Something Missing (36 page)

While the prospect of spending a month at home hadn’t appealed to Martin, his careful planning and willingness to save had placed him in a secure financial position. Realistically, Martin could miss more than a year of work without much concern. He owned his home, free and clear, and he was judicious in his spending. And as long as he returned to his job at Starbucks (he was currently on medical leave), the health insurance that the
company provided would pay for any future medical bills like the ones he faced after his fall down the stairs. Even though he genuinely missed his clients and his work, his temporary immobility left him with little in the way of financial concern.

In fact, the previous two weeks had proved to be especially satisfying to Martin. Laura had stopped by the house nearly every day since the accident, sometimes for an hour or two but more often for most of the evening. Though they had yet to be intimate, the two had become close, with their first real kiss taking place at 8:04 on the night following his accident. After picking up his prescriptions earlier in the day and cooking them an elaborate lobster dinner, Laura had sat down on the couch, toasted to Martin’s health, leaned over, and kissed him. Though her embrace had caused his ribs to flare up in pain, Martin managed to ignore it long enough to enjoy the kiss and make note of the time.

Thankfully, it had been the first of many kisses that week, and after a few days, Martin had summoned the courage to initiate an occasional kiss himself.

Most of the time they had spent together had been filled with conversation, a process at which Martin was growing more adept by the day. Though he continued to plan and rehearse possible conversational elements prior to her arrival, much of his recent dialogue with Laura had been completely spontaneous. Martin had learned a great deal about Laura in the time they had spent together, and the more he learned, the more he liked this clever and quirky woman.

In order to fill the time, Martin had also spent many hours working on his novel, and after a week of pleading, he finally allowed Laura to read the first chapter. He couldn’t help but stare at Laura as her eyes scanned the words that he had placed upon the page, watching as the sentences forced smiles, frowns, and looks of confusion from her. He marveled at how he had managed
to create an entirely new world from his imagination, and how real his characters, and in particular his main character, had become. Though he couldn’t be certain, he thought that she enjoyed the story a great deal, and he was proud of what he had accomplished so far. He had written more than thirty thousand words, filling more than a hundred pages, and his story had taken an interesting turn. His main character, Matthew Stock, had turned out to be a smash-and-grabber, an ordinary thief with a little more finesse than most of his kind. He was in his mid-twenties and living a bachelor’s life, with a large number of friends and acquaintances and a constantly rotating stable of women in his life. His friends considered him the consummate frat boy with a well-paying job in an IT department at a major insurance company, but in reality Matthew was a much more private person than anyone knew. As a smash-and-grabber, he specialized in jewelry but had recently found himself becoming more interested in the people from whom he stole than in the actual jewelry that he acquired. One of the women whom Matthew Stock planned to rob was suffering from leukemia, and in the midst of chemotherapy, her husband, a coward by the name of Paul, had moved out, unable or unwilling to deal with the stress of the situation. Matthew Stock suddenly found himself needing to take care of this woman in her greatest moment of need, but not knowing how to do so without being caught.

Remarkably, the novel seemed to be writing itself. What had begun as autobiography had quickly diverged into the story of a man whom Martin never would have imagined until his fingers began striking the keys, and this burst of unexplained and seemingly uncontrollable invention thrilled Martin and made the days pass by with ease. Though he had no idea where this story might lead, he had learned to stop worrying about plot and allow his imagination to take control.

He had pretended to be a writer for years, never knowing how easy writing could be.

After she finished reading the first chapter, Laura had grabbed Martin’s face, kissing him and telling him how proud she was of his accomplishment. “You’re so talented! What made you think of writing about a thief? And a thief who I kind of like.”

“Honestly, I have no idea,” Martin had lied. “Maybe I read something in the newspaper that day. I don’t know. I came home after that night at the Elbow Room and just started writing. This is what came out.”

“Well, I think it’s brilliant. I can’t wait to see what happens next. Can I read the next chapter?”

