All along, I had been thinking of Theresa as the young woman I’d left. She would look the same, she’d be in the same job. She’d lean out of the door of her same house, her face opening up into her wide grin. She might even cry. I had imagined the reunion enough times over the years, but that part never changed. Theresa might cry with relief to see me again—alive, well, strong. But we’d been estranged by the time I’d left. She couldn’t stand to watch what was happening to me. I’d also seen the town now. I’d seen thirteen years. Things could be so different than I’d hoped. What if Theresa hadn’t thought of me at all? Or, if she had, if she remembered all the times the girl I’d been had needed her, had leaned on her without taking her advice. If she thought of me at all, maybe all she remembered was how one-sided our friendship had been. No big loss. A relief, really.
I’d felt the same way when I’d seen my mother’s obituary in the online edition of the hometown paper. My father’s name, not listed. Good. I’d clicked away immediately, but it was too late. I raced to the bathroom to throw up and then back to the computer to find the notice again. To know—I couldn’t not know. To see it through, though I knew I hadn’t. I had already missed the funeral by months. Anguish that felt strangely like release. Nothing tied me to Sweetheart Lake anymore.
The barman came back with my sandwich. He tucked himself back onto his stool to watch the TV in the corner. I took a big bite. When I glanced up, the barman had turned his attention my way. “Hungry, huh?”
My mouth was too full to do anything but nod.
“From around here?”
Now I was thankful for the food in my mouth.
“Got a place up here?” he said.
A place. That’s what we used to say. If you’re not from around here, you still might have a place. You might be a neighbor, a summer neighbor, and bring the kids or grandkids to fish and boat and splash in one of the lakes. You might turn your place into a rental, shilling it out by the week to Chicagoans willing to pay fifteen hundred dollars or more to sit around the fire pit and slap at mosquitoes. You might visit two weeks a year or you might come up every weekend of the summer, but a place gave you a little heads up over a tourist, which was the worst thing to be.
“Just visiting,” I said around a mouthful. “Just touring around.”
The sea captain grunted. “Off-season. Got it to yourself.”
“That’s the way I like it.” I shoved another giant bite into my mouth and looked away.
Bells jangled at the back of the building, and a couple came in from the alley.
“Ahoy,” the woman cried. She was skinny and held together by tight, bad jeans and a tighter sweater. She grinned, showing off a missing tooth deep in her mouth. The guy with her was solid, thick from head to boots, his skin so red that he could have been spit-roasted.
“Betty Spaghetti,” the barman said, sounding pleased. “Jim. You’re in a little early.”
Betty chose a stool and hopped onto it. “’s Friday somewhere.”
I stopped chewing. As far as I knew, it was Friday here. Joshua had been gone three days. The food in my mouth had turned to concrete. I put a napkin to my lips and spit it out. Three days, and here I was, a lady who lunches. I pictured Joshua standing by the side of the road, hungry. Arriving at last at his father’s house, only to find the unwelcome mat rolled out.
I shoved the plate away. Betty, Jim, and the sea captain, whose name turned out to be the landlocked Chuck, sorted out the need for brews and burgers and the predicted score of a game that was not yet being played. Betty looked away first, noticing me. “Hey, girl. How’s that working for you?”
“What?”
She gestured toward the half-eaten sandwich.
“Oh, it’s good. Highly recommend.”
Betty blinked. “Are you a reviewer or something?”
The men both turned to look at me.
“No. Just a . . . tourist.”
“Off-season, baby,” Betty said.
“No good fishing in the damn lake,” Jim said.
Chuck refilled Jim’s beer. “Duke and his kid got some walleye this morning, they said.”
“Duke is a liar,” Jim said. “And so’s his kid.”
Betty leaned down the bar. “They don’t like Duke because their wives like Duke too much,” she stage-whispered. “What’s to see this late in the year? The colors?” The missing tooth winked at me. I was Betty’s big catch of the day.
“Seeing some—” Old friends? Relatives? “Sights.”
Jim snorted. “Trees, trees, and more trees.”
“Lakes,” Betty said, defensively. “Are you staying on a lake? You got a place up here?”
“No,” I said. “Might be heading home again, soon. Indiana,” I added, before they asked. They would have asked. They all nodded.
“Got a cousin lives down near Tell City,” Jim said.
Tell City meant nothing to me. But then I thought of a way out of my deadlock. “I used to have a cousin up here,” I said, as if I’d just remembered. “Ray Levis?”
“You’re Ray Levis’s cousin?” Betty had an uncertain smile on her face.
“No shit?” Chuck said. “Been sitting here all this time.”
I’d made a mistake. The Clipper could still be Ray’s hangout. He might be due any minute—it was Friday somewhere.
“Distant,” I said. “Like, three times removed or something.”
“You been to see him yet?” Betty said.
So he was still here, despite the address from the web being a bust. “I went to the house on Elm.”
“He ain’t been there for a while,” Jim offered. “He gave up city living a while back.”
City living. Only someone who had lived in Sweetheart Lake his whole life could say it with sincerity. But if Ray had given up the city, and the city was Sweetheart Lake, that meant—
“His place is out on Dam Lake,” Chuck said. He checked with Jim. “Is that St. Germain or is that Eagle River?”
“That’s Sugar Camp,” Betty said. She laughed. “I remember, because Sugar Camp, come on.”
“Unincorporated,” Jim chimed in. No town, then. Ray Levis lived on some quiet county road with as many inches of lakefront as he could afford, and if there was someone who could live without people, without even a town to call his own, it was Ray.
Chuck began to draw a squiggle-line map for me on a napkin. “You’ll have to go out there. He doesn’t come in much anymore. Not sure he even has a phone.”
“Ray Levis,” Betty said, shaking her head. “Whatever happened to that deal? You know . . . with that girl?”
Jim frowned at her. “What deal?”
“Don’t you remember that fuss with the cops and that woman who kept saying that Ray had killed her sister?”
I let my root beer mug thud to the bar.
“Weren’t her sister. Her friend,” Chuck said. “You want a refill?”
I shook my head and dug into my purse for cash. I had to listen carefully to hear around the rush of blood in my ears.
Chuck got Betty a refill. She wrapped her hands around the mug. “Yeah. What was the girl’s name?”
“That was a bunch of bullshit,” Jim said. “That was twenty years ago. Never heard from that girl again.”
“Which is why it makes sense.” A slur was creeping into Betty’s voice, but she had adopted a serious expression, as though the matter, twenty years old or not, would be decided right here at the Clipper, today. “Right? You remember. The blood they found. I mean, if anybody’d heard from her, then it could be bull.”
“Someone heard from her,” Chuck said. “Didn’t they?”
“Ray Levis didn’t even hunt.” Jim slapped his hand on the bar.