The Night Before(10)

He points to a building just down the block.

“That’s where I live. I’m parked in the garage. Want to take my car and go down to the water? There’s a ton of places down there.”

“Sure!” I say with enthusiasm. Anything you want, Jonathan Fields.

We start to walk.

“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I was so relieved when I saw you.”

I get it now. He hid in the back somewhere until he could scope me out.

“So, what would you have done if I was old, fat, and ugly?” My tone is slick and I hate myself again. I hear Rosie. It’s not that hard—just be nice for God’s sake! Nice. Be nice. Not slick. Not irreverent.

But then he laughs. He finds my irreverence amusing. I fight to keep from making assumptions. Drawing conclusions. Maybe he’s just nervous. People laugh when they’re nervous. It doesn’t mean he sees old me. Real me. And likes her. It doesn’t mean anything. We just met. Do not invent him.

And—I’m the one who should be nervous. I’m walking now into an underground parking garage. Alone with this man. This stranger. No one else in sight.

He pulls out his keys and clicks the button. A Toyota sedan lights up. It’s not the car I was expecting from a forty-year-old banker with no kids to feed. It’s not the black BMW he told me about.

It’s not that I care about money. I’ve fallen for all kinds of men. Teachers. Students. A handy man. It’s just that it’s not adding up. But what do I know about divorce and alimony and the cost of keeping a house and an apartment? Nothing. Well, maybe a little. It’s not rocket science. Maybe his BMW is in the shop. I’m so very good at inventing stories.

But, anyway, it’s too late. He opens my door and I get inside. The door closes and my stomach tightens.

This was supposed to be simple. I was supposed to be new me tonight. Just a girl who wore a dress and went on a date. My head is throbbing. I’m so tired from the emotional roller coaster of the past fifteen minutes. Facts are spinning around and around. The car. His story …

And that woman’s voice from the back of the bar, calling after him as we made a hasty departure.

Please let me be wrong, Jonathan Fields.

Please be the man you said you were. Please, please, please.

Because I don’t know what I’ll do if you’re not.





SIX


Rosie. Present Day. Friday, 5:30 a.m. Branston, CT.

Rosie stood before the empty bed. She drew both hands to her mouth, open palms pressed to her lips to silence the fear.

She started to turn, run back downstairs to tell Joe that Laura really hadn’t come home last night. But then she stopped. He would just repeat his theory about how she got carried away. About Laura being Laura.

So she began the search for her sister, alone.

It felt strange to be among Laura’s things, and she paused to consider her actions. It was a violation. There was no way around it. She knew her sister at her core, but the outer layers that had been built around it these past ten years—she knew nothing of those. Only benign facts. What she studied in college. The basic tasks of her job as an analyst. A vague description of her office and colleagues. Bitchy Betty. Hot Henry. She had a best friend there, a woman named Jill. The two of them had made up nicknames for everyone else. It was funny, but impersonal. Rosie didn’t even know if she’d been happy there.

When Rosie called her, and even when she’d gone in with Mason to see her at her apartment, they spoke of sandwich shops and political scandals and Mason not sleeping in his bed and the Stepford Wives at the mommy and me classes. Never about the layers—not Laura’s. And not her own. Rosie hadn’t even met her roommate, who never seemed to be there on the weekends. She had a boyfriend in New Jersey who had his own place.

Having Laura here, in her house, felt more like hosting a family friend who’d come for a visit than a family member. So it also felt strange to be in her room, looking through her private things.

And yet, at the same time, she was family, and Rosie was worried the way only family can worry because of the history they shared and the things she knew. And how those things now made her feel. The mother bear protecting her cub.

Something is wrong.

It was a familiar feeling. One she’d had since she wore braids and plaid kilts and would find Laura in her room, crying under her bed where no one would see her. Or up in that tree, fear overcoming the determination that made her start climbing.

No one remembers that Rosie had gone up after her more than once, swallowing her own fear to help her sister get back down. But that was the truth.

What is the truth now, Laura? Where are you?

She shook off the apprehension and let her eyes scan the room the way they never had before. Even when she’d come to find her sister here—bringing her food, bringing Mason to jump on her bed. Seeing if she wanted to go for a walk or a drive or sneak out for a drink after Joe got home. She’d been in this room dozens of times and yet never seen it beyond Laura. It was always just a setting, a backdrop. Now, it was transformed in her absence.

She looked around carefully. There were four coffee mugs, some empty, some with remnants days old. Also three dirty dessert plates. Four water glasses. Rosie gathered them slowly, methodically piling them on the floor just outside in the hallway.

Her eyes turned next to the unmade bed. The black eyeshades that lay across a pillow. The sheets and blankets tangled from restless sleep. Dreams. Nightmares, maybe.