But tonight, I have paperwork to thank.
The rope he installed on my tank was no obstacle. When the time came, after he had finished cleaning and departed, I unfastened the knot and lifted the lid in quite the same manner as I always do. Should I be insulted by his underestimation of my abilities?
The route to Terry’s office was rife with temptation, but The Consequences come on ever more quickly these days, so I forsook every tempting mollusk on the way. The Pacific geoduck clam exhibit looked especially ripe for the picking tonight. The humans call them gooey ducks, but their texture is pleasantly firm.
But no gooey ducks tonight. I had more important plans. And to be honest, my appetite is rather poor these days.
When I suckered up the side of Terry’s desk, I found the central object of my mission.
A driver’s license. Just like the one in my Collection. It states a human’s full name and date of birth.
As the seconds ticked by and The Consequences loomed, I carried the thin plastic card down the hallway. By the time I arrived at my destination, I had already begun to feel terribly weak. With effort, I tucked it under the tail of the sea lion statue.
My return journey was slow and difficult. More than once, as I heaved my heavy body along the cement hallway, I pondered the possibility that I might perish. Right then, right there. Never to taste a scallop again. Never to feel my arms sucker onto the cool glass, to taste that humanity on the inside of her wrist, to touch, in turn, my Collection’s treasures. If I had died tonight, would this errand have been worth it?
Indeed.
Tova did not come tonight. She may not come tomorrow, but she will come. I am confident she will not leave without saying goodbye.
She will not be able to resist running her rag under the sea lion’s tail. She never can. She knows she is the only one who does.
When she does, she will see what I have left for her. And then she will know.
The Bad Check
Ethan splashes Laphroaig Single Malt over two ice cubes then settles onto his lumpish little sofa. Evening creeps into the living room, daylight draining from the front window in unhurried measures, as slow as the sips of whiskey disappearing from his lowball glass.
Cassmore.
That surname had been a bugger in his brain since the very first time Cameron introduced himself. He knows Cassmore, but from where? It wasn’t until he was brushing his teeth this morning when, out of nowhere, the memory popped into his head.
A bad check.
It was the sort of thing that happened with some frequency back in those days, back when check writing was still a common way to pay for groceries. You bounce a check, you get put up on the wall. Sometime in the ’90s, it must’ve been.
Ethan remembers the ancient, wrinkled slips tacked there, on the counter under the cash register, when he bought the Shop-Way. Bad checks from customers. A warning. Some of them had been there for years, such as this one in particular. The name Daphne Cassmore printed up in the corner atop the address block. The check was for some piddly amount. Six dollars and change.
Ethan took the checks down right away. That wasn’t how he’d run the store. But he made a mental note of the names.
It had been simple enough to link Daphne to Cameron. A few clicks on that ancestry website he’d bought a premium membership to a few months back led to Daphne Cassmore (who later married and became Daphne Scott) and then to a half sister: one Jeanne Baker, age sixty, of Modesto, California. Ms. Baker’s robust online presence seemed largely due to her involvement in several communities for collectors and consigners. Ethan knows the type: people who make a hobby of buying and selling rubbish. Cameron had complained about his aunt’s hoarding problem. It fit together.
Ethan drains the last of the scotch from his glass. He’s glad no one writes checks anymore. Seeing so-called scammers hung up like that, their shame made public . . . how cruel. And Daphne Cassmore’s bad check, in particular, always made him feel sorry for whoever wrote it. To be crucified over such a lowly sum. What measly six-dollar grocery haul precipitated her fall, in the store’s eyes, from grace?
It couldn’t have been a terribly long fall.
From the bits and pieces Cameron has told him of his mum, anyway, that seems to be the case. The lad gets tight-lipped when he speaks of her, but Ethan has heard enough to deduce drugs were involved. Can he blame Cameron for not wanting to get into it? His mum abandoned him.
The living room is fully dark now, and Ethan nearly trips over the pair of trainers he kicked off earlier when he crosses to the kitchen to pour another Laphroaig. Part of him thinks he ought to fill Cameron in on the town gossip, as it’s sure to spread now that Sandy Hewitt is opening her mouth in the middle of the produce section at the Shop-Way. Sooner or later, the lad will hear it himself: the rumor that his mother may know something about the disappearance of a teenage boy thirty years ago. Might have known and never said anything. Could Cameron’s image of her grow any more tarnished? Obviously, it all happened years before he was born.
Or did it?
How old is Cameron? Ethan can’t recall whether he’s ever mentioned his age, but he can’t be older than twenty-five, right?
And then there’s the matter of Tova.
How well can you know someone from bagging their groceries for so many years? Well enough to be certain she’s hunting down info on Daphne Cassmore right now. She won’t stop until she finds this woman who she thinks can tell her the untellable. Tova has never bought into the official story of Erik’s death, Ethan is certain.
And then what will happen?
He ought to tell her that Cameron is Daphne Cassmore’s son. She should hear it from a friend. Those two are chummy. How the lad has managed to crack Tova’s shell is a mystery to Ethan; he’s been trying to do so himself for nearly a year. But if Cameron’s mother was potentially involved in what happened to her son, what will she think whenever she looks at Cameron?
It’s past ten in the evening, but Tova Sullivan is a night owl. Gathering his wits, he picks up the phone. He’ll ask her over for dinner.
The Downside of Free Food
Cameron tosses a disgustingly mealy peach, whole but for a bite, into the trash can at the end of the pier. Ethan’s expired-grocery offerings can be a blessing and a curse. But he’s saved a crap ton of cash on groceries this summer, and to boot, he’s been parking the camper in Ethan’s driveway for free. He owes Ethan a solid, for sure.
Stars scatter across the sky over Puget Sound, reflecting their silvery glow on the inky water below, a beautifully random pattern of lights that reminds Cameron of the dark brown freckles on the bridge of Avery’s nose. He turns from the water and heads back to the camper, where his phone is charging. He wonders, not for the first time, what it would be like to park here on the shore and wake up to nothing but the water view in his windshield. He’s thought about trying it, but Ethan says that Sowell Bay’s overnight patrolman, a buddy of his called Mike, would apparently relish towing a camper from one of the public lots. Would give poor old Mike something to do in the tedious predawn hours. Maybe, someday, he’d live here and have a house with a view of the water. Maybe, if he could just find Simon Brinks.