Martin had told Laura that the next chapter wasn’t finished and that major revisions were needed, but in truth, his first three chapters were complete. He just wasn’t ready to share them yet. As much as he wanted to hand the pages over to Laura immediately, he worried that the story might fizzle out at some point, leaving him with an interesting character and no place to go. By parceling out the chapters one at a time with days or weeks in between, Martin hoped to avoid disappointing Laura if things weren’t going well.

He had been sitting at the dining room table, working on chapter five of the book, in which Matthew Stock confronts Paul at the hotel where he is staying, when the knock came. The sound startled Martin out of his fictional world, causing him to wonder who might be at the door. It was two-thirty in the afternoon and Laura was working. The two had spoken less than an hour ago by phone and had planned to dine out this evening, the first time (other than doctor appointments) that Martin would leave his house since the accident. His visit to the doctor yesterday had been good. His leg was healing nicely and his ribs were nearly pain-free. The two had decided that it was time to celebrate.

Martin rose from his chair, grabbed his crutches, and made his way over to the front door. As he reached for the knob, the person on the other side of the door knocked again.

“I’m here,” he called, turning the knob and swinging open the door.

He should have recognized her immediately, but the possibility that she might one day be standing on his front stoop had never entered his mind. She looked different than Martin remembered, with purple and yellow bruising under one eye and a swollen, bruised jaw. She was wearing a sling over her left arm and looked as though she had been through hell, and yet she was smiling.

It was the smile that Martin finally recognized, for he had only seen this woman smiling. Had only seen her in photographs. Standing on tropical beaches and in exotic locales.

“It’s you,” Sophie Pearl whispered in a soft voice, her eyes moving from the immobilizer on his leg to the healing gash in his forehead. “I can’t believe it. I found you.”

“Me?” Martin stammered, feeling his entire body begin to shake. His instinct was to slam the door, turn and run, but he knew that it was too late for anything like that. Besides, he doubted that he could manage the maneuver. He was trapped in a state of frozen trembling.

“It’s okay, Martin,” she said, causing his terror to spike to new levels.

She knows my name
, he thought.
Oh my God. She knows my name
.

“Listen,” she said. “I’m not here to get you in any trouble. I’d like …”

“How? How did you know?” Martin interrupted, still trapped in place by a nervous system on overload.

“Can I come in?” she asked. “Please? It wasn’t easy finding you, but I had to meet you.”

“How?” Martin asked again, not because he wanted the answer anymore but because it was the only word he could manage to say.

Sophie Pearl sighed and reached into her jacket pocket with her unencumbered hand. A moment later her hand emerged from the pocket grasping a small, rectangular piece of plastic.

Martin recognized it immediately.

Attached to his keychain were several small plastic cards from the various businesses that he frequented. Grocery stores, pharmacies, retail outlets, and even gas stations distributed these cards to consumers in order to build customer loyalty. Whenever Martin made a purchase from one of these establishments, the cashier would scan the bar code on the back of the card and as a result, Martin would receive a discount, a coupon, or a sale price on items that he purchased. In between Sophie Pearl’s thumb and forefinger was an orange card for the Stop & Shop supermarket, its top left corner broken off.

“How?” Martin stammered again, this time with genuine curiosity.

“I found it in my backyard,” she explained. “Underneath one of the garage windows.” She paused a moment, seeming to wait for Martin’s response, but when none came, she leaned forward, closing the distance between them. “Please, Martin, can I come in? I won’t be long. I promise.”

Martin was still processing the idea that Sophie Pearl had found his Stop & Shop frequent-shopper card in her backyard. He understood how it had ended up there almost immediately. After spotting Clive Darrow’s truck inside the Pearls’ garage, he had fallen, landing in the grass below the window. Since his keys were stuffed in his pocket (a place they never would have been during a regular visit to a client’s home), it was conceivable that the fall had caused the card to snap off his key ring, depositing it in the grass as he stood up. And since Laura had been doing his
grocery shopping for the last two weeks, the loss of the card had gone undetected. He couldn’t even remember seeing his keys at all over the last two weeks. But how had Sophie Pearl used that card to determine his identity? There was no name or address on it. Just a bar code. Martin’s mind was stuck.

“Please, Martin. Just five minutes. Okay?”

