intends to keep it that way if at all possible.

  The other cop, the one to his left, hands him a card. “Well, if you think of anything that could help us find her, please call this number,” he says. They step backward, as if they’re going to leave, and he feels himself relax. Bullet dodged.

  Then the one in front of him pauses, adds, “We might have some more questions for you, Mr. Spacey. So don’t go far.”

  “But—” His girlfriend starts to argue, to tell the police they are about to leave town. He puts the hand holding the business card on her shoulder to quiet her.

  “Sure thing,” he says, and gives them what he hopes is a reassuring smile. He knows what this is. He is now a person of interest in Annie’s disappearance. But he does not let the smile falter; he leaves it on his face until they are in their cars, all the while thinking of how like Annie this is: to get in the way of any chance at happiness he might find apart from her.

  His girlfriend is pacing back and forth, wearing a path in the already threadbare carpet. Kenny watches her, since there is nothing else to look at. This apartment isn’t much of a home, which he never gave a great deal of thought to until his girlfriend started spending more time here. Her roommate is a librarian and likes the place quiet, for reading. She was displeased every time he was there, with his big, heavy steps, his tendency to absentmindedly hum. So, though they never really talked about it, his girlfriend gradually moved in with him. He supposes that has left her apartment very
quiet, just the way the roommate likes it.

  “And you haven’t seen this Annie person in . . . how long?” his girlfriend says. She does not stop pacing as she says it. Kenny doesn’t think she even expects an answer. He has answered this same question already, more than once. She stops pacing, which gets his attention. He looks up to find her watching him warily.

  “Why won’t you answer me?” she asks, her words accusing.

  “Because I already have,” he says. “A bunch of times. I wish you would believe me.”

  “But you never told me about her!” She raises her voice, lifts her hands out to her sides in a display of exasperation. “I thought we told each other everything!” she cries, and he winces at the shrillness of her voice.

  “She’s just someone from high school. From when I was a kid.” He rolls his eyes. “She’s not in my life anymore.” He is pleased with himself for the way he has phrased his words because they are all true. He likes feeling—being—clever.

  “Then why were the police here asking you about her?” This is also a question she has asked more than once. The smile he felt that was starting to form is gone before it can make it to his face.

  “I told you. She’s missing. They’re looking for her. Someone probably remembered that we used to be friends, so they questioned me. They’re desperate to find her, that’s all.”

  He stands up, deciding that this inquisition is over. “Let’s go to Hops Haven, grab a beer, get out of the apartment.”

  She glances over at their half-packed suitcases. “We were supposed to be on a trip right now.” She pouts.

  “I know. And I’m sorry. But you heard them. They want me to stay in town.”

  She squints. “But you don’t have to. You’re not under arrest or anything. They have no right to tell you you can’t travel.”

  He thinks about this. He would actually love to get the hell out of this town. He thinks about how much he and Annie used to dream of exactly that. And now she is keeping him from being able to do so. “I can’t,” he says. He sighs and shakes his head. “If I do, it’ll make it look like I’m running, like I have something to hide. And I don’t.”

  She crosses her arms, cocks her head at him. “You really don’t?” she asks.

  There are freckles on her arms. He counted them once: twenty-eight on her right forearm and thirty-six on her left. “You’re asymmetrical,” he’d said, and she had giggled and scooted closer to him, and he’d known that she was his chance.

  “I really don’t,” he says. And this time he is outright lying. But she doesn’t know that. He holds out his hand. She takes it. He pulls her to him and whispers into her hair that he is sorry. He doesn’t say for what, and she doesn’t ask.

  Faye

  From across the room, she spies Tracy entering the house, her eyes wide as she takes in the crowd that has gathered. The police are there again, ostensibly to brief Faye on the search and the visit they paid to Kenny Spacey. But they have done that, and now they are mostly loitering. Travis and his wife have also showed up, and Scott seems to have taken up residence. Her usually empty house feels quite full. She is hosting the world’s most morbid party.

  Faye is glad she made the early-morning run to the grocery store, even if she did have to encounter Millicent while she was there. There is plenty of coffee with cream, which the younger officers have drunk so much of she doesn’t know how they aren’t coming out of their own skin from all the caffeine. She has set out cookies, too, and made some chicken salad sandwiches, but those are going mostly uneaten. She glances at the food, wonders at what point she should wrap it up and put it away. She does not know the rule for food going bad, but it can’t be good for chicken to sit out that long. She wonders how she can think of something so basic at a time like this.

  She is heading to the kitchen when Hal comes over, picks up a chicken salad sandwich, and shoves half of it in his mouth. With his mouth full, he says, “I always did like good homemade chicken salad, Faye. Where’d you find the time?”

  She doesn’t tell him that she bought it in the deli at the Food Lion. She just says, “Oh well, you know, I just threw something together. Besides, I hear your wife’s chicken salad is the best in town. I’m sure mine can’t compare.” She picks up a dishcloth and rings it out, hard, her back to him. He was just a beat cop when Lydia died, a beat cop who dreamed of being right where he is now. And Lydia’s case helped him get there. This is something they both know but do not say to each other, now or ever.

