“Well, people do.”
“Not this people, honey. No worries there. Your da’s a two-woman man. Just you and your mom. Forever.” How smug that sounds now. An innocence bordering on arrogance, as if there were some kind of protection from the human condition, some prophylactic against the pain, loss, and betrayal in store for all of us. But of course if we knew what awaited—the losses and disappointments and grief that are inevitable, the unthinkable things we will prove capable of—the knowledge would paralyze us.
The bartender returned with the draft and set it in front of me along with a plastic bowl of salted nuts. “Anything else you want?” She emphasized anything in a way that seemed suggestive, but I had to be imagining it. I had a good twenty years on her.
“I’m good. Where’s Gilly?”
“His night off. I usually have the weekend shift, but they asked me to cover for him today.” She lingered, belatedly sliding a coaster under my glass. “So what do—” Her question was cut off when one of the customers farther down the bar signaled for her and she strode off, walking with what Sophie would call attitude. I took a deep swig of the beer. It helped wash away the taste of sherry but did little to erase my lingering anger. I stared up at the TV, watched the Sox botch a double play, finished the beer, thought about heading home.
The bartender returned. “Another?”
I stared at the glass, surprised to find it empty. “Why not?”
In an efficient motion, she tilted my glass beneath the tap, filling it until foam spilled down the sides. “I haven’t seen you here before,” she said.
“I don’t come in often.” Her hair was pulled back in a low ponytail, revealing ears that were well shaped and flat against her head, a row of silver studs piercing the lobe of each. I thought briefly of telling her what pretty ears she had, but I rejected the idea immediately, knowing how it would sound. “How long have you been here?”
“I started about a month ago. I used to work up in Portsmouth. At the Strawberry Banks pub. You know it?”
I shook my head.
She extended her hand across the bar. “Jessica.”
I took it, registering the softness of her skin, the firmness of her grip. “Will,” I said.
She smiled. “So will you or won’t you?”
Will you or won’t you? What did that mean? Or had I not heard her correctly? I no longer trusted my ability to clearly understand simple conversations. I was saved from responding by another customer calling for service from the far end of the bar.
“Don’t go away,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
I stared up at the TV, felt the presence to my right as someone slid onto the stool.
“Evening, Mr. Light.”
I recognized him. “Detective.” A silence stretched between us, both unsure of how to open a conversation, an awkwardness broken only when Jessica returned.
“What can I get for you?”
“Coffee. Black.” Gordon turned toward me. “I’m on the evening shift this week. My wife and daughter are visiting her parents on the South Shore, so I’m on my own for the week.”
I nodded, could think of nothing to say. Our relationship—if you could call it that—had always been strained, as if from first glance he had detected a capacity for violence in my face.
Jessica set a mug in front of him. The steam curled up, scenting the air with richness of coffee. “You want something with this?” she asked.
“What’s the special?”
“Chicken burrito or fish tacos.” She lowered her voice. “Not that I’d recommend either one.”
Gordon laughed. “I’ll have a bowl of chowder. And a burger. Medium.”
“Anything on the burger? Cheese? Onion?”
“Have them throw a slice of swiss on it.”
She punched the order in the bar computer.
Gordon grabbed the sugar dispenser, poured a steady stream in his coffee. I remembered that detail: the amount of sweetener he liked in his coffee. And that one specific image triggered a flood of memories. I remembered Gordon sitting in our kitchen, adding spoonful after spoonful into his coffee, remembered the horror of that first night. The night Lucy hadn’t come home.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It had taken less than five minutes from the moment I called the station to report Lucy missing to when a patrol car pulled into our drive.
Before the two patrolmen even got out of the car, I had the front door open and was waiting at the threshold while they crossed the walk and up the steps. I led them in and introduced myself and Sophie. Both men were large, and their presence, magnified by the holsters on their hips, crowded the hall. The taller of the pair, the more fit, took the lead. “I’m Detective Gordon,” he said. “This is Officer Slovak. We’re responding to a report of a missing child.”
“Yes. Our daughter. Lucy.”
“Full name?”
“Lucy Light. Lucy Leigh Light.”
Slovak, a man with a beefy build but not soft, as if he spent his spare time power lifting in the gym, stood to one side and let Gordon take the lead. The detective pulled out a pad, flipped it open, retrieved a pencil from his jacket pocket, and scribbled down some words without looking at me. I noticed his ring finger was bent at an odd angle as if he had broken it at some point and it had not been properly set. Sports injury, I guessed.
“Age?”
“Fifteen. Lucy is fifteen.”
“When did you notice that she was missing?”
I checked my watch, amazed to see that nearly an hour had passed since we had found Lucy’s room empty. “A little after five.”
Sophie spoke for the first time. “She didn’t come home after school.”
“When was the last time either of you had contact with her?”
“This morning. At breakfast. Before school,” I said.
“I saw her at lunch,” Sophie added. “We passed in the hall when she was walking to the cafeteria.”
“You were at the school?”
“I teach there. We both had lunch at the same period. I was on my way to the teachers’ lounge.”
“What time would that be?”
“Twelve thirty.”
“Did you speak with her?”
“Yes. I asked how she was feeling.”
Gordon raised an eyebrow. “How she was feeling?”
“Yes. She hadn’t felt well yesterday, and we thought she might be coming down with something. But she said she was better. She said she was going to the hockey scrimmage and would get a ride home.”
“And that was all?”
“I made her promise if she felt sick at all to skip hockey. I told her to call home so Will could come and get her. She promised she would.”
Gordon turned to me. “And where were you?”
“Here. I work at home.” That evening neither of them asked me the pointed questions—if I had gone out at all during the day, if there was any way or anyone who could verify I had been home alone all day—those would come later.
“And she didn’t call you?” Gordon said.
“No. I assumed she was coming home with her mother.”
“What about siblings? Brothers? Sisters?”