Authors: Alafair Burke
Long Gone (4 page)
D
rew accelerated through the loop into the Holland Tunnel. She could tell he enjoyed the way the BMW handled the curves, low and tight. She felt like she should say something impressive. Something about torque or suspension or German engineering. All she came up with was, “I can’t even remember the last time I drove a car.”
Growing up, her parents had a chauffeur for the family in the city, so her only opportunities to drive had been at their house in Bedford or on an infrequent visit to her father’s place in Los Angeles. She went through the teenage ritual of obtaining a license but had never been particularly comfortable behind the wheel. Now she preferred her nondriving existence, tooling around Manhattan by foot, subway, and the occasional taxi in bad weather.
“That’s what happens when you grow up in the city.” Drew hit his fog lights as the sedan hit the tunnel. “You grow up in Tampa, Florida, and you drive. My friends say I’m crazy for keeping a car in the city, but I like the freedom to hop behind the wheel and go whenever and wherever I want.”
She didn’t recall telling Drew she’d been raised in Manhattan. He must have Googled her before offering her the job. Lord knew she’d entered her own name in search engines before, simply out of boredom-induced curiosity.
On the spectrum of Google-able names, Alice Humphrey fell somewhere between Jennifer Smith and Engelbert Humperdink. Most of the hits belonged to a scientist who had written what was apparently a politically divisive book about global warming. More recently, sixteen-year-old Alice Humphrey of Salt Lake City had been kicking butt and taking names on her high school soccer team. But this particular Alice Humphrey had her own online existence. Unfortunately, most of it was not of her own making. Sure, there was her Facebook page, as well as a couple of mentions for her work on museum events. But any marks she had made out there in the virtual world as Alice Humphrey the woman were far outweighed by mentions of Alice Humphrey, former child actress and daughter to Oscar-winning director Frank Humphrey.
She was tempted to ask Drew whether it made a difference. To ask whether she would have gotten the job if she had been just plain old boring Alice Humphrey, with, say, a schoolteacher mother and an accountant father. But to ask that would be unfair, both to Drew and to her. There was no correct answer, and no appropriate response for her to then offer in kind. She no longer wanted to take anything from her father, but she was in fact his daughter. That was never going to change. And so far, Drew hadn’t uttered one word about her family. For her to raise the issue, just because of an innocuous comment about driving, would officially make her the freaky thin-skinned girl.
“So what exactly do you do, Drew?”
“Well, I’ve got two possible responses to that question. One—the answer I might give to a woman on a first date—is that I’m an entrepreneur. Are you suitably impressed?”
“Honestly? I’m not sure I’ve ever understood entrepreneurship as a job description.”
“Which is why there’s a second option—the one my mother might give you. If my mother were here—and not mixing up her it’s-finally-noontime martini down in Tampa—she’d probably tell you I’m a spoiled kid living off his family’s money.”
Apparently she wasn’t the only person in the car with delayed-cord-cutting issues. “Well, if those two versions are your only choices, I’d stick with the first.”
“Somewhere between asshole and pathetic daddy’s boy lies the truth, which is that I live a really great life and figure out ways to make people money in the process. Like, say I go to a tiny little restaurant with a young chef who’s doing everything right; I’ll see if he’s the kind of guy with bigger dreams that might require investors. Then I try to get a deal done and take a little commission for myself in the process.”
“Why does your mom give you a hard time?”
“Because usually the people I turn to for the seed money are the same two guys I’ve been working for since I was mowing lawns for the snowbirds as a kid. And they happen to be my dad’s friends, which makes them only slightly less despicable than the AntiChrist.”
“And one of these men is my new boss?”
“To the extent you have a boss.”
Drew pulled next to a parking hydrant in front of a rehabbed town house and hit the emergency blinkers. The ground floor’s front window was lined with commercial real estate listings. He was out of the car before she’d even unbuckled her seat belt. He tossed the keys on the driver’s seat before shutting his door. “You can drive, right?” he hollered from the curb. “Just in case?”
“Yeah, sure.”
She watched through the glass as he spoke first to the receptionist, then shook hands with a leggy woman with spiky black hair. She walked to a file cabinet and returned with some paperwork. He removed a pen from his sports coat pocket and gestured toward the car. Spiky woman was looking at her now. Was Alice supposed to wave or something? She pretended to fiddle with the car stereo, then saw Drew leaving the building in her periphery with the paperwork.
