The Night Before

by Wendy Walker

  Then he eases into another question. “Why were you so drawn to him? To this shithead who only fed you scraps?”

  I have an answer. It’s a lie.

  “Our father left when I was twelve. Left us for another family. That probably has something to do with it. That’s when it all started. It took me years to understand myself. What pieces were broken and why. It was such a relief when I finally sorted it out.”

  This is a good lie—that Dick leaving was the start of my problems. My anger. The truth is that I was broken long before Dick left us.

  But Jonathan buys it and moves on.

  “So then what happened with that guy in New York? The one who disappeared?”

  It’s a good question, Jonathan Fielding.

  “I don’t know. Honestly. He was the first man I thought was actually good,” I say. Then I shrug and look sad. Truth. Truth. Truth. All of it true, even the sadness.

  “So this must be hard for you,” he says. “Getting back into dating. You must be analyzing everything—even what I’m saying right now.”

  I wave my hand in circles like a magician. “If only I had magical powers to see what’s going on inside there.” I smile. Try to sound playful.

  Our story turns a page. A new chapter begins.

  “Well,” he says. “It’s not easy for me, either, if that makes you feel better.”

  Yes, it does. Misery loves company. Misery beats empathy every time.

  “How so?” I ask. I want it to be bad. I want to hear how he’s suffered so I don’t feel so alone in my own suffering. I’ve been around Rosie and Joe and their marital bliss for too long.

  “I told you my mother died last year, right?”

  I nod. He did. I almost forgot because I can be selfish that way, hearing only the part about how much his parents loved him and feeling the fury of envy from it.

  Exhaustion caused by chronic insomnia can make a person selfish.

  “It came soon after the divorce. Maybe a month. My wife was at the funeral. Sorry—my ex-wife. I don’t know why I keep doing that.”

  Neither do I.

  “That must have been hard,” I say. Both of us, we keep saying this. And I wonder if he was a patient of the same therapist. Haha.

  “When they lowered her casket into the ground, and I looked at my ex-wife, across the grave, not beside me—it was just like watching all the love in my life go into the ground with her. It hasn’t left me. That feeling I had, like it’s all so fragile. The very thing that makes life worth living can be gone in an instant and there’s not a thing you can do about it.”

  Holy. Shit.

  I stare at him because he’s closed his eyes and can’t see me stare. And because he’s crying. Not like a waterfall. Just two or three drippy little tears.

  He blinks them away, opens his eyes again, and catches me staring.

  I look away.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to stare. You just caught me off guard.”

  He smiles and shakes his head. “All this talk about the meaning of life, and these horrible events from our past and bad breakups … I guess these things don’t come up that often in conversation, so I push them aside. Get up. Go to work…”

  “Check your likes and winks on findlove.com.”

  “Exactly.”

  I exhale loudly so he knows I’m running alongside him on this emotional obstacle course.

  “It’s been a lot. I’m sorry. I’ve been in a very reflective place since I’ve come home. This is all my fault.”

  “You know what’s funny, though?” he asks.

  I have no idea. “What?”

  “It feels good in a way. Cathartic.”

  He knows how to turn the pages. I’m right there with him.

  “I know. I haven’t had one conversation since I’ve been home that’s transcended mommy gossip, sports, and funny stories from our childhood. Always the funny stories. Never the other ones.”

  “Same here. Even when I visit my father or my sister. We don’t ever talk about my mother, except to remember how she used to like this thing or that thing, or what she would have said about something happening in the news. None of us talks about the hole in our lives, or how it shines this bright light on death and loss. It’s lonely sometimes.”

  Jonathan Fielding, you have no idea how lonely it is. Or maybe you do. Maybe you know in a different way, having had such incredible love from a parent and now having it gone. Maybe that’s worse than spending a lifetime yearning for it. Maybe the hole that’s left is just as big and the urge to fill it with other things just as strong.

  I want to reach across the cheap plastic console of this car that’s all wrong and put my arms around him. I want to bury my face in the nape of his neck and smell his skin and feel the warmth of him. This man who knows. This man who understands.

  I can hear Rosie scorning me. Can’t you see how these men are like a drug for you? Don’t you get it? They can’t fill the hole. They just make it bigger.

  I’ll quit tomorrow, Rosie. I promise. Just one more.

  I have to see if maybe this one’s not wrong. His words. His tears. How can I still not know the difference? I learned not to turn them away, the right ones. I learned how to see through the wrong ones, not construct them into more than they are. Didn’t I?

  Is it wrong that I see Asshole across from me now?

  Jonathan Fielding reads my mind again.

  “What was his name?” he asks.

  “Who?”

  “The man in New York. The one who left you. Who disappeared.”

  Asshole, I’m about to say. But that’s probably not the best answer.

  “Kevin,” I say. True. But the word is bitter on my tongue.

  There’s a pause. A long one, and he stares at me now. Payback’s a bitch. Then I feel a line slowly drawn down my cheek. Just one. It curls around my chin and stays there until I wipe it away.

  “Jesus—now I’m sorry!” he says. His hand reaches across the cheap plastic console of this car that’s all wrong and wipes my cheek. Erases the line with smooth, soft skin.