  When she’d walked into the police station, it’d been Hal who was holding three-year-old Annie, wrapped in a blanket that looked too scratchy to Faye, but they couldn’t get it away from the traumatized little girl. They also couldn’t get Annie away from Hal. The child had clung to him like he was her long-lost daddy.

  Annie’s daddy was a bad decision named Larry Taft who’d lured Lydia down to Ludlow just before he got himself killed in a motorcycle accident and left her there with a baby. Faye had begged Lydia to come home to Virginia, but Lydia was too proud to admit her mistake and return home with her tail between her legs. Faye thinks now about what the Bible says about pride, how it goes before a fall. It sure was true in Lydia’s case. Her pride had been her downfall—if she’d just packed up Annie and come home, she’d be alive now. At least, Faye likes to think so. She daydreams sometimes about a life where Lydia made different decisions and all their lives turned out different. No, not just different. Better.

  For instance, Faye wouldn’t be in this kitchen making small talk with a sheriff she’s known too long and for the wrong reasons. She wishes he would take his men and leave, but instead, finished with his sandwich, he reaches for a cookie, holds it up. “Good,” he says, and she thinks he’s being too friendly and happy. She is close to telling him so when Tracy walks over.

  “I thought when I saw all the cop cars here that they’d found her,” she says to Faye, ignoring Hal’s presence. “I thought I’d walk in, and she’d be sitting in the middle of everything, telling the story of what happened.”

  Faye puts her arm around Annie’s best friend, gives her a little squeeze. She knows that roller coaster, the highest height followed by the deepest depth. It’s enough to keep your stomach permanently in your throat. She remembers this all from when Lydia died, is surprised how effortlessly it has come back to her. It is just as hard the second time.

  Hal swallows his cookie and says, “We’re working on it, honey. Greenville cops, too. We’ll find her.” He winks at Tracy.

  Faye is sure he means to be reassuring, but she thinks he just looks like a creepy old man. But she will not say that in front of Tracy, who excuses herself to go and sit beside Scott. Those two sure are chummy. She wonders if it is premature to have a little talk with Tracy about the way it looks for her to be quite so close with Annie’s fiancé. Maybe she’s being a fuddy-duddy, but she doesn’t think it’s fitting. She is about to ask Hal what he thinks, but before she can, he announces that they’d best get going. He puts his hand on her shoulder, and it is big and warm and comforting. She has to stop herself from moving toward him.

  “Thank you,” she says instead, all business.

  She thinks about the text she received earlier asking if she could meet, if she could get away. He is breaking the rules, and she knows why. Annie being gone has changed everything, brought back a long-ago time that neither of them ever forgot and always shared. She thinks about this as she watches Hal leave with his men, taking his big, strong hands with him. She thinks of responding to the text, figuring out a way she can get away, go and seek comfort for her own self, decorum be damned. Later she will respond; she will make a plan. Later she just might seek comfort in the arms of the one person who she most wants to provide it. But for now there is the chicken salad to put up and someone else at the door bearing food.

  Clary

  As they round the bend, Miss Minnie gets to the end of her story, just as she always does. It is not just the story itself that is familiar;
there are the points in the road that correspond to the story. She cannot drive this road without pairing them in her mind, even when Miss Minnie is not in her car. She knows this will be true long after Miss Minnie is gone, after the dementia has finally caused her brain to stop telling her to eat, her heart to beat, her lungs to take in and expel air. Miss Minnie will be gone, but her story will live on.

  The story itself is quite simple, a snippet of an ordinary day carried out many years ago when life was, Clary imagines, happier. When her husband was alive and her children still at home. When she was the mistress of her domain and drove herself along this familiar road instead of depending on someone else to do it for her. The story is about a day that she and her husband left the sporting goods store they owned and decided to take a drive for no particular reason at all.

  He just said, “Let’s go for a drive, Sugar,” Miss Minnie always begins.

  Clary likes that part, thinks it would be nice to have a man call her “Sugar.”

  “And I said, ‘Well, okay.’ So we got in the car, and we took a drive with the radio on real low. And we talked about things, the kind of things that don’t really matter in the end but you talk about anyway. Because at the time they seem like they need sayin’. When we were finished with our drive, we went to Neil’s baseball game. We sat outside with the sun on our shoulders and watched our son throw the ball so fast it would make your head spin. He was quite a baseball player, don’tcha know.”

  At this part, Clary always says the same thing: “I didn’t know that.” Because now she has become part of Minnie’s story, too.

  Clary thinks about this while they drive, how we become part of each other’s stories, sometimes because we want to and sometimes because we don’t but have to anyway. Whether we have a main role or a bit part; we are onstage in each other’s lives. She thinks about Annie and their role in each other’s stories, how they were meant to be bit parts—the cousin you saw only once a year, maybe twice—but ended up in leading roles. In high school English, they’d learned that there are two kinds of characters: protagonists and antagonists. Clary thinks that she and Annie are both to each other. She thinks of that last conversation they had, how each of them saw the other as the antagonist that day. Clary recalls how angry she was with Annie. Now she wishes she could take her angry words back, could stay on the phone instead of hanging up.