I thought of Greg a few times, recalling past Thanksgivings. Specifically, the year he had insisted on deep-frying a turkey. Mom was skeptical, but he swore it was the absolute juiciest turkey. He started at three in the afternoon, and at nine o’clock, we were finally sitting down to eat. He cut into the bird along the breast bone, and the inside shone white with a touch of pink. Mom looked as if she might cry. He ran to the closest grocery store and bought four leathery rotisserie chickens. He cut them up and presented them on the turkey platter, smothered in Mom’s gravy. We almost didn’t know the difference. Almost.
I recounted the story at the dinner table, and Hannah seemed to delight in the memory, although she couldn’t have been more than a year old. I have to bring him up more, I thought. Let her talk about him, let her remember him.
With Thanksgiving over, I began preparations for Christmas, our second without Greg. I didn’t count on Drew coming. I hadn’t heard from him since the gallery opening. I was sad about that, but not overly so. I didn’t doubt that we’d still be friends. We just needed time, and I had tons of that.
The first week in December, we went to the tree farm, something we used to do as a foursome. I let Leah pick the tree and told Hannah she could pick it the next year. I made Christmas lists and decorated the house. I even dug out all the Christmas CDs and sang with the girls.
Mom watched the kids while I trekked back to the mall. I was reminded of the previous year’s trip, and for the millionth time, I was content with how far I’d come in the past year. There would be no overabundance of toys and no Drew to distract us. In some ways, Christmas could very well be harder.
I pushed the cart up and down the aisles of the toy store. Hannah wanted another Barbie. She’d also asked for a Wii. Greg had always been adamantly against video games. But I had researched age-appropriate games and decided I could set limits. The Wii, at least, had active games that involved jumping around and dancing. I purchased the game console, a combined gift for both girls, and a game for each. I added a few small things for their stockings and paid just under two hundred dollars, drastically different from last year’s spending spree. We were back to normal, a new kind of normal. I drove home and stashed the gifts in my bedroom closet. I would wrap them on Christmas Eve, only a few short days away.
December’s visit with Detective Reynolds came a week before Christmas, our last meeting before we started our semi-annual meetings. Hannah was at school in the morning, and I settled Leah in front of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse while I made coffee.
Matt was fifteen minutes late, but I forgave him when he handed me a brown paper bag, the scent of sugar and cream drifting up as soon as I unfolded the top. He settled at the kitchen table and opened the file he usually brought with him to review latest developments with me. I had always thought it pathetically thin. It looked almost… thick.
True to form, he did not mince words. “Claire, there’s been a development.”
My heart thudded. I sat in a chair across from him and stared at the file.
“I don’t beat around the bush, so I’m going to start the story and tell it to the end. You can interrupt if you have questions, but try to wait until I’m done, okay?”
I nodded. I glanced at Leah sitting on the floor in the living room, absorbed in the television.
“About a year ago, a car went into the Onondaga Lake. Do you know where that is?”
I shook my head.
“It’s north of Syracuse, New York, about an hour and a half drive from Rochester. Two people were in the car, a woman and a man. A few months ago, I began researching unidentified deceased males in a concentric pattern around Rochester. I had a few leads, but none of them panned out. Eventually we identified them all, except for the passenger in this car. Their bodies were found about three months ago, in the car at the bottom of the lake. The police were trolling the lake for a teenage girl missing from the Syracuse area, believed to have drowned. They found the car at the bottom. The lake is sixty-five feet at its deepest. It was a rental car, leased to a woman named…” He consulted his file. “Melissa Richards. Does that name sound familiar to you?”
“No, I’ve never heard it before.”
“Basically, they located two pelvic bones held in place by seatbelts and the crushed car. There was a femur and a tibia found in the car, but no other bones. They believe the driver was a woman and the passenger was a man, based on the width of the pelvic bones. Do you have any questions so far?”
“What happened to the rest of the bones?” I asked, curious as to how two whole skeletons could just disappear.
He coughed and looked down at the file. “When the car went into the lake, the passenger broke the window, trying to get out, which had to have happened prior to the car sinking, otherwise, the pressure would be too great. Apparently, neither could get out of their seatbelts, so they drowned.” He averted his eyes as he said the last words. “And the Onondaga Lake is unique in that it is the fastest flushing natural lake in the United States, about four or five times in a heavy rainfall year. The lake discharges into the Seneca River and the water eventually ends up in Lake Ontario. So with that depth, and that level of water exchange, we wouldn’t expect to find intact skeletons nine months after they were submerged.” He spoke in a clinical voice, devoid of emotion.