by Kara Thomas
I didn’t intend for this playlist to be my running soundtrack. I’d hit shuffle; the universe has always had a way of sticking Jesse Salpietro in my face when I’m trying to forget him.
I tug the earbuds out, shove them in my pocket. I slow to a trot at the stop sign at the end of my road and make a left, and before I realize what I’m doing I’m setting my internal compass for Jesse’s house.
Jesse’s aunt and uncle live on Main Road, just before the sign dividing West Brookport from Brookport Village. I slow to a brisk walk as I come around the treacherous bend that’s marked by a wooden cross and a decomposing teddy bear.
Cars zip past on my right, drowning out the thump of blood in my ears, as I slow to a crawl. It’s just a damn house. You can handle walking past his house.
In the driveway is an old blue Thunderbird, the car Jesse’s uncle Donald uses for his twice-daily pilgrimage for beer, cigarettes, and scratch-off lottery tickets from the 7-Eleven down the street. His aunt Andrea’s car is missing, which means she’s probably at work.
The sight of the empty carport along the side of the house twists my heart like a rag.
Jesse bought the Volkswagen Jetta at the end of junior year for two thousand dollars from some guy off Craigslist. I went with him to pick it up so he wouldn’t get robbed or murdered. When he test-drove it around the parking lot, “Born to Run” was on the radio, so I jokingly named the car Bruce and it stuck.
Of course, his aunt and uncle got rid of Bruce rather than keep up with the insurance payments.
The realization makes the fire in my lungs worse. I can’t linger here, because if Donald comes to the window, things will get weird. I inhale and start to jog again, this time toward Brookport Village.
Andrea works at Fast n’ Fresh, the village grocery store. Jesse always hung out at my house; the last time I saw Andrea was the week before prom weekend, while buying a bag of Twizzlers on one of my work breaks.
I should have stopped in to see her before I left for college, but I chickened out. I told myself, if I were Andrea, I was the last person I would want to see. Because even if Jesse’s aunt believed I didn’t have anything to do with his disappearance, she wouldn’t be able to look at me without thinking it: Why did I come back and he didn’t?
That’s what I told myself, but deep down, I know she would have liked to see me. The lie was more comfortable, though.
I just didn’t have the balls to face her.
It seems appropriate, now, that I at least show my face.
It doesn’t take long to track Andrea down. I can see her in the alley between the grocery store and the CVS—a petite woman in a blue grocer’s uniform doing a terrible job of pretending she’s not about to light up.
“Mrs. Kelly?” I ask. My breath, ragged from running, frosts in front of my face.
Andrea whips around. Blinks several times before recognition sets in. “Claire. Oh my goodness.”
My voice is suddenly defective. Andrea stuffs her pack of cigarettes into her apron pocket and comes toward me. Her usual blunt bob has grown out to her shoulders, her hair glossy and black aside from the silver streaking her part.
I return Andrea’s hug, stiff and awkward. When we break apart Andrea takes a step back. Her eyes, big and brown like Jesse’s, glisten with tears. “You look so grown-up.”
I fight off the sting of tears, made worse by the bite in the air. “I’m so sorry it’s taken me this long.”
“Stop. There’s nothing to be sorry for.” Andrea squeezes my hand, a quick pulse before she begins smoothing the front of her smock. Her fingers linger at the pocket where she stashed her cigarettes.
“You can smoke,” I say. “I don’t mind.”
I can practically smell the relief on her as she slips a cigarette out of her pocket and lights it, a tremor in her thumb. “I was doing good with quitting, and then.”
She doesn’t say and then what, but it’s clear that it’s Jesse’s absence driving her back to old habits. Maybe, like me, it’s even more than the absence. The silence, maybe—the waiting for the phone call that never comes.
“Have you heard anything?” I ask. “From the FBI?”
I haven’t spoken to Agent Cummings or Agent Novak in months. Cummings called me in the fall, while I was at school—when I realized she had no news, she just wanted to see how I was coping, I was so angry I made an excuse about losing reception in the dining hall just so I could end the call.
“Not in a while.” Andrea takes a pull from her cigarette. “I used to call every day, but I can’t even remember the last time I spoke to them.”
Andrea tilts her head back, blows some smoke out. “It sounds terrible. Like I don’t even care.” She glances at me as she says it. Wondering if I agree.
Andrea had always wanted children of her own. She and her husband, Donald, had spent years and what little money they had saved up trying, only for her little sister, Diana, to wind up pregnant in her last semester of college. Jesse was convinced this was the root of his aunt’s coldness to him; even in pictures of his aunt holding him as a baby, he said, she looked at him as if he were a house guest who had overstayed his welcome.
Jesse complained to me that Andrea only cared about her useless asshole of a husband—she never stood up for Jesse when Donald yelled at him for playing his guitar too loud, or forgetting his shoes in the hall, or simply because Donald woke up angry and hurting and needing to take it out on someone.
The pain on Andrea’s face right now, though—that can’t be faked.
“It doesn’t sound terrible,” I say. “I know you care.”
Andrea wipes the corner of her eye with a knuckle before flicking the ash from the tip of her cigarette. “I was so hard on him, and God knows his uncle—I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I’m just glad he had a friend like you.”
