I checked my watch. “It’s late, Breezy. You guys ever going to close?”
“Maybe at eleven. Look at this place. I’ve made more money today than I’d make in two weeks normally. I mean, I feel a little bad about it, but still. No offense to our local boys, but I wouldn’t get a twenty-five percent tip around here if I served them stark naked. Today? That’s my average.”
“Lots of reporters on expense accounts, huh?”
“No kidding. I hope this keeps up for a few days. I’ll have enough to retire Dudley and get a new car.” Then she closed her eyes in disgust with herself. “Oh my God, did I just say that?”
“Yeah. You did.”
“Sorry. I got carried away.”
“Hey, I get it. Just keep it to yourself.”
Breezy pasted the flirty smile back on her face and went off to serve the strangers in the diner. I looked toward the front window, where rain continued to pour down from the night sky like a deluge. A drumroll of thunder made the building shake.
“Jeremiah’s out there in this,” I said quietly, underneath the noise of the café.
Adam heard me. “Yeah, I know. It sucks.”
“Do you think he’s alive?” I leaned close enough that Adam’s beer breath was in my face.
“If he is, it might be better if he weren’t,” Adam replied. Being drunk has a way of making you speak the truth even when you’re better off with a lie.
I swore, because I didn’t want Adam to be right, but he probably was. I’d held onto the hope all day that this was a mistake. An accident. But suddenly, there was a truck. The truck changed everything. Someone had gotten into a stolen truck, and two hours later, Jeremiah vanished without a trace, leaving his bicycle on the road. I couldn’t find an innocent explanation for that.
“Have you seen my father?” I asked.
“Yeah. He went home.”
“What about Monica?”
“She left an hour ago.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Hey, Shelby?”
“What?”
“Sorry for being a dick.”
I winked at him. “What else is new?”
I finished my donut and waited for the sugar to kick in, but it never did. I watched the rain, which was hypnotic. Every now and then, lightning flashed over the Carnegie Library across the street like a broken branch. I thought the storm might pass if I waited long enough, but the downpour kept on. Eventually, I climbed off the stool and left money on the counter. I gave Breezy a 30 percent tip, which didn’t amount to more than a dollar. I figured she’d laugh about it anyway.
“I’m heading home,” I told Adam.
“Yeah, see you in the morning.”
I listened to the thunder. “You still got your bike outside?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, drive carefully.”
“Always.”
The rain did finally quit. The roads were a mess, slick with mud and leaves and fallen branches, but at least I could see where I was going as I drove home. When I got there, the lights were on, giving the house a saintly glow through the stained glass windows. Dad’s truck was in the driveway, but when I called for him inside, I got no answer. I checked his bedroom, which was empty. The bed didn’t have a wrinkle and was made with hospital corners, as always.
When I looked through the windows at the backyard, I saw him. He’d built a screened-in gazebo out there years ago as a playhouse for me. The light inside made it look like an oasis in the darkness. I went out the back door and trudged through the muddy grass, leaving footprints. A firefly winked at me near the trees. Inside the gazebo, I found Dad in one of the wicker chairs. He was still in his uniform, sitting straight up with perfect posture. The daily crossword puzzle was folded up in his lap, with only a handful of words filled in. He had his phone on the table in front of him, as if waiting for it to ring.
Something told me it hadn’t rung all day.
“Hi, Dad.”
He gave me the kind of smile that lets you know in a glance that you’re loved. “Hello, Shelby.”
“Mind if I join you?”
“Please.”
I sat down next to him. We didn’t talk for a while; we just listened to the buzz of insects hiding in the grass. Eventually, he asked about my day, and I gave him an update. We were silent again after that, until he looked over at me and said, “I owe you an apology, Shelby.”
“For what?”
“I should have listened to you about Adrian and the Gruders.”
“It was a hunch. I got lucky.”
“No, you were observant, and I didn’t take you seriously.”
“Don’t worry about it, Dad,” I said, but I liked hearing it.
Somewhere during the day, he’d slipped off to see the town barber and get his hair cut. When I looked at him in profile, I could still see his face looking like it did in photographs from twenty-five years earlier, when his hair and mustache were dark brown. He’d been leaner then, but just as serious. I remembered the proud expression on his face in the first picture Monica had taken when he held me as a baby. It was a long time before I understood what it meant to him to find me on his doorstep in that year of all years. He’d lost his father to Alzheimer’s four months earlier. His mother to the same damn disease five months before that. Enter Shelby Lake into his life. He used to say that I’d saved him as much as he saved me.
“I have to ask you something, Shelby.”
“Sure, Dad. What?”
“I don’t want you to panic when you hear it.”
“What is it?”
His hand trembled a little with nervousness. “What’s the name of the boy who disappeared?”
I stared at him. “Dad, I... I don’t—”
“Just his name, Shelby. Please.”
“It’s Jeremiah, Dad. Jeremiah Sloan.”
He nodded as if it were one of the answers in his crossword puzzle that had eluded him. “Of course, it is. Thank you. I was able to remember everything else about the past two days, but not that. Weird, isn’t it? It was just gone. Like a chip of paint falling off the wall. This has been a bad day. I know it’ll go up and down, but this was a bad day.”
Dad was being clinical about it to protect me. I knew he would never show me the depth of his frustration, but it was there. I looked away so he wouldn’t spot the sadness on my face, but I could never fool him.
“You don’t have to pretend, Shelby. We’ll just take it as it comes.”
“I know.”
“It can move fast, or it can move slow. And there are new drugs now. Hopefully, we’ll hardly notice it for a while.”
“I know,” I said again, choking on the words.
Funny how I could feel myself getting older at that moment. The teenage girl, the volleyball player, was slipping away from me into the distant past and leaving me alone. It was as if Jeremiah had taken what was left of that side of me with him when he disappeared.
“Trina’s sick again,” I added, not knowing why I felt the need to tell him that when he had his own troubles. “She told me about it last night.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t want her to be alone going through this again. I’m just worried she won’t open up and let me in. Or anyone else. Not Karl. Not Anna.”
“Some people can’t do that.”
“I know. That’s not who she is.”
“All you can do is be there for her. She has to decide for herself what she needs.”
“I know,” I said again.
Sitting there, I felt a wave of anger at the world. It’s that helpless frustration we feel when fate deals a blow to someone we love, and there’s no one we can blame and no one we can scream at.
“Do you want to bring out your guitar?” Dad asked, trying to pull me out of the hole I was in.