Six Years

by Harlan Coben

  "What happened after the trial?"

  He stared at his glass again. I was losing him.

  "Eban?"

  "I'm getting to it."

  I waited, gave him his space.

  "Todd Sanderson came from a small Southern town. His father had lived there his entire life. But now, well, you could imagine. He couldn't get a job. His friends wouldn't talk to him. See, no one had truly believed him. You can't unring that bell, Jacob. We teach that here, don't we? Only one person still believed in him."

  "Todd," I said.

  "Yes."

  "Weren't there other family members? Todd's mother?"

  "Long dead."

  "So what happened?"

  "His father was crushed, of course, but he insisted that Todd go back to school. Did you read Todd's transcript?"

  "Yes."

  "Then you know already. Todd was a magnificent student, one of the finest ever to attend Lanford. He had a bright future. His father saw that too. But Todd wouldn't come back. He saw it as abandoning his father in his hour of most need. Todd flat-out refused to return until the situation at home got better. But of course, as we know all too well, situations like this don't get better. So Todd's father did the only thing he thought he could to end his own pain and free his son to continue his studies."

  Our eyes met. His were wet now.

  "Oh no," I said.

  "Oh yes."

  "How . . . ?"

  "His father broke into the school where he used to work and shot himself in the head. See, he didn't want his son to be the one who found his body."

  Chapter 12

  Three weeks before Natalie dumped me, when we were madly in love, we sneaked down from our retreats in Kraftboro to visit Lanford. "I want to see this place that means so much to you," she said.

  I remember the way her eyes lit up when she walked with me on that campus. We held hands. Natalie wore a big straw hat, which was both endearing and odd, and sunglasses. She looked a bit like a movie star in disguise.

  "When you were a student here," she asked me, "where did you take the hot coeds?"

  "Straight to bed."

  Natalie playfully slapped my arm. "I'm serious. And hungry."

  So we headed to Judie's Restaurant on Main Avenue. Judie made a wonderful popover and apple butter. Natalie loved it. I watched her take it all in--the artwork, the decor, the young waitstaff, the menu, everything. "So this is where you took your ladies?"

  "The classy ones," I said.

  "Wait, where did you take the, uh, classless ones?"

  "Barsolotti's. The dive bar next door." I smiled.

  "What?"

  "We used to play condom roulette."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Not with girls. I was kidding about that. I'd go there with friends. There was a condom dispenser in the men's room."

  "A condom dispenser?"

  "Yep."

  "Like a condom vending machine."

  "Exactly," I said.

  Natalie nodded. "Classy."

  "I know, right?"

  "So what are the rules of condom roulette?"

  "It's silly."

  "Oh, you're not getting off that easy. I want to hear."

  There was that smile that knocked me back a step.

  "Okay," I said. "You play with four guys . . . this is so stupid."

  "Please? I love it. Come on. You play with four guys . . ." She gestured for me to continue.

  "The condoms come in four colors," I explained. "Midnight Black, Cherry Red, Lemon Yellow, Orange Orange."

  "You're making up those last two."

  "Something like that. The point is, they came in four colors, but you never knew which one you'd get. So see, we'd each put three bucks in the pot and choose a color. Then one of us would go to the dispenser and bring back the wrapped condom. Again, you didn't know the color until you actually open the wrapper. Someone would do a drumroll. Another guy would do the play-by-play like it was an Olympic event. Finally, the package was opened, and whoever picked the right color got the money."

  "Oh, that's too awesome."

  "Yeah, well," I said. "Of course, the winner had to buy the next pitcher of beer, so there wasn't much of a financial windfall. Eventually Barsy--that's the guy who owned the place--made it a full-fledged game with rules and league play and a leader board."

  She took my hand. "Could we play?"

  "What, now? No."

  "Please."

  "No way."

  "After the game," Natalie whispered, giving me a look that singed my eyebrows, "we could use the condom."

  "I call Midnight Black," I said.

