I reversed course, walking back past the Owl Lady’s house, past the playground, now dark and empty, the boys gone home. In the town center, a Coors Light sign flickered neon in the window of the Crow’s Nest. Forget it, I told myself. Go home. A promise was a promise. I thought of Sophie in Washington, off on her crusade.
The Nest was crowded, and as soon as I entered I was assaulted by body heat and noise. The place stank of stale beer, of something faintly musty, of cigarette smoke although years ago the state had passed a no-smoking law. You could wash the place down with a fire hose and it wouldn’t cleanse the air. I paused, almost left, thought of the promise I had made to Sophie. Just one, I thought. One beer and I’d leave. I took a quick look around. The crowd was young—mostly fishermen and a few women, two men engaged in a game of darts—no one I recognized except for Gilly behind the bar. Each stool was occupied, and I muscled in at one end, pushing against a brawny twentysomething, jostling his draft. The man, still in his fishing garb, whipped toward me and our eyes met. I didn’t know him but watched recognition dawn on his face and then, swiftly, saw it shift from belligerence to embarrassment and then pity. A look I knew too well. Even strangers gave me that glance. I might as well have been wearing a T-shirt proclaiming, Something terrible has befallen this man. And if it wasn’t pity I saw in the faces of others, it was suspicion. “You’re imagining that,” Sophie told me when I confided in her, but I wasn’t. I knew the police hadn’t immediately cleared me in the beginning. I remember the cadaver dogs brought in by the state police before Lucy had been found, German shepherds sniffing the ground of our backyard, even rooting around in our basement. Our basement. The implication clear.
“Sorry,” the fisherman said as if he were the one who had shoved in, spilled beer.
I felt let down. Although I had not been in a fight since high school, I would have welcomed it that night. The release of it. Something solid to punch, not phantoms. Had that been my intent in coming to the Nest? To seek the physical release of a fight? Though the truth was the fisherman was younger, fitter, and in any confrontation I would have gotten the worst of it. Hell, those days Sophie of the muscled arms could probably have bested me.
Gilly made his way toward me. “Hey, boss,” he said and slapped a cardboard coaster in front of me. “So what’ll it be? Draft?”
Seven months.
I can still recall every detail of that October day as if it were etched in granite, a monument of loss. It had begun in an ordinary way. I’d made breakfast. We’d eaten together, and then Lucy and Sophie had left for school. I’d welcomed the time ahead—eight full hours because it was a Tuesday and my wife and daughter wouldn’t return home until nearly five. After classes Sophie had chorus, already in rehearsals for the concert that signaled the holiday break; Lucy had French club and a field hockey scrimmage.
I put in a full day painting—probably forgetting to eat lunch without Sophie there to remind me. I was that way with work. At some time late in the afternoon I’d descended to the kitchen to start dinner preparations: chopping onions, mincing ginger, pureeing garlic, seasoning and browning the lamb. I took satisfaction in the cutting and dicing, the sound of oil sizzling in the pan. Cooking grounded me after a day in the studio. It was a segue between the two passages in the symphony of my life: painting and family. At one point I had looked out the kitchen window and noticed the last of the serrated leaves from the elm cartwheeling through the air. As I often did when I stared at the tree, I’d taken a moment to admire the graceful architecture of the arching branches. I’d poured myself a glass of Cabernet to sip while I worked. Back then, drinking hadn’t been an issue. I rarely had more than two glasses at night. Occasionally, Sophie and I might allow ourselves a short pour of something later, before bed. Asked how I felt, I’d have said, “Content.” I was pleased with the progress of my current painting. Dinner was under way. The prospect of a family evening lay ahead. Content.
I’d heard the front door open and called, “In here.” Minutes later, Sophie entered the kitchen. She had looked so happy, as she often did after a rehearsal with her chorus. She loved those kids, and the feeling was reciprocal. They even phoned her at home. I’d lift the receiver and hear a young voice asking for Mrs. Light. Many of them came to her with their problems or for advice, things they could have taken to the guidance counselor or their parents. I used to wonder if the administration knew the kids called her, if she could get in trouble for it. I knew how territorial educators could be. I’d tease her, ask her if the school paid her extra for the counseling. Once she had asked me if I thought Lucy minded this, this sharing of her mother, but the truth was Lucy was supremely confident in her place in both of our hearts and openly proud to have a mother who was so loved by her peers. The previous spring, before the prom, two of the senior girls asked if they could come by to show Sophie their gowns, and a boy called to ask whether he should buy his date a wrist corsage or pin-on one. Last summer vacation, two of the girls—altos in the chorus—had called her and told her they were pregnant, confiding in her even before they told their parents. She had been deeply upset by their news.
“Imagine if it were Lucy,” she’d said.
“Well, where were their parents?” I said. “Didn’t they know what was going on in their daughters’ lives? What were they doing, letting those girls run wild?”
“Oh, it’s so easy to blame the parents, but it’s not that simple, Will.” She’d paused and reached out to stroke my arm. “I think we like to affix blame because it makes us feel safe. Like it couldn’t happen to us.”
“Well, we don’t have to worry about it happening to us. To Lucy. She’s a great kid.”
“That’s the thing, Will. These girls—Cassandra Lewis and Heather Church—they’re really great kids, too.”
So that last afternoon, radiant as a girl herself, she’d come into the kitchen. She paused by the iPod dock, made a selection. A clarinet concerto. Von Weber, as I recall. “Hmmm,” she’d said. “Something smells delish.”
“Lamb tagine,” I’d said and poured her a glass of the Cab.
She took it, kissed me lightly in thanks. “Is this the same meal you made when the Rogerses came for dinner? With all the spices?”