When I get to The Diner, Cooper’s already there, eating in a bright orange booth. Like Rusty’s and the rest of Cedar, The Diner never changes. Same chalkboard with decades-old “specials.” Same place-mat menus with the misspelled “choclate.” Same salty smell greeting me at the door. I inhale it like the scent of home.
I watch Cooper before approaching. His face is filthy, streaked with dirt and flecked with something blue. His big hands are clutching a hamburger, and when he bites into it, he closes his eyes. Even from here, I can see it: the juice from the dead animal slithers down his chin.
“Hi,” I say, sliding into the seat opposite him. He wipes his mouth and grins, meat between his teeth.
“I had to order without you,” he says. “I’m always starving after work.”
I’m about to tell him it’s fine when someone grasps me from behind. Envelops my upper body, pins my arms to my sides. Air catches in my throat and my heart skips. Someone is squeezing me. Cooper looks at whoever it is. Chews his burger slowly. Completely unconcerned.
“My little Ferny,” the person says, and my muscles loosen. My breath whooshes out.
“Peg.”
I twist around to hug her, and it’s like hugging Mrs. Claus. Her white hair is pulled back into a bun. Her chest is a cushion for my head. When we separate, I notice her cheeks are pink and shiny. Just as they’ve always been.
“Ted mentioned you were back,” she says. “So nice of you to help him with the move.”
“Oh. I’m doing what I can.”
Peg’s eyes well up a little. “This’ll be one of the last times you’re here then, huh?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, once Ted heads to Florida… Cedar’ll always be home, of course, but—there’ll be no house for you to come back to. It’ll belong to somebody else.”
I gape at her, watch the tears collect in her eyelashes. (Peg always vacillates between smiling and crying—“chronically emotional,” Ted calls her.) I hadn’t thought about Ted’s move like that. But she’s right. Soon, someone else will live in Ted’s house. A whole family, probably. They’ll walk up the creaky staircase and have no idea how often I sat there, elbows on knees, chin in the palm of my hands, waiting for Ted to notice me. They’ll fill his study with—what, exactly? Craft supplies? A rocking chair and cradle? It’s impossible to imagine. Impossible to think that Ted himself won’t be there. A ghost behind a closed door.
“Oh, Ferny, I’m sorry,” Peg says. “Don’t look so worried, okay? We’ll make sure you still come back plenty, won’t we?” She elbows Cooper, who swallows a bite of burger and nods. “And you can always stay upstairs with me. I’ve got one of those sleep-sofa things. My nephew says it’s comfier than a cloud.”
I chuckle in acknowledgment, even though she was right the first time. Once Ted’s gone, I’ll have no reason to come back. Not even Rusty or Peg will be enough, though they spoiled me as a kid with stickers and milkshakes and smiles. Just like that, Cedar will be erased from the map of my life. No town with spotty reception. No woods that darken the road to home. No Cooper, either. I look at him now. There’s ketchup in the corner of his lips. He stares up at Peg, chewing with his mouth wide open.
“Hey, why Florida, by the way?” Peg asks. “Of all the places for Ted to go.”
I have no answer. Ted among tourists? Ted among all those “senile shuffleboard addicts,” those “hip-replacement hippies”? Ted has no shortage of epithets for people who move to Florida.
“I don’t know,” I tell Peg. “Mara told him she wanted to find a new studio space, and I guess he took the opportunity to make a change.”
“But it’s still weird, right?” she asks. “Florida?”
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s really weird.”
“Hmm.” She stares into the distance, then shakes her head. Taps the table twice. “Corned beef sandwich coming right up.”
As she walks away, I fidget with my fingers in my lap.
“So,” I begin, but Cooper cuts me off.
“You’re probably wondering why I asked you here,” he says.
I meet his eyes. They’re stony and serious. “Huh?” I mutter. Then he breaks into a smile. Shoves a fry into his mouth.
“I’m kidding,” he says. “What’s up, Brierley? Why’d you wanna meet? You sick of Ted already?”
“No, I…”
To be sick of him, I’d have to spend time with him.
“My name’s Douglas now,” I remind him.
“Yeah, I know,” he says. He closes his hand into a fist, nudges my chin with it. “But you’ll always be Brierley to me.”
I lean back until my shoulder blades touch the booth. Something flickers in his eyes and he laughs through his nose.
“Out with it,” he insists.
There’s a wad of potato bobbing on his tongue. I keep my gaze focused on his eyes. “Do you remember that summer I went with you guys to Edgewood Lake?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“And you drove Kyla and me to a hair salon? But then she wanted us to get her some candy from the gas station?”
“Okay…”
“What happened after that?” I ask. “When we went to get the candy. I can’t remember.”
He stops chewing. His jaw freezes at a strange angle. I hold my breath.
“You wanted to meet up so you could ask me about a trip to the gas station… from twenty years ago?”
I nod. How quickly he recalled that it was exactly twenty years.
