The More They Disappear (37 page)

He read it once to himself, then out loud, tasted the words on his tongue. There was something ominous about the past tense, the terseness. She'd signed her full name in cursive below the line and the year, a final flourish. Harlan turned the paper over in his hands, looked for more. If it was a suicide note, it wasn't exactly straightforward. It could just be a goodbye, an explanation for why she left. The atlas itself gave Harlan hope that Mary Jane was still out there—running.

He went to the window as if by some magic he'd see her on the horizon. It was open and he examined a hole cut in the screen. He wondered where she hid the pipe and searched the room some more, rummaged through piles of dirty clothes, looked behind books on the shelves. In the closet he found a stack of shoeboxes, each one with the word
memories
written in permanent marker on top. The boxes were filled with keepsakes from Mary Jane's youth—Valentine's cards from every kid in class, drawings she'd pulled from school notebooks, seashells and arrowheads. He hoped for a diary or some other tangible evidence, but it wasn't until he reached the last box that he found anything recent. Inside were doodles making fun of teachers, pages of Mary Jane trying different signatures, an attempt to write Mark to tell him she loved him.

He tucked the unsent love letter and five-word note into the atlas. It was hard for Harlan to look around the room and think of Mary Jane as anything more than a lost girl, easy to forget she was a murder suspect. He'd need to put out an APB and alert the authorities along her route north, get in touch with border control. And if she didn't turn up, well then he'd need to search the river.

He walked down the stairs and found the front door open. Lyda was waiting for him on the porch, smoking a cigarette. Harlan held up the atlas. “I found this in her drawer. It's probably nothing but I'd like to study it some more.”

“Of course,” Lyda said. “Anything that helps.”

“A recent photo would be good. For the missing persons.”

“Give me a minute.” She stabbed out her cigarette and disappeared inside, came back with her pocketbook and pulled a small photo from a plastic shield.

“What's this?” Harlan asked, pointing to a number along the photo's bottom.

“It's a school photo. That's so you can place an order, which I would have done had Mary Jane shown me it. I found the picture in a pile of her things months after it was taken.” Lyda took the photo back and studied it. “I can't believe the photographer got her to smile.”

*   *   *

Sophie called Lewis and asked if he could look after the girls. At first she lied and said she needed to run errands, but then, without him prodding, she came clean and told the story of her father being led away in a squad car. “Arthur Blakeslee is driving in from Cincinnati and I need to go with him to bail Dad out.”

“That's crazy,” Lewis said, trying his best to sound surprised. “What's going on?”

“I don't know.”

Sophie sounded lost and Lewis felt a pang of guilt for not warning her, for not reaching out.

“I'm sorry, Sophe,” he said. “Bring the girls. I'll watch them for as long as you need.”

She pulled into the driveway twenty minutes later. Ginny and Stella jumped out and started playing tag in the yard. Lewis risked a kiss on Sophie's cheek. “Thanks for taking the girls,” she said.

“I'm happy to.”

“I won't be long.”

Ginny and Stella were circling a tree. He couldn't tell who was chasing whom.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“No. Not really. Everything is falling apart.”

Lewis nodded. “I know.”

“First your dad and then us fighting. And now whatever's going on with my dad. And my brother. I didn't mention that. Arthur called me on the phone right after I hung up to tell me Mark was arrested, too.”

“Is it related?”

“I don't know. I don't know anything. I just want life to go back to normal.”

There were tears in Sophie's eyes, and Lewis wrapped his arms around her. She shook against him like water lapping to shore. “It'll be okay,” he said. “We'll get back to normal. Whatever that is.”

The girls stopped playing tag and watched them. Lewis wondered what was going on in their minds, wondered how much they understood. Sophie stilled and he dropped his arms to his sides. “Thank you,” she said under her breath.

Lewis crouched down like a catcher and called to Ginny and Stella, but each girl hesitated. “Did they see what happened with your father?”

Sophie shook her head. “They were asleep.”

Lewis stayed in his crouch, kept looking up at Sophie. The gray sky loomed stark and close behind her. “And you still think they're fine?”

