Before She Disappeared(45)

Stoney takes his time answering. “Was. She died. Ovarian cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Had thirty amazing years. Appreciated every minute. Makes me luckier than most.”

“Kids?”

“Three. Two girls and a boy. One of my girls lives in Florida now. Keeps asking me to join her and her family. But this is my home.”

“You grow up here?”

“New Jersey. But moved here when I was in my teens. Close enough.”

“This neighborhood, this bar, these are your memories.”

“I see my Camille everywhere,” Stoney affirms. “And I’m not complaining.”

“Grandkids?”

“Four. Ages three to eight. Two in Florida, two in New York.”

“All three of your kids are married?”

“My two girls. Jerome, my son, died at sixteen. Not easy to be a young Black man. Harder still, when you’re sixteen, stupid, and susceptible to your peers.”

As usual with Stoney, it’s what he doesn’t say that matters most. “Gangs or drugs?” I ask at last.

“Drugs. Broke his mother’s heart.” His father’s, too, but that went without saying.

“Gonna die in this bar?” I ask him.

“That’s the plan.”

“What’s it like?” I whisper. “To know exactly what you want? To know this is your home? To feel like you belong?”

Stoney doesn’t answer, but then, I don’t expect him to.

“You know the family?” His turn to question. “The missing girl, Badeau?”

“No. This is what I do. I look up cold cases involving missing persons. Then I find them.”

“How many?”

“Fourteen.”

“How long?”

“Nine years. More or less.”

“How’d you get started?”

“Fluke thing. I had just joined AA. One of the women was struggling with the disappearance of her daughter. The police thought she’d run away. Margaret didn’t believe, but couldn’t argue. I asked a few questions, which led to a few more, then a few more. Addicts are prone to obsession. I ended up tracking the daughter to a flophouse where she was holed up with her abusive boyfriend. The girl was underage, so I called the cops. They closed in for the arrest, but not before the boyfriend shot her, then himself. Classic murder-suicide.”

“Not a happy story.”

“No, but maybe that’s why I keep coming back for more. I don’t trust happy. These cases, these situations, I understand.”

Stoney nods, sips more coffee.

“Thank you,” I say at last.

No comment.

“You know your cat is crazy, right? And/or a serial killer?”

No comment.

“But she does have a nice purr,” I allow.

Stoney smiles. We both drain our mugs. Then, together, we restack the chairs, wash out our cups, rinse the coffeepot.

Stoney goes home. And, no bottle in hand, I head upstairs.



* * *



—

In my dreams, Angelique appears. She is running down a long, dark alley that gets longer and darker with every step. She is a blur of frantically pounding limbs, dark hair bouncing beneath a bright red ball cap.

“Help me,” she screams, disappearing around a corner. Except when I get there, she’s already flying around the next sharp turn. So I run left, then right, zigging and zagging, zagging and zigging but never gaining any ground. I can just hear the echo of her footsteps, the sound of her breathing as she races ahead.

“Help me help me help me.”

Abruptly, the dark alley is gone and I’m standing at the grassy edge of a road, peering at the crumpled remains of my parents’ car, their bloody faces slammed wide-eyed into the crackled windshield.

No, I’m underwater, fighting to get away from Lani Whitehorse’s skeletal grasp, as she pulls me down, down, down.

I try to pinch my skin. I try to scream at myself to wake up, but it doesn’t work. I remain trapped in a nightmarish slideshow, where the scenes go from bad to awful to terrifying to . . .

Paul. His head on my lap, his body bathed in blood.

“What did you do, Frankie?” he screams at me, his fingers reaching out like talons. “Dear God, what did you do?”

Shh, I want to tell him. Save your strength.

But it’s too late. A kid is screaming, a gun is booming. No place to go, nothing we can do. I reach for his hand.

“What did you do?” he asks me one last time as the life drains out of him. So much blood. Too much. And yet still he grips my hand. Still he looks to me.

“I loved you.”

Then I close my eyes, as light explodes around us, brilliant, excruciating, searing. I scream. In my dream. In my sleep.

I pray the pain will be quick.

Now, as then, it isn’t.





CHAPTER 15




Morning disorients me. I wake up with a feeling of dread and a pit in my stomach. For a moment, I lie still. I drank. That must be it. I caved, I gave in to the beast, and now I have to start my sobriety all over again.

Tears are already leaking out of the corners of my eyes before my mental fog lifts and I remember I didn’t break. Stoney pulling down the chair. Stoney talking to me. And then I do cry, from sheer relief, because my sobriety is my one and only accomplishment in my whole fucking miserable life and to lose that . . .