Andy, is it really you? Where are you?
That’s what Matt had written back to the first Andrea message he’d gotten.
The response he’d received wasn’t much:
I can’t say. But need to talk to you. Need to ask you something and can’t come home till I get an answer.
I stared at the words on Matt’s iPhone.
We were sitting across from each other in a tight, uncomfortable plastic booth at the Main Street Dunkin Donuts. It was Matt’s idea to come here. It wasn’t very far for me to walk, and we weren’t likely to be overheard by anyone we knew. No one hung out here but older folks from the Eastside Village apartments for retired people.
“And you already wrote back?” I said.
Matt nodded. “But just two words: What’s that? Still waiting to hear back on that.”
“Uh-huh,” I replied.
It seemed like a good strategy to me—to let Andrea, or whoever was writing the messages, take the lead. Don’t give this person much to work with, in case he or she is a fraud.
“The whole ‘need to ask you something,’ thing,” I said uneasily. “Does that sound like Andrea to you?”
“It’s not specific enough to not sound like her.”
“But don’t you think it sounds a little . . . manipulative?”
Matt opened the orange juice he’d bought to justify our presence in the booths. After taking a sip, he grimaced. “Who says Andrea was never manipulative?” he said.
“Okay,” I replied. “What’re you going to do now, then?”
“Well, wait. To start.”
I nodded. Matt sipped his juice again. I began to wish I’d ordered something, to have something to keep my hands busy.
“Well,” I mumbled. “Here we are. Waiting.”
Matt stared out the window at the parking lot. I realized I shouldn’t have said we. I admired the shiny finish of Matt’s black car. I wondered if he washed it, or had it washed, every week. It seemed like a weird thing to pay attention to, given all of the sad things happening in his life. I wondered how it was that I was starting to like Matt when there was so much I didn’t quite get about him.
A red compact car buzzed into the lot, coming to rest right next to Matt’s car. Matt jumped a little as the balding driver got out.
“You know who that is?” he said, turning to me.
“No.” I squinted, following Matt’s eyes. The man was tan and muscular, with a slight limp. “He looks familiar, though. Does he work at the—”
“Andrea’s dad,” he whispered.
I tried not to stare as Mr. Quinley walked into the doughnut shop, jangling his keys. He smiled when he caught sight of Matt. “Hey there,” he said. “Surprised to find you here. Nice to see you.”
“You, too,” Matt answered, matching his smile. I couldn’t tell if he was forcing it or not.
“You a coffee drinker, Matt?”
Matt held up his orange juice. “Not really.”
“Good idea. Stay off the stuff as long as you can.” Mr. Quinley went to the counter to order. After he bought a big cup of coffee, he waved his keys in our direction. “Tell your mom and dad I said hello.”
“Okay,” Matt called weakly. But his smile had vanished.
•••
We sat in silence as we watched Mr. Quinley drive away.
“I feel bad that I was just talking about Andrea the way I was,” Matt said in a low voice. “Hey, sorry I didn’t introduce you.”
“He sort of looked right through me, anyhow.”
“He’s like that. More so now than before.”
“Because of Andrea, you mean?”
Matt shrugged.
I’d seen Mr. Quinley around town and at the school over the years, knowing he was someone’s dad, even though I might not have registered whose specifically. He’d been one of the coaches of the girls’ softball league. My old friend Amy had made me join when I was around twelve. Mr. Quinley knew the names of all the most athletic girls; he’d kid around with them and chat with their parents like they were friends.
The rest of us he called “dear” or “kid.” I remember him grumbling, almost sneering, at Amy when she’d repeatedly strike out, as if there was something morally repugnant about her clumsiness. Amy had masochistically stayed in the league all season. I had quit in favor of spending my Thursday afternoons watching TV and eating Cheetos.
“Were they close?” I asked Matt, thinking of what he had told me last time—that Mr. Quinley refused to admit that Andrea might have been having problems.
“They were until, like, a couple of months before she disappeared. When she started acting weird, I think things got tough with her parents. Did you know she quit basketball a little while before she disappeared?”
“No.”
