Nowhere Girl (20 page)

“Shouldn't we be thankful Patrick is doing something?” I couldn't listen to her anymore. “Why do I get the feeling you'd rather leave this alone?”

“Honey,” she said. “All I'm suggesting is that we let the police do their jobs; there's no reason to get involved. Your father and I have been talking about this since Detective Tunney called us, and this is what we've decided, what we feel is best for all of us.”

My father cleared his throat and finally spoke. “And it's better not to talk about it too much. I'm sure Patrick told you both it's best if this is kept quiet. One thing that stopped the investigation last time was that the town was upset, and they don't want to disturb people's sense of safety again. We've asked them not to let the reopening of the case be in the news.”

It was only with my family and occasionally with Greg that I could let myself feel that boiling rage that was so often barely below the surface, and it was rising now. I wanted to hang up the phone and flee. I had that claustrophobic feeling I used to get in high school after Savannah died, even though I was alone. “Do you think you could do that, try not to get too involved with all this?”

Savannah had been killed. And Malcolm Fisher put her in cold storage because he didn't want to ruffle any more feathers in this snooty town, where everyone wanted to believe in the lie of safety in suburbia. And now, after all these years, Patrick Tunney had the good graces to get her out of the basement, where she never belonged. And my parents were telling us not to get involved?

No one spoke. The tension was like an electromagnetic field that seemed to stretch taut and timeless through space from one of us to the next. “I don't want to forget about Savannah,” I wanted to tell them. “I can't, and there's no way in hell I'm going to.” I finished my yogurt instead.

“Oh, sweetie, I can tell you're mad.” My mother knew me better than I thought. “Please.” She sounded desperate. “Will you two please trust us on this?” I'd almost forgotten David was on the line.

“Fine,” I said, but I was furious. I wondered vaguely what I had agreed to by not saying what I really felt. How odd it was that we could talk about such meaningless things during our weekly phone calls, and yet we couldn't discuss the one thing that was sitting among us: Savannah, and the possibility that maybe we were going to finally find out who stole her from us.

 

CHAPTER

24

I had never been on Gabby's motorcycle. When we were teenagers, she begged her mother for a scooter. I think it was Savannah being gone that finally convinced her mom. The two of us had been so miserable. But the second day she had it, we'd gone downtown to Dairy Queen and crashed it into the side of the brick building. We'd been wearing helmets, so our worst injuries were scrapes on our knees, but it was enough to make me never want to be on two wheels again. There was something about that moment of surprise, the brick coming straight at me and not being able to do anything about it, that was too terrifying. I didn't even like to ride bicycles now. I stuck to horses. I could communicate with horses, read them. They weren't inanimate objects whose brakes could fail like Gabby's scooter's had.

I revealed this in articles. I also told the interviewers other things, like I hated sleeping alone when I was on tour, was afraid of the dark, thought milk tasted the way Band-Aids smell, and had almost a million frequent-flier miles. I thought if I gave fans some inside scoop on my life, they'd be satisfied enough, and I wouldn't have to talk about Savannah. I'd given so many interviews over the years, both in print and on TV, that I assumed anyone who followed my work or knew me personally understood certain things about me.

So when Brady knocked on my front door on a Wednesday morning, carrying two helmets, I thought maybe he'd lost his mind. I was trying to research everything I could on hypnotism. I should have told Deanna that writing while on deadline was off limits, but she would have said, “Publish or perish,” and it would have given me one more reason to hate her.

“You're coming with me.” Brady set the helmets on the counter.

So he wasn't mad at me for talking about personal things with Larry Cauchek. “Where are we going?” I tried not to be embarrassed that my hair was a mess, I was wearing an ancient torn Columbia T-shirt of Greg's, and my yoga pants came from the dirty laundry pile.

“How about the shore?” he asked.

Normally, I would have been thrilled at the idea of being alone with him for that long. I hadn't seen him since the prison, even though I'd texted him twice asking when I could interview Larry again. Both times he'd written back, “Never.” And now that I finally had a chance to hang out with him, the helmets were ruining it all.

