In Between Days (41 page)

“Who is this?”

“She wanted me to let you know that she’s safe and that she loves you and that she’s very sorry. These are her words, okay:
I’m sorry, Mom, but you need to trust me. I’ll call you when it’s safe
.”

Staring at the still water in the blue-lit pool, Cadence feels sick.

“This is ridiculous,” she says finally. “She’s coming home right now. My son is bringing her home as we speak.” But by the time she finishes, the line has gone dead, and the caller is gone. She tries to call back, but a voice comes on to tell her that the number she is trying to call is no longer in service. Panicked, she turns back toward the house and starts inside, thinking at first that this is all just a prank, some cruel prank. But who would pull such a prank? Who would be that cruel? The voice was not a voice that she recognized, not a voice she had ever heard before. Racing now through the kitchen, she calls out for Elson, but he’s nowhere in sight.
Elson
, she calls again, her heart sprinting now, but he doesn’t answer. And then she remembers that he’d just stepped outside to get the sod and starts back toward the hall. But when she opens the front door what she sees in her driveway is not her husband pulling out sod from the back of his car, but her own minivan, parked at the edge of the curb. And that’s when she notices Richard, his body drenched in sweat, his red T-shirt and baggy jeans hanging loosely off his hips, and then she sees Elson, moving toward him, his body still covered in dirt, and then the two of them hugging, embracing, at the edge of the lawn, beneath the streetlight, two looming silhouettes, their bodies convulsing, sobbing, a sight she has not seen in many years. And she realizes then with a certainty and a terror built into her from years of disappointment that something here—something at this moment—is terribly wrong.

WHEN THEY WERE KIDS
, they had devised the game out of boredom, or perhaps out of a desire to keep their own relationship at a distance from the relationship they shared with their parents. This creation of alter egos, this invention of names. She had been Blaise—a name that she thought suggested wealth and intrigue—and he had been Sean, a name that he had borrowed from a book he’d once read. They had played the game constantly, on family vacations, in the hallways at school, sometimes even at the dinner table, surreptitiously slipping each other secret notes full of cryptic messages, addressed to the other person’s alter-ego. Some psychologist would probably have a field day with this, he used to think, trying to interpret it, perhaps defining it as a worrisome sign of things to come, but Richard himself rarely considered it.

In fact, it wasn’t until he’d received an e-mail during his second week of classes at the University of Michigan, almost three months after Chloe had disappeared, that all of the memories came flooding back. The e-mail had been sent to him from an address he didn’t recognize ([email protected]) and the subject line was blank. Normally, he would have just discarded this type of e-mail without even reading it, but for some reason he opened it, and when he did, his mind went numb.

He stared at the computer, rereading the message several times, his mind still not processing it. Initially he had wanted to write back right
away, tell her how much he missed her and that, no, of course he didn’t hate her, couldn’t possibly ever hate her, but he’d been sitting in the campus library at the time, surrounded by undergraduates, and he was late for his four o’clock class, and so instead he’d logged off his computer and gone to class, figuring he could just write her back later, when his mind was a little clearer and he’d had a little more time to process it.

In the end, he had spent almost an hour crafting his response. He wanted to make sure he didn’t say anything that might make it obvious that he was writing to Chloe, in case his account was still being monitored, but at the same time he had so many questions for her. Was she safe? Was she still with Raja? Could she tell him where she was? First and foremost, he wanted to emphasize to her how happy he was to know that she was still alive, not that he’d ever doubted it, and how much he had been thinking about her these past few months. He also wanted to tell her, in case she wasn’t sure, that it was safe for her to come home now, anytime she wanted, that she hadn’t technically done anything wrong, at least not in the eyes of the law. He’d wanted to assure her of this, that the Beckwith boy was fine, that the charges against her were now being dropped, and that she and Raja could get full exoneration if they simply came back to the States and testified. He’d written the e-mail very carefully, including the dates of Seung’s trial, the name of the district attorney, and even the PO box of the private investigator that his mother had hired. Then he’d emphasized again how much he’d missed her, and signed it
Love, Sean
.

