Somebody I Used to Know (17 page)

“It’s not her,” I said. “I want it alive.”

Heather reached out again. She ran her hand over my cheek, brushing it against my stubble. “Even if it hurts?”

“Growing older usually does,” I said.

I went to the bathroom and got ready, shaving and brushing my teeth and hair, while Heather dressed in the bedroom. I told her she could take a shower or make coffee, but she declined. When I came out, she was ready to go, so I walked her to the door.

“Have you ever been to a therapist?” she asked.

“No.”

“You might want to think about seeing one,” she said. “A good therapist can do wonders as you try to sort out your past. I can give you the name of the guy I’ve been working with. He helps me make sense of things.” She seemed a little distracted, her voice a little wistful. “Mistakes I’ve made in the past. Things I’m trying to understand. They’re not things I like to think about, but they’re always with me.”

She stared off into space.

“You mean your divorce?” I asked.

“That, of course. Everything.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“With men, that usually means no.”

“Usually.”

She leaned in and kissed me good-bye. It was a long kiss. “Let’s do this again sometime,” she said. “I don’t have the kids this week at all. They’re with their dad.”

“Sure.”

But she didn’t leave. She stood in my foyer, looking contemplative.

“Do you ever . . .” she said, but didn’t finish the thought.

“Do I ever what?” I asked.

“Well, you and I met freshman year, before you met Marissa. And if we hadn’t broken up, then you and Marissa would never have started dating. I know we tried later, but that was for other reasons. Do you ever wonder how things might have been different?”

“I wonder about a lot of things from the past. Sometimes I think that’s all I do.”

*   *   *

The open door revealed a bright morning. A warm breeze blew in, carrying with it a hint of the blossoming spring. A lot of birds seemed to be chirping too. And as Heather stepped outside, Laurel came up the walk. The two women greeted each other and exchanged an awkward hug. I saw the look on Laurel’s face as her head rested on Heather’s shoulder. She looked like she was hugging a dead animal. They exchanged the requisite compliments on how good they each looked, and then Heather gave us both a small wave and headed to her car.

When Laurel passed by me on her way into the apartment, she muttered just one word.

“Really?”

I followed her in, closing the door.

She said it again. “Really?”

“Don’t start,” I said, trying to cut the conversation off. “You can’t judge me for my relationship choices. You’re married and stable.”

“Whatever gets you through the night,” she said, sitting on the couch.

“Besides,” I said, “I have some questions I need to ask you. For instance, what were you doing talking to Reece? I didn’t know you were going to do that.”

“Come on, Nick. Sit down. Let me explain.”

I felt betrayed in some way. But her calm request that I sit down took a lot of the air out of my indignation.

So I sat in the chair I’d been in the previous night. I thought about what Heather had told me about Marissa—the cheating, the other man. It felt less like a sharp knife in my back and more like the slow turning of a corkscrew. Was everyone laughing at me behind my back all those years ago? How big a fool did I look like crying at her funeral?

“I know a lot of cops,” Laurel said. “I don’t know Reece well, but I know him. If I have information about a murder investigation, I have to share it with the police. It’s a moral obligation on my part. I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t. And I thought if I shared what I’d learned it might keep you off the hook. You know?”

Her logic eased my tension a bit. “Sure. But why didn’t you tell me about the obituaries?”

“I didn’t know about them,” she said, her voice rising and growing insistent. “He tracked them down after I left his office. I didn’t call you right away because I knew you went to Emily’s funeral. I figured you had enough on your mind with that. And we’d talk when it was time.”

“So there it is,” I said. “Don’t these obituaries invalidate everything you told me was going on? We’d cooked up this whole theory that something weird was happening with Marissa’s family, that they’d just fallen off the face of the earth after she died. But they were right there in Colorado the whole time.”

Laurel held up her hand. “Hold it. Who said they were just living right there in Colorado the whole time like everybody thought they were?”

“Reece.”