“What's with the helmets?”

He picked up the purple one and passed it to me. “We're not seventeen, and this isn't a scooter.” So he
had
read my interviews. “You're going to love my Triumph. I've never crashed, and it's a beautiful day. Plus, you need to stop writing. You need a break. It's important to have some fun.”

I felt like someone was trying to choke me and offer me candy at the same time. “Sorry. I have to write a magazine article.”

“You're afraid.” Brady watched me. He was wearing all leather, and he looked so hot it made me feel sort of faint.

“Not really afraid…” I started lamely.

“You'll have the time of your life, I promise.” He set the purple helmet on my head. “I'll have you back by dinner.”

His eyes were so bright and his smile so big it was hard to say no. In a weird way, I felt like I owed him for the Larry interview. Or maybe I was just crushed out.

I took the helmet off and held it in my hands, glancing at the clock. It wasn't even noon. I couldn't imagine spending seven hours on something that terrified me. But then I thought about the feature I was supposed to write, and I envisioned my hands around Brady's waist.

“Oh, what the hell,” I said. “I'm in. Let me get changed first.”

In my room, I frantically riffled through my closet for something to wear and finally decided on a pair of jeans, a suede pullover Gabby had given me when she got back from her trip to Utah, and a pair of boots I'd bought for a book tour out west that I'd never worn. On the way back to Brady, I thought about how afraid some of my students had been of riding horses back when I used to give riding lessons in the summertime. Everyone was afraid of something. Maybe it was okay to push past that once in a while.

Brady was waiting for me outside, holding the purple helmet like an offering. I tied my hair back in a ponytail and put it on. It was too tight, and I wondered if Colette usually wore it.

“It'll be easier if I get on first, and then you slip on behind me,” Brady told me.

I did as he said and tried to relax into the hot, black leather seat. When he started the engine, it sounded like a jet taking off. Not being able to talk to him for two hours disappointed me, and as I was considering changing my mind, I heard his voice. It took me a moment to realize there were speakers inside the helmets.

“Ready?” he asked, his voice clear and crisp.

“Yes,” I yelled over the roar of the motor.

He ducked away. “Use your regular voice. I can hear you fine.”

“Sorry.” I felt awkward. “I think I'm ready.”

The motorcycle was a lot wider than I remembered Gabby's scooter being, and I didn't feel unbalanced at all. The wind was warm, and the sun was bright and high in the sky.

“When I lean,” Brady told me, “lean with me, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“You'll want to lean away from me, but you have to keep your body in rhythm with mine. Can you do that?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I can do that.”

When he wasn't talking, asking questions about how work was going, and what I thought of the weather turning nice so quickly, a mix of classic rock and alternative music came through the speakers. Despite the fact that we must have been going close to seventy, I found the warmth and the music and the vibration of the engine hypnotic. Gabby and I went to Massage Envy in Princeton once a month, but hot stones on my back weren't nearly as relaxing as this. And after a while, I did something I never in a million years thought I would: I let my head rest against Brady's back.

It was easier, too, to ask him things when we rode. Not seeing his face gave me some kind of license I wasn't sure I could explain. I asked him about his family. His father, he told me, was a fourth-generation military guy. Captain in the army. He missed Vietnam by a few years, so he hadn't seen combat but wanted to. And his mother did custom embroidery for high-end boutiques out in California, and that's where they'd moved after his dad retired.

“Why did you stay?” I asked.

“I didn't,” he said. “After graduation, I traveled.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere,” he said. “I got a dirt bike and went up the Trans-America Trail, through Canada, down the center of the country to Mexico and Guatemala.”

So that's where Brady Irons had been. “Why did you come back?”

“Because of all the places I've lived, this is the only one that ever felt like home.”

Then he was quiet for a long time. I wanted to ask him more. I wondered why, with four generations of military men in front of him, he hadn't joined too. But something stopped me, and I let myself listen to the murmur of the road and feel the bike's vibration.

