Just the Nicest Couple(53)

When Amanda first went missing, her car was found about a quarter mile from Langley Woods. There was a suicide note set on the dashboard. The search for her should have been cut-and-dried. It was anything but. Search parties looked for her for days that stretched into weeks. They used bloodhounds and then cadaver dogs to scavenge the woods and the residential areas around them. Even the dogs couldn’t find her. Dozens, if not hundreds, of people searched for Amanda, whose friends called her Mandy, by air and by foot. Her family was devastated. This was maybe five years ago. I remember at the time watching her parents cry on TV. I remember that months passed without finding her. Eventually everyone gave up. People stopped talking about Amanda Holmes. They came to believe that she wasn’t at Langley Woods or anywhere even close to it, that something else had happened to her, something far more mysterious and insidious, but no one knew what. There were theories, and unconfirmed reports of Amanda sightings all over the Chicagoland area and around the country. Had someone met her and driven her elsewhere? Was the suicide note just part of a cunning plan? Had she abandoned her life, her family, and was she living a new life somewhere else? But why? No one knew.

The case went cold. A year passed and still she wasn’t found, until one day when some hikers stumbled upon her body in the woods.

The medical examiner determined the cause of death: suicide. Amanda Holmes took her own life. She hung herself from a tree. She had been in these woods the whole time everyone was looking for her, and still no one could find her.

I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly. Jake, his blood, his wallet, his phone, a shoe. After an hour of searching, walking aimlessly through trees, marking the trees with each turn, I find none of it, and I wonder if I can’t find them because I’m not looking hard enough or in the right places, or if I can’t find them because they’re not here. Because Jake isn’t here.

Dusk starts to fall upon the earth. The sun sinks low and the world turns to gold. I look at my watch; it’s later than I thought. I need to leave before it’s so dark I can’t find my way back and before Lily starts to wonder where I am.

I turn around, looking at my inscriptions in the trees, following them blindly out of the woods. I don’t notice anything else at first because I’m only looking at my own markings, letting them lead me.

But then I see that there are also dashes etched into some of the trees, with something like paint or chalk. It’s white and fading. The dashes are much more elusive than my own etchings, making them hard to see and impossible to follow because some have already been washed away by rain.

I look around and realize what it is I’m seeing. Not so long ago someone else blazed a similar trail so they, too, could find their way out of these woods.

I make my way out of the trees for the path, following the crushed limestone trail back toward my car as the sky starts to get darker. It’s late September now. October is only a week away. The sun sets around six thirty, so that now, just shortly before, it’s what’s referred to as the golden hour, where the sky has a signature soft golden glow. I’ll be home later than usual tonight and I’ll have to give Lily some reason why, though I wonder if I’ll tell her that I was here. It’s probably better that she doesn’t know.

Up ahead, a man walks his dog. I watch them for a while from behind, thinking how Lily and I used to have a dog before she died. Lily and I always said one day we’d get another dog, but there was never a good time for it. We said kids first and then another dog, but the kids didn’t happen like we expected.

The man gets stopped by a little girl who wants to pet his dog. He bends to get a good hold on the leash before he lets her, and then I watch from a distance as the giggling little girl strokes the dog’s ears while her mother watches on. When she’s had enough, she waves goodbye to the dog. The man stands back up. Something falls from his pocket, but he doesn’t notice. He and his dog turn and keep walking.

“Sir,” I say, calling after him to get him to stop. I jog to catch up, calling again, “You dropped something, sir.”

When I come to it, I stoop over and pick up the man’s wallet. At the same time, he hears me and turns around. He’s tall like me. He can’t be forty.

He shields the fading sun from his eyes with a hand. “Did you say something?” he asks.

“Your wallet,” I say, holding it out to him. “You dropped it back there.”

“Thanks, man,” he says, taking it from me, turning it over in his hands, looking at it as if to make sure it’s his. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice.”

I shrug. “It happens.” As I get a good look at him, I realize that I recognize this man. I cock my head. “Hey. Do I know you?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at him.

At first he looks at me like he thinks he knows me too, but then that look of recognition fades and he shakes his head. “Sorry,” he says. “I don’t think so.” The dog at his feet starts to bark, tugging on the leash. We both look down at it and he says, “Serena, no.” It’s a black-and-white dog, something like a border collie. The dog turns and tries walking away despite his command. He tells her again, “No,” and this time she listens. “Thanks for this,” he says, brandishing his wallet before slipping it into a back pocket. “I don’t know what I would have done if I lost it.”

I lost my wallet once. Canceling the debit and credit cards and having to go to the DMV for a new license was a pain in the neck. This man is just lucky his wallet didn’t fall into the wrong hands.