Laurel dismissed Reece with a wave of her hand, and then she started digging in the messenger bag she carried with her. “It means they were
buried
in Colorado, that’s all.” She brought out a piece of paper. “Yes, we did that preliminary background check, and nothing turned up on them. But locating death records can be tricky. It takes time for everything to show up. If we’d dug more, we would have found the obituaries like Reece did. He’s a good cop. He did his job. But it’s still hard to explain how they went off the grid all those years. And none of it explains that girl with your address in her pocket.” She held the paper out to me. “Here.”

I took it but didn’t look at it.

“What about Jade?” I asked. “You were going to try to track her down.”

“Same deal,” Laurel said. “She fell off the face of the earth too. Like I said, if she got married and has a different name, it would be tougher. But there’s no sign of her for the last twenty years.”

“Could she be dead?”

“She’s mentioned in the obituaries. Both of them. Survived by a daughter. Jade. No mention of a husband for her, but maybe she’s divorced. The information is scarce on her, but we’ll keep looking.”

“Okay, I have to tell you what happened at the funeral.”

I related the whole story: the information about Emily being adopted and the appearance of the woman at the cemetery who looked so much like Marissa. Then I told her about what happened at the Russells’ house.

“What am I supposed to make of all of that, Laurel?” I asked.

She didn’t answer right away, so I looked down at the sheet in my hand. I recognized it instantly. It was a copy of the obituaries, the ones Detective Reece had shown me at the police station the day before.

“Why did you give me these?” I asked.

Laurel paused and looked at her hands. “It seems kind of silly now.”

“What does?” I asked.

“I was hoping that seeing those obituaries and especially seeing Marissa’s name listed as their late daughter would help you process things more. But it seems like we’re moving in the other direction.” She sounded a little exasperated, the frustration leaking out between her words.

“How can I not be? They never identified Marissa’s body. And Emily looks just like her. And then that woman is at the funeral, a woman who looks just like Marissa.”

“From behind,” Laurel said. “And she didn’t respond to the name.”

“Come on.”

“Come on?” she asked. “Where are we going?”

I scooted forward in my chair. “Hanfort. Let’s go to Hanfort together. We can ask around. We can find people who knew Marissa’s family. Her friends from high school. You say they fell off the face of the earth. Well, let’s go to where they were living right before they fell. Maybe there’s something there. If not, I’ll leave it alone. It’s easier than going to Colorado.”

“I don’t believe you’ll leave it alone,” she said.

“Okay, I’ll leave
you
alone. I won’t ask for anything else.”

“I don’t believe that either.” She gave me a look full of regret. “I don’t know. I can’t just up and go like you can. I have—”

She stopped herself, but I knew what was coming next.

“I get it,” I said. “You have a spouse. You have a family. And I don’t. It’s true.”

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way,” she said. “Sorry. I just mean I have to check and make sure.”

She pulled out her phone and started scrolling through, checking her schedule, I assumed.

“I’m not alone,” I said. “I have Riley.”

He looked up at the mention of his name. Then he put his head right back down and closed his eyes.

“And Heather,” Laurel said, her voice distracted.

“You really don’t like her, do you?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“You don’t have to beat around the bush. Give it to me straight.”

“Sorry,” Laurel said. “I just always thought she was a little bizarre, a little . . . I don’t know. Untrustworthy.”

“That’s harsh, Laurel.”

“She’s always had a thing for you,” she said.

“Can you blame her?” I asked.

Laurel rolled her eyes. “Just watch your back.”

“I already am,” I said. I told her about the gas station and the near miss with the silver sedan. “Can you believe that?” I asked.

Laurel looked genuinely concerned. “Shit, Nick. There are a lot of careless people in the world.”

“Indeed.” I waited a moment. “Should I be worried about it? Do you think it was intentional?”

Laurel’s forehead wrinkled. “You mean you think someone might have wanted to hurt you? Maybe kill you?”

Stated out loud in that way, it sounded a little crazy. “Forget it,” I said. “I don’t know what I think.”

“If you want to call the police in that town . . .”

“I don’t even remember where I was,” I said. “It’s fine.” I looked down at the obituaries again. Both of them contained those awful words: “Preceded in death by a daughter, Marissa.”

