Desire Lines (13 page)

“No. That’s not what I’m suggesting.” He unearths a telephone from a pile of papers and punches in a few numbers. “Cheryl, would you bring me that file you got from the library this morning?” He turns back to Kathryn. “I was looking at an old story the other day, and I came across all those news clippings about Jennifer. That was ten years ago, can you believe it?” He shakes his head slowly. “Anyway, most of them were from 1986, some from 1987, one from 1988. Then the story just went away.”

“If there’s no news, I guess there’s no story.”

“Well, yes and no. I think there is a story. And I’d like you to do it.”

She inhales sharply. “God, Jack, I don’t know.”

He leans forward on his forearms and speaks quietly, coaxing her toward him with the urgency in his voice. “Listen: Jennifer disappears on the night of her high-school graduation. She just vanishes. No clues, no note, no physical evidence, nothing. Nobody ever sees or hears from her again. Now it’s a decade later, the class of eighty-six is back for its tenth reunion, and her best friend, a reporter, decides to undertake her own investigation. Were there ever any suspects? Is the case closed?”

“But, Jack—”

“No, listen, Kath. This is an important story. I want you to go talk to Will, talk to Mrs. Pelletier, talk to Jennifer’s teachers, the police, all of us who were with her by the river that night. Trace her steps after she left us. You probably won’t find out anything new—but maybe, just maybe, you will. Either way, it’s a story.”

“But don’t you think this might be a little exploitative?”

“No, I don’t. Look, it’s not like she died. She disappeared. What does that mean? How does somebody just vanish into thin air? It’s unresolved, Kath, and if you want to get noble about it then you can think about the fact that you’re opening up a case they gave up on way too soon. Remember how every year on the anniversary of the day it happened Mrs. Pelletier used to run an ad offering money for any information? And after four or five years the money figure went away? It was obvious they were giving up. They still ran the ad for a while, but it was just a memorial—and then, three or four years ago, it stopped altogether. Doesn’t that seem creepy to you? Why hasn’t anybody pursued it any further? How could we have allowed that?”

“Well, if you feel this way, why haven’t
you
investigated it?”

He rocks back in his chair. “By the time I got here after college, the story was considered dead. I mentioned a few ideas to the crime reporter who covered it, but he wasn’t interested.” Gesturing with his chin
toward the newsroom, he says, “Office politics. I didn’t want to step on anybody’s toes.”

“So what’s changed?”

“That crime reporter left, for one thing. Got an offer the BDN couldn’t match.” He grins. “The boss never liked him anyway.”

A woman raps on the glass outside Jack’s office, and he motions for her to come in. She hands him a folder.

“Thanks, Cheryl.” She nods and leaves his office. “Also,” he says, turning back to Kathryn, “now there’s a hook—and that hook is you.” He hands her the folder across the desk. “Here, you can start with this. It’s just a few clippings and a time line, but it should refresh your memory. You can use our library to find the rest.”

She takes the folder from him, and it falls open on her lap. “Snapshot of a family struck by tragedy.” That’s the caption under the grainy photograph in the Xeroxed clipping, dated July 15, 1986, on the top of the pile. There is Jennifer, her face guarded and secretive, standing on the steps of her home, with Will and their mother. Mrs. Pelletier’s arm is draped around Will’s shoulders, but Jennifer is standing slightly to the side. She isn’t touching anybody.

“Think about it,” Jack says.

“I’ll think about it.” She shuts the folder and stands to leave.

“Of course,” he says, rising, “if you don’t want to do this, I need someone to cover Egg Day at Broadway Park.”

She smiles. “You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Ledbetter.”

“Listen to this little ditty from the Egg Day promotional packet,” he says, walking her out.” ‘Humpty Dumpty had a bad summer, Humpty Dumpty’s spring was a bummer, Humpty’s winter was no good at all, but-’”

“Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,” she says, shaking her head. “That’s really awful, Jack.”

“The choice is yours. Just let me know.”
“HOW’D IT GO?”
Kathryn’s mother asks brightly when she gets home. She’s come out into the garden to say hello.