I don’t think it’s possible for me to feel like a bigger piece of crap right now. A friend wouldn’t have left Kat and Jesse at that campsite to go back to the lake house; a friend would have known that Jesse’s band broke up.
“We were kind of distant from each other the past year,” I say. “I didn’t realize—”
My words die on my lips. Andrea watches me, big brown eyes blinking against the cold, until I force it out: “The sheriff said that you thought Jesse was depressed.”
Andrea drops her cigarette stub, grinds it with the heel of her sneaker. “I don’t know if I used that word.”
“I just—I wish I’d been paying closer attention.”
There’s something she’s tiptoeing around. Andrea looks up, studies me. Whatever she sees makes her let her guard down. “It was her,” she says. “Kat.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I figured he’d have hid it from you too.” Andrea looks over her shoulder. “They were on the phone at all hours, whispering, arguing. I told him no girl was worth being that miserable over, even one as pretty as her.”
Humming, deep in my ears. I can’t believe what I’m hearing—Andrea using words like miserable to describe Kat and Jesse’s relationship. “What did he say?”
“That it wasn’t her.” Andrea shrugs. “He loved her.”
For some reason, I think of the flyer we handed out. Kat’s picture—just Kat’s picture. The one of her beaming at Jesse from behind the counter at Dolce Vita. The clouds part in my brain.
“Her family,” I say. “They didn’t like him, did they?”
“Jesse wouldn’t come out and say it, but I knew that’s what was upsetting him.” Andrea looks me up and down. “Remember the party in May? The one they had for the grandmother?”
The grandmother. As if Marian Sullivan-Marcotte is a species of her own. In a way, it feels accurate. I swallow. “I couldn’t go. I was working. Did something happen at the party?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. But he came
home—” Andrea shakes her head. “He didn’t come out of his room for two days after. He wouldn’t talk to anyone, not even Kat.”
“He didn’t tell you what happened?”
Andrea shakes her head. “That morning—he snapped at me. I got him to admit he was nervous about meeting her father and grandmother for the first time. He even asked me to trim his hair, and you know he never asked me for anything.”
Andrea looks at me, eyes glistening. “I guess her family wasn’t impressed with what they saw.”
I swallow to clear my throat. Neither Kat nor Jesse had said anything to me; when I’d asked Kat how the party went, she’d said fine and changed the subject to our upcoming AP English exam.
“Is that why you didn’t want to stay at the lake house with us last June?” I ask Andrea.
Andrea’s eyebrows meet. “Didn’t want to? Kat’s family never even asked. I had to pay for a motel in town.”
I’m reaching for the words—What? Why?—when Andrea’s gaze lands on something beyond me. A boy in a black hoodie shuffles past us, hugging the wall of the adjacent CVS, doing a poor job of trying not to be seen by Andrea.
“Third time late this week,” she mutters, putting a hand on my shoulder. “I’ve gotta go handle this.”
“Yeah. Sure.” I’m still so stunned by Andrea’s revelation that I don’t even think to return the awkward hug she gives me before turning to the grocery store, telling me not to be a stranger again.
* * *
—
Thick gray clouds blot out the sun by the time I get back to the main road. I should head home before they unleash whatever they have brewing in them, but I can’t bring myself to go back to an empty house.
During a pause in traffic, I cross South Country Road. Let my feet carry me away from home, and toward the heart of the village.
Marian lied to me; in the hospital, she’d said Jesse’s aunt hadn’t wanted to stay at the lake house. But according to Andrea, Marian had never even extended the offer.
A lie so pointless has to have a purpose. Marian probably didn’t think I’d ever ask Andrea why she didn’t stay at the lake house with Kat’s family; Marian probably assumed, correctly, that I had no idea Kat’s family’s feelings toward Jesse were causing a rift in their relationship.
Marian not asking Andrea to stay at the lake house might not have anything to do with whatever Andrea thinks happened at the party last May; Kat’s parents thought from the beginning that Jesse was involved. Maybe they couldn’t stand the thought of Jesse’s aunt under the same roof as them while they thought he was responsible for their daughter’s death.
But the Marcotte family is about appearances; their name peppers the town’s playgrounds, park benches, even a road named after Marian’s late husband. Marian’s foundation doles out millions in aid to children in need; wouldn’t they want to do everything they could to appear generous and accommodating to Kat’s boyfriend’s family?
I slow to a walk at the corner of Idledale Road. When I was younger, I wished I lived here, with the other village kids. Anna, Ben. Kat.
I struggle for air, thinking of her house. The pool deck where I tripped and split my chin open when I was six; the backyard Kat wanted to get married in someday.
Through the thrumming in my head, I hear my name, garbled as if the person calling it were underwater. Tapping behind the glass of the house I’m in front of.
I look up in horror to see Ben Filipoff waving at me from the other side of his door. He’s in gray sweatpants and a New York Giants T-shirt that matches the flag over his garage door.
He props open the front door. “Hey.”
I command my body to move up the driveway, meet him by the door, because as weird as it is to be caught outside his house, it would be weirder to shout back that hey, I was actually headed for my dead best friend’s house, and continue on my merry way.
