The Broken Girls(70)
She walked up to him and held out the note. “Are you looking for me?”
His eyes didn’t leave her face as he looked up from his low position on the ground. He watched her for a long time. She saw uncertainty in his gaze, and calculation, and anger mixed with fear. Be careful with this one, she told herself.
Finally, he smiled and stood up, bracing himself against the church wall. “Hi, Fiona,” he said.
She stepped back, glad now that they were in an open square in daylight, with people around. This had been a mistake. “Do I know you?”
“I’m sorry about the note,” he said, watching her reaction. “I didn’t know how else to approach you. It seemed the best way.”
“Okay, well, I’m here now. How do you know me, and what do you want?”
The man shifted his weight. Now that they were face-to-face, he made no move to come closer. “My name is Stephen,” he said. “Stephen Heyer.”
She shook her head. He wasn’t sick, she realized now; he was healthy, his eyes sharp and unclouded. The gray of his skin and his matchstick thinness spoke of addiction instead.
He looked away, past her shoulder, as if considering what to say. He really hadn’t planned this, she thought. He’d likely thought she wouldn’t follow the note. He scratched the back of his neck with a restless hand. “I followed you here from Barrons.”
Fiona’s blood went cold.
“You met with that woman,” Stephen Heyer continued. “I thought maybe . . . But I don’t recognize her. I don’t know who she is.” He looked back at her face, and she saw something naked in his eyes, a desperation that looked painfully familiar. “Does she have something to do with Tim Christopher?”
Fiona took another step back as if she’d been slapped. “Fuck off,” she said to him, with all the icy cold she could summon into her voice, denying her fear, her sudden shakiness. She turned and walked away.
She could hear him behind her, trailing her. “Wait,” he said. “You’ve been going to Idlewild. To the restoration. I’ve seen you there.”
What the hell was this? Some stupid game? She kept walking. “Leave me alone or I’ll call the police.”
“I go to Old Barrons Road, sleep there sometimes,” he said, still following her, as if he was compelled to explain. “The old man who used to run the drive-in lets me use his place.”
“You go there to get high?” she shot back over her shoulder.
“No, no,” he protested. “I have some problems, yeah, but that’s not why. That’s not what I’m getting at.”
Her mind was racing. If he was a Barrons local, he must have known about Deb. He was around her own age, the right age to have been a teenager when it happened. She racked her brain again for the name Stephen Heyer, trying to put it in context, but she was sure she’d never heard it before, that he hadn’t gone to her high school. She pegged him as some kind of creep, a ghoul, maybe looking to scare her for money. She did not need this shit. She really did not.
“I’ve seen you,” he said. He was following at her shoulder. He gave off a curiously diminished vibe, as if he was so low on life force that he couldn’t be dangerous. Fiona knew by instinct that she didn’t have to run or scream; if she got in her car and drove away, he’d simply recede, defeated. So she strode purposefully toward the parking lot. “That red hair,” he continued. “It’s unmistakable. I’ve seen you, Deb Sheridan’s sister, the journalist, coming back to Idlewild. Looking, looking, right? They’re restoring it, and you can’t stay away. I figure you must be looking, looking. You think I don’t understand, but I do.”
Fiona turned and stared at him. He wasn’t lying; he was telling the truth, at least as he knew it. “Listen,” she said to him. “Whatever you think you know, I do not give a shit. Do you understand? Stop following me, or I’ll call the cops. Whatever crazy shit is in your brain right now, I suggest you forget about it. Forget about me. I am none of your business.”
“You want answers,” Stephen said. He didn’t seem high, but she wondered how long it had been since his last fix. “Closure, right? That’s what they call it. The therapists and group sessions and grief counselors. They don’t talk about what a load of bullshit that is.” He stared at her, and she saw frustration behind his eyes, some kind of crazy pain that spiraled through him, undulled by drugs. He gestured down at himself. “You think I got this way because I got closure?”
Her mouth was dry. “Closure for what?”
“You’re not looking hard enough,” Stephen said, echoing his own note. “I’ve been looking for closure for twenty years. Just like you. But I looked harder. And I found you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what the hell that means.”
“I know how it feels.” He was strangely eloquent now, his eyes bright, an evangelist speaking the truth he knew best. “You’re all in here”—he tapped his temple—“and you can’t get out. It goes round and round. You’re thinking, thinking—always fucking thinking. The therapists and the grief counselors, they don’t understand. They want you to talk and write things down and share, but nothing makes it go away. I did drugs. You go walking at Idlewild.”