“It was nice. He was sweet.”

Her mother looks up from where she’s digging in the dirt. “So …”

Kathryn can feel the weight of her mother’s expectation on her shoulders, and she deliberately shrugs it off. “So nothing.”

“You’re not going to do something for the paper?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure yet.”

“Oh, Kathryn.” She sighs. “You are obstinate. Just like your father.”

Kathryn crouches down, her arms crossed over her knees. “You can be pretty obstinate yourself.”

Her mother wipes her forehead with the back of her white cotton glove, as big and rounded as a clown’s. “Good thing, with a daughter like you to contend with.”

“I believe the chicken came first, Mom,” Kathryn says.

PART TWO
MEMORY

Chapter 9

A
fter four cups of coffee Kathryn’s body is tingling. She might as well have injected the caffeine into her veins. She can’t think straight, can’t concentrate. Her senses sharpen: She hears a dump truck grinding down the street several blocks over; a child wails, an old lawn mower coughs into gear. The house is still. She wanders through the downstairs, chilly in the thin morning light, inspecting the familiar watercolor hanging in the living room and the Chinese plates on the dining-room wall. Little has changed since she lived here. It’s strange to her now that she ever did—it feels so much to her like her mother’s home.

Kathryn drifts upstairs, her eyes adjusting to the gloomy hall, and goes into her mother’s bedroom. She opens the closet and sifts through the clothes, idly searching for pieces she doesn’t recognize. This skirt is new, this blouse. A moss-green cardigan still has its tag, an orange price sticker revealing its bargain-basement provenance. When she was growing up, her mother bought clothes on clearance or not at all. It was more than
the money: Once you had the necessities, her mother believed, anything else was frivolous. You didn’t really need a moss-green cardigan, so if you bought it, it had to be an especially good deal. As a result, Kathryn had a closetful of clothing that was a half-size off, or slightly the wrong color, or made of a fabric that stretched or sagged. When she went to college and was earning her own money working in the dining hall, she began paying full price for small luxuries: black suede boots, a leather jacket, a pair of velvet jeans. Spending the money was a druglike high, but it didn’t last long. After college, with a mountain of bills and three maxed-out credit cards, Kathryn had no choice but to return to her mother’s careful ways.

Kathryn opens a window in the stuffy room, putting her hand to the screen to gauge how warm it is outside. The day is overcast, with a tarnished edge to the silver sky. The air is cool. She can hear the wind whistling sharply as it moves between the trees. She had forgotten how quickly the weather can change, how cold Maine can get in the summer. Standing there in her shorts and UVA T-shirt, she realizes that she’s covered in goose bumps. She reaches into her mother’s closet, tugs the green cardigan off its hanger, and slips it on, yanking off the tag and slipping it into the patch pocket on the front of the sweater, in case her mother wants to take it back.

Last night, when she and her mother were sitting down to dinner, Jack had called to see if she wanted to go out to the Sea Dog for a drink. “I can’t tonight,” she said into the phone, turning toward the wall as she used to do in high school to avoid her mother’s inquisitive gaze.

“So?” her mother said as soon as she hung up.

“It was Jack.”

“You could go. Don’t feel you have to stay here because of me.”

“I don’t, Mom. I’m not in the mood to go out tonight.” Kathryn sat down and spread her napkin on her lap.

“Maybe you should,” her mother said, cutting squares into the vegetarian lasagna Kathryn had made that afternoon. “It might be good for you.”

“What is this, peer pressure?”

“Jack Ledbetter is very nice. And he knows everybody in town. It wouldn’t hurt to be seen with him.” She motioned to Kathryn to hand her her plate.

“Wouldn’t hurt what?” Kathryn asked. “Who am I supposed to be impressing?”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean, for your career. Don’t you need to be establishing contacts?”

Kathryn laughed. “That’s really lame, and you know it. You just want me to go on a date.”

“He was asking you on a date?”

She rolled her eyes. “We’re not talking about this.”