He sent the e-mail off at ten o’clock that evening and waited for her response, but her response never came. The following day he sent off another e-mail, asking her if she was okay, but again heard nothing. Finally, two days later, he received an e-mail in his in-box informing him that the account he was trying to contact no longer existed. He wondered if Chloe had even received the message or whether she’d canceled her account long before he’d even replied. He’d tried again to send her a message, but again the message was denied. He stared at the screen. If she was protecting anyone, he realized then, she was protecting Raja, not herself. Raja, who was still facing two assault charges back in the States. But still, he wondered, why would she have even gone to the trouble of sending him a message, and then canceled her account?

For the next several weeks her message had haunted him, had made it hard for him to do anything else, to concentrate on classes, to hang
out with friends, to prepare for the undergraduate course he had been assigned to teach. Every few hours, he would check his e-mail, hoping for another message, but he never received one. He even thought about calling up his mother and telling her about it. His mother, who was convinced that Chloe was dead. It would have been the humane thing to do, after all, but he also knew where this would lead and how Chloe would never forgive him. His mother had hired a private investigator almost as soon as she’d learned that Chloe was gone, and she had been calling Richard every two or three days just to inform him of their progress. So far, they had no solid leads, she’d told him, but they had narrowed the search down to a remote part of Mexico. That’s what she’d told him the last time they spoke, though he could tell, even then, that his mother was skeptical, that she was preparing herself for the worst.

Meanwhile, his life in Michigan had turned out to be better than he’d expected, or at least better than anyone could have expected given the circumstances. At Michelson’s insistence, he had finally sent off his materials to the program, and when he’d received a phone call a few weeks later from the director, he had been charmed by her demeanor, by her genuine friendliness, and by the fact that she didn’t seem to be pushing him in one direction or the other.
You can come or not. It’s your choice
, she’d told him. And a few days later, he had called her back and accepted the offer, realizing then that there wasn’t much keeping him in Houston anymore and also wanting to get as far away from his parents and the memory of what had happened as possible.

And since he’d been here, it hadn’t been that bad. The town itself was very cute—a sleepy college town filled with independent bookstores and coffee shops and more bars than he could count. He’d found a small apartment near the river, which ran through the center of town, and in the afternoons and evenings he’d sometimes take walks along the river, the leaves in the trees already starting to change color now, the first brisk winds of autumn biting his cheeks. Often he thought about Chloe and the way she’d described Stratham to him when she’d first arrived there.
You have no idea what it’s like to have seasons
, she’d written.
Real seasons. It would blow your mind, Rich
. And he would wonder then, as he walked along the river, if this is what she meant. Making his way back toward town, he would sometimes stop at a bar where all the poets went, a small, smoky dive that played a lot of Velvet Underground and Leonard Cohen. You could always count on a regular crowd there, young men and women
just like him, slamming down amber shots of whiskey and eager to talk about anything from Robert Hass to Jorie Graham. He’d had some great conversations there, conversations that had made him want to go back to his apartment and write, conversations that had inspired him in a way that Michelson never had. And he’d met some wonderful people, too, in particular a young visiting poet who was teaching one of the graduate workshops that semester, a man who had twice asked him out to dinner and who had told him that his work showed “remarkable promise.” He wasn’t sure if this man was just delivering a line, a loaded compliment designed to get him into bed, but he didn’t think so. This man wasn’t like Michelson. There was no sleaziness there. He was young and handsome and probably could have been with anyone he wanted, and that he’d chosen Richard, Richard believed, was simply luck, or, at the very least, a sign—a sign that he might actually be capable of trusting another human being again.