How could words on a page make someone feel sick? They did. I could barely look at them, even after twenty years.

Then something else on the page caught my eye. I wasn’t sure what it was at first, but it struck a silent chord in my memory. I scanned the obituary again. It was only listed in Joan’s obituary, the most recent one. It meant something, but I wasn’t sure what.

“Do me a favor?” I asked. “Right next to you on the couch is the newspaper with Emily Russell’s funeral details in it. Can you hand it to me?”

Laurel did. “What?” she asked.

“Hold on.”

I scanned the article all the way to the end. I saw what I was looking for and handed the paper and the obituary for Marissa’s mother back to Laurel.

“Read her mother’s obituary and then read the one for Emily,” I said.

Laurel did, and I saw a moment of recognition spread across her face.

“Do you see it?” I asked.

“I see that the same charity is listed in Emily’s obituary as is listed in Joan Minor’s obituary. Something called Catholic Charities. Was Marissa’s family Catholic? They were, weren’t they?”

“Yes. Don’t you think it’s weird that they both have the same charity listed?” I asked, my voice rising along with my hope.

“Wait.” Laurel pulled her phone out and started tapping away. Her brow furrowed. “It’s huge, a national charity dedicated to eradicating poverty and educating the poor.” She looked up at me. “Anybody could pick that, especially Catholics. It’s like the United Way or something.”

“You said ‘eradicating poverty’? Marissa’s father had no interest in that. She used to say his politics and lack of charity appalled her. He was a pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps guy.”

“But it wasn’t listed in his,” Laurel said, tapping one of the papers. “His asks for donations to the local Rotary club. So maybe Mom was more charitable. And how many Catholic obituaries do you think asked for donations to Catholic Charities? Thousands? It’s really not anything special.”

I felt a little deflated. “You’re sure you don’t want to go to Hanfort?” I asked.

“And do what?” she asked.

“Get closer to the source,” I said. “I don’t know.”

Laurel came over and gave me a hug. “Let’s keep our options open.”

“That sounds like a dismissal.”

“I have to get going,” she said. “But we’ll talk soon.”

“That is a dismissal,” I said. And she was gone.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

A
fter Laurel left, I opened my laptop and did more searching on the Catholic Charities website. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but the obituary made me curious. Had Marissa’s mother simply felt herself pulled more toward the Church when she knew she was dying and so wanted money donated to that cause? Or had Jade, her only surviving daughter, picked the charity?

When I knew Jade she wasn’t remotely religious. She used to skip church when the rest of the family went, and when they did manage to get her to attend, she often fell asleep during the homily. So any religious feeling she had acquired had come to her long after I knew her. No surprise there. Teenagers resisted and then sometimes came around as adults.

I looked and looked. I read a lot about Catholic social justice and eradicating poverty. Charts and graphs popped up telling me what percentage of the world’s children lived in poverty and how many of those children Catholic Charities helped every year. So much information came at me as I clicked and scrolled through the site that my eyes started to glaze over, and I reached the conclusion that the Minors knew a good cause when they saw one.

Then I saw the tab on the bottom about the sanctity of life. I clicked there.

The page that opened was no longer about eradicating poverty. It was about life, as in preserving unborn life. Catholic Charities had an entire branch of their organization dedicated to counseling unwed mothers and placing the children of those mothers with “loving, forever families.”

Another link took me to a list of “success stories,” families who had adopted children through Catholic Charities and were so happy they couldn’t contain their joy. At least according to the pictures shared on the website.

I remembered what Margie, Mrs. Russell’s cousin, told me in the cemetery. Emily was adopted as an infant and so was her sister. Emily was adopted and looked so much like Marissa.

“Margie,” I said out loud, stretching my brain to remember. “Margie Rhineback from Paducah.”

*   *   *

It took a lot of explaining before Margie remembered me. First I had to remind her of our conversation in the cemetery at Emily’s funeral, and then I had to explain how easy it was to find her phone number through an online database. She didn’t like that at all.