“Any time.”
“I should go, too,” Adam said. “Breezy, don’t beat yourself up about Jeremiah. There’s nothing you could have done.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
We opened the trailer door. Old Man Winter waited for us like a ghost with frigid breath. I took one step down into the cold, but then I stopped and turned around as I thought of something else. I was reluctant to ask the question with Adam standing between us, because this was something better shared friend to friend. But I needed to find out anyway.
“Hey, Breezy? Listen, I don’t mean to put you on the spot.”
“What is it?”
“Well, there were a lot of strangers in town those first few days after Jeremiah disappeared. Media people. Out-of-town cops. Volunteers. They were big tippers over at the diner.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So I was wondering if anyone came out to Witch Tree with you after your late shifts.”
Breezy didn’t react well to what I was implying. She opened her mouth as if to fire something back at me, but then she stopped. Her face pinched into a strange, unhappy expression as she looked back and forth between us. I knew I’d crossed a line by not waiting to talk to her in private. It’s one thing to joke about easy sex, it’s another to have your friend ask you about it in front of a man. I saw Adam flinch, as if he’d wandered into the middle of a shooting match and figured he’d better duck.
“Why do you care who came home with me? Jeremiah was already gone by then.”
“I know, but if someone was out here with you, we should probably talk to them. Just in case they saw anything. Like you said, this is the only road out to the resort.”
“Well, there are so many men, Shel,” Breezy said sourly. “What makes you think I’d even remember?”
“I’m sorry. Look, I’m not judging you. I would never do that. This is just routine follow-up.”
Adam played the good cop, which, of course, made me the bad cop. “We’re not trying to pry, but Shelby’s right. If you came back here with someone, you should really tell us who it was.”
“Really, Adam? You think that’s what I should do?”
“He could be a witness and not even know it.”
Breezy shook her head. “Well, sorry, the answer is no. I was working late every night, I was tired. Nobody came out here with me. Got it? Now you can both go.”
I wanted to say something else to make it right, but for now, there was nothing more to say. I’d made a mistake and offended a friend. Adam put a hand on Breezy’s shoulder and thanked her and murmured an apology. Then the two of us tramped down the trailer steps into the snow, and she slammed the door behind us. We stood by our cars as the freezing cold stung our faces.
“That was awkward,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“I had to ask.”
“I know. You were smart to check.”
I didn’t say anything more. We both got into our cars. I waited while Adam started his engine and drove into the night. I looked at the trailer and thought about going back to the door to confront Breezy again, but all that would do was make things worse.
Even so, I knew the truth. Girlfriends always do.
Breezy was lying.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I found my father staring into the flames of a roaring fire when I got home. The fireplace took up most of the north wall of the great space in our house, and he’d built it himself brick by brick. There were no lights on in the room, just the fire’s orange glow. He sat in a Shaker chair, his back straight, his feet flat on the floor, his hands on his knees. I didn’t let him know I was there. I watched from the wide arched doorway and wondered where he was and what he was thinking about.
Monica came up behind me. She was drying her hands on a kitchen towel. She took off her big glasses and wiped away water spots and then repositioned them carefully on her face. The glasses made her eyes look twice their size. She wore the yellow polka-dot apron that I’d given to my father when I was nine years old. It looked ridiculous on him, but on Monica it seemed to fit, even though it was so big that she looked like she was wearing a bed sheet.
“We had spaghetti,” she squeaked. At almost sixty years old, she still looked and sounded the way she had my whole life. She was as sweet and perfectly preserved as strawberry jam.
“Did Dad eat?”
“Yes, he needed a little help with it. He wasn’t too happy about that.”
“His pride hasn’t gone away, that’s for sure.”
“I think I’d feel worse if it had. I did laundry, by the way. I figured you wouldn’t be up for it when you got home.”
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Monica.”
“Oh, please. There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”
“Is Anna back?”
“No. I haven’t seen her.”
I tried not to let my frustration show. I had no idea whether Anna would come home at all. She knew I needed her help, but that didn’t mean anything to the girl. I thought she might stay out just to spite me.
“Are you hungry?” Monica asked. “There’s still some pasta.”
“I can heat it up myself. You should go home. You’ve got a long drive.”
“Only if you’re sure you don’t need anything else.”
“I’m sure.”
Monica untangled herself from the extra-large apron and handed it to me along with the kitchen towel. She grabbed her winter coat from the hall closet, then retrieved her satchel purse and Moody’s flowered urn from the table near our front door. I waved at both of them, and Monica giggled and left. I felt bad that she still had to drive an hour to get home. With me and Dad depending on her, she didn’t have much of a life for herself.
I went into the kitchen and heated up a small bowl of pasta and sauce in the microwave and ate it quickly at the table. Then I joined Dad in the great space that had once been the church sanctuary. Sometimes he played music in the evenings, and sometimes he preferred silence. This was a silent night. The crackle of burning wood was enough to occupy him. Even on a January evening under a high ceiling, the fire made the room so hot that I began to sweat. My father didn’t seem affected by it at all. His face had the same suntanned glow it always did.
“Hi, Dad,” I said as I pulled over a chair and sat down next to him.
“Hello, Shelby. How was your day?”
“Oh, fine.” Then I stopped biting my tongue and decided to be honest with him. “Actually, no, that’s not true. It was a pretty tough day for all of us. Do you remember Jeremiah Sloan? The boy who disappeared?”
“It was last summer, Shelby. I’m not likely to forget it.”
In fact, it had been ten long years, not six months, but I was glad that Dad knew who Jeremiah was. His mind operated like a time machine with a bug in its programming. You couldn’t tell where it would carry him next. Whenever my father went traveling, he came out at a different moment of his life. Sometimes the moments were enveloped in fog, and sometimes they were crisp and clear. And you never knew how long any given moment would last.
“Well, it looks like someone took Jeremiah to that old abandoned resort out near Witch Tree. Mittel Pines. We still don’t know what happened to him. The FBI is coming back into town to run the search.”
“Then I should go out there.”
I chose my words carefully. “Adam and I have it under control, Dad. We’ll take care of it.”
“Even so, they’ll want to talk to me.”
“Okay, don’t worry. I’ll arrange it.”
But I wouldn’t. In the morning, he’d have forgotten our conversation entirely.
“What about the F-150?” he went on with a precision that surprised me. Sometimes details flooded out with perfect recall like that. The past wasn’t gone. It was still in his head somewhere, just hidden away in places he couldn’t always find. If only we could help him look.