  She laughed. I could still hear that sound as I entered Judie's, as if her laugh were still here, still echoing, still mocking me. I hadn't been back to Judie's in, well, six years. I looked over at the table where we'd sat. It was empty.

  "Jake?"

  I spun toward my right. Shanta Newlin sat at a quiet table over by the bay windows. She didn't wave or nod. Her body language, usually fully loaded with confidence, seemed all wrong. I sat across from her. She barely looked up.

  "Hi," I said.

  Still staring at the table, Shanta said, "Tell me the whole story, Jake."

  "Why? What's going on?"

  Her eyes came up, pinning me interrogator-style. I could see the FBI agent now. "Is she really an old girlfriend?"

  "What? Yes, of course."

  "And why do you all of a sudden want to find her?"

  I hesitated.

  "Jake?"

  The e-mail came back to me:

  You made a promise.

  "I asked you a favor," I said.

  "I know."

  "So you can either let me know what you found or we can just forget it. I'm not sure I get why you need to know more."

  The young waitress--Judie always hired college kids--gave us menus and asked if we would like drinks. We both ordered iced teas. When she left, Shanta turned the hard eyes back on me.

  "I'm trying to help you, Jake."

  "Maybe we should just let it go."

  "You're kidding, right?"

  "No," I said. "She asked me to leave her alone. I should probably have listened."

  "When?"

  "When what?"

  "When did she ask you to leave her alone?" Shanta asked.

  "What difference does that make?"

  "Just tell me, okay? It could be important."

  "How?" Then, figuring, what was the harm, I added: "Six years ago."

  "You said that you were in love with her."

  "Yes."

  "So was this when you broke up?"

  I shook my head. "It was at her wedding to another man."

  That made her blink. My words diffused the hard glare, at least for the moment. "Just so I'm clear on this, you went to her wedding--were you still in love with her? Dumb question. Of course you were. You still are. So you went to her wedding, and while you were there, Natalie told you to leave her alone?"

  "Something like that, yes."

  "That must have been some scene."

  "It wasn't like it sounds. We had just broken up. She ended up choosing another guy over me. An old boyfriend. They got married a few days later." I tried to shrug it off. "It happens."

  "You think?" Shanta said with the confused head tilt of a freshman. "Go on."

  "Go on with what? I went to the wedding. Natalie asked me to accept her choice and leave them be. I said I would."

  "I see. Have you had any contact with her during the past six years?"

  "No."

  "None at all?"

  I realized now how good Shanta was at this. I had taken the position that I wouldn't talk, and now you pretty much couldn't get me to shut up. "Right, none at all."

  "And you're sure her name is Natalie Avery?"

  "That's not the kind of thing you make a mistake about. Enough questions. What did you find, Shanta?"

  "Nothing."

  "Nothing?"

  The waitres
s came back with a big smile and our iced teas. "Here are some of Judie's fresh popovers." Her voice was the happy song of youth. The popover scent rose from the table and took me back to my last visit here, yep, six years ago.

  "Any questions about the menu?" the perky waitress asked.

  I couldn't answer.

  "Jake?" Shanta said.

  I swallowed. "No questions."

  Shanta ordered a grilled portobello mushroom sandwich. I went with the turkey BLT on rye. When the waitress was gone, I leaned across the table. "What do you mean you found nothing?"

  "What part of 'nothing' is confusing you, Jake? I found nothing on your ex--zippo, nada, zilch. No address, no tax returns, no bank account, no credit card statement. Not-a-thing, no thing, nothing. There is not one shred of evidence that your Natalie Avery even exists anymore."

  I tried to take this in.

  Shanta put her hands on the table. "Do you know how hard it is to live off the grid like that?"

  "Not really, no."

  "In this day and age with computers and all the technology? It's pretty close to impossible."

  "Maybe there's a reasonable explanation," I said.

  "Like what?"

  "Maybe she moved overseas."

  "Then there's no record of her going there. No passport issued. No entry or exit in the computer. Like I said before--"

  "Nothing," I finished for her.

  Shanta nodded.

  "She's a person, Shanta. She exists."

