The Ambrosia chocolate factory did shut down, about a year after the Journal broke the news that the serial killer had worked there. People had begun to look at those deep drums of chocolate with newfound horror. During his confession, the serial killer revealed that he sometimes brought his victims’ body parts to work with him. Many people, including Leif, were now out of work. It was just like Erik had said. Before the factory closed, they sold hundreds of tons of cocoa bean shells to the city on the cheap; Milwaukee used the husks as mulch around their city trees, so even after the factory closed, the sidewalks smelled of chocolate.
The day Leif got out of prison, we didn’t go to the apartment. We hadn’t paid rent in months, and we were definitely in breach of contract. I hadn’t worked consistent hours at the library in so long, and Leif and I had been pooling our money to pay for his work release program, so we were beyond broke. (I’d never understood that part of the program—you pay to be able to go to work.) I didn’t know what we would do. Leif always said the same thing when I was dropping him back off at the prison: We’ll figure it out. I knew enough by then to know no one ever figures it out.
When I picked him up, he threw himself into the Spitfire like the thing was a coffin. I wasn’t sure he’d ever move again. He was skinny, and his body was limp in the bucket seat. He had always been quiet, but he was quieter than ever now. I drove us to a tiny spot of beach north of the city. We walked down a steep, winding path to the rocky beach. There was an old cement pier crumbling into the lake, rainbows of beach glass glinting in the sand, whole tree trunks’ worth of driftwood washed up on shore. The lake was seven different hues of blue. Some people said you could see part of an old shipwreck from this beach, and fragments of the ship still washed up here after storms. The lake was glass that day, though. Leif sat down on a log and cried. I did not hold him even though I could tell it was what he wanted. I went to the lake and skipped stones. I wished there were loud waves so I couldn’t hear him cry. He should have been alone to do that. When it sounded like he’d calmed down, I went to sit with him on the log.
“We’re never going to find Dee,” I told him. “I know Frank killed her.”
He shook his head. He picked up a piece of smooth brown glass and rubbed it between his fingers. “You don’t know that,” he said.
“What happened to you?” I asked him.
“You happened.”
I allowed this. “What are we going to do?”
He turned to me and held my chin. I closed my eyes and wished we could be living in any other time except now. I knew this was delusional. If you think about the cumulative coincidences too often, it will ruin your mind. Maybe I wanted him to keep holding my chin. Maybe he wanted me to hug him. Maybe I liked it.
“When I’m off parole, I’ve got a buddy who’s gonna set me up with a truck-driving gig. It’s good pay, you get regular time off, and the best part—I’ll get the fuck out of this city.” It was far enough away from the smokestacks to the south, and the ambulances wailing in the north, and the constant whirl of traffic, to feel as if we were out of the city.
“Jesus. Truck driving?”
He didn’t say anything. I began to panic.
“Please don’t leave me too,” I begged. My throat was suddenly dry, and my tongue stuck to the top of my mouth. I was embarrassed to beg.
“You can come with me,” he offered. “You should.”
I shook my head. “You know I can’t,” I choked. “Dee . . .”
“You just said it yourself . . . you think she’s gone.”
“Don’t say that,” I cried. “Don’t you fucking say that.”
I pushed him as hard as I could. I wanted him to fall. I wanted to hurt him, but he merely teetered backward off the log. Still, he scrambled to stand up and step away from me. His eyes were wide and wild. Maybe he thought then that I was gone too. Maybe I was. Maybe I was just then beginning to feel beyond the shore of my own deep despair. I thought maybe, in the weeks before, I had been feeling Dee’s missingness like something too hot or too cold to touch—carefully, tenderly, barely at all—and now I was beginning to understand the intensity, the insanity, even, of really feeling it. I could see then the huge, monstrous shapes of the feeling forming inside me.
“Give me the keys,” he said. “I’m sorry. I can’t. Stay here. With you.” I dug in my pocket for his car keys and threw them at him. He didn’t blink, and then he started back up the bluff. I stayed on the log and tried to listen for the car’s engine to start up, but all I could hear was the soft lap of the lake on the beach. I listened and listened. I felt Dee’s absence growing wider and wider inside me.
I had to walk three miles to a pay phone to call Peter to come pick me up. When I got him on the phone, he was out of breath and confused. What did we tell you Margaret? You’ve got to tell us where you’re going. Who you’re with. How long you’ll be. Always. The shortest bouts of silence from me could throw him and Ma into a panic. I had started asking everyone because I truly didn’t know the answer.
“Pete,” I said. “What are we going to do?”
“Where the hell are you?”
I told Pete about Leif leaving, and Pete called the man I loved a degenerate, and I clenched my jaw. The phone cut out. I was out of money.