You Can't Catch Me(16)

I watch Liam drive, his hands sure on the wheel, the route memorized. No GPS or Google Maps for him.

He glances at me, catching me looking. “What makes you think she’s crossed paths with the other Jessica?”

“I have a feeling.”

“That’s it?”

“She’s only lived in Wilmington for two years, and you said she works at the elementary school as a librarian. But that woman in Chicago said that she’d come into some money, and that’s why she quit her teaching job there and moved away. I googled her and found a story in the local paper about her, you know, one of those ‘Let’s meet our new neighbor’ sort of things, saying that she’d won the lottery. So, if she has money, why’s she working in an elementary school library?”

“Maybe she likes kids. Or was bored.”

“Or maybe Jessica Two stole all her money, so that’s why she has to work.”

“That’s a stretch.”

“Don’t be so negative.”

I fiddle with the radio until I find a good station. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers twenty-four seven. Liam nods in approval.

“What’s your plan?” he asks. “For when we get there?”

“Ring her doorbell until she lets me in?”

“And then?”

“Get her to tell me if she’s met Jessica Two?”

“And if she has?”

“We’ll put our heads together and pool what we know, so we can track her down.”

“How, though?”

“I haven’t worked everything out yet.”

He stares at the road, saying nothing. We pass a sign for the Catskills, and I wonder if Liam notices, but he doesn’t say anything.

“You don’t think this is going to work?” I ask.

“Truth be told, I doubt anything’s going to come of it.”

“Why agree to come along, then?”

“I thought it would distract you, give you something else to focus on besides all that job stuff.”

I’m touched, truly, but it’s best not to let him see that.

“Wait, wait, wait. Hold up. Is Liam Davis confessing to deceiving me?”

“I wouldn’t call it a full-scale deception.”

“Semantics.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. It’s what I was going to do anyway. But thank you.”

“For what?”

“For coming along.”

“You don’t care that I think there’s no point to this?”

“Nope. I’m still nercited.”

Two hours later, I’m less nercited and more plain nervous, anxiety about what’s coming up soon on the road pushing past the adrenaline. The sugar high has worn off, and we’re in a zone on the highway past Albany where there’s intermittent cell reception. Even the radio went fuzzy and then silent.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” I ask Liam.

“Where did that come from?”

“Just making conversation.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, do you?”

“Not at the moment, no.”

“But you have, right?”

“What are you asking me, Jessica?”

I bite the corner of my thumb where it meets the nail. “I was just sifting through stuff in my mind, and it occurred to me that I’ve never met one of your girlfriends. Why is that?”

“I like to keep my personal life and my professional life separate.”

“Ouch.”

His hands squeeze the wheel. “I didn’t mean it like . . . I’m sure you’ve had plenty of boyfriends that you haven’t introduced to me.”

“No one special.”

“So, Pete was special?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Liam shakes his head. “You know I care about you. About all of you.”

“I know. Forget I brought it up, okay?”

We’re silent for a few minutes. Then, it happens: we pass the first exit for Schroon, a place I know too well and never intended to come back to. I can feel myself shrinking, folding into myself, as a deeper kind of silence descends in the car, one created by the memories that are rushing past like the pine trees. Without a word, or even a sound, Liam reaches over and takes my hand. I clutch it, weaving my fingers through his, letting the warmth sink in. I look away from the road and hold my breath until that exit and the next are in the rearview.

Eventually, I let go. I lower the window and fold my arms on the sill. I feel the wind in my hair and breathe in that smell of loamy earth. The smell of home. The only home I knew.

“What was the reason,” I say to Liam, “that you spoke to me that day at the market?”

“What’s that?”

“September 15, 2007, at 11:28 a.m. The Schroon Lake Farmers’ Market. You came up to me. Not Kiki or Sarah or Hughie. Me. Why?”

I’m not making up the time. I remember everything about that day. The late-summer sun on my neck. The scratchy fabric of the dress I was wearing, what we called a “civilian dress,” one of the few I had for when we left the compound because a group of teenagers in Scout uniforms and Park Ranger outfits would’ve set off alarm bells even in that sleepy town. There was a battery-powered clock on the wall behind the cashier. I was holding a ripe tomato and trying to resist the temptation to eat it right there like an apple.