Courtney was a writer, at work on a book. She had talent and hope—she knew what she was doing. She’d polish up scenes between copies and incoming calls. She knew publishing was a long shot, but, unlike me, she wasn’t ashamed to be seen trying. When I finally told her that I wanted to write, too, it felt like a huge confession. Part of the reason I’d taken a low-responsibility job was that I wanted time to write in my off-hours—a fact I hardly admitted to myself—but I rarely had the courage to sit down and do so. When I did, all I could think about was Mom. I would be overpowered by a clear memory of her, then sit down at my computer and pour out five or so pages in a fever, desperate to keep that moment forever. But then the fever would pass and I would be left with the screen’s infinite blank page, the cursor blinking at me expectantly, and I’d go pour myself a drink. I did this every month or so, until my desktop was littered with disconnected stops and starts. As a child, I had left writing in a moment of terror, and every time I tried to return as an adult, that terror came back, hardwired and physical.
I’d thought slinking back down to North Carolina was some kind of failure, but it turned out to be exactly the right move. Free from the suffocating, conservative atmosphere at Davidson, its academic pressure, I could slowly relax in this land of large houses and mild winters. Eventually I moved to nearby Durham and became the caretaker of a beautiful, comfortably decaying historic house, living rent-free and steadily paying down credit card debt I’d accrued during college. My neighbor Liz exuberantly befriended me, dragging me out of the house and introducing me to her friends. She took me to parties, and we went out dancing at least once a month, when a friend of ours spun soul records in a crumbling four-story building that used to house a boxing ring, all dark corners and red lights.
I dated a little, falling into the comfort of touch and immediacy. Often, a relationship would begin before the previous one had ended; I tried to make myself feel better by joking that I had a “little problem with overlap.” I was barely aware that I chained my loves together just as my mother had; I never would have admitted how deeply I needed someone.
I ended up befriending many other people who had crash-landed in the area, artists and writers looking to re-center, people who had been thrown off-balance by turmoil they would not or could not discuss. Six or eight of us started taking turns hosting weekly dinners, the meals becoming more elaborate and competitive each week. After we ate, we’d sit out on the porch and continue drinking the wine and beer we’d begun over salad, our chairs wobble-thudding on the wide, warped planks. Heavy vintage ashtrays from Goodwill lined up next to dirty tea saucers on the railings, and other friends would sometimes amble by and come sit with us. Porch sitting was best in the middle of the summer, when it was still eighty-five degrees at ten o’clock, the evening stretching unnoticed into the still-sweaty early hours of the morning. For me, porch sitting gave me back the night I’d loved as a young child, made it safe and beautiful again. And sitting and talking with these kind, smart friends, music on low, took the hard, speedy edge off my drinks, made me happy with fewer of them.
Looking back, it seems like we were all trying to catch our breath during those after-dinner, red-wine nights on the front porch, all those smoky evenings at the bar. Life was pleasant despite the feeling that if anything important was happening, it was happening elsewhere. Rent was low in Durham and wages were okay; we could put everything on hold for a while. Occasionally, someone would move to New York or Portland, Oregon. We’d have a big going-away party, only to welcome them back a few months later.
We laughed and drank and shared confidences and made love in a musical-chairs kind of way. When parents came up, I made it clear that my father was absent, my mother dead. Everyone assumed cancer and I didn’t correct them. I made of these friends a new family that didn’t need the facts concerning my first one. I faded away from my aunts and uncles; I called only every six months or so, and for the most part they didn’t call me. I was no specific person’s responsibility, and they all had their own lives to worry about. I had one friend, Mindy, with whom I had deeper, more open conversations. She knew what had happened to my mother, but we didn’t talk about it much. There was no reason to. It all belonged to another era, for a while.
36
* * *
Then, one afternoon at the office, time collapsed again. It was a Monday, late March 2006. A quiet day. Polite, mumbled conversations, gurgle of the coffeemaker, the shirring sound of paper piling up in the copy machine exit tray. The occasional warbly, digital ring of a telephone.
The central reception line sang out at about two o’clock, blurr-blurr-bl’blur breaking the post-lunch spell.
“Dean’s office—this is Courtney . . . Hold on—just a moment.”
She nodded at me, hit the HOLD button. I stretched my face into a smile, one that would bend my words so that it sounded, on the other end, like I was chipper and energetic, eager to help. I raised my eyebrows at Courtney while she giggled. I snatched up the receiver, punched the lit button to release the line.
“Hello, this is Sarah!”
“Sarah, this is Walter Grzyb. How you doin’ down there?”
The long, rounded vowels of that Maine accent rushed suddenly into my unprepared ears. It had been months since I’d spoken to anyone up north.
“Oh . . . I’m, I’m good. Just, y’know, Monday, working. Just at the office here . . . It’s been a while—”
Walt cut me off, abrupt in a way I’d never heard before. “Good, good. Listen, Sarah, I’ve got some news for you. In fact, are you alone right now? Or can you get somewhere where you have some privacy?”
“Sure, sure,” I said, starting to shake, just a little, surprising myself. “We have an extra office; I’ll just transfer over. Just give me a minute.” I couldn’t tell if I sounded normal. I focused on all those old failed leads, tried to use them to hold down my newly pounding pulse. There had been a tightness in Walt’s voice, a slightly higher pitch, something different from the even, professional tone I remembered. It almost sounded like excitement.
But surely Walt would read me the name of a town that, no, we’d never visited, a man that, no, I’d never heard of, a supposed lead that would prove to be the product of rumor. Many people called the police because they craved the shadowy fame of being connected to the case, thought it would throw them into relief against the gray background of other people’s calm, uneventful lives. They tried to imbue incidental connections with meaning, their imaginations fast-forwarding to headlines about a heroic tipster. They claimed to have overheard confessions, to have found a knife in the woods, to have seen a vehicle that night, eight or ten or now twelve years ago, and the police would cautiously and thoroughly investigate and come up with nothing. As I got up from my desk, I prepared myself for the familiar whoosh of disappointment, the quick loss of hope, followed by the shame of ever having felt that hope, even if just for a moment. My life would not change, I told myself, and that would be fine. Just fine.
I shut myself into the dim spare office. White light from the overcast sky came in through the big window, angling down between our building and the next. I sat down at the large desk, armed with a white legal pad and a blue pen. I uncapped the pen, just in case. I picked up the receiver and pushed the button for Walt’s call.
“Okay, I’m ready. What’s going on?” I asked smoothly, calmly, in my work voice.
Walt took a breath. “Well, Sarah. We think we know who killed your mother. In fact, we’re sure we know.”