  “Both of us crying—I don’t know what that says about this date.”

  I don’t even try to smile this time.

  “He hurt you pretty bad, huh?”

  “Apparently,” I manage to get out as the muscles around my mouth tremble. “I don’t know why. It only lasted a few months.”

  We’re still in this car. Half an hour later and we’re still sitting here in the darkness. I feel trapped, suddenly, like I’m in a cell with no way out. But there is a way out. It’s a door handle, then an exit sign, then a street, then Rosie’s car, the way home, the driveway, front door, unlocked of course, lingering garlic, up the creaky stairs, down the narrow hall to the attic and my bed where I will fall into the fluffy comforter that smells like my nephew and I will lie there awake all night.…

  It’s just another cell. This is what I realize as I sit in the car that’s all wrong with this stranger and this hope and these tears. It’s a cell where I stare at the ceiling in a state of fear about who is writing me ugly notes and why did Kevin leave me without a trace and when will I ever turn off this mind that is killing me in a million small ways every day?

  Which cell is worse?

  I decide to stay.

  “Was he the first one you thought you got right?” Jonathan asks. “After figuring out your issues with your father?”

  I move my head up and down. Yes.

  I hear Kevin’s words in my ear. I love you. I feel his skin on my skin and his hands in my hair and his breath so warm against my cheek. He said those words even though I had told him everything—about that horrible night. About my fists for hands and my father who left and my mother with her men. Rosie and Joe. And Mitch Adler. He said the words in spite of everything.

  “He broke it off in a text message,” I say. “I don’t know why.” It makes me sound pathetic.

  “Just like that?” Jonathan asks. Even though I a
lready told him this.

  “Just like that.” I guess I have to keep saying it to convince him.

  Jonathan Fielding shakes his head with wide eyes like I’ve just told him something unbelievable. But he doesn’t know my past, how many wrong men I’d managed to find in the haystack, and how they treated women. Or me, I suppose. Maybe it was just me.

  “That’s just wrong. Breaking up with a text. I don’t care what day and age it is. I sure hope it works out between us because I don’t know if I can handle the modern world.”

  “You’ve already been stalked. You got through that. I think you’ll be okay,” I say, trying to move away from this story. I can’t bear it. Not tonight. I’m so tired.

  Jonathan pulls the keys from the ignition and grabs his wallet from the cheap plastic console. He opens his door and the dome light turns on, making both of us squint.

  “Why don’t you come up for a drink? I feel like I want to keep talking to you, but it’s silly to be sitting in the car in a garage. I have a decent view.…”

  Hell. No. I know better than that.

  “We could go back to the bar on Richmond. Maybe the stalker is gone,” I suggest like a nice church girl.

  He gets out of the car. He walks to my side and opens my door. He gives me his hand.

  “Come on,” he says. Something comes over him then. It’s unbridled. It’s strong and manly and it sweeps me away like the ocean at the harbor.

  I give him my hand and leave the car. Close the door. Stand beside him.

  He looks me in the eye. The tears gone. The questions answered.

  “Come on,” he says again. “You’re safe. It’s not the third date yet.”

  Another page. A new chapter. This one has a title I’m familiar with. Mischief. It’s a title I like, that old me likes, and I cannot refuse her. Not after everything I’ve just put her through.

  Old me rushes out the back door like a dog who’s been stuck inside all day. Running free on the lawn. Sun shining on her face.

  “I may be safe,” I tell him. “But you may not be.”

  Haha.

  EIGHTEEN

  Rosie. Present Day. Friday, 11 p.m. Branston, CT.

  The house was quiet. This time, it was Joe in the bed with Mason beside him. They didn’t even bother putting him down in his own room. Even after an hour at the park with Zoe, Mason could feel things weren’t right in the house. Kids are like animals that way, sensing the storm before even one cloud appears in the sky.

  Joe was in the bed, but he was not asleep. He was on his laptop, quietly searching for men named Jonathan Fields.

  Back in the kitchen, at the table with Laura’s laptop open, Rosie stared at the message inbox for their fake findlove.com account. There was nothing new—not from secondchance or anyone else they’d contacted. Sometime between seeing those notes and this moment, the cells in her body had shifted. The shock and terror at the thought of Laura being gone, maybe forever, and in some horrible way, had morphed into something else. Not quite resignation like she’d seen on Gabe’s face. Not the feigned concern of the police. It was a mosaic of pain and sadness, fear and anger. She could taste them all as her thoughts shifted through scenarios.

  Laura missing, never found. Laura found, hurt or worse. She couldn’t even think the other word. The tragedy was starting to take hold, progressing through stages. She suddenly had a window into the aftermath for parents whose children go missing—every day wondering. Every day, hoping. Every day, mourning. That could be her life now. The thought was unbearable.

  She rested her head in her palms, elbows propped on the table. How did people learn to go on after something like this?

  She thought about the parents of Mitch Adler, how they had learned to live with the loss of their son—their only son in between two daughters, a giant hole ripped into their family. That teenage boy, barely a man, whom Rosie could still see clearly in her memories, just gone. He was not a nice boy. Chances were, he would not have grown into a nice man. Still, whatever his life held, that life was ended on a gravel road. A crushed skull. Blood pooling around it. And Laura, standing there.

