The morning before I left, I sat down with Stefan to ask if he had chosen the next candidate for The Healing Project. Dozens of suggestions had poured in since our appearance on TV. It would take a long time to sort these new ones into priorities and future possibilities. Since Merry was on a maternity leave, for the first time he’d be doing that entirely on his own with situations that were unfamiliar, related in no way to him or us. Even given his driving desire to make amends, he felt like he was underwater in heavy current.
Julie and I hadn’t revealed the full scope of my own colossal flop at being a ministering angel to the survivors of Roman’s victim. I hadn’t asked Julie to lie, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell the whole truth. I thought of myself, hands on my knees, heaving in the weeds. Still, it more or less all worked out in the end, hadn’t it? I’d offered my help in sorting through the mail, but Stefan gently refused. Good for him, I thought.
More in the spirit of hopefulness than sage counsel, I said, “You’ll do fine. Just trust your instincts. You have good instincts.”
“Let the people figure out their own goals. You just be the listener and the facilitator,” Jep said. “You don’t have to influence. They know what they need. They’ll tell you if you give them room and just listen.”
I left them making coffee and went upstairs for my things.
By the time I came back downstairs with my overnight bag, Stefan was carrying his files into the den to spread them out on the big library table in there. He apologized again that he couldn’t go with me. Jep kissed me like I was his best girl, and then slipped something into the pocket of my coat. When I reached for my gloves later on, I almost laughed. It was one of his big silver coaching whistles, the kind that lets out a blast that could stop a train.
* * *
Coming into Black Creek that afternoon after so long was probably akin to the experience of people returning to a place of their youth, to find everything a little smaller and more begrimed than the way they were remembered by their smaller and more begrimed selves. As if my turning onto that very exit road animated a tableau of that night, the steely sky closed in and the snow threw down. I didn’t remember that the drive from the highway to the hospital parking lot was literally seconds: The storm-gauzed lights from the hospital building, glimpsed from the top of the ridge road, were as terrifying to me as if I’d come upon an alien installation. I drove down there and parked for a moment in the lot. After seeing Stefan in the locked ward that night, I’d come back out here, and, laying my hand against the hot hood of the still-running car, I threw up in the snow.
There were things I hadn’t thought about for years; how was that possible?
I remembered again the sticky red leather seat of the booth in the Denny’s, where, that following morning, Jep and I sat across from Stefan’s lawyer located quickly for us by a coach friend of Jep’s. He sketched in the potential outcomes of our son’s case. Some were bad; some were worse. “We don’t want a trial. The best hope is a judge who’ll see Stefan as a kind of victim too, of drugs, not a longtime user but a first-time offender; a judge who’ll give him less than ten years, for manslaughter, maybe a spin in a mental health facility, even though those places are hellholes.”
“And the worst hope?”
“Murder can mean a life sentence,” he said. “Parole after twelve years maybe.”
Worlds we never knew existed were smashing fists to our ribs. I didn’t want to remember that sensation. There was no profit in such recollections. It was getting late now so I slowly steered the car out of the hospital lot and headed toward the town.
Even though it was Thursday, and barely dinnertime, the main street had a frowsy feeling, as if the performance had already happened, and somebody had forgotten to tear down the tattered posters. The place would not have looked sinister to anyone but me; it was just an ersatz hippie little college street of no particular distinction. Cuddly single-story abodes of the cottage type sat a little back from the street, surrounded by patches of scrappy lawn, and the retail establishments that flanked them followed a nonconformist conformity—bagels, juicery, head shop, bookstore, repeat. The signs on the stores reminded me of the precious way some people name their cats: Gypsy Threads, The Exuberant Alternative, Mrs. Pennyroyal’s Papers, Bagel Bountiful. Not in any particular hurry to get to the Glory Be Bed-and-Breakfast Inn, I decided to find myself a quick dinner first, then maybe do some scouting around.
The restaurant was called Mack The Cheese. It served only variations on macaroni and cheese. In a town filled with homesick college kids, I thought, this idea was a stroke of genius. Beside Mom’s Traditional, there was Spinach and Artichoke Macaroni and Cheese, Macaroni and Cheese with Andouille Sausage, and Taco Pizza Macaroni and Cheese. As I ate my Macaroni-and-Gruyère with green peppers and sun-dried tomatoes, I thought helplessly of Jep and me, more than twenty years ago, before Stefan, “cooking dinner” in our wretched studio apartment, believing that Kraft Spaghetti Classics in a box was a real gourmet triumph, especially with a healthy side of iceberg lettuce. We had been so sweet and earnest: How could this foul luck have come snuffling its dark way through time until it found us? Only a fool believes that people who do good must then derive good from fate; but we’re helpless in that belief. Why else do good? Why not teach our kids just to smash and grab in life?
When I finished dinner, it was still early, but I was exhausted. My plan was to go directly to the bed-and-breakfast inn, and, by eight o’clock, anesthetize myself with Valium and a slug of the innkeeper’s sherry. Although the weather was moderate for this time of year in north central Wisconsin, it was no day at the beach, as it were. Still, I decided on a short walk, just a couple of blocks, before getting into my car, to shake down the pound of macaroni and cheese I’d eaten and to clear my head.
I thought of the time back then, when he had just gone into the hospital, I asked Stefan, where did you get the drugs? I was so na?ve, I never dreamed he wouldn’t just come right out with it. Thinking about it with the remove of time, I’m shocked that he did, knowing I could have tracked the girl down, knowing that I might well have given the police her name. I could have told the police, and I should have.
Why didn’t I?
It honestly hadn’t occurred to me that the drugs were a crime as well. And no one had asked me.
“Emily,” he said. “Emily Lindquist. Or Lundgren. Or something with an L. Belinda’s best friend up there.”
“How did Belinda know her?”
“From...from before college. She met Bindy in cheerleading camp, I guess. I think she was from Chicago. But I didn’t realize at first she was the same person she used to talk about from cheer.
“We weren’t like insane addicts. It was just drugs like there are in a college town. Weekend drugs. Study drugs. It went fine, it was fun. Except for that night.”
I walked along. Maybe it was what I knew about the place, but the town felt creepy. Human beings really do have animal senses. You can tell if you’re being watched. I felt eyes on me from all those frowsy, closed, empty little places. Then my phone vibrated with a text in my pocket and I pulled it out.
I can see you, walking up Pottawatomi Street. What the hell do you think you’re doing?
Abruptly, I felt cold, but not from the weather.
I texted back, Why are you here?
She replied, Because you’re here.
Back when this girl told me that she wasn’t involved with bad people, I believed her. Now I didn’t. She was entangled in some way with a murder in a small college town. She was drawn back here. Or if she wasn’t drawn back here, she was following me, and her reasons for doing that couldn’t be pure. I found a little courtyard between two small brick houses and tucked myself into it.
How did you know Belinda? I texted her.
She texted, Cheer competitions.
So Stefan was right. Except he didn’t know that Emily was Esme was Emily.
I texted back simply: Call me.
She agreed, but said she had to go somewhere safe first.
It grew colder as the evening drew in fast. I found a bench and sat huddled. At last, my phone vibrated.