He hopped back into the driver’s seat, placed the documents on the center console, and began a rapid-fire signing of pages that had been pretabbed with hot pink tape.
“Creepy in there,” he said as he scrawled. “Those girls are all way too pale and tall. I felt like a field mouse dropped into the middle of an anaconda tank.”
“So you said you find ways to make other people money. Does my new boss see the Highline Gallery as a hobby, or is it actually supposed to turn a profit?”
He snapped his Montblanc into his coat pocket and tapped the contract against the steering wheel. “Excellent question, Alice.” Stepping out of the car, he glanced back at her. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
J
oann Stevenson felt a tongue between her toes and jerked her leg back, letting out a high-pitched squeal.
“Sebastian!”
Her shih tzu matched her yelp as he leaped to the floor, then back onto the bed near her head. She couldn’t help but giggle as his fluffy nine pounds bounced around her pillow.
“I thought you said we had to be quiet.”
She felt a warm mouth against the back of her neck. This time, the kisses were definitely not Sebastian’s.
“We
do
have to be quiet.”
“Mmm, you sure about that?”
She felt Mark’s bare skin against hers beneath the sheets. Felt his knee rub against the back of hers. She turned to face him. Saw him smile before he kissed her.
“Very sure.”
“Absolutely certain?”
She raised a finger to his lips. “Be very, very quiet.”
She fumbled for one of Sebastian’s smooshy toys from the top of the nightstand and tossed it across the room. He happily followed.
“Good dog,” Mark whispered.
She hadn’t been kidding about the need for silence. They stifled their giggles and adjusted their bodies as necessary with each squeak of the mattress, each knock of the headboard against the bedroom wall. She struggled to choke back her own sounds at that crucial moment. Bit her lip so hard she thought she might bleed.
Afterward, they shared silly, silent, sweat-soaked grins. She nestled her way into the crook of his right arm and placed her head on his chest.
“I don’t want to move.”
“Me neither.”
“You’re a scientist. Can’t you invent a machine that lets us hit pause and stay here naked for a week while the rest of the world remains still?”
“I adore you, Joann, but I don’t think either one of us would be faring very well if we kept this up for a week straight.”
“We could pause for showers and nourishment.”
“Now
that
sounds like a plan.”
A monotone beeping erupted beside her, and she let out a pained groan as she slapped the top of the alarm clock.
“Do I even want to know what time it is?”
She gave herself twenty minutes between snooze alerts, and the latest round of beeping marked the end of the third respite. “Eight o’clock.”
“Crap. I need to be on campus by nine. So how are we sneaking me out of here?”
After fifteen years as a single mother, Joann had never—not once, not ever—allowed a man to spend the night in her bed while Becca was home. Sleepovers in front of her kid were a strict no-no on Joann’s list of self-imposed rules. But she’d known the previous night that Becca would be out with her friends until ten. And things with Mark had heated up when she’d asked him inside after the restaurant. She’d known him for two months now. Had hit double digits in dates. And he was—well, he was different.
So she’d broken her own rules. As if she were the high-schooler and Becca the parent, Joann had sneaked Mark into her bedroom before Becca returned home. Left Becca a note in the kitchen: “Decided to hit the hay early. Knock if you need anything. Apples and really tasty cheddar in the fridge if you want a snack. Love, Mom.”
Now she had to sneak the boy out.
She climbed from bed and pulled on her dog-walking sweat suit. Sebastian hopped excitedly at her feet. She cracked open the bedroom door, listening for the usual household sounds. Becca’s sleep schedule was unpredictable. Sometimes she sprung from bed at the crack of dawn to surf the Net or to catch up on whatever TiVo’d show she wanted to kibitz about with her friends at school. Other times, she was truly her mother’s daughter, hitting the snooze button until Joann had to drag her from bed.
The house was silent.
“Coast is clear,” she whispered.
She admired the leanness of Mark’s body as he pulled on the jeans and striped shirt he’d worn the previous night. Forty-five years old, but the man looked good. She waved him into the hallway, past her daughter’s room. At the top of the stairs, he took her hand and pointed to the first step. They took each step in synchronicity, walking with a single gait. She gave him a quick good-bye kiss at the door, then watched him through the living room window, making his way to the Subaru he’d parked on the street, two houses down.