“Okay,” he managed, knowing that he had no choice. To send Sophie Pearl away at this point would be impossible. Martin turned and moved out of the doorway, making room for her to enter. Once she was inside the house, Martin motioned to the couches in the living room and began moving in that direction.

“I wish you’d stop shaking,” she said as she moved aside a pillow and sat down beside Martin. “Honestly, you’re not in any trouble.” It wasn’t her words that allowed him to begin to relax. It was her smile, followed by her hand as it reached out and gently grasped his own, that finally stilled his nerves a bit. “I came here to thank you, Martin. You saved my life. You saved my husband’s life. You’re a hero.”

Martin’s eyes filled with tears as Sophie Pearl spoke, a mixture of gratitude and guilt. Had he followed his father’s advice and reported Clive Darrow to the police, Sophie Pearl’s face would not be plastered with bruises. She would not be wearing a sling. Though he knew that his intervention had probably saved her life, Martin also knew that his initial inaction had placed her in danger in the first place. He opened his mouth to say as much but was unable to speak.

“I know that it was you who came to save us that night. I wasn’t sure until I saw you, but once I saw your leg and your head, I knew. I’m so glad that I found you.”

“But how?” Martin asked again, clinging to those words like a life preserver.

“The card,” she explained. “I found it in the backyard about a week ago. I knew that it wasn’t mine, and I knew about that
evil son of a bitch parking his car in our garage. When I saw that the card was underneath the garage window, I thought I might have found my man. You.”

“But my name isn’t on the card,” Martin stammered, still not in full control of his faculties. Sophie Pearl, client of more than nine years, was sitting in his living room, and this made parts of Martin’s mind wonder if he was dreaming.

“No,” Sophie admitted. “Your name isn’t on the card, but your bar code is. And the supermarket has your information tied to the bar code. I hired a private investigator to find its owner. The police had told me that you probably wouldn’t want to be found. Even though you saved us that night, they said you were probably in some kind of trouble with the law, and that’s why you ran away like you did. ‘Fled the scene,’ one officer kept saying. But I didn’t care what kind of trouble you might be in. I just had to know. So my private investigator found someone at the grocery store who was willing to scan the card and give her the information. Then she gave your name and address to me.”

Martin was impressed. He wondered how long it would’ve taken him to think to use the bar code on the card to identify its owner. And even then, he would’ve had to find a way to convince a grocery store manager to scan the card and provide him with the information. Not an easy job. “So you found me,” Martin said, finally regaining control of his speech. As Sophie Pearl had told her story, he’d begun to relax, realizing that this woman meant him no harm.

“So the police were right, huh? You’re in some kind of trouble?”

“Not really,” Martin answered truthfully. “But I guess I could be if I’m not careful. It’s hard to explain.”

As if sensing a chink in his defenses, Sophie pounced. “Martin, I need to know something. And it’s not because I want you to get into trouble. Completely the opposite. I think you deserve a
reward. A medal. You risked your life to save me, and I’ll never forget that. I’ll never forget seeing you throw yourself out of my bathroom that night, launching yourself down the stairs like you did. You know that he almost died, right? You could’ve died too.”

“I was just doing …”

“Hush,” Sophie interrupted. “Don’t do that. Don’t belittle what you did. You risked your life for me that night, and I’ll never be able to thank you enough. But Martin, I need to know something. How did you know that I was in trouble? How did you know about the man in my house? And how did you know my name? And his name? When you called for us, you used our first names.
You knew who we were
. And you knew his name too. Darrow’s name. And even though I’ve never seen you before, you recognized me when I was standing on your front stoop. How did you know so much?”

For more than a decade, Martin had wanted to share his life with someone, to tell another human being about the career that he had created for himself. He wanted someone else to know how careful and clever and precise he had been for all these years, and now, sitting across from him, was someone who wanted to listen, who wanted to know. Someone who was indebted to him, who referred to Martin as her hero, and who had reminded Martin moments ago about just how close he had come to death. In the end, it was this reminder about the fragility of life that compelled Martin to tell his story to Sophie Pearl. His willingness to speak, to share his most precious secret, was born from a fear that he might one day die without anyone ever knowing about who he really was and what he really did.