  "Well, she existed. Six years ago. That was the last time we had an address on her. She has a sister named Julie Pottham. Her mother, Sylvia Avery, is in a nursing home. Do you know all this?"

  "Yes."

  "Who did she marry?"

  Should I answer that one? I saw little harm. "Todd Sanderson."

  She jotted the name down. "And why did you want to look her up now?"

  You made a promise.

  "It doesn't matter," I said. "I should just let it be."

  "Are you serious?"

  "I am. It was a whim. I mean, it's been six years. She married another man and made me promise to leave her alone. So what exactly am I looking for anyway?"

  "But that's what makes me curious, Jake."

  "What does?"

  "You kept this promise for six years. Why did you suddenly break it?"

  I didn't want to answer that, and something else was starting to gnaw at me. "Why are you so interested?"

  She didn't reply.

  "I asked you to look a person up. You could have just told me that you didn't find anything. Why are you asking me all these questions about her?"

  Shanta seemed taken aback. "I was just trying to help."

  "You're not telling me something."

  "Neither are you," Shanta said. "Why now, Jake? Why are you looking for your old love now?"

  I stared down at the popover. I thought about that day in this restaurant six years ago, the way Natalie tore off small pieces of her popover, the look of concentration as she buttered it, the way she simply enjoyed everything. When we were together, even the smallest thing took on significance. Every touch brought pleasure.

  You made a promise.

  Even now, even after all that had happened, I couldn't betray her. Stupid? Yep. Naive? Oh, several steps south of that. But I couldn't do it.

  "Talk to me, Jake."

  I shook my head. "No."

  "Why the hell not?"

  "Who ordered turkey BLT?"

  It was another waitress, this one less perky and more harried. I raised my hand.

  "And the grilled portobello sandwich?"

  "Wrap it for me," Shanta said, rising. "I lost my appetite."

  Chapter 13

  The first time I met Natalie she was wearing sunglasses indoors. To make matters worse, it was nighttime.

  I rolled my eyes, thinking it was for effect. I figured that she fancied herself an Artiste with a capital A. We were attending a mixer of sorts, the art colony and the writers' retreat, sharing one another's work. This was my first time attending, but I soon learned that it was a weekly gathering. The art was displayed in the back of Darly Wanatick's barn. Chairs were set up for the readings.

  The woman in the sunglasses--I hadn't met her yet--sat in the last row, her arms crossed. A bearded man with dark curly hair sat next to her. I wondered whether they were together. Remember the blowhard named Lars who was writing poetry from the perspective of Hitler's dog? He began to read. He read for a long time. I began to fidget. The woman in the sunglasses remained still.

  When I could listen no longer, rude or not, I wandered toward the back of the barn and started to check out the various art on display. Most of it, well, I will be kind. I didn't "get it." There was an installation piece called Breakfast in America that featured spilled boxes of cold cereal on a kitchen table. That was it. There were boxes of Cap'n Crunch, Cap'n Crunch with Peanut Butter (one person actually muttered, "Notice there is no Cap'n Crunch with Crunch Berries--why?--what is the artist saying?"), Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs, Sugar Smacks, even my old favorite, Quisp. I looked at the spilled cereal coating the table. It did not speak to me, though my stomach grumbled a little.

  When one person asked, "What do you think?" I was tempted to say that it needed a little milk.

  As I kept walking, only one artist's work gave me real pause. I stopped at a painting of a small cottage on top of a hill. There was a soft morning glow hitting the side--the pinkness that comes with the first light of day. I couldn't tell you why but it choked me up. Maybe it was the dark windows, as though the cottage had once been warm but it was abandoned now. I don't know. But I stood in front of the painting and felt lost and moved. I stepped slowly from one painting to the next. They all delivered a blow of some kind. Some made me melancholy. Some made me nostalgic, whimsical, passionate. None left me indifferent.

  I will spare you the "big reveal" that the paintings were done by Natalie.

  A woman was smiling at my reaction. "Do you like them?"