He picks up a fry, stabs at the ketchup on his plate. “Brierley, I have no idea. But I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that… we got candy?”
I shake my head. Fast and hard. “Kyla said no. She said we were gone a really long time. Way longer than it would take to pick up cigarettes and Nerds Ropes. So something must have gone wrong somehow. You must’ve…” I trail off.
“Are you talking about what happened when we were kids?” he asks.
My jaw clenches. It’s a moment before I can respond. “What do you mean?”
He snips a fry in half with his teeth. “How I used to, you know, mess with you and stuff.”
Mess with me? When we were kids? He was eighteen the first time he shoved his arm into my mouth. I look at his tattoo and I swear I can feel that honeycomb on my tongue.
“Because I’ve grown up a lot since then,” he continues. “I mean, obviously.” He flexes his arm muscles. The bees convulse. “So if this is about confronting me or something—for maybe freaking you out that day, or whatever—there’s no need. I’m a completely different person now. It wouldn’t even make sense for me to apologize, you know? Because I’d be apologizing for something that someone else did.”
I stare at him. Gape, really. I’m still struggling for a response when Peg slaps a sandwich and milkshake in front of me. I jump a little.
“That was fast,” I say.
She winks at me. “I poached it from table seven. Shirley Schmidt can wait a minute.”
She spins around, heads to another table, and I rip the paper off a straw. Plunk it into my shake. I’m about to suck some of it up when I feel a ripple of nausea. I look at the corned beef fringing the bread on my plate. Usually just the sight of it makes my mouth water. Now, I can’t help but see it as the pile of flesh I know it is.
“Listen,” I say, “I’m not talking about what you did to me when I was a kid. I’m talking about that day in particular, when we went to the gas station. Can you think of any reason why it would have taken us so long to get back?”
He shoves the last bite of burger into his mouth. His cheek bulges with the meat as he considers. After a moment, his eyes brighten.
“I know what you’re talking about now,” he says. “Christy Miller.”
“Christy? No—Astrid.”
“Who?”
“Astrid Sullivan. Did we see her that day?”
He’s slurping his soda but stops when he hears her name. “The missing chick?”
I nod. Watch him turn his head a little, look at me out the side of his eyes.
“Uh, I don’t know who you did or didn’t see, Brierley. But there’s only one girl I remember seeing that day.”
“Who? Did she have red hair and freckles?”
“No, she had blond hair and incredible tits.”
“What?”
“Christy Miller. She was this girl whose family always went to the lake the same time ours did. Shit, she was, like, supermodel hot. You should’ve seen her in a bikini.”
I’m trying to process what he’s saying. Find some connection between Christy and Astrid. But I’m struck by how young he sounds. Forty years old and still talking like he’s half that.
“Anyway.” He picks up his glass, jabs at the ice with his straw. “We finally hooked up that summer, and then I saw her at the gas station.” He shrugs. “I must’ve told you to scram and that’s why you don’t remember her.”
“But where did I go?”
Another shrug. “Fuck if I know. I was pretty preoccupied.”
I lean forward. Put my hand on the table. “Well, how long was I gone?”
Cooper smirks. “A while,” he says. “Definitely a while.” His eyes go hazy. “Christy Miller, man. I wonder if she’s on Facebook.”
“So you have no idea where I went?”
He focuses on me again. “No, Brierley. I wasn’t your babysitter.” His gaze narrows. “What’s this even about? Why were you asking about Astrid Sullivan?”
I slump back against the booth. Cooper’s another dead end. Like Foster. Like all the roads in my mind that stop right when the memory should start. All he’s done is confirm that I had time and opportunity to see Astrid. Maybe I should take that as a victory. But I was already sure of that.
“Where did we meet back up?” I ask, ignoring his question. Now that I know he didn’t see anything, I don’t want to tell him more than I have to. Don’t want him to glimpse the source of my anxiety so he can gnaw on it like a bone.
“Who knows,” he says. “I left so me and Christy could—you know.” He bites his lip, closes his eyes, bobs his head. I wait through the gesture. “So I guess I would have gone looking for your skinny ass afterward. And then we went back to Christy’s.”
I wrinkle my brow. “You took me back to your girlfriend’s place?”
He chuckles—a single slap of sound. “Christy Miller was not my girlfriend. But no, I mean the haircut place. It had Christy in the name. I remember that because, well… I thought it was funny that my sister and I were both getting blown by someone named Christy that day.”
I squint at his crudeness. He picks up three fries and crams them into his mouth. Then he looks at his hand, flecked with the same blue paint that freckles his face.
“Oh—before I forget,” he says. “I wanted to thank you.”
His lips shine with grease. I have to concentrate on my breathing. Between Cooper’s eating habits and the smell of corned beef, I’m close to losing what little I’ve gotten down today.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
He picks up his napkin, wipes his hands. Smiles like he’s got a secret. “You inspired me.”
“Inspired you.”