I didn't know how much time had passed when Brady pulled up to Bliss Ice Cream on the boardwalk in Cape May. Savannah's horse, Bliss, was named after this place. We got off the bike and put our helmets on the seat.

As I started to walk, a wave of vertigo hit. He grabbed me around the waist, which was so embarrassing I felt myself flush deep red.

“Stay still for a minute. It's like when you're on a boat for a long time. The world will feel like it's rocking,” he said.

I quit worrying about my extra pudge and let him hold me up. He smelled different from when I'd met him on his lunch hour. Today, he smelled like grass and wind and sun. When I had my sea legs back, we went in the shop and ordered ice cream cones. I got pistachio mint, and Brady ordered vanilla.

“Vanilla?” I said to him. “But this place is famous for its crazy flavors.” The menu was written in bright colors on a chalkboard. Dandelion, cocoa with whipped cream, bubble gum.

“I like vanilla.” It came out like an apology.

Outside, we found a bench by the marsh.

“I love this place,” I said. “But I only ever come in high summer. It's usually so crowded the line is out the door.”

“Ha,” Brady said, sounding a little disappointed. “I thought this was my secret. Sometimes I just get on my bike and ride. You wouldn't believe how many funky shops and obscure stores I've discovered.”

Marshes played out before us, the ocean glittering on the horizon.

“Sorry to burst your bubble, but everyone knows Bliss. Best ice cream on the East Coast. We used to vacation here in the summers,” I said, catching a drip with my tongue. “Savannah, David, and I would walk down here every night from the cottage my parents rented and get these huge, three-scoop cones. At least one always ended up on the ground.” What was wrong with me? First, I got on a motorcycle, and now I was talking about my sister. I couldn't stop thinking about her, the dreams, the fact of her getting pulled up from the basement. “Savannah used to order the cinnamon bun flavor.”

Brady watched me. A line of vanilla was dripping down his cone onto his hand. I had the craziest urge to lick it off his skin.

“And now?” he asked. “Did you quit coming?”

“David, Chandler, and I come around the Fourth of July every year. Usually, Odion comes with us. Sometimes Gabby and Duncan too.” Maybe, I thought, Brady would come this year.

“What about Greg?”

“He's always on call. Fourth of July brings out all the crazies, and he has to talk them off the ledge.”

“And Emma, did she come?”

I laughed at the insane thought of Emma on this boardwalk in July with screaming kids and bikini moms eating hot dogs. “We always invited her, but she never came. Suntans and sand in her bathing suit on a public beach are not her idea of fun. Come to think of it, fun wasn't her idea of fun. She was more of the work-out-at-the-gym-and-get-more-Botox kind of girl.”

We finished our ice cream and then walked around town. We meandered, something Greg never did. We went into stores that sold hats and jewelry and summer souvenirs. We walked along the boardwalk and then took off our shoes and picked up shells. There was something about being with Brady that was familiar. The easy feeling kept catching me off guard. Like I would remember every once in a while that I shouldn't feel that comfortable with him. And yet I did.

Finally, we found a wooden swing and watched the sun set. A woman jogging by with her dog stopped a few feet from us to tie her shoe. She stepped on the leash while she tied, but the dog saw a squirrel and took off. She jumped up and called his name, but the dog made a beeline for Brady. It trotted right up to us on the bench and stabbed his nose against Brady's leg. Brady laughed and gathered the leash. By that time, the woman had gotten to us, and he handed the leash to her. She thanked him and continued jogging. When she was gone, he sat back down next to me.

“I guess you weren't kidding. Animals really do love you,” I said.

He cocked his head as if he didn't understand.

“You told me at the barn that you're some kind of animal whisperer. Apparently, you are.”

The sun was almost gone, and goose bumps were coming out on my arms, but I didn't want to go home yet. Brady must have seen that I was cold, because he slipped his arm around me and rubbed his palms against my skin, the way my dad used to when I was little.