“Well, she did. I thought it was strange that her parents would know she did that—Andrea, the big star player—and not see that as a sign of depression or some kind of trouble. Like I was saying the other day. When I asked her why she quit, she said she just didn’t feel like playing anymore. And when I asked if her dad was mad that she quit, she said something like, ‘Wake up, Matt. Like my dad cares about anything I do anymore.’”
“Which means what?”
“I don’t know for sure. But I know that with all of his knee surgery problems, he wasn’t able to do a lot of things he’d done before. I guess he was focused on his own health issues more than Andrea and her brother and sister, for a little while?”
I hesitated before speaking. “Maybe she quit basketball to see if that would finally get his attention?”
Matt smirked. “Well, aren’t you the psychotherapist?”
I shrugged. “It’s the tea-leaf reading. I have to do a little psychologizing with it.”
“I see,” he said. “Have you been psychologizing me much?”
“Only a little.”
He nodded. “So. You asked me why I was asking you about Jimmy Harmon. I should have given you more of an answer.”
Surprised, I said, “Okay?”
Matt leveled his gaze at me. “He liked you, you know.”
“What?” Of all the directions my mind had wandered, it hadn’t gone there.
“That’s what Andrea said,” Matt continued. “That he’d talk about you sometimes. About how he liked you when you were kids, at least. That he’d go over to your house and hang out with your brother, and sometimes, if they were watching a movie, or were playing a game with three players or whatever, you’d join them. He thought it was cute how important it was to you that everyone play fair. He said he’d try not to act so crazy when you were around.”
I could feel myself blush. “I must’ve been . . . I don’t know . . . eleven . . . the last time anything like that happened.”
Matt held my eyes. “Sure. But. In any case.”
“He never even talked to me once I got to high school,” I said, looking down.
“He didn’t?”
I thought about this. Jimmy would usually give me a sort of half wave, a hey in the hallway. Sometimes he’d ask me how I was, to which I’d usually reply, Okay. I’d never thought to wonder if this was more attention than he’d give others. Now that Matt was talking this way, it seemed quite likely. Generally, Jimmy antagonized people.
“I guess sometimes. Why would Andrea have told you that?”
Matt sighed and looked away from me again, out toward his shiny black car.
“She talked about Jimmy quite a few times, the couple of weeks before she disappeared. Mostly random stuff, but . . .”
“Yeah, but . . .?”
“I wonder, if I tracked him down . . . if someone could track him down . . . if you would be willing to talk to him for me?”
“I’d think if it’s stuff about Andrea, you’d want to ask him yourself.”
He hesitated. “I’m not the sort of person Jimmy would want to open up to.”
“And you think he would open up with me, because he thought I had cute pigtails when I was a kid?”
Matt plunked down his juice bottle defensively. “I didn’t say it like that. Don’t be gross.”
“I’m not being gross.”
“Okay. Suppose you were able to track him down. What exactly would you ask him?”
“I’d ask him why Andrea was so depressed.”
“Do you think she would’ve told him that?” I asked.
Matt took a deep breath. “I’m not saying that I think she told him anything. I’m thinking he might know on a different level. Like he was the cause of some of her problems. She only started acting funny after she met him.”
“Oh,” I whispered, understanding better now. “Do the police know that she was hanging out with him a lot? Did they ever question him?”
“I know they know, because I told them. But Jimmy wasn’t in town when she disappeared.” Matt shook his head. “I feel like if he was supplying her with pot earlier in the winter, then maybe he started giving her something more serious around then . . . you know? Something like that? Maybe something she might have even used that day. Especially if she was thinking of hurting herself.”
It seemed like a reasonable theory. But if Andrea had killed herself, why hadn’t anyone ever found her body? I was sure Matt had thought of that before, but I didn’t want to bring it up myself.
“I get it, Matt. But do you seriously think that if that was the case, Jimmy would admit anything to me?”
Matt was silent.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. His voice caught. “It was just an idea. Not a brilliant idea, but at least something. I need to feel like I’m doing something. Do you think you could ask your brother, or . . . talk to Jimmy yourself?”
I looked up at him. His eyes were glistening. I knew I was being used. But at least it was for a good reason.
“I guess I could talk to him,” I said slowly.
Matt perked up. “Great,” he said. “You want a ride over to his house right now?”