“Fine, yes. But not good. You were right about that.”

Lewis shrugged. “Maybe having to be right or wrong is what caused our problems in the first place.” He shredded a rust-colored maple leaf in his hands, twirled its veiny remains. “Right now, I'd settle for fine.” He called the girls again, clapped his hands together. Ginny came first and Stella followed. It was always Ginny first. Lewis needed to work on that; he needed to earn Stella's trust as well.

“Do you girls want to see Grandma's new garden?” he asked as he hugged them. They each nodded. Sophie helped him settle the girls in the Explorer, and after she closed the back door, he wished her luck and asked her to call him with news. She waved at them as he backed away, and Lewis watched her and wondered what his life would be like if he hadn't married Sophie, if he'd be happier or sadder, if she was someone he'd remember fondly. The high school girlfriend. The first girl he'd ever loved. Maybe he'd have led the same life but with a different person. Or maybe he'd be lonely. And what about Sophie? Would she have been better off without him?

“What are you doing, Daddy?” Ginny asked.

Lewis looked in the rearview mirror. Both girls sat shock still. He'd almost forgotten they were there. “Oh, nothing much.” He'd only spent a couple of days apart from his daughters, but it wasn't until that moment, that glance in the mirror, that he realized how much he'd missed them. Maybe a better father wouldn't have needed the time apart. He wasn't sure. All he knew was that he wanted to be with them now.

He guided the Explorer onto a highway pull-off next to a plaque.

“Why are we stopping?” Ginny asked.

“A little fresh air.”

He helped the girls out and they looked at the creek below. Mounds of leaves had piled beneath the trees, and in the distance a log cabin lay in open view. The girls peppered him with questions.

“What's that?”

“A cabin.”

“Whose?”

He read the plaque. “A family. The McGoverns.”

“Do you know them?”

“No, sweetie. This was in pioneer times. Way back before cars or television.”

“Before TV?”

“Yep.”

“What did they do?”

Lewis made up a story. “They worked. They hunted and gathered, mended clothes. They played games and took long walks.”

“Why'd they leave?”

“It says here they didn't want to be near other people.”

“Why not?”

“I guess they were happy by themselves.”

The girls stopped talking and tried to mimic how Lewis looked deeply into the valley. He imagined how their lives would have been different in earlier times. Maybe things were better then.

“Are you and Mommy getting a divorce?” Ginny asked.

“Where'd you hear that?”

Ginny didn't answer.

“I don't know anything about that,” Lewis said.

“Do you love Mommy?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“What's divorce?”

“It's when two people who live together decide not to anymore.”

“What happens to their kids?”

Lewis thought before answering. He wasn't saddened by the question so much as unsure how to respond. The girls weren't distraught or suffering; they were trying to understand. He tried his best not to lie. “They grow up,” he said. Each girl nodded like she understood.

When he settled them back in the Explorer, Lewis let the girls sit in the front. A soft rain broke down from the clouds, and he showed them where the windshield wipers were and how they worked, and as he drove, he draped his arm over the seat so that he could hold them all together as the world raced by.

*   *   *

Harlan parked next to the same unfinished A-frame he had the day after Lew died. No more work had been done. The house would stand exposed all winter long. Bored kids would congregate there, tag the beams, leave empty bottles and the remnants of fires. Nobody would complain or care.

He hiked the worn path back to the spot where Mary Jane shot Lew. It was wishful thinking, but he hoped he might find the girl there. It made sense to him, returning to that moment when a life went off the rails. And if she was out there, sitting on the bald rock and staring out over the river, he would let her have her moment's peace. Hell, he might even join her.

The ground was soft and forgiving underfoot and Harlan barely made a sound as he walked, but when he came out of the woods, the clearing was empty. He sat down on the rock and started to roll a cigarette, then decided against it and let the tobacco scatter in the breeze. He picked up a few small stones and pitched them over the edge.

