I didn’t really know where I was going. It’s not like Hope had some secret spot she would run off to or anything. Or, if she did, she kept it really well hidden because I had no idea where to go.
Instead, I found myself moving in the direction of Hope’s house. I wasn’t really thinking when I flicked on the blinker and took the left turn a little faster than I should. My tires squealed, and I tried to hug the road to keep control—my palms were sweating again—and then I heard the little chirp-chirp of the police car. I didn’t even realize I was being followed. I pulled over, sighed, and grabbed my license and registration from the glove box. I tried to remember if I was speeding, but three minutes ago seemed like three lifetimes ago, and I couldn’t even remember if I stopped at the four-way on Lupin two blocks back.
The police officer seemed to take forever getting out of his car. I couldn’t see him clearly due to the thick yellow beam coming from his Maglite. He shined it through the driver’s side window as I was rolling it down, and I was nearly blinded. When I could see again, I was staring into Officer Pace’s face.
He didn’t smile at me.
“Hello, Tony.”
My throat was dry, even though now I was certain I didn’t do anything wrong. “Here’s my license and registration,” I say anyway, holding them out to him.
Pace shook his head, waved a black-gloved hand at my open window. “That’s not necessary. Where are you going at this time of night?”
I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but my heart twisted in my chest. A thousand lies rolled through my head: tell him you’re getting Alice medicine, or your dad fell off a ladder, or your mom needs a cup of sugar.
Instead, I heard myself say, “I’m looking for Hope.”
Pace’s dark eyebrows popped up. “Are you? And where are you planning to find her?”
I looked up the dark street and then back at Pace. “I don’t really know, sir. I was just starting to drive.”
“Looks to me like you’re headed over to the Jensens’ house.”
I licked my lips. “Is that okay?”
“You think Hope’s there?”
A little bubble of anger welled and popped in my chest. I don’t know where the hell Hope is, I wanted to scream, but I’m pretty sure she’s screwing with all of us!
“I don’t know.”
Pace sighed, crossed his arms in front of his chest, and spread his legs a little bit. The action wasn’t cop-like. It was more Let’s be buddies and just chat. I think I would have preferred cop-like.
“Hope was a lot of work, wasn’t she, Tony?”
I didn’t answer for a beat, and Pace went on. “I mean, dating her wasn’t that easy, right? She seemed like she would have been pretty high maintenance. Maybe even a little bitchy?”
I wanted to agree with him because yeah, Hope could be a total bitch, and I wouldn’t be on the side of the road at 3:00 a.m. on a Wednesday night if Hope wasn’t high maintenance. But I knew what he was doing. I have seen a lot of cop shows.
“She isn’t a hard person to date,” I said carefully.
Pace cocked a brow. “So you’re still dating?”
“No, but she isn’t…like you’re saying.”
“Come on.” Pace showed me the palms of his gloved hands. “It’s not like this is going in the official report or anything. I’m just curious. I mean, the girls I dated in high school? They sure as hell didn’t look like Hope, you know? And famous parents, always had TV cameras around, the best of everything…” Pace took a few steps away from the side of my car and eyed it, doing nothing to hide how unimpressed he was. “And you’re just…well, you know. Regular. Like me, right? We’re just regular guys.”
“I guess.”
“I’m just thinking maybe a girl like Hope, pretty worldly or whatever, maybe she thought she could fix you or take advantage of you. Or, maybe she kind of made you feel shitty. She had a brand-new SUV, right? Bet you had to work your ass off for this hunk of—”
“Hope didn’t even know how to drive.” I didn’t want to be friends with Pace. I knew he didn’t want to be my therapist or some kind of father figure, that he was only trying to get me to talk so I’d say something incriminating, but it just kind of tumbled out.
Hope’s parents got her the exact SUV she cut out of a dealer catalog and slapped on the refrigerator door. She had never talked about wanting a car or even learning to drive; I don’t even know if she had her permit. But, one day we were at her place watching TV and a commercial came on: that SUV, roaring down some windy, ocean-lined highway. I told her I wanted that car. She said we could drive down the coast—whatever coast that was—and stay in a bed-and-breakfast or a bungalow or something like that. That it would be romantic. Just the two of us.
Two weeks later, the car was parked in her driveway with a bow.
“That must have made you mad, huh?”
I shifted in my seat. “Not mad, it was just…whatever, you know?”
“I don’t know. That would piss me off. If I’m working my ass off for everything I have, and she just snaps her little fingers and poof! Everything you ever wanted.”
“Hope isn’t like that.”
Hope was exactly like that.
“Oh, I’m not saying anything bad about her. I heard she was a real sweet girl. I’m just saying where it could make a guy mad.”
I gripped my steering wheel. “Hope is a real sweet girl.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie.
