“Probably not. I’m basically just a traffic cop; there’s no crime in this town. There’s drugs, but even those have a larger regional task force. It’s no secret I can’t stand Harper. He goes after what he thinks the truth is, be damned with what he finds out along the way. I want to be a detective, but not his way.”
“Something was going on at school,” Bridget admitted slowly. She thought about the witch comments, the burning note. She thought about Lucia’s creative writing journal, sitting on her desk, the bizarrely cryptic entries she’d initially attributed to her brother. Wrist to floor, his hand like an ape.
She thought about how disengaged she’d been as a teacher in the past year, the past few months. How life seemed to be happening around her, and if she had to picture it, she felt like an observer. A patron in the monkey house. She realized that maybe all of this was related, that maybe Nate was collateral damage.
She couldn’t articulate now how the kids all seemed to slide sideways since Lucia disappeared. How their eyes shifted away from Bridget, away from Bachman, their mouths smirking, whispering behind cupped hands.
There was a missing piece. Something that no one knew.
The waitress brought dinner. Bridget ate and thought about how she’d been turning a blind eye, out of laziness or tiredness or the sensation she was being weighted down. That anything she did was hopeless, that the students at Mt. Oanoke would go on being ruthless or chipper or doing heroin or underage drinking and nothing she did would make a difference. She was simply treading water. For a teacher, apathy was a crime; she used to believe that. Then again, like Tripp said, she was just a person trying to get through it.
“I think I’ve been stupid. Or at least willfully ignorant.” On her plate, a half serving of gluey pancakes remained. She hadn’t eaten that much at once in weeks. Months maybe. The hard knot of dough and sugar felt lodged in her esophagus, stuck.
“Well,” Tripp cleared his throat and rummaged in the plastic holder for more sugar packs. “You’ve been through a lot.” When he looked up he met her eyes, tilted his head. “Did I ever tell you how sorry I was? I was. I am.”
He didn’t. At the funeral, he gave her a quick peck, but mostly avoided her. He’d said, let me know if I can do anything. Like of all people in the world, when she was at the absolute bottom, when the world seemed black and shot through with silver sharp pain, when getting out of bed or taking a shower seemed like daunting tasks, when she just wanted to talk about Holden because all anyone else seemed to want to do was change the subject or bring her macaroni-and-cheese casseroles, she would have called Tripp? No.
“You didn’t. But I appreciate it.” She was better at accepting condolences, about smiling back instead of crying. To say Oh, thank you, yes it’s so hard, no don’t worry, I’m fine. That in the strange role of widow, people expected her to comfort them. Oh yes, I know it’s terrible, so awful. Yes, he was so young. Oh, I remember that time at community picnic, yes he was very good at softball.
“I should have said something sooner, but I never knew what. Plus, the guy didn’t like me much.”
And for once, Bridget laughed. Most people wouldn’t have dared to say it. So she smiled at him and spoke the truth, which felt a bit liberating. “No. Not so much.”
“I made too many eyes at his wife, I guess.” He took a sip of coffee but kept Bridget’s gaze until she looked away, out the window to the dimly lit parking lot. To the older couple shuffling to their car, he using a walker, she guiding him with one hand under his elbow. Bridget felt the familiar sting in the back of her throat, the burn in her eyes. “I admit I was jealous of him. Nate, too. Y’all had what I wanted. These happy marriages, a friendly foursome. I wanted that with Melinda, my ex. My daughter. We got engaged for a spell there. It didn’t last. She wasn’t the cheating type, either. And still, somehow.” He gave her a knowing smile and a slight lift of one shoulder and Bridget looked away.
She held her breath, her mind wiped white of words. Tripp played everything so close to the vest and Bridget had never pried. She knew so little about him; any personal inquiry in the past had been laughed off, treated like a joke. The intimacy felt too sudden, too urgent.
“And now?” Bridget asked, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say but knew absolutely, positively that she didn’t want this conversation to end, although she couldn’t have quite pinpointed why.
“Now?”
“Yes, now. With Melinda? Or . . .” Bridget looked around, her hands out helplessly, her face reddening. “Anyone else?”
“Nah. It’s too hard. I’m getting old.” He laughed, but silently, his mouth opened and she could see the fillings in his teeth. Silver amalgam; she didn’t even know they still did that. “Have you tried dating? It’s awful.”
“No,” she said much too quickly, her voice hitched and her hands flat against the table.
He appraised her then, his tongue moving around in his mouth, his cheek bulging with a wry sort of smile. He picked up the bill, and in a smooth motion, shifted out of the booth to pay. When he came back he held his hand out to help her up, and when she stood, they stayed, just close enough for her to feel his warmth, smell the syrupy pancake on his breath, the soapy, dewy fragrance of his shampoo. “You should, you know.”
“I should what?” she asked, flustered.
“Try dating.”
CHAPTER 25
Alecia, Friday, May 8, 2015
Search parties on television were a bustling, dazzling affair: efficient and clipped detectives, the buzz drone of walkie-talkies, people coming and going at all hours of the day and night bringing lasagnas in foil pans and tins of homemade cookies. When pregnant wives of suspicious husbands go missing, particularly those who are beautiful and rich, it’s a national spectacle with news crews and cameramen shuffling for the spot next to the detectives. There’s always more than one detective.
Not so much for the teenage mistress of a married teacher.
They’d put the call out the night before, shoved between the local news and weather and a single headline in Thursday’s paper on page three: “Volunteers Needed in Search for Missing Local Teen.” People in Mt. Oanoke were rarely motivated to do much of anything; Alecia shouldn’t have been as shocked as she was at the desolation.