The Missing Place

by Sophie Littlefield

  But that didn’t mean she couldn’t fight back. She splashed water on her face and dug into her makeup kit. Repaired what she could and combed her hair. Dampened a handful of paper towels and wiped the mud off her clothes. Pulling up her pant leg, she inspected the bruise and torn skin. She dabbed at it with soapy hot water, and welcomed the sting.

  Back at the counter, the sandwich was indeed waiting, cut into four perfect triangles, with a tiny sprig of parsley and a lemon slice on the side. The men had resumed what they were doing—reading the paper, watching a game playing silently on the TV hung from the ceiling—and didn’t even glance her way. Emily watched as Colleen forced herself to take a bite and wash it down with water.

  “I am so sorry for what you’re going through,” Emily said.

  “You knew him?” Colleen felt a little better. She had been hungrier than she realized. “You knew Paul?”

  “Only a little. My friend’s roommate was his girlfriend. I met him at a party once.”

  “Paul had a girlfriend?”

  Emily’s expression softened. “You didn’t know?”

  “He . . . he never said.”

  “Okay then, well, what I have to tell you is going to be kind of a shock, I guess. I wouldn’t say anything, I mean, I feel like it’s not my place or whatever, but you have a right to know, especially since, well, because of whatever happened.” She took a deep breath and said, “He and Kristine started dating last fall, and, well, she’s pregnant.”

  “What?”

  Pregnant. The word tumbled in Colleen’s mind, spinning and bouncing against all the impossibilities. Paul had never had a girlfriend, not for more than a few weeks at a time; he never had any trouble getting girls to go to dances with him, and Colleen had always felt that they might have been interested in more, but for some reason Paul had never let things go further. While he was at Syracuse, she’d had the impression that there were a couple of girls he dated, but he never talked about it at home.

  And since he came to Lawton, it hadn’t occurred to Colleen even to wonder. The ratio of men to women up here . . . that she was aware of, it was mentioned in every news article about the place. She’d assumed that all the girls would pair up with the more outgoing boys, the ones who knew their way around a place like this, who were more confident and charismatic.

  But Paul had found someone. Even as Colleen tried to wrap her mind around the situation, there was a tiny flame of pleasure inside her, a relief that he’d had this happiness.

  They’d made a baby. Even now, with Paul missing, his trail going colder, the piece of him that he’d left behind here in Lawton was growing. His child.

  “How far along?” she asked faintly.

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Mitchell. I’m not supposed to know. They aren’t telling anyone. Way I heard was, I guess Paul was drinking with some friends and he kind of hinted around that he got her pregnant, and one of the guys told Chastity. When she asked Kristine about it, she got all upset and asked her not to say anything. And she’d only told me, and I don’t think she’s told nobody else and neither have I. I don’t like to spread rumors. But I thought you should know.”

  “I can’t . . . I just can’t even believe it.” Colleen stared at the food on her plate. The idea of eating was impossible now. “Could you put me in touch with her?”

  “I don’t have her phone number, but I can tell you where to find her. She works at Swann’s, her and Chastity both. Chastity got her the job.”

  “What’s Swann’s?”

  “It’s a restaurant, the only really nice restaurant around here. Steak and seafood and stuff like that. They make good money over there; they get all the corporate types.”

  “How late are they open, do you know?”

  Colleen saw the look that passed over Emily’s expression before she answered, knew what she was thinking. In her state, she was hardly at her best, especially to meet the girl who was carrying her grandchild.

  “I think they’re usually open until eleven,” she said. “Do you want me to try to call over there for you?”

  Colleen considered: how would this girl, this girlfriend, feel about meeting her? If she loved Paul—and God, Colleen discovered that she wanted this girl to love Paul—she must be frantic with worry. But she hadn’t tried to contact her or Andy, and presumably Paul had told her where he was from. Although Mitchell was a common name . . . But she couldn’t afford to scare her off. “No, I think it would be better if I didn’t, if she didn’t, um . . .”