On the first night they went out, the man had taken him to a small Indian restaurant on the other side of town. Over steaming plates of curry, they had talked about the man’s work and then about Richard’s work and then afterward, as they stood outside in the chilly night air, the man had kissed him beneath the awning of a neighboring bar. The man’s lips had been cold, and soft, and Richard had realized then, as he kissed him, that this was the first time he had willingly kissed another human being since Marcos.

It was strange. When he was out at the bar or sitting in class or standing in line for a movie or lecturing to the group of sleepy-eyed freshmen he’d been assigned to teach, he felt strangely at peace. He took a certain comfort in the fact that he had a reason for being there, a purpose. It was only later, when he got back to his apartment and sat down to write, or make himself dinner, that he felt that old sense of loneliness coming back, that he felt his mind drifting back to the past, to Houston. And the truth was, he didn’t want to think about Houston. He didn’t want to think about Brandon, who was no longer talking to him, or his father, who had recently moved in with his girlfriend, or his mother, who was sinking obscene amounts of money into her pseudo-investigation. He didn’t want to think about any of it. He wanted to pretend that the past was the past, that that life had been another life lived by another person. He wanted to pretend that the person he was now was the person he would always be. But inevitably his mind would drift back to the past,
replaying the events of the previous spring, and at these moments he’d find himself standing up, lighting a cigarette, sometimes pouring himself a glass of wine, then sitting down at his computer to write. He’d pull up his e-mail account and begin a new message.
Dear Blaise
, he’d begin, and then he’d start writing, letting it all out, everything he wanted to tell her, everything he’d wished he had said, his regrets, his fears, his anger, all the while knowing that the person he was writing to, the account he would later be sending this e-mail to, no longer existed.

WHEN SHE THOUGHT
about it now, what bothered her the most was the fact that Chloe never knew. She had never had a chance to talk to her, had never had a chance to explain to her that the charges against her were now being dropped. If she had, she wonders if Chloe would have even cared, if she would have changed her mind and come back home, or whether it would have even made a difference. The truth was she didn’t know and might never know. All she knew now was that Chloe was gone, and though in her darker moments she’d occasionally allow herself to consider the worst, she believed in her heart that her daughter was alive. She believed this in the same way that she had once believed that her marriage to Elson was going to work, with a kind of willful denial. To believe the opposite, after all, would be to throw in the towel, to give up on the only thing in her life that actually gave her hope.

She had tried to explain all of this to Peterson the last time they met, but Peterson had simply sat there, staring at her blankly. She had started seeing him again these past few months, mostly out of a sense of boredom and loneliness. She had so few people in her life to talk to right now. Richard was off in Michigan, Elson had moved in with Lorna, and Gavin, after their last painful meeting, had decided to stop returning her calls. Peterson was at least a person to talk to, a person who would listen, though, in typical Peterson fashion, he offered very little.

During their last meeting, she had told him about her idea to sell the house, about how she’d already started looking for apartments in Montrose, and about how the money she earned from the sale would not only keep her afloat financially for a while but would also help to fund the ongoing investigation, her search for Chloe. Like Richard, Peterson had been skeptical of the man she had hired, the private investigator, and
of the investigation in general, and like Richard, he also wondered if she wasn’t becoming a little too obsessed. But instead of saying this, he simply asked her what she thought Elson would think about it.

“Elson will not have to know about it,” she’d said.

“Well, I imagine he’ll have to know at some point, right?” Peterson had smiled. “I mean, his name is still on the house, right?”

“Whose side are you on anyway?” she’d asked.

“It’s not about sides, Cadence,” he’d said and smiled. “It’s never been about sides.”

Frustrated, she’d left her meeting with Peterson and gone to a wine bar near her house and proceeded to spend most of the night there. The truth was she had wanted to sell the house precisely because it reminded her of Elson, precisely because it reminded her of her former life. How was she expected to move on when she had to pass her daughter’s bedroom every morning, when she had to spend her life inside the hollow cavern of her past?
It’s like living in a tomb
, she’d wanted to say to him. But instead she’d gone to the wine bar and gotten drunk and then gone home alone.