“Hi.” I’m wheezing as I reach the top of his front steps. I shove my hands into the front pocket of my hoodie. “I was out for a run.”
Ben stares back at me, prompting me to pant, “What?”
“You never responded to me yesterday,” he says. “Thought I was being ghosted again.”
I have the texts memorized.
Hey…I’m sure you’ve heard by now about Mr. Marcotte. Nuts. are u ok?
I know this is weird and inappropriate considering everything…but I had fun last night
“Can we talk inside?” I ask.
* * *
—
Ben’s mom’s car is in the driveway, but she doesn’t materialize as Ben microwaves two mugs of hot chocolate and leads me to his basement lair. I know from experience that Ben’s mom leaves him to his devices, mostly out of necessity. She works nights as a NICU nurse and started picking up extra shifts when Ben’s dad left a few years ago.
I follow Ben down the stairs, waiting to see where we’re sitting. His bed is down here, as well as an old couch and two bean bag chairs. I try not to think about the things we did on each surface as Ben lowers himself onto one of the bean bags.
He extends a mug to me as I take the bean bag next to him.
“I should have texted you back,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s cool. I figured you were processing the news.” Ben lifts his mug to his lips. “I can’t believe it.”
“Me neither.”
“I can’t imagine what her mom and sister are going through. Her grandma.”
I feel Ben’s eyes on me. I lower my mug and adjust myself on my bean bag so I can see him better. “I talked to Jesse’s aunt this morning. To see how she was doing.”
Ben drops his eyes to his mug at Jesse’s name. Long, dark lashes blinking rapid-fire. “How is she?”
“I don’t know. It was a weird conversation.”
“Weird how?” Ben isn’t looking at me; apparently, even though he’s gone, Jesse Salpietro will always be a conversational landmine. I tamp down the memory of Ben’s face, hair clinging to his forehead, wet from Anna’s hot tub. The way he looked at Jesse, coming to my rescue, before shaking his head. Of course.
“In the hospital—Kat’s grandma came to see me, and she lied when I asked if Jesse’s aunt was staying at the lake house,” I say. “She said Jesse’s aunt didn’t want to intrude, but today his aunt told me Kat’s family never asked her to stay with them.”
Ben is quiet. I watch the marshmallows at the surface of my hot chocolate melt, congeal until they form a single entity. I’m embarrassed I brought up the conversation with Andrea. I’m finding meaning in things because I’m desperate for meaning. Marian’s lie has to have meaning because if not, there’s nothing.
We were random targets of a robbery turned kidnapping. I got away because I was lucky.
Next to me, the sound of beans shifting under Ben’s weight. “Claire—did you have another reason for talking to Jesse’s aunt?”
“What—why would you ask that?”
“You told me you talked to her to see how she was doing.” A smile tugs at Ben’s mouth. “You always overexplain yourself when you’re lying.”
Heat fills my cheeks as Ben brings his mug to his lips. I set the mug on the coffee table behind us. “Okay. So maybe I went to see her because I wanted to know if she heard from the FBI. If they were looking into a connection, maybe, between them and Mike Dorsey.”
Ben tilts his head. “But the FBI said there was no connection.”
“They said they haven’t found a connection. Not that there isn’t one.” I draw in a breath. “I know this sounds insane…but I just have a feeling that Mike Dorsey knew we’d be at Devil’s Peak, and he knew who we were.”
There has to be an explanation. Even if it’s something as simple as us stopping for gas in Sunfish Creek that morning, Mike Dorsey seeing Kat’s Infiniti at the pu
mp…
I pick up my mug, take a sip. “Kat’s family had been going up to Sunfish Creek for years. Maybe Mike Dorsey had seen her before—seen her with her grandma. I don’t know. I just…need to know.”
Ben is quiet for a beat. “The thing with Jesse’s aunt not staying at the lake house—”
I turn my head toward Ben in time for him to cut himself off. He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
“No, what were you going to say?” I steel myself. I’ve heard all the judgmental comments about Jesse’s family. I saw the comments on an interview Andrea did with a local news site on the six-month anniversary of Jesse’s disappearance. I know Andrea Kelly. She’s a good woman who works hard.
Yeah, someone had replied to the comment. So her husband doesn’t have to.
That’s why, when Ben inhales and then says, “Kat’s family. They’re weird,” I sit up straight.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I don’t know—everyone on this street is pretty close. The Marcottes lived here longer than any of us, though, and they were always kind of standoffish. Like they didn’t want anyone involved in their business.” Ben shrugs. “And Mr. Marcotte scared the shit out of me.”
I think of the coffeepot slipping from Beth’s hand, the way Mr. Marcotte made her jump from her skin with one look.
Ben glances over at me. “Didn’t you ever notice anything off about him?”
“He was always nice to me. I knew he was kind of controlling,” I say. Of course, I’d noticed it. Anyone who spent five minutes with Kat’s dad could tell he was a military man: He demanded not only orderliness, but perfection.
But it didn’t seem to bother Kat that her dad was up her ass about her grades, her volleyball serve. No one could be as hard on Kat as she was on herself.