  “I know this has to be a shock,” Emily said. “But if it helps, Kristine seems really nice. I don’t know her all that well, but she’s always been real polite to me.”

  “Thank you,” Colleen said faintly. She noticed that Emily didn’t try to talk her out of showing up unannounced. What girl would want that, to meet her boyfriend’s mother in these circumstances, the future grandmother of her child . . . if she was even keeping the child? Oh, God, she hadn’t thought of that. Especially now, with Paul missing, maybe she would get rid of it. Maybe she already had. Colleen was astonished to experience a jolt of loss at the thought—that a baby she didn’t even know had existed until moments ago had instantly come to mean something to her, a connection to Paul, a child of her child.

  “Do you want me to tell you how to get there?” Emily asked.

  “I can find it,” she said. “It’s just that . . . I don’t have a car.”

  “Did someone drop you off here?”

  “I . . .” How to explain? That forty-eight hours after meeting Shay, joining up with her to find their boys, she had managed to destroy that relationship and lose their place to stay and all of her possessions?

  “Someone did, but it’s not someone I can ask for a ride.”

  “Well, where are you staying?”

  “I’m . . . I don’t currently have a room.” She realized that Emily probably thought she was deranged, given the way she looked when she came in, the fact that she had no bags with her. “There was a miscommunication about where I was supposed to stay,” she tried, figuring that a lie was easier than the truth. “And my luggage has been lost. I need to figure out my next steps, but I don’t want to wait to talk to this girl. Every day that passes . . .”

  Her voice broke, and Emily surprised her by reaching across the counter and taking her hand. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Mitchell. We’ve all been praying for the boys and the families, down at my church. I just feel in my heart that you’re going to find them.”

  “Thank you,” Colleen whispered.

  “Tell you what . . . let me call Kristine myself. I’ll text Chastity for her number.” She got her phone from her pocket and her thumbs flew over the screen. “Look, I’d invite you to stay with me, but I’m with my folks and my mom’s sick. She doesn’t sleep good at night and—”

  “I wouldn’t dream of imposing,” Colleen said. “Please, I have several options, I just need to sort them out.”

  Emily apologized again and excused herself to go take care of her customers, and Colleen forced herself to eat the sandwich and drink the water and coffee. The food felt like lead going down, but she hadn’t been eating much and she couldn’t afford to collapse from hunger.

  Emily returned, coffeepot in hand. “Chastity texted back. I didn’t tell her why I needed Kristine’s number, but she didn’t ask, so that should be all right.”

  Colleen entered the number into her phone. Emily moved down the counter, checking the ticket on an order she’d taken. Colleen knew she was giving her privacy, but years of nagging Paul not to talk on the phone in public places made her get up and go stand in the lobby by the restrooms and the vending machines.

  She hit Send before she could think about it too much. Even so, she was shaking when the girl picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Kristine?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “Kristine, I’m so sorry to be calling late at night. This is Colleen Mitchell, Paul’s mother.”

  There w
as the sound of an intake of breath, not quite a gasp. “Mrs. Mitchell . . .” she said faintly. “I get off in a few minutes. I’m just doing receipts now. Would you like to meet?”

  “Yes, very much. I’m . . . I’m at the truck stop down by the storage place. I hope it’s all right that Emily gave me your number.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll get there as soon as I can. Just give me a half hour.”

  twenty-two

  SCOTT PEELED THE foil expertly from the bottle before opening it. The cork made a satisfying pop. The sweat patches visible through his starched cotton shirt had almost dried, now that they were back at the hotel, away from the noise and din of the overheated club.

  His suite was nice; the hotel couldn’t have been more than a year old, the newest one built to accommodate the boom. It had a minifridge that he’d used to chill the wine. The wine he’d intended for Colleen, Shay reminded herself, keeping the playful smile fixed on her face. It hadn’t been too difficult to get him to forget all about being stood up, especially not after she’d told him how tired she was of the unwashed and ungroomed men in Lawton, considering that she worked as a physical therapist and took her work seriously. Shay didn’t know a lot about physical therapy, but she did know how much men liked to talk about themselves, so it didn’t much matter. In the bar, he’d been happy to talk her ear off about his job and his golf game and the trip he was planning to take down to the Keys with some guys he knew.

