The town I remembered was here, and not here. I could see both at the same time, the ghost and the actual.
I thought I might cry or throw up, but I couldn’t tell which. I’d expected the town to be the same, but not this much the same, and I’d expected it to be changed, but not this changed. I had no right to say that Sweetheart Lake had been better before, that the old bank was more useful than a dog souvenir shop. I didn’t get a vote. But I felt the changes in a deep place in my gut that I hadn’t known would be there. My grief made no sense, except that I knew it wasn’t just the buildings torn down, the changing of the T-shirt shop guard.
It wasn’t the stuff. It was the time. The time spent and gone and, at the moment, nothing to show for it. That little boy on his mother’s shoulder would grow up in town and not know the difference. The town would be fine to him, until he left and came back and saw how the one place where he should be necessary would go on without him.
I turned to look back down Pine Street and stood there for a good long while with no fear that anyone would recognize me. Ray himself could walk by. I was invisible.
I HAD TWO addresses culled from the internet and a choice to make. Be a coward and go find Theresa first as my backup, or be brave and find Ray—and Joshua—alone. The thought of seeing Joshua, of wrapping my arms around him for as many seconds as he would allow, made my chest tight. But Ray. How angry would he be by now? What would he risk in front of Joshua? If I went to Theresa first, I’d have a witness—maybe. Maybe Theresa would talk to me. Or maybe I’d have to spend real time trying to make Theresa understand, real time I should spend finding Joshua.
Joshua. The right choice was Joshua. I wasn’t sure I was brave enough for the right choice, but I drove that way, hoping I would gain courage as I went.
The town was still too small. In no time at all, I had passed the address I’d memorized by now and had to circle the block again. On the second try, I parked. The houses looked as though they’d been purchased from a catalog. Ray’s house was white and boxy, the lawn a little patch of deep green. I stared at the curtains, hoping for movement. Or if I waited long enough, for Joshua to emerge on his own.
The entire street was still, except a lone car crossing at the next block. No one walked by or came to the window. There was nothing to do but go to the door and see what would happen. I imagined what Russ Keller would say about a plan like that.
I slid out of the truck and approached the house, wishing I had something, anything, in my hands. With every step, I expected the door to swing open and for someone to shout me down. But the door stayed closed, the curtains stayed drawn. I reached the stoop and the doorbell without incident, and had nothing to do but push the button.
A dog yipped. Claws scrabbled against the floor inside and up to the door. No steps. No voices.
I gave the door a chance to open, glancing uneasily up and down the street. A neighbor would be watching. If they knew me, they’d stick their heads out of their doors and tell me when to try again. But I was a stranger. They’d watch to see what I did, dialing the local posse if they saw me heading toward trouble. My out-of-state plates had already been noted.
I had decided to go when I saw the corner of an envelope poking from the half-open mailbox. I tugged on the envelope until I could see it was addressed to—David Cotter, Jr. I opened the mailbox and dug the rest of the contents out. Let the neighbors call the police. I had a few things to report, too. Cotter, Cotter, David, Christine Cotter. One of the magazines was a woodworking magazine. I dropped the mail back into the box and walked, unhurried, to my truck. Relieved. This was not the place.
Chapter Twenty-nine
I parked in town, bumping up against the curb and then shoving the meter full of quarters. An upstanding citizen.
I walked Pine Street, taking a better look in the storefronts and seeing no one I should have known or who should have known me. I moved from one window to the next, not engaging. The summer tourists were back home and the winter tourists not yet on the horizon, the kids in school, the college students back on campus, the working people at their stations. I was a single woman walking unhurriedly down a bare street, worthy of note. But maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea, being noticed. I had to figure out where Ray was, but I wasn’t sure what would happen when I did.
I reached the north end of town where the streets had gotten their makeover and looked around. What I needed was a headquarters. A phone book. A phone, since mine hadn’t been able to find service in the last fifty miles.
And then I saw the answer: the Clipper. It was right where I left it, the siding still weathered like a shack on a dock, the sign still pale and unwelcoming. Inside, it was dark. In the second it took for my eyes to adjust, I wondered at my own idiocy. This was one of Ray’s hangouts, and I’d walked right in.
“Ahoy,” said a voice from the direction of the bar.
My eyes finally found the source of the greeting. A middle-aged man with a round belly over the top of his pants sat on a stool at the back of the bar. He didn’t look familiar. I hoped I didn’t, either. Someone wanting to make conversation would ahoy him back. “I’ll have a root beer,” I said, sitting as far away as I could. I glanced around at the framed ads for fish sticks and beer, the tables with fishhooks and lures caught forever underneath thick shellac, yellow with age.
He put the root beer in front of me and slid a menu across the bar.
“Do you have a phone book?”
“Stolen,” he said.
That jibed nicely with what I remembered about the place. I ordered the first sandwich off the menu so that he would have something to do while I made a plan.
I still had a visit to Theresa in my back pocket, but that prospect seemed further from reality every time I thought about it. We’d been friends thirteen years ago. If I’d stayed in Sweetheart, would we have found a way to bridge the next year, let alone a dozen or more?