The Night Before(26)

I play it cool.

“Okay,” I say.

“I mean you. The real you. Not Laura Heart. Laura Lochner.”

“So we both lied about our last names? Is that what you mean?”

He shakes his head. I knew he would. I was just buying time. Think. Think. There’s the door handle. The street. The deserted street and the fence and the bodega two blocks away.

“I get it,” he says. “I mean, I would use a different name too.…”

I stop him right there. “How did you find my real name?”

The best defense is a good offense.

“There were no Laura Hearts who matched your photo. But Heart is your middle name so an image came up with all three. Names, that is. All three names. Laura Heart Lochner.”

I don’t know if I believe him. I’ve been so careful. I Googled myself before I started this misadventure, and I didn’t see any images of me with all three names. But then again, I didn’t look at every image. Maybe he has more patience. Maybe he’s more careful because of that woman. Or maybe he’s more careful for other reasons.

Or maybe he already knew.

“Okay,” I say again, only this time with resignation. I’m cornered.

“Look,” he says. “I read all of it. Every article I could find about what happened, and obviously I still came to meet you … so…”

I don’t let him finish. “Are you a reporter or something?”

He gets offended, but I can’t tell if it’s rehearsed. Reporters can be sneaky as hell.

“No!” he insists. “I told you. I just wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting myself into.”

“I could say the same.” I pull out my phone, prepared to Google Jonathan Fielding. But my phone is dead. I don’t know when it died, but it’s dead.

He hands me his phone. “Do you want to check? It’s only fair.”

I push his hand away. “No,” I say. What am I going to find that could even come close?

I face the executioner straight on. I feel him hang my hope first so I can watch it die before my eyes. That’s what they used to do to exact the maximum punishment—hang the coconspirators one at a time, making them watch.

“So what do you want to know? Everything is right there—in the articles you read. It was eleven years ago, so there’s plenty of them.”

He tries to find my eyes, but I can’t bear it.

“It’s okay,” he says. Suddenly I can’t stand that word. “Look, I just wanted you to know that I knew. Like with my last name. I like you and I don’t want to start out with lies.”

I close my eyes. Count to five, then six, then seven. I’m still counting when he speaks again.

“Something happened to me when I was a teenager. Something traumatic like that. I mean, not just like that, but similar in that it stayed with me. Hung over me for years. I think it still does.”

He waits for me to engage, but I’m still counting numbers, looking straight ahead. My hand is on the handle of the door.

I can’t stand this conversation. I can’t go back there. To that night. I was an idiot to come home and think the past wouldn’t be here waiting for me.

He keeps talking.

“I was at the beach with some friends. We used to go there to drink and hang out. It’s a small town, where I grew up. Cops turned a blind eye. Anyway, we saw this old guy out there, in the ocean; he was swimming laps. Back and forth, in the moonlight. We didn’t pay any attention after we realized what he was doing—you know, just swimming.”

I try to listen. I try to focus on Jonathan’s story. But the woods are pulling me back.

“Then all of a sudden he stopped—like he was too tired or something. He waved an arm and called out to us. I took off my shoes and started running toward the edge of the water. A girl was on her phone calling 911. The other kids were like, What are you doing? He could drown you! And I knew they were right. But it just seemed wrong not to try to help him.”

He pauses and I realize I should be having a reaction, an Oh my God, what did you do? or a What happened next? But I haven’t been listening closely enough. Something about the beach and a man swimming …

He continues without me.

“By the time the police came, he’d gone under. Just like that. I will never forget that sight. Watching his head disappear and then, the very last thing to go under the black water—the hand that was waving for help.”

I say it then. “So what happened?”

“He drowned, that’s what happened. Right in front of my eyes, and I did nothing to help him. I didn’t even try.”

I find more words. “What could you have done?”

He shakes his head like he’s heard this a thousand times, and I wonder if he tells this same story to every woman from findlove.com. I wonder if he told it to that crazy woman who stalked his ex-wife. I wonder if it’s even true.

“Nothing—I know. He was too far away for me to have gotten to him, and I didn’t have any training or anything. He could have grabbed me and pulled us both down. I know all of that. Still, the sight of it haunts me. That hand, just disappearing.”

Long pause. Heavy sigh. He’s waiting for my confession now. I don’t give it.

Instead …