  She pretended to listen, laughing at the right times, occasionally touching his hand. She tried to mimic Colleen’s ramrod-straight posture: maybe guys like this liked the chase, preferred the ice-princess type. When he finally got around to asking her about herself, she implied that she was getting over a breakup, while accidentally brushing against him, easy enough to do given the press of the crowd at the tavern.

  It was entirely too easy, especially considering the fact that she was wearing Colleen’s shapeless sweater and mimicking her frosty demeanor. Either the guy was truly desperate or he really did go in for the frigid housewife look. Different strokes for different folks. Maybe, Shay thought, she should have a little compassion: it couldn’t be much fun to be stuck up here, away from family and friends, week after week. It was probably lonely and definitely boring. But then there was that ring on his finger, the phone calls he kept ignoring, checking his phone and then putting it away, until finally, when they got back to the room, he silenced it and tossed it onto the desk facedown.

  Just like Mack, a voice inside scolded. But no. This was nothing like Mack, who came to her when Caroline turned away from him, who tore himself up with guilt and longing whenever they lay twined together after. Who’d been in love with her for years, longer than a lot of marriages lasted. At least, that was the story Shay clung to hard, and she wasn’t going to give it up now, not because of one expense account douche bag who’d probably already forgotten her fake name.

  “Look, I hope this doesn’t seem out of line, me inviting you up here,” Scott said, handing her a glass of wine. She was sitting in the club chair in the suite’s living room, leaving him the sofa. He sat down close enough that their knees touched. “I just was having trouble hearing you in the club, and that shit they serve there could wear a hole in your gut. This is a pretty nice pinot, by the way. New Zealand, 2008.”

  Shay made an appreciative sound as she sipped.

  “So,” Scott said, setting his glass down and inching slightly closer. Now their knees were pressed together, and it would be awkward for her to move them. “You said you wanted to ask me about something in the bar. I got to say, the lawyer business can’t be half as fascinating as what you see every day, working in a rehab clinic.”

  “Well, I’m sure that’s not true. You’ve seen one torn Achilles, you’ve seen them all.”

  Scott laughed as though she’d said something hilarious. By Shay’s estimate, he’d had at least three glasses of wine so far—the one he’d been finishing when she spotted him and the two since then. Depending when he’d arrived at the bar, possibly more. She’d had a weak gin and tonic, most of which she’d left at the bar.

  “It’s just that when you said you were a lawyer for White Norris, well, I thought I could ask you, since it doesn’t involve your company. And my friend Rose is having the hardest time getting answers.”

  “She got a legal problem?”

  “Not her, but her son. He’s twenty. Last December, he got in an accident out on one of Hunter-Cole Energy’s rigs. What happened was, some drive chain broke and snapped back, and Ricky lost a couple of fingers.” Shay was quoting from the anonymous blog, as well as she could remember. The image accompanying the post, taken at the hospital—the man’s hand bloody, the stumps ragged—was impossible to forget.

  “One of the Hunter-Cole guys came to see him in the hospital and told him Hunter-Cole was picking up the bills and throwing in ten thousand dollars for his future medical bills, on top of what he’d get from disability.”

  Scott nodded. “Sounds about right. They generally have some discretionary funds to help out with cases like this, try to make things right when a guy’s going to be out of work for a while.”

  “Well, that’s just it. Ricky can’t go back to being a derrick hand, and he can’t earn anywhere near that kind of money doing anything else. I know from my job that he’s got a lot of occupational therapy ahead of him. And he’s got a couple of friends willing to testify that there was all these safety violations. I guess the cable hadn’t been oiled and it was all clogged with dirt, and that was what caused it to snap.”