She heard a low growl and looked down to see Sebastian with one of her UGGs in tow.
“Hold your horses, little man.” She leashed him up, then paused at the bottom of the staircase, wondering whether to wake Becca before their walk. Becca could get dressed in ten minutes flat when necessary, and it was good to see the girl get some much-needed sleep.
She and Sebastian kept their usual pace on the usual route around the usual block. Most people—and dogs for that matter—would have tired of this morning routine long ago, but she liked to think that both she and Sebastian appreciated this ten-minute ritual as “their” time. Between raising a kid and working full-time as a records clerk at the hospital, life tended toward chaos. At least she and Seb could count on their walks.
Unlike too many of her mornings, Joann found her thoughts during this particular jaunt to be peaceful. In the fifteen years she’d been trying to build a life for Becca, Joann had been lonely. She had a few friends at the hospital, but they were married with younger children and didn’t have the need for friendships that extended past working hours. She had met some men along the way, but none of them ever stuck. She had a kid, after all. She had all of her rules as a result. Not many men were willing to abide. And the few who had? None had ever turned out to be worth what felt, to Joann at least, like an awful lot of effort.
Until Mark. She’d met him at the prospective-students reception she had forced Becca to attend. Becca fostered fantasies of attending design school at Parsons in New York City, but Joann certainly couldn’t afford the tuition, and the last thing she wanted for her kid was to be unemployed and saddled with debt at the age of twenty-two. She was hell-bent on getting her into a state four-year college.
Even with her single-mother status hanging out there for all to see, given the nature of the event, she’d been certain Mark was interested. He’d gone out of his way to catch up to her and Becca after the panel discussion to speak to her about the university’s physics department. Becca barely hid her indifference, but Joann feigned a deep interest in the school’s brand-new lab facilities. When she finally said good-bye, she was disappointed he didn’t ask for her number. But two days later, there he was, roaming the hallways of St. Clare’s Dover General Hospital in search of the records department.
“Are you lost?” she’d asked.
“Not anymore. Call me old-fashioned, but I just couldn’t hit on you in front of your daughter. It’s okay I’m here, right? If not, if I read things wrong the other night, I can—I don’t know, awkwardly excuse myself with some ridiculous cover story?”
“As curious as I am to hear what you’d come up with, no, a cover story is definitely not necessary.”
They were two months in, and nothing about Mark had once felt like work. They talked, dined, walked, kissed, and made love effortlessly. She kept reminding herself to take it day by day, but she found herself imagining a future with him.
And it wasn’t only her love life that was falling into place. After a few rough teenage months, Becca seemed to be back to her normal self. No more skipped classes. No more missed curfews. She’d even set aside some of her more rebellious ways, hanging out with a few of the popular kids at school.
As they approached the house, Sebastian—as usual—pulled against his leash. She let go, allowing him to drag the thin brown strip of leather behind him as he ran to the door. She opened it for him and followed him inside.
“Becca,” she called out as she hung her keys on a cat-shaped hook in the entranceway. “Time to get up.”
Nothing. Sebastian beat her to the top of the stairs and scratched at Becca’s door.
“Come on, sleepy girl. I’ll drive you, but we’ve both got to get going.”
Still nothing.
She opened the bedroom door, expecting to find her daughter in that same sleeping position she’d used as a toddler—on her side at a diagonal, head rested on her forearm, one leg straight, the other bent like Superman taking flight, blankets and pillows scattered across the bed.
But the bed was empty.
She knocked on the bathroom door down the hall. Nothing. Opened the door. No one.
She walked back to the bedroom for another look at Becca’s unmade bed. Was it her imagination, or were the sheets bundled into the same knot as when she’d quickly pulled the door shut last night to hide the mess from Mark? Same with the bathroom: Becca’s paddle-shaped hairbrush was tossed on the right side of the sink counter, and the adjacent bottle of gel was capless, despite Joann’s repeated reminders about the cost of dried-out hair products.
Joann tried to convince herself she was wrong. Becca must have woken early and left for school already. Maybe she realized Mark was over and snuck out to give them privacy.
But as much as her brain tried to create a simple explanation, somehow Joann knew—truly
felt
the truth, at a cellular level. Her daughter had never come home last night. And the explanation wouldn’t be simple, if it ever came.
