“Uh, no,” I said, a little bemused.
The room looked more like a fortune-teller’s den than the office of a trailer park. There were sumptuous velvet throws draped over a small round coffee table and a shapeless couch complete with matching cushions. Old movie posters in thin black frames were hung on the wood paneled walls. Displayed on a bench that stretched wall to wall behind the counter were gaudy trinkets and a pack of illustrated tarot cards next to a large crystal ball. She looked me over again, her expression pensive. “Then how can I help you?”
“I’m looking for someone. You may know him,” I said nervously. “His name is Rad.” I wasn’t sure what else to say, so I added, “He sent a postcard from here a few months ago.”
She regarded me carefully. “You’re looking for Rad,” she said, with a mysterious smile. “Then you must be Audrey.”
Maud led me down a narrow, winding path to a white trailer with muddy-orange trim parked in an area partly hidden by trees and shrubbery. A makeshift washing line was strung from the trailer to a nearby tree, and my heart skipped a beat when I recognized one of Rad’s T-shirts fluttering in the gentle breeze.
“This is him,” said Maud.
“Thank you.”
She pressed her gnarled hands into mine. “Good luck, dear.” She turned and ambled back down the path.
Taking a deep breath, I walked toward the door and knocked.
A moment later, the door swung open, and Rad stood there, framed by the doorway, wearing a pair of board shorts and clutching a towel in his hand. He looked at me with an expression I couldn’t quite interpret. After a few tense seconds, he finally said, “Audrey.”
“Hi, Rad.” He looked different. There was something about his face and body that looked harder and more defined. A thin layer of stubble had grown on his usually clean-shaven face, and his fingernails were chewed and brittle.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, unsmiling.
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “I just wanted to talk to you.”
He looked nonplussed. “Well, I was just about to go for a swim.” His tone wasn’t rude exactly, but it was dismissive. He pushed past me, heading toward the beach.
“Rad,” I walked after him. “What the hell? I came all the way here. Can you at least talk to me?”
He stopped and turned around. “Talk to you?” he gave me an incredulous look. “You disappeared, Audrey. You changed your fucking number. It’s a little bit too late for talking, isn’t it?”
I was taken aback. This person in front of me looked and sounded like Rad, but he seemed like a stranger. It was like knowing your favorite song by heart and then hearing a live karaoke performance sung with an odd staccato and off-key.
“I had to get away,” I said, hating the pleading tone in my voice. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
He shrugged and continued walking.
“Rad,” I called after him.
“Just leave me alone, Audrey,” he said quietly, his back still toward me. I ran up past him, jogging backward, and peered up into his face.
“Hey, I just want to talk—please.”
He stopped walking. “How the hell did you get here, anyway?”
“I drove.”
“Since when did you learn to drive?”
“When I was in Delta. Gabe taught me.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to take them back.
“Gabe?” he said, his eyes narrowing.
“Just someone I was kind of seeing.” I avoided his gaze.
“Well,” he said wryly, “that didn’t take long.”
He walked past me again, crossing the threshold from lawn to sand.
“Rad,” I said helplessly. “I don’t know what to say.”
My eyes were fixed on his back as he walked farther and farther away toward the shoreline.
“Just go back home, Audrey.” His voice was barely audible over the crashing waves. “There’s nothing for you here.”
“How did it go, dear?” asked Maud as she caught me walking back to my car. I wiped at the tears spilling from my eyes and shook my head. “Not good.” She reached out and took my hand. “Come with me, dear. Let me make you a cup of tea.”
I soon found myself sitting beside Maud on her couch. Our empty teacups and chipped saucers were perched near the edge of the coffee table. “I still remember the day he came through here. I took one look at him and thought to myself, ‘This kid looks down on his luck.’ He rented one of the trailers for a month or so, then when the general manager left, he took on the role.”
“Rad? But he’s a writer.”
“Not anymore,” she said, with a small shake of her head. “He told me he wanted a job that didn’t require too much thinking. Said he was tired of thinking.”
“What happened to him?”
“I’ll leave that up to him to tell you.”
“He won’t talk to me.”
“Maybe not,” she said, “but I can tell you this. You’re the only thing he ever talks about.”
I checked myself into a motel a few streets away from Bell Rock. The room was a lot nicer than I expected, with a view of the sea through double glass doors that led onto a small balcony. I even found a chocolate mint on my pillow when I climbed into bed, exhausted.
I picked up my phone from the side table and dialed Lucy’s number. She answered right away.
“Hey!” she said cheerfully.
“Hey, I just arrived at Bell Rock.”
“You okay? You sound tired.”
“Yeah, I’m fine. It was a long drive, and it took me awhile to get used to driving on the other side of the road.”
“Oh, I should have come with you.”
“No, I think it’s better I came alone.”
There was a short pause.
“I found Rad—he’s still here.”
“Oh, good. How is he?”
I sighed. “He didn’t want to talk to me.”
“You serious? Why?”
“I don’t know. He’s still angry, I suppose.”
“Well, maybe it was a shock for him, seeing you after all this time.”
“Maybe.” I put my head back on the pillow and stared up at the ceiling. “It’s just that he seems so different.”
“In what way?”
“He took a job managing the park.”
“Really? What sort of work is that?”
“General maintenance stuff, I guess. I’m not really sure.”
“So he’s not writing anymore?”
“I met Maud, the owner. She says he’s given up on writing.”
“He’s so talented, though,” Lucy protested. “Why would he give that up?”
“I don’t know.” I chewed on my thumbnail. “He looks different, too. It’s his eyes, I think. They seem—” I struggled to find the right word. “Empty,” I said finally.
“Oh no. God, I wish Freddy and I had checked up on him a little more.”
“It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have disappeared all of a sudden.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Audrey. People are allowed to leave if they want.”
“Yeah. It’s just that . . . well, I think he might be going through a really hard time at the moment.”