Pace shrugged. “I’m just saying I could understand that kind of thing getting to you.”
“It doesn’t.”
I was immediately pulled into a memory of me and Hope at the mall. It was Christmastime and we were shopping, and Hope was pouting because I wouldn’t tell her what I wanted for Christmas. Not that I wouldn’t tell her—it was just that I didn’t really want anything. It was more like I wanted everything. I wanted the new snowboard jacket she pointed out, but I’d never even been to the snow, and I sure as hell couldn’t afford a snowboard. I wanted the Bose noise-canceling headphones that she plopped on my head, but they were four hundred dollars. I couldn’t have my girlfriend buy me a four-hundred-dollar gift when I had one hundred and seventy-two dollars to my name, and that was supposed to buy Hope, Mom, Dad, and Alice’s gifts, plus pay my car insurance.
Hope put her hands on her hips, pushed out her bottom lip, and tapped one foot impatiently on the ugly mall tile floor. “Well, Tony Gardner, you’re just no fun at all, are you? If you don’t tell me what you want, you’re going to end up with a lump of coal.”
“Maybe I don’t need anything because I’ve got everything I need right here.” I snaked Hope into my arms and hugged her to me, and she melted, cuddling right up to me, her head nestling against my neck.
“You’re so sweet,” she cooed.
Now when I thought about that time at the mall, I wondered if there were cameras hidden somewhere—in the plastic play park or the fake snowdrifts in Santa’s Workshop. I wonder if Hope was miked, something tucked under her sweatshirt or poking out of her jacket pocket. I can’t remember if that piece of our life made it on the show, but something tells me if it wasn’t a vignette surrounded by fake snow and Christmas music, it was at least retold by Bruce and Becky on one of their hundred Christmas specials.
“Like I said…” Pace went on, actually kicking at the asphalt like he was nervous or shy or something a cop shouldn’t be. “It would be understandable if you just lost it one day…”
A coil of anger worked its way through me, and I prayed that Pace couldn’t see my knuckles turn white as I gripped the steering wheel.
“I didn’t do anything to Hope. If that’s what you were wondering, why didn’t you just ask me? I don’t know where Hope is. I didn’t have anything do to with what happened to her.”
Pace was unfazed. “And what happened to Hope, Tony? Why do you start by telling me that?”
“I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t know what happened to Hope, I promise. If anything happened to her at all. That’s why I’m out here, I just thought—” I felt stupid, like I was playing right into Pace’s hands, but I didn’t know what else to do other than tell the truth. “I just thought maybe if I drove around, I could find her. Is that a crime?”
Pace actually chuckled. “You tell me, lover boy.”
There was an edge to his voice now, the friendly “you can tell me anything” tone gone.
I sucked in a slow breath, focusing on the cracked leather on my steering wheel. “Am I under arrest?”
“Should you be?”
Another breath. “Right now. Am I under arrest, or can I go?”
Pace took a step back from the car and wiped his nonexistent fingerprints from my windshield with his elbow. “You’re not under arrest. You’re free to go whenever you like.” He opened his arms like he had the key to the city. “Be my guest.”
I grabbed my license and registration from my lap and went to cram them back in the glove box. I saw it the same instance Pace did. Hope’s phone. He raised his eyebrows.
“That’s quite a phone.”
The thing was bedazzled with pink-and-white diamonds or rhinestones or whatever. Had a swirly pink H on it. Even though it was half shattered, this obviously wasn’t my phone.
“Yours?”
I swallowed hard. Did I lie? My mind surged: Was it worse to be found with Hope’s phone or to lie about having it? I palmed it. Handed it to Pace.
“I found it in the gutter when I went to Hope’s that first night.”
Pace turned the phone over in his hand. “You didn’t think to mention it earlier?”
I shrugged. “I forgot.” It sounded stupid and weak—fake even to me. “See…” I took the phone from him and swiped it open. “See, there are a bunch of missed calls from me. I was looking for her.”
Pace glanced at the screen. “You have her pass code?”
“Uh…”
“What time did you say you found the phone?”
“I don’t know…nine, ten maybe? After I talked to her, I went over to her house. I found the phone in the gutter.”
Pace was nodding, going along with me. “So you picked it up, put it in your glove box, then went home and called Hope.”
I nodded my head. “Yeah, that’s exactly what happened.”
Was Pace on my side?
“Why would you call Hope’s phone when it was in your glove box, Tony? Why would you call a phone you knew Hope couldn’t answer?”
My heart started to sink.
Heat burst out everywhere.
“I thought… I thought she would forward the calls.” My voice was a hoarse whisper. “Maybe to a burner phone. She wanted me to find the phone.”
Pace pinned me with a stare that said everything. He was careful to barely touch the phone, dropping it into a plastic bag he produced from his shirt pocket.
“Go home, Tony.”