They hadn't yet found a body in the river but each passing hour made Harlan more and more certain it was Mary Jane. He tried to convince himself he'd done right, handled the case right. Mark Gaines and his father were in custody. He knew who pulled the trigger and had an APB out to arrest her. He'd uncovered the truth, or most of it, anyway. He'd done his job. By all accounts, he should have been proud—it was good police work—but he didn't feel proud. The girl, if she was dead, that was on him.

All his life, Harlan had searched for a code worth living by, a guiding star, but he was a man who hedged bets, who believed a little in everything and therefore stood for nothing. He'd wanted to place his faith in the law, to place it in God, place it in himself, but he wasn't a true believer. Other people found mentors or gave themselves fully to a cause or a person or the bottle, but Harlan had always kept a part of himself back. Out of fear. Out of doubt. It was the reason he'd failed Mary Jane. He'd allowed himself an ounce of doubt and it had drowned her.

When the dust settled, he would be able to stand before a crowd of voters and claim he'd delivered justice, but that would be a lie. There was nothing just about what he'd done. What was the point of reckoning? Harlan had never wanted to punish people. He wanted to save them. He wanted to be there the moment before Mary Jane pulled the trigger, wanted to let her know that if she put the gun down, he'd let her go. Mary Jane was somewhere out there—on the road? in the river?—and what had he done to help her? What had he done?

If the good book was right, maybe there was some St. Peter at the gate separating the righteous from the wicked and if only Harlan could believe that, or believe that there was a man whose judgment was honest and absolute, then maybe the wet world before him wouldn't seem such a terrible place. But he couldn't imagine there was much reward for stumbling through this life, and he wasn't sure he wanted the reward anyway.

 

epilogue

NOVEMBER 1998

Harlan managed to have Mark Gaines transferred to a juvenile facility in the southern part of the county even though he was nineteen, a carrot that he hoped would maintain the kid's cooperation. Mark kept refusing visits from his father, who was out on bail, and told Arthur Blakeslee, his father's lawyer, that he'd be using a public defender. He agreed to tell the whole story in court and a plea deal was drawn up. Harlan was there with the lawyers for Mark's first deposition. The story Mark told was long and wieldy—it started with his dad's medical practice and Mark's ability to get pills, moved on to Lew and his father's partnership, Mark's scheme in Lexington, and the startling wealth that came from dealing pills, all of which sowed the seeds of distrust that ended in murder. He even copped to setting the fire at the Spanish Manor to help Mary Jane escape. When the kid finished talking, Harlan could see that he expected swift punishment, but this was just the beginning and Harlan didn't know how to tell him the guilt wouldn't go away. “I'm so sorry you and Mary Jane went through this,” he said, patting Mark on the shoulder. “But you should have fought back.”

Each day Harlan sent one of the deputies to search the banks of the river for a body. He hoped they found it before the vultures or snapping turtles did their damage. Eventually, word got out that it was Mary Jane Finley in the water, and it seemed like the entire town joined the search, but they all came up empty. The only things anyone in Marathon could talk about were the case against Mark Gaines and his dad or the Finley girl's suicide. The details were meant to stay sealed but rumors spread.

Right after Trip posted bail, he started bad-mouthing Harlan to the
Marathon Registrar
. Each issue included an editorial by Stuart Simon about the various ways in which Harlan was tarnishing Lew's legacy. Harlan tried to shrug off the criticism. The case against Trip seemed primed to go federal—there were even charges of fraud concerning the Silver Spoon and Trip's attempted land grab. Harlan had done the job he was supposed to, but no one thanked him for it. He wanted to believe that when Mary Jane turned up, life would go back to normal, but it wouldn't.

The authorities in Lexington found her car and thanks to a bevy of parking tickets from a diligent meter maid, they confirmed it had been parked since before her disappearance. Holly didn't like to talk about Mary Jane, but sometimes when she looked at him, there was a sadness in her eyes that made Harlan shudder with guilt. He drove by the Finley home at the end of each night, hoping for some glimpse of Lyda, but the blinds were always drawn and the only light came from two small windows near the roof.