Her mother served herself a piece and propped the spatula in the serving dish. “Well, that’s a little presumptuous, then, don’t you think? Calling you at the last minute?” She took a bite of lasagna. “Umm, good. What is that, chicken?”

“Eggplant.”

“I think you did the right thing, playing hard to get.”

Kathryn poured herself a glass of wine, hesitating at the midway point and then filling it to the top. “Mom, I’m not playing anything,” she said, taking a big swallow. “I just didn’t feel like going out tonight. And it’s not a date. Let’s nip that idea in the bud.”

Chewing thoughtfully, her mother said, “He’s kind of cute, I think, in a rumpled, underpaid way.”

“Did I say we’re not talking about this?”

“Those big green eyes. And that hair—it probably used to be red when he was little, don’t you think? There’s still a little red in it.”

“Mom,” Kathryn said firmly. “How was your day?”

Now, looking at herself in the mirror over her mother’s dresser, Kathryn wonders idly if Jack
was
asking her out. She tries to remember what he was like in high school, why she had never really thought about going out with him then. He was always there, part of the group, his shoulder brushing hers at football games as he passed her a soda or a
slice of pizza. He was in the last row of class, laughing with Rachel. He was walking down the hall with cheerleaders, flirting with them at their lockers, dropping them off at class.

He was funny and charming with her, but never more. Even if he had been interested, Kathryn thinks, his friendship with Rachel would have taken precedence. It was as if he was afraid of hurting Rachel, of betraying her somehow. Kathryn always suspected that was why Jack never had a serious girlfriend in high school. Or maybe it was simply that he didn’t need one; he had enough else going on, and he didn’t want to complicate his life. At any rate, at some point, without ever discussing it, both of them must simply have dismissed the idea that there might be something between them. So they went through the motions of friendship without ever really connecting, without risking revelation, without hope of anything deeper than the occasional dialogue about chemistry class, or arranging rides to the movies, or how the foreboding sky suggested a possible day off from school. More often, their voices joined an ongoing conversation; their personalities melded into the group.

After getting dressed in jeans and the green cardigan, Kathryn hunts for a notebook and a pen. Her mother has left the car keys for the Saturn on a bulletin board in the kitchen that has always served as a message center, along with a note: “Frank brought the car over this morning. I’m assuming your driver’s license is O.K.! I’m having drinks with Frank tonight (payback!) so don’t expect me home before 7 or so. If something comes up for you, don’t worry about calling—I’ll figure it out. XX MOM.” Kathryn sighs at the bulletin board and lifts the keys off the hook. Looking out the kitchen window, she sees a sporty, bright-yellow car in the driveway with dealer plates.

The inside of the car smells like a carpet showroom. Everything is beige. In the glove compartment Kathryn finds the registration and the owner’s manual, still sealed in its plastic bag. Except for a ski trip to Utah when she and Paul rented a car, Kathryn can’t remember the last
time she drove a new one. The car she and Paul had in Charlottesville, the one he kept, was eight years old when they bought it, with ninety-two thousand miles, a fringe of rust around the bottom, and a strange clunking noise they never bothered to investigate.

Driving down Main Street, Kathryn feels as if she is vacuum-sealed in a biosphere. She turns on the air conditioner, just to see if it works, and cold air blasts out of the vents. At a stoplight she figures out that the strange black slit in the radio is in fact a CD player, and she discovers three CDs under the dash:
Victoria’s Secret’s Classical Music for Lovers, Wayne Newton Live in Concert,
and
Yanni at the Acropolis.
She opts for the radio. By the time she reaches the
News
building, she doesn’t want to get out. The climate is perfect, she’s just heard two songs by Cheap Trick on the classic-rock station, and she’s found a spillproof cup container at the touch of a button. She could stay in this car all day. She’s tempted to pull out of the parking lot and keep going, all the way down Route 1 to Winterport and beyond, maybe to another state. Hell, why not Mexico? But the next song is REO Speedwagon, and, well, she’s here. She gets out of the car.