Nice Girls(12)

“I’m home for a school project,” I said casually, my heart pounding. “Doing research for my thesis.”

“Exciting. What’s it about?”

“It’s very difficult to explain,” I said quickly. “The research and the readings—it’s very complicated.”

Mr. Nguyen nodded, his gaze flashing to a patron who walked by.

“Well, it’s good that you’re back. Madison is finishing her senior year at school. I guess it works different in the Ivy League,” he said, shrugging. “Go get your degree, Mary. Many people don’t have the chance like you do.”

His daughter had been one of those people. Yale was Madison’s dream school.

Years ago, we’d sat at the library, waiting for college decisions. It was spring break. Instead of doing homework, we kept refreshing the online university portals. I stared mindlessly at the web page. In a blink, it changed. I burst out screaming. The people around us glared. Across from me, Madison’s face fell.

At school, I was discreet—I told only a few teachers and acquaintances. I knew that was how news would spread the fastest. After that, the city newspaper interviewed me, then the district bulletin. But around Madison, I kept quiet. She was disinterested when I mentioned college, and she would suddenly get distracted by other things, other people. We never talked about Yale again.

I was one of the lucky few. It didn’t matter what I did afterward—my university degree would impress most people. An Ivy League degree was gold.

And I’d lost it. Ripped right out of my hands. Four years of high school, three years of college, now gone. I had nothing but debt.

In the end, Ivy League Mary couldn’t live up to her name.

“How’s Madison been?” I croaked.

“She’s happy. She’ll probably stay in Los Angeles after graduation. You’ve seen her—she really likes the weather over there.”

He sounded sad. With Madison gone in California, he was probably alone most of the time outside of the restaurant. His wife had left him years ago.

“Madison will be back for Christmas, though,” said Mr. Nguyen. “Maybe you two can get together at our house.”

“We will,” I said. But I didn’t plan on it. Madison was flying back to L.A. the day after Christmas. She’d purchased the flight last summer when I came to see her.

“When I’m home, I just lose momentum,” she’d said. “There’s nothing for me in Liberty Lake. Maybe snow on Christmas. But that’s it.”

A server brought Mr. Nguyen two paper bags of orders.

“The chicken pho and pork eggrolls?” he asked, checking one of them.

“Yes, how much—”

Mr. Nguyen waved it off.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you sure?”

“You need the energy for all that studying,” he said. In one hand he gave me the food and in the other, a white flyer.

I nearly dropped the bag.

I was staring at Olivia’s face.

“What’s this?”

“Flyer for the missing girl,” said Mr. Nguyen. He leaned in across the counter, his voice lowered. “The search committee gave me a stack of three hundred to give away. They said flyers work better than signs. But I don’t want to upset the customers while they’re eating.”

The flyer showed Olivia’s senior-year portrait from the news. Beneath it, in bold red letters, the flyer promised a reward for information on her disappearance.

“Twenty-five grand?” I balked.

“If I had that kind of money, I would spend it to find my kid, too. But you know how many people would lie for that?” said Mr. Nguyen, shaking his head.

I imagined Mr. Willand and his wife sitting at their dining room table, surrounded by dozens of rotary phones. The noise would be deafening as the phones rang, the crystals on the chandelier vibrating above them. At the center of the table, there would be a silver briefcase with a mountain of cash on top of it, a scene out of a movie.

But the reality was starker—the Willands were panicking. And Olivia was missing.





7




Dwayne was out sick for the next two days, so I continued to train with Jim. He stopped by once to check on my work, but after that, he simply liked to talk. He told me about his college baseball days and the scholarship he received. Before he could elaborate, he began to cough violently into his handkerchief.

To the customers, Jim was a sunny presence. He was flirty with the women, friendly with the men. But once in a while, he would say something unsettling.

“One day you’re twenty, smoking on the beach with your frat brothers, and the next, you’re rotting with lung cancer,” Jim said to me.

I couldn’t tell if he was serious, but Jim just laughed and walked away.

I ran into Ron more frequently. He often passed by my cash register or the shelves where I restocked. At lunch, he hovered near my seat as if he wanted to join. To my relief, he sat somewhere else.

I began to recognize some of my other coworkers—they were people I’d seen in high school, whose faces I remembered but whose names I’d never known. None of them had made it out of Liberty Lake. They were here, and they would never leave. The thought depressed me, and it repulsed me. I kept my distance. I preferred the loneliness over the shame.