Stranger in the Lake(75)
“Yours now.” Micah is at the counter, filling two mugs with boiling water, dropping in bags of tea. He glances over his shoulder with a sheepish smile. “But if some angry woman comes up to you in town, demanding to know where you got it, maybe don’t mention my name. As I recall, things didn’t end well.”
They never do. Micah Hunt should come with a warning sticker: not husband material. His relationships rarely make it past more than a few months, which is why I don’t bother remembering their names until I’ve seen them more than three times by his side—and even then I sometimes confuse their faces. Micah has a type: young, blonde, pretty. His girlfriends all look the same.
He picks up the mugs, points me to one of the couches. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but the diver confessed to swiping the necklace. He says it was resting on the rear dash under the shattered back window, which had collapsed under the weight of all that water. The local cops have tossed him in jail. Tampering with evidence is a crime.” He settles my mug onto the coffee table and plops with his onto the opposite couch.
“So that puts Jax in the car.”
“That puts Jax in the car.” Micah grimaces, shifting on the couch. “You know, I have to think that whatever happened that night would have been an accident. Jax was a mess, but he was always a good guy. Reckless and careless, maybe, but not malicious.”
“No, what was malicious was leaving Bobby down there all these years and not telling a soul. For pretending he had no idea what happened. For lying about it for twenty years.” I’m talking about Jax, but the same would apply to Paul, too. How could I ever be with Paul after this? How can I share a house, a bed, a life with a man who lied about something so monumental? “So what do you think happened? Was Jax...I don’t know...hitchhiking and Bobby picked him up? Were they taking a joyride when the car slipped out of the curve?”
Micah swings a big arm over the back of the sofa and watches me across the coffee table. “Probably too many possibilities to think about.”
“Maybe, but you said it yourself. Jax and Bobby didn’t exactly run in the same circles. Most likely they wouldn’t have been palling around.”
I pause a moment to think, mulling around the possibilities in my mind when I hear my mother’s voice, so clear it could be coming from the next room.
Come on, Bobby. Just one little hit.
“What about drugs? Jax could have gone to Bobby for drugs.”
It’s not all that far-fetched. People always think it’s the trailer-park kids who are looking to numb their woes in narcotics, but the kids I grew up with couldn’t afford pills—not until they were old enough to get a job, and even then, it wasn’t pills but heroin, strong and cheap. The rich kids, though, the ones with big allowances and parents too distracted with their sixty-hour workweeks... Those kids lived in a world where anything was possible. Coke. Oxy. Adderall. They were always making a pit stop at Bobby’s trailer. My mother always said they were some of Bobby’s best clients.
I think these things, and at the same time, a memory. A fleeting image of her falling naked in the dirt. Of a pretty man—no, a boy, puking. It flits away before I can grab hold.
“What are you thinking?” Micah says, watching me from the opposite couch.
“I’m just thinking about how we lived down the street from him. From Bobby, I mean. My father was already...well, you know. But Chet and I lived four trailers down.”
Micah’s face flashes genuine surprise. “That’s...that’s quite a coincidence.”
“Is it?” I shrug, reaching for my steaming mug. “The shacks down by the river, that row of apartments off 64, the trailer parks. There are only so many places for people like us to live.”
He tilts his head at the people like us comment, but he doesn’t dismiss it. “Why haven’t you mentioned this before? And you must have been, what—two? Three?”
“Six.” I did the math this past spring, when they pulled Bobby’s skeleton from the cove. I was six that summer he disappeared. Not old enough for any real memories, only a bunch of blurry images that connect into the same, sad story. Chet crying. People raising hell out in the yard. Our mother passed out on the couch. “Enough people talk about my trailer-park past. I’m not going to go around reminding the rest.”
“I don’t talk about it.”
“I wasn’t referring to you.” I smile and sip my tea.
“But six. That’s old enough to notice when a boy from your neighborhood goes missing.”
“Honestly, the only thing I remember about Bobby was the noise.” I thread my fingers through the handle of the mug, soaking in the heat. “His car, his music, his clients coming by at all hours of the day and night. When Bobby disappeared, I wasn’t the only one who was relieved. Bobby stopped raising hell, and Chet started sleeping through the night.”
My phone springs to life on my lap, a flurry of texts from Chet. I scroll through the messages.
Sorry I disappeared on you, but you won’t flipping believe who I ran into.
Grant! Sienna’s Twitter friend. And he had a LOT to say. He’s working on a podcast.
Actually maybe I should tell you in person. It’s kinda bad.
Leaving now, call you from the car.
Paul’s been blowing up my phone FYI.
That last one he follows up with an emoji with its mouth zipped shut, and I relax a little against the cushion. Chet is on the way, and Paul still has no idea where I am.