After the last bell, she packed up her bags, quick, at the last moment, throwing Lucia’s black leather-bound journal in.
She drove slowly to Lucia’s house, the porch sinking like she remembered, a yawning mouth. The window dormers were like angry eyes and the upper left one with a cardboard patch reminded her of that nursery rhyme.
Cry, baby cry, stick your finger in your eye.
This town was the curse, not Lucia. In the right dormer, the curtain moved and Bridget thought she saw a face. Lenny. Bridget pounded on the door, but no one came.
She sat in her car, in front of the brown ramshackle house, and called Tripp’s phone, letting it ring over and over. She gripped the steering wheel, willing her heart to calm. Her skin buzzing, hot and cold. She pressed a hand to her cheek.
Her phone rang in her palm and she almost answered it, assuming Tripp. Petra. Again. Her finger hovered over the red button, shaking in midair. She hit decline.
?????
At Tripp’s house, Bridget rang the doorbell, a finger pressed and held there.
Tripp finally came to the door, his face pinked with sleep, his eyes heavy lidded. He wore a faded T-shirt and basketball shorts, barefoot. It felt too intimate, somehow.
“I’m sorry. Were you sleeping? I can come back.” Bridget felt her face flush.
“Bridge, what’s up?” He opened the door wider, yawning, and motioned her in. She slid past him, into the house.
“I think Lucia’s missing?” She came right out with it, but it got hung up at the end, like a question.
“Again?” He lifted up the hem of his shirt and wiped his mouth, a boy gesture, something she’d seen Holden do a million times. “This girl runs off a lot.”
“I think it’s real this time. There was an incident at school and I haven’t seen her in four whole days.” Bridget’s voice hitched up, a shrill squeak.
“Bridget, are you okay?” His face slackened, worried.
“Everyone thinks I’m going to drive my car off the bridge into the Lackawaxen.” She lifted her hair up, sweat popping up at her hairline. She’d been having these hot flashes lately, her hair suddenly sticky at the neck, her cheeks bursting red.
“It might be . . . understandable,” Tripp said. Like he would know anything about it, his singly focused life. He didn’t, as far as Bridget knew, even have a girlfriend. No one to care about but himself. Bridget tried to envision Tripp taking care of anyone else. The kind of shit-piss-vomit end-of-life care. Bridget fanned herself with her fingers.
“Do you have any water or something?”
Tripp got her a glass of water that he filled from the tap, no ice, and when he handed it to her their fingertips brushed. She downed it in one gulp.
“I think I need to fill out a police report.” She handed the glass back to him. “Will you come with me?”
Tripp rubbed his chin, looked out the window above the sink, through the yellow gingham curtains. The sun was burning too bright for such a weird day; the air had a circus-music feel to it.
“Yeah, I can come. But, Bridget, why are you the only one doing all this? What about her family? Other teachers?” He looked back into the living room. “You know Nate is staying here, right?”
Bridget nodded. Alecia had told her, perfunctorily, when she’d called the day before. Her voice had been so flat. Everything is so different now, you don’t even know. I found things.
Bridget flashed back to Lucia kissing Nate, her hand pulling him against her by his shirt. The way he seemed to lean into her, his body seeking it. His words, later, saying a different thing.
She had asked Alecia what things, but she just said, I don’t want to talk about it. Their conversations were so halted now. Formal. How is Gabe? He’s doing great! How’s school? Oh, you know, end of the year coming. They didn’t talk much about Nate, neither of them sure where the other’s loyalties would lie. That’s the trouble with “couple” friends. When there was no longer a couple, was there still a friendship? She’d asked her once do you believe Nate? Alecia just snorted into the phone. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Which didn’t really answer the question, but Bridget, being southern, didn’t press even though she wanted to. Nate’s situation, as they called it, flowed between them like a wide open river, fast and furious. They didn’t cross it, or talk about it, except in roundabout ways (we should get together soon), but sometimes, Bridget could hardly hear Alecia over the loudness of the rushing water. They talked louder to cover the noise but it all felt a little bit hollow.
Bridget missed her real friendship, the one before the river. And the past few days, Bridget couldn’t breathe and maybe if she talked to someone about it, it would get better. If she could just say I don’t know why but I can’t breathe, maybe she’d be able to breathe again. But Alecia was in the thick of it, and maybe she wasn’t the right person to talk to anyway.
“Where is Nate now?” Bridget looked around, seeing no trace of him at all.
Tripp just shrugged. “I haven’t talked to him yet today. I got home from work, I worked a double. He was passed out on the couch. I went to bed. He’s gone now. Sometimes he leaves a note.” He gestured to the empty table.
“Tripp, do you believe him?” Bridget hadn’t meant to ask it, didn’t even know what she’d hoped to accomplish.
“I do.” Tripp straightened and did that thing with his shirt again, lifting it to his mouth. Bridget could see his stomach, muscled and carved in a new way. She wanted to press her palm to the ridges, feel the dew on his skin. Feel how it was different. Holden had been fit, he could run miles and often did, but he was rounded in the belly, soft with age. She used to move her hands around it, holding it like a globe. Tripp was still talking. “Nate is complicated. He wants everyone to like him. I think he was trying, in a weird way, to rescue her. But, he, uh, sometimes goes too far.”
Bridget didn’t ask what that meant. She didn’t want to know.
“I just mean that he tries too hard,” Tripp clarified.
“You don’t think he slept with Lucia?” Bridget asked.
“He says he didn’t. I’ve never known him to be a liar. I can’t ask too many questions, you know?” He shrugged and saw her face. “Because I’m a cop. I’m not on the investigation, but if I knew anything definitive, I’d have to report it, right?”
“Tripp, I think she’s missing. I went to her house. It’s just that creepy weird brother there. He didn’t answer the door.” She gulped, her throat thick. Something occurred to her, an awful, clawing feeling. “Do you think . . . ? Do you think it’s possible that Nate is with her . . . ?”
Tripp blinked, then puffed out his cheeks. Looked around his kitchen like he’d never seen it before.
“I’ll get dressed,” he said.