“You found him?” Norah took a step back. “Was he . . . ?”
“No.”
Norah began to cry.
“The lost live in your head,” Jones said. “Hope feeds them and keeps them alive. Like any living thing, they grow bigger and bigger as time goes on. It gets harder and harder to carry the lost. You think you can’t do it anymore, but somehow you just keep carrying the weight day after day. Putting it down should be a relief, but it’s not. Somehow, it’s worse.”
Norah wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. “You’re not here for her. You’re here for you.”
“Yes,” Jones said.
“You’re here for hope.”
Jones nodded.
Norah took two fists of his coat. “I don’t care if you’re not here for her. Do you hear me? I don’t care because you think you can bring her back. She’s still out there and you think you can bring her back. Please—please bring her back to me.”
“I’ll try.”
“Do better than that. Promise me.”
Jones gently took hold of Norah’s hands and pulled her fists away from his chest. “This world hates promises. All I can do it try.”
Norah left Jones under the tree. He watched her close the door and then he walked back to the Jeep, thinking about what he had accomplished. He had a name and by tonight, after Norah got off work, he would have a picture. He got behind the wheel and took a second to cue up a playlist of rock music that had come out of Nashville that he planned to play loud enough to hurt his ears and kill his thoughts. Kings of Leon hit the speakers just as Jones noticed that he had a voicemail. He touched the phone and the music went quiet to make room for the message.
Call me, Jones. It’s important.
Melissa’s voice instinctively sent Jones’ thumb to his contacts icon, but he paused before tapping the screen. She was probably calling to set up an appointment with a client; Jones didn’t want to lie to Melissa and he didn’t want to tell her the truth, so he decided on telling her nothing. He swiped up on the phone and put his thumb down on the play button. The music erupted from the speakers and made it impossible to do anything other than drive.
It was close to dinnertime when Jones got back to Toronto and parked up the block from Brew. Sheena and two other employees were behind the counter, working their asses off. The coffee place made all kinds of sandwiches, and, for some reason, waffles, and people were eagerly after both during the dinner rush. Jones waited for his turn and ordered a coffee and grilled cheese. He was hungry and figured the grilled cheese was the simplest thing he could order from the already swamped baristas.
After Sheena took the order, she said, “No time to talk.”
Jones said, “Sure,” and waited for his food. He took his order to a vacant stool along the window facing the street. He had expected bread and cheese; he got both, but they brought friends. The bread was as much seed as bread, and the cheese was not at all orange, or alone. Sheena had used Brie and had slipped apple slices under the bread before pressing it in a panini machine. Jones drank some of his coffee while he considered the sandwich. He decided he was too hungry to wait in line for something else, so he ventured a bite. Jones took a few seconds to decide he liked the different textures and flavours. He ate the sandwich fast, but took his time with the coffee while he waited out the dinner rush.
After about an hour of watching cars drive by, Jones looked at the reflection in the mirror and saw that the line was a quarter of its former size and there were now only two people working; Sheena was one of them. Jones got off the stool and deposited his plate and mug on the counter on his way to the washroom.
The bathroom was occupied and Jones could hear someone inside. The guy who opened the door smiled regretfully to Jones, but that was nowhere near enough of an apology for what he had left behind. The smell was earthy and rank and contained no traces of the air freshener left next to the sink. Jones closed the door and fogged the room with Lysol. The spray didn’t kill the smell, but it put up a fight. Jones put the can down and examined the door. His paint job had already been defaced with a swastika drawn in shaky ballpoint pen. Jones ignored the tag and pulled the Sharpie out of his pocket. The drive had given him time to think, and Norah had given him something he was happy to think about. He had a plan by the time he reached Kingston and supplies after he got into Toronto.
Jones moved to the left of the door and bent down to write his message over the spot Lauren had chosen for hers. In clear letters, Jones wrote: Lost kitten. Answers to Lauren. Under the message, he wrote his phone number and the words: Ask for Norah.
Jones took a step back and evaluated his work. His handwriting was nowhere near as fancy as Lauren’s, but it was easy to read and the right audience would understand the message. In the back seat of the Jeep were one hundred flyers with the same message and a tape gun he had bought at an office supply store. Jones figured he would start taping up posters in a widening circle around Brew. He would also stop into every bathroom he could find and leave a message behind for her. If Lauren was local, she’d see the flyers and make the call.
Jones finished up in the bathroom and found a line three deep waiting outside the door. He dodged the glares of what looked to have the makings of a lynch mob and found his stool still unoccupied. Sheena had taken the next seat and saved it for him.
“How’d you like the grilled cheese?”
“That was not grilled cheese,” Jones said.
“You didn’t like it?”
“It was good.”
Sheena smiled. “I hate it. I like mine with regular bread and orange cheese.” Jones noticed the familiar colour peeking out from under the bread on the plate in front of her.
She caught him looking. “Want half?”
Jones accepted the triangle. After he took a bite, he said, “I went there.”
“You drove to Cartwright?”
Jones answered with his head while he took another bite of the grilled cheese.
Sheena watched him chew for a second before she punched him in the arm. “So?” The punch was solid and she fed it with her hips. She had trained somewhere. The pain in his shoulder did not diminish the glorious taste of the sandwich.
“This is good,” he said.
“I used double cheese. Quit stalling and tell me what happened.”
Jones told her everything.
“She has a name,” Sheena said after Jones had finished. She was looking out the window, but she was seeing something else. “She’s out there and she has a name.” She looked at Jones. “What are we going to do? I mean there has to be, what—a few thousand Laurens in this city. It’s not like we can just walk around asking every short sixteen-year-old girl if her name is Lauren and if she ran away from Cartwright two years ago?”
Jones liked that she said we. “You’re not far off.”
He told her about the posters in the Jeep and the note he left in the bathroom.
Sheena did not seem impressed. “You’re going to put up flyers. That’s your plan?”
“You got a better one?”
“No, but I’m not a professional private detective. Flyers is the kind of thing a kid would do. I mean it’s not like she’s a dog.”
Jones laughed.
“What?”
“I said the same thing to someone yesterday.”
“So you agree with me.”
“The only move in this game is forward.”
Sheena, suddenly no longer interested in her sandwich, pushed her plate away. “Still seems stupid.”