  Already Scott was shaking his head, frowning. Shay knew she probably wasn’t getting the details right but she was counting on him chalking it up to her ignorance. She rushed ahead before he could interrupt her. “One of his friends took pictures on his phone of the logbook where they were supposed to initial that it was getting oiled, and there were all these gaps, whole weeks with no entries. And this thing was dated with the supervisor’s signature. So Ricky’s mom, my friend, she’s wondering if she’s got a case? If she hires a lawyer?”

  “Look,” Scott said. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you about this. You got to understand, I don’t just answer to my own boss, I’ve signed so many confidentiality agreements you could paper this room with them. I’ll guarantee you right now there’s not an attorney in this state who would give your friend the time of day.”

  She was losing him, she saw; his expression had turned wary and his posture had gone rigid. Suspicion clouded his expression and he looked at his watch.

  “I know that,” she said hastily. “I know it’s an uphill battle, my friend is just so worried. Ricky and his wife bought a house, they just moved in before the accident, and their second baby is on the way. They’re desperate.” She made her voice soft and tremulous, brushing away an imaginary tear.

  “Aw, now, hey,” Scott said. “Look. What you got to understand, rig work’s dangerous, it’s just the nature of the job. Then you got OSHA coming around changing the game every few months, half the time we can’t comply simply because we haven’t got the latest updates to the standards and procedures. I know everyone’s ready to point the finger at the big bad corporation, but the truth is, and you can ask any hand worth his salt, that ninety percent of accidents on the rig are just plain human error. Inattention, shortcuts, whatever you want to call it, it’s when the guys themselves don’t follow company procedure. Case in point, your friend’s son. And I’m not even saying that the state of the draw works is what caused it, because it’s frankly impossible to know, but even if it was due to maintenance gaps, whose fault is that? I mean, was it the company president’s job to get out there and oil the damn thing?”

  “Well, I guess that—”

  “No way, it’s not. That’s a case, and again I don’t mean to generalize, but a lot of your younger hands, they’re finding what you might call chemical ways to tolerate the twelve-hour shifts where your more experienced guys know how to pace themselves, you see w
hat I’m saying? I’m not trying to tell you that your friend’s boy was using uppers, but you wouldn’t believe how many of them do, and that’s where you get your procedure failures. Skipping steps like that.”

  He shrugged, as though that closed the case for him.

  “I don’t think Ricky was the type to do drugs,” Shay said doubtfully. “I mean, I’m really grateful you’re talking to me about this, telling me what her chances are. It beats paying some guy three hundred bucks an hour to hear the same thing.”

  “Yeah, which is exactly what would happen, if she could even find someone to be honest with her. Trouble with a lot of these personal injury outfits, they’re not going to shoot straight. Hell, they might manage to get a couple thousand more out of Hunter-Cole, especially if they’re willing to sign a covenant not to sue, but where do you suppose that’s going to end up? Lining the lawyer’s pockets. Seriously, if I was you, I’d tell your friend to save her money.”

  Shay took a sip of her wine, waiting until Scott did the same. She had to push him just a little bit further, and she wasn’t sure he’d follow. While she was hesitating, he put his hand on her knee; his fingers made slow circles around her kneecap.

  She figured she had nothing to lose. “I know this is going to sound crazy,” she said. “But Rose says a guy came to see her and told her to drop it. She says he threatened her. That if Ricky’s friends didn’t back off about the maintenance logs, they’d regret it. She asked if they were going to get fired just for making a report, and she says he said something like, not just their jobs. Like their safety.”

  Scott’s fingers stilled on her knee. “Rose has always been kind of dramatic,” Shay said, pretending she hadn’t noticed. “So I don’t even know what to believe. I mean, it sounds kind of crazy, right?”

  “I got to say, I’ve just about had enough work talk for today,” Scott said stiffly. “I mean, you’re asking things way out of my expertise. And frankly it sounds a little suspicious.”