  They didn’t stay long, his family. They had relatives in Colorado and were gone before Christmas. Rosie searched for them and couldn’t find any trace back in Connecticut. Still, they had friends here. Mitch had friends as well, many of whom had likely stayed or returned. Any one of them might have seen Laura in town. Any one of them could have sent those notes.

  Rosie thought about what she might do if it had been Laura lying on the ground instead. If she might hunt down the person she thought was responsible. It was far less satisfying to believe that the killing was at the hands of a mentally ill hermit—a man who could not be held accountable. Justice must have felt very hollow to the Adler family.

  She heard her phone ring on the counter by the sink and she was there in an instant.

  “Gabe? What’s happened? Tell me…”

  Gabe’s voice sounded tired. “The waitress called—the one from the harbor bar who waited on Jonathan Fields and one of his dates,” he said. “She found the credit card slip.”

  “The date who bought drinks with her own credit card?”

  “It was three weeks ago, like the bartender said. Her name is Sylvia Emmett.”

  Rosie’s hand pressed into her chest.

  “Rosie?”

  “Yeah. I’m here. I want to speak to her. Can you get a number?”

  “I did. I left a message. I gave her both of our numbers. She could be in bed already. It’s late.”

  Rosie was walking now, around the island. “What if we go there. Or the police! They could go. We can’t wait all night. My God, Gabe—”

  He interrupted her. “The police? You called them?”

  Rosie stopped walking. “I did. It was time.…”

  “What did they say? Did they…”

  “Nothing—they didn’t seem to know who she was and they weren’t too concerned, either. They said they would try to get the phone records by morning.”

  The line was silent for a long moment. Then: “It’s good you called, Rosie. You’re right. It was time.”

  Another abrupt shift swept through her. She didn’t want to be right. She wanted Gabe to tell her she was overreacting. Tell her she should have waited. Tell her she was wrong.

  Then she remembered the notes Joe had found in Laura’s coat pockets. The threats. Gabe didn’t know about those, either.

  “There’s something else…” she started to say. But another call was coming through.

  “Rosie?” Gabe was waiting for her to finish.

  “Hold on—there’s another call. Maybe it’s that woman.…”

  “Go! Pick it up!”

  Rosie answered the second call. “Hello?”

  “This is Sylvia Emmett.” The woman said it in a whisper. She said it like she didn’t want to be on the other end of the call.

  * * *

  Rosie took Joe’s car to the west side of town. The streets were quiet, empty. There was nothing there but industrial buildings—warehouses and car dealerships. She passed a furniture outlet and saw the neon lights of a diner. She turned in and parked, walked inside, and sat across from a woman with dark brown hair pulled up in a ponytail. She was young, like Laura. And pretty.

  “Are you Sylvia?” Rosie asked.

  The woman motioned for her to sit down. “Yeah,” she said.

  Rosie slid onto the bench, the table between them. “I’m Rosie. Thank you for calling back. You have no idea—”

  “I have a boyfriend,” the woman blurted out. “He can’t know.…”

  The waitress was upon them. Sylvia ordered coffee.

  “I’ll have the same,” Rosie said. Then, to the woman, “My sister went on a date with a man last night. She never came home.”

  Sylvia sat back, wide-eyed. “What does that have to do with me?”

  “Her phone was last online near a bar by the harbor. The bartender recognized this man.…” Rosie p
ulled the picture from her purse and laid it on the table. She pointed at Jonathan Fields and stared at his smug smile.

  “My sister went on a date with a man from this site. The profile matches—the age, description. And he was at the bar where her phone was last online.”

  Rosie watched the woman process the information, part of her hoping that she was about to say something that sent them on a new course, a course where this man, this player, was not the man her sister met. She couldn’t decide if that would be better or worse.

  But it didn’t matter. That hope was quickly dispelled as Sylvia’s face changed from shock to recognition.

  “He loved that place. It was always crowded. Easy to get lost.”

  “He said his name was Jonathan Fields,” Rosie said.

  Sylvia shook her head with disgust. “He lies about his name. I met him at a different bar. Not through any dating site. I was out with some friends and he was there—alone. Trolling, it turns out. He was relentless, but cute. First he told me he was Billy Larson. But on our first actual date—which was at that bar by the harbor—he told me he had lied about that, and that his name was Buck Larkin. He covers his lies with more lies. After he told me he’d lied about his name, I thought that was it—that was the thing he was hiding. He said he didn’t like women looking for him on social media. He said he was worried they might tell his ex-wife and that it would hurt her feelings. Ridiculous, right? I didn’t think it at the time. Not with handsome Billy, or Buck, or whatever his name really is, sitting across from me and two glasses of wine…”

  The waitress returned and set down the coffee. Sylvia took hers in both hands, spun the cup around in the saucer. Her mind was on this man, Jonathan Fields. Billy Larson. Buck Larkin. The liar.

  Rosie didn’t speak. She didn’t want to interrupt the story for fear that it would end before it could lead her to her sister. And Sylvia seemed anxious to tell it all as quickly as she could.