The Night Before(27)

“I’m sorry. That must be very hard. To carry such a burden.” I got that line from the shrink.

“Anyway…” says Jonathan Fielding. This is his second favorite word, and I hate that I am finding things not to like. Things I can use later, after it ends badly, to convince myself he was all wrong—anyway.

“So when I read about what happened when you were in high school, I understood a little bit about how these things can happen and then affect you for the rest of your life.”

I smile. It comes over my face like a mask.

“I read everything I could find. One of the articles said that they’d found the car abandoned at the other end of the preserve. Deep in the woods. And some homeless man sleeping inside it.”

“Lionel Casey,” I say, finally. Might as well.

“Right. Lionel Casey,” he repeats after me. “He never went to trial, because he was found mentally incompetent. He died in an institution still claiming to be innocent.”

I shake my head. “Yes,” I say.

Long pause. And then …

“Do people still think you did it? Is that why you don’t use your real name?”

I look at him now and I don’t know what I see. My mind has gone there, back to those woods, back to that car, back to that night, and he has become part of it now, this burden of all burdens. My hand squeezes the handle, and before I can stop myself, I am out of the car, running alongside the fence to the park.

I hear him call my name. “Laura!”

I hear another car door shut and my name, louder this time. “Laura! Stop!”

I run and run until I find the entrance and then I am in the park, the dark, littered park, that I pray will swallow me up.

Jonathan Fielding is fast. Faster than I am in my high heels, and I have a new theory on why men invented them. I feel his hand grab hold of my arm and yank me back so that I fall into him and we are both on the ground.

“Jesus Christ!” he says, standing up, brushing himself off. “What’s the matter with you?”

I don’t get up or brush myself off or do anything except stare at this stranger whose name I don’t even know.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have asked you that—if people thought you killed that boy. Please…”

He reaches his hand out, but I don’t take it.

“I wasn’t implying that you … I just, I was just trying to relate. To understand what you might be going through being back here, where it all happened.”

I’m listening again. He pulls me back with what sounds like reason.

Then he looks around us.

The park is silent but ominous somehow, like we have silenced it. Like it’s waiting to come back to life and feast on us. People have been murdered in this park over car keys and wallets.

“We shouldn’t be here. Let me drive you back to town at least. Please, Laura.”

He reaches out his hand again, and this time I take it and pull myself up to stand. I brush the dirt from Rosie’s dress. We walk, quickly, back toward the entrance. He doesn’t stop talking. Explaining.

“People said things about me too. About all of us who were at the beach that night. They asked us why we didn’t try to save him.”

It’s not the same. Not even close. But I let him continue.

We get to the car. He opens my door and I get inside.

Again, for the third time, I get in his car.

“I really just didn’t want there to be any lies between us so early on—that’s all. That’s why I wanted to tell you I knew and tell you that I understood, so you wouldn’t think that I thought badly of you.… God, I’m making it worse, aren’t I?”

Jonathan Fielding is a talker now. He knows just what to say, because I believe every word. I have crawled deep inside our story, the story of me and Jonathan, and I only see what is right in front of me. I don’t see that two days ago I had never heard of him and he had never heard of me. I don’t see that our story is now chapters long, filled with questions and explanations and secret investigations into the lives we were not ready to reveal. That woman in the bar. That night in the woods. The holes in his story.

Am I doing it again? Am I constructing him? Writing our story to fit my desires?

I can ask all I want. There is no one there to answer. I’m alone with my defective mind.

Alone. The story of my life. And in spite of everything I know but can’t see, that’s the only story I want to end.





FIFTEEN


Rosie. Present Day. Friday, 2:45 p.m. Branston, CT.

A second email arrived soon after the first. The same woman from findlove.com who had sent the first email. The one that said, simply, RUN!

And now the second one—HE’S NOT WHO HE SAYS HE IS.

Gabe responded, asking for more information. He didn’t tell her about Laura missing. He didn’t want to scare the woman off. He said it was important. I need to know if this is the same guy—what name did he give you? Did you get his phone number or an address? That was all they needed—something to ID the guy. They waited for over two hours, but there was no further reply. Gabe went home, beckoned by his jealous, needy wife, leaving Rosie and Joe to take turns watching the screen.

Rosie paced the room, Mason in her arms. He was looking for attention now. He could sense something was wrong. Very wrong.