  "Very much," I said. "Are you the artist?"

  "Heavens no. I run the bakery and coffee shop in town." She offered me her hand. "They call me Cookie."

  I shook it. "Wait. Cookie runs a bakery?"

  "Yeah, I know. Too precious, right?"

  "Maybe a tad."

  "The artist is Natalie Avery. She's right over there."

  Cookie pointed to the woman with the sunglasses.

  "Oh," I said.

  "Oh what?"

  With the sunglasses-indoors look, I had her pegged as the creator of Breakfast in America. Lars had just finished his reading. The crowd gave him a small golf-clap, but Lars, sporting an ascot, bowed as though it were a thunderous standing ovation.

  Everyone quickly rose except for Natalie. The man with the beard and curly hair whispered something to her as he stood, but still she didn't move. She stayed with her arms crossed, still lost, it seemed, in the essence of Hitler's dog.

  I approached her. She looked right through me.

  "The cottage in your painting. Where is it?"

  "Huh?" she said, startled. "Nowhere. What painting?"

  I frowned. "Aren't you Natalie Avery?"

  "Me?" She seemed befuddled by the question. "Yeah, why?"

  "The painting of the cottage. I really loved it. It . . . I don't know. It moved me."

  "Cottage?" She sat up, took off the sunglasses, and rubbed her eyes. "Sure, right, a cottage."

  I frowned again. I was not sure what reaction I expected, but something a bit more demonstrative than this. I looked down at her. Sometimes I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer but when she rubbed her eyes again, the realization hit me.

  "You were sleeping!" I said.

  "What?" she said. "No."

  But she rubbed her eyes some more.

  "Holy crap," I said. "That's why you're wearing the sunglasses. So no one can tell."

  "Shh."

  "You were sleeping this whole time!"

  "Keep it dow
n."

  She finally looked up at me and I remembered thinking that she had a beautiful, sweet face. I would soon learn that Natalie had what I'd call a slow beauty, the kind you don't really notice at first and then it knocks you back and grows on you and she gets more beautiful every time you see her and then you can't believe that you ever thought that she was anything less than completely stunning. Whenever I saw her, my entire body reacted, as though it were the first time or better.

  "Was I that obvious?" she asked in a whisper.

  "Not at all," I said. "I just thought you were being a pretentious ass."

  She arched an eyebrow. "What better disguise to blend in with this crowd?"

  I shook my head. "And I thought you were a genius when I saw your paintings."

  "Really?" She seemed caught off guard by the compliment.

  "Really."

  She cleared her throat. "And now that you see how deceptive I can be?"

  "I think you're a diabolical genius."

  Natalie liked that. "You can't fault me. That Lars guy is like human Ambien. He opens his mouth, I'm out."

  "I'm Jake Fisher."

  "Natalie Avery."

  "So do you want to grab a cup of coffee, Natalie Avery? Looks like you could use one."

  She hesitated, studying my face to the point where I think I started to redden. She tucked a ringlet of black hair behind her ear and stood. She moved closer to me, and I remember thinking that she was wonderfully petite, smaller than I had imagined when she'd been sitting. She looked way up at me, and a smile slowly came to her face. It was, I must say, a great smile. "Sure, why not?"

  That image of that smile held in my brain for a beat before it mercifully dissolved away.

  I was out at the Library Bar with Benedict. The Library Bar was pretty much exactly that--an old, dark-wood campus library that had recently been converted into a retro-trendy drinking establishment. The owners were clever enough to change very little of the old library. The books were still on the oak shelves, sorted in alphabetical order or the Dewey Decimal System or whatever the librarians had used. The "bar" was the old circulation desk. The coasters were old card files that had been laminated. The lights were green library lamps.

  The young female bartenders wore their hair in severe buns and sported fitted conservative clothes and, of course, horn-rimmed glasses. Yep, the fantasy librarian hottie. Once an hour, a loud librarian shush would play over the loudspeaker and the bartenders would rip off their glasses, let loose their bun, and unbutton the top of their blouse.