“Mm-hmm. The way you reacted to the cabin yesterday. My dream flip. It gave me the push I needed.”
“The way I reacted?”
All I can remember is my body stiffening as Cooper plunged his truck through the woods.
Cooper nods. “I saw the way you looked at it. So serious. And so… awed. I could tell you felt the same as me about it. That it’s special. That little house tucked into the woods. Peace and privacy for miles. A person could get lost there.”
His tongue cradles the word lost like it’s something precious. Something desired.
“I’m not following,” I say.
He smiles again. A twitch of his lips. “I went to Town Hall today. Started the process of buying the property. I even took my folks to see it this morning. They think it’s a fool’s errand. Too much work, my dad says. No way I’ll turn a profit. But, man, I’m telling you… sometimes you just know something, you know? And yeah, the property’s gonna cost me a lot, but I’m fine with that. Because when you’re that certain of something, when you feel it in your gut”—he clutches his stomach, gives it a shake—“you have to see it through to the end.”
He leans back, grinning at me. He crosses his arms over his chest. “You know what I’m saying?”
Astrid could be in a cabin. One that’s like Cooper’s—somewhere overlooked, underloved. Right now, she could be locked in a basement, her red hair the only bright thing in all the darkness, and every day, every moment that goes by, the walls could be crumbling a little bit more. Is she worried she’ll run out of time? That they’ll collapse altogether, bury her in a tomb of wood and rot? Is she waiting for the witness, still, to tell someone what she saw?
“You get me, right, Brierley?” Cooper continues. “How when you know, you know?”
All these dead ends, but I’m certain—I know—that if I keep looking, I’ll find the road that leads me back to her.
“I do,” I tell Cooper. “I know exactly what you mean.”
It’s not until I’m driving back to Ted’s that I put it together.
Christy. Cuts by Christy.
That was the name of a place I saw in Foster today. One of the businesses made memorable by the alliteration on its sign. It was a few turns from Astrid’s neighborhood. A very short drive. A perfectly reasonable walk.
So there it is, then—more confirmation. I was close. I was there. And today, I drove down the same streets I traveled two decades ago.
I should feel validated. Or buzzing with the promise of this new puzzle piece. But I don’t. When I saw those businesses, those houses, those roads, I recognized nothing. Every sign might as well have been blank, every building empty and shuttered.
I can go back there, though. I can read the memoir. Find out more details about where she was taken, what the witness saw. If her words on the page don’t trigger a memory, they’ll at least give me a map.
My hands grip the steering wheel tighter. I step on the gas a little bit harder. My headlights slice through the purple dusk, the road ahead the color of a bruise that will take a while to heal. The houses are starting to space out, growing woodsy in between. A figure appears in the distance. Dark and difficult to distinguish from the backdrop of night.
I slow down. Let my lights creep up his body. Black boots. Black pants. Black raincoat. I check the temperature gauge on my dashboard—eighty-two degrees. I bet his body’s burning. Mine flushes just from looking at him.
Cooper called this guy a drifter, acted as if he was a suspicious intrusion to our town. But he has to be headed somewhere. And maybe his clothing is protection from mosquitoes, which in New Hampshire can seem as big as birds. I glance at my own uncovered skin. All of it so prickable. So close to the blood beneath—which suddenly flows faster.
He’s walking in the direction I’m driving, but now, bathed in my headlights, he stops. Turns slowly. As if he’s a knob that’s screwed too tight. My foot squeezes the brake. My car crawls.
In a few moments, he’s facing me. We’re the only two on this road and then—one second, two seconds, three—neither of us are moving. Why don’t I pass him? Why do I feel like there’s something about him I need to see? Ten yards, I think—that’s all that lies between us—but I can’t make out his face at all. His hood is so big, so dark, that it conceals his head completely. Falls over him like a mask.
Like a hard mask.
The kind that protects the eyes and nose and mouth.
The kind a welder might wear.
My pulse kicks and kicks. I blink, and he’s still frozen. His hood is just a hood again. His hands are the only skin I can see.
But there were gloves, once. Long, dark gloves. They went halfway to somebody’s elbows.
I lean over the wheel. My heart pounds against it. He’s a guy in a raincoat, a hood, black jeans. But he’s someone else, too. Dark gloves. A welder’s mask. And—overalls?
No. Waders.
A welder’s mask. Gloves. Waders.
I gasp a mouthful of air and instantly scream it out. The sound shoves the drifter out of his stillness. Sends him shooting away. I stomp my foot on the gas, but he’s through the trees before I reach him. An inky streak in a smudge of woods. I skid to a stop. Jerk forward, back. Reverse. Do half a K-turn until my lights splash against the trees. I don’t see him anywhere. He’s animal-fast. He’s gone. And I’m panting. Panting. Clutching my chest as I breathe.
I remember him now. The man who grabbed Astrid’s waist. My flashes have been of a bodiless arm, but now I remember the rest of him—or at least what he wore: welder’s mask, gloves, waders. Black on black on black.