Lineage(96)

Lance nodded. Harold sipped his coffee again before he continued.

“She moved away a month after Erwin was killed, just up and gone one day. Didn’t call Josie or me until nearly a week later, and we worried ourselves sick while we waited. She just said she couldn’t live here after what happened, couldn’t stand to look people in the face. I told her it was nonsense, that she should come home, but she wouldn’t have it. She felt responsible on some level, telling Aaron what she did without knowing what he was planning. I think she felt so betrayed, also, that the thought of setting foot back here again was like tearing an old scar open.”

“If you gave me her number, do you think she would talk with me? I’d just like to know a little …” Lance trailed off as Mary’s hand squeezed his arm, and when he looked at her, her head shook from side to side.

“I’m sorry, but she passed away a little over a year after she left home,” Harold said, his voice breaking like dry kindling. “She fell asleep at the wheel of her car one night. We’d visited her a few times just before it happened. She finally told us where she’d gone—a little town in northern Iowa, just across the border. We had the funeral there too. We figured she wouldn’t have wanted to come home.” Tears leaked from the corners of Harold’s eyes; the sound that might have gone with them had dried up over the years. All that remained was the man’s memory of his daughter and the unavoidable grief that it brought.

“God, I’m so sorry,” Lance said, but Harold sniffled once and shook his head.

“It’s okay. I just loved her so much, it’s still hard to believe she’s been gone for over thirty years.”

The room fell silent in the wake of the older man’s words. The rain tapped against the window, asking to be let in, and receding thunder grumbled at the tossing waves of the lake.

After several minutes, Harold cleared his throat and took his glasses off to be polished repetitively by a practiced hand. “Mary said you wanted to know about something else too? Rhinelander, was it?”

Lance nodded, trying to shake off the guilt he felt for making the other man expound on his daughter’s death. “Yes. I heard someone say that he was a missing person?” Lance tried to sound casual, not wanting to delve into the details of his visit to Riverside.

“Gerald Rhinelander. Yes, that was a mystery.” Harold stood from his chair, motioning for them to follow.

They left their coffee on the table and walked after the older man as he zigged and zagged through the interconnecting paths of relics. Lance marveled at how quiet the building seemed. How still. Perhaps it was the passage of time suspended in increments everywhere he looked. The bottling of history all in one place instead of evenly spread out.

Harold came to a stop before a table with several leather-bound albums on its surface. He selected one from the rear of the table, a coat of dust layering its dark cover. He turned and flipped it open, squinting as he turned the stiff pages.

“Gerald Rhinelander was a young man who lived in this area back in the late sixties. Worked for your grandfather’s shipping company, actually, now that I think about it. He disappeared on the eighth of October, 1968. He was supposed to meet his ex-wife for dinner that night but never showed. She reported him missing the next day when she went to his house and didn’t see his car or any sign of him. The police finally went into his place when he didn’t turn up after a few days. Nothing seemed out of place. Actually, his wallet was still there.”

Harold flipped another page and then nodded, turning the album so Lance and Mary could read the clipped, faded article plastered beneath the clear plastic that held it in place. Lance read the brief report, no more than a blurb about Gerald’s disappearance, and searched for something that he would recognize within the print. Nothing jumped out at him, and Mary shook her head too, reading his thoughts.

“So did they ever find anything? Any leads or reasons for the disappearance?” Mary asked, handing the album back to Harold, who closed it and set it back in its place on the table.

“No, not really. Apparently they interviewed a few of his fellow workers and his supervisor, but everything came up a dead end. Some people said suicide, but that didn’t ring true either. That was why it was such a mystery. Why would a young man, in the prime of his life, suddenly up and leave a decent job, his home, and an ex-wife that he was trying to rekindle a relationship with? It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Why was he meeting his ex-wife? Were there children involved?” Lance asked.