Chapter 4
CHAPTER
N ormally, on Thursdays after I’ve finished teaching, I head to the yoga studio across from campus, but today I skip exercising.
I also haven’t been running every morning like I usually do.
It’s been almost a week since I emailed the student who submitted the ominous chapter, and I can’t seem to quell the unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I’ve considered calling Ivy. The three of us—Ivy, Jocelyn, and me—were inseparable back in the day, the three musketeers.
A trio of lost souls who bonded over being dirt-poor and neglected by our alcoholic, single moms. Or in Ivy’s case, alcoholic and drug addicted.
We told each other everything . So it’s hard to believe it’s been twenty years since I’ve spoken to either one of them.
I know where Ivy is at least. Jocelyn, though, she disappeared the day I did, two decades ago.
I went north, and she went south to Florida, and that’s the last I heard of her.
I’m not sure whether I should try to make contact with either of them.
What if someone is trying to smoke us out, cause us to make mistakes?
No, it’s best to keep to myself. Besides, it could all still be a coincidence, couldn’t it?
I once read an article about identical twin brothers separated at birth.
They never even knew about each other, yet they married women with the same names and gave their firstborn children and dogs the same names.
It’s not impossible.
That’s what I keep telling myself.
But today I need to do a little more digging, a little more research—though not from my laptop this time. Everything we do in today’s world leaves an electronic footprint, and one can never be too careful.
My eyes are alert, scanning face after face as I walk to the library.
Three kids fresh out of high school kick around a hacky sack to the left, a redhead twirling her hair and making googly eyes at a nice-looking guy with broad shoulders sits on a bench to the right—he’s too busy to notice, checking out the ass of every woman who passes.
Before last week, I wouldn’t have seen a single face, but suddenly everyone is a suspect to rule out.
Inside the library, I take the stairs to the second floor. My pulse quickens as I approach the bank of cubicles, each equipped with a desktop available for anyone’s use. There are more than a dozen, yet only one is occupied. Everyone has a laptop or iPad these days.
I choose the workstation farthest from the woman working and glance around before pulling out a chair. No one seems to be paying attention, so I hit the space bar to wake up the screen and jump right into it, clicking the Google icon from the menu bar, then typing:
D-A-M-O-N S-A-W-Y-E-R
My hand shakes as I hit the enter key. It’s a name I’d managed to not think about in a very long time—almost two decades—until last week.
The search return at the top of the page is the website of Chapman and Sons Funeral Home. Obituary of Damon Sawyer. I’ve read it before. Hundreds of times, a lifetime ago. But I click into it and read.
Damon Sawyer passed away tragically at age thirty-nine on May 20.
He is survived by his devoted wife, Candice, and a seven-year-old son.
Damon was born and raised in Minton Parish.
Upon graduating from the University of Southern Louisiana with a degree in secondary education, Damon returned home to Minton Parish to become a teacher at the local high school he had attended.
He was a beloved member of the teaching community and earned the title of Teacher of the Year three times—a testament to how much he gave to his students.
How much he gave . . .
Scrolling the rest of the results, I find most of it vaguely familiar—a few mentions from Minton High School, an old article from the Minton Herald , triathlon results from twenty-five years ago.
I guess when you’re dead, very little gets added to your Google search.
At the bottom of the page, though, there is something new—another obituary on the website of Chapman and Sons Funeral Home. Obituary of Candice Maynard-Sawyer.
His wife. I click into it. It’s dated five months ago.
Candice Maynard-Sawyer passed away at age fifty-eight on December 13.
Candice met the love of her life, Damon Sawyer, while attending college at the University of Southern Louisiana.
Together they had one son. Candice was a Eucharistic minister for more than thirty years, bringing communion to elderly church members who were unable to attend mass.
Her yearslong battle with heart disease ends only for her to be reunited with her beloved husband and our Father in heaven.
Beloved. What a joke.
The nerves I felt typing Damon’s name are suddenly replaced by anger.
I tug at the neck of my blouse. Why is it so damn hot in here?
I need some fresh air, so I close out of the web page and gather my things.
But as I start to get up, I think better of it.
There are other names I haven’t searched in a long time. So I type:
I-V-Y L-E-I-G-H-T-O-N
Unlike Mr. Sawyer’s, this name comes back with a ton of hits—the first of which is from Minton Parish Child Protective Services.
A few years back, I had a rare, lucid conversation with my mother, and she mentioned that Ivy had become a social worker.
The irony isn’t lost on me that the child who used to get removed from her home has now become the remover.
Curious, I click into the web page, and I’m taken aback when a picture of my old best friend pops up.
She hasn’t aged so well, but there’s no doubt it’s her.
Plump face, tired eyes, graystreaked frumpy hair—the same gummy smile that shows off the tiny chip in her front tooth she got when we were riding bicycles at seven.
I read the bio and stare at her for a while.
She lives in Clarion, a stone’s throw from where we grew up and where she apparently still works.
But it couldn’t be Ivy who sent me the chapter, could it?
She’s the only person in the world who stands to lose almost as much as I do by dredging up things from the past. Plus, she has five kids.
She wouldn’t have time to dig skeletons from closets.
But before I click back, I jot down her email and telephone number—just in case.
I look around before typing again. The one woman using a computer isn’t paying me any mind, and other than her, it’s a ghost town up here.
My eyes well up as I type the next name.
J-O-C-E-L-Y-N B-U-R-T-O-N
More than seventeen thousand hits. I try adding Florida at the end, since that’s where she went after leaving Louisiana, but it doesn’t narrow it down much. So I spend the better part of three hours scrolling page after page, looking for anything that seems like her. But I come up empty.
I slump back into the chair and sigh. Where do I go from here?
I want to reach out to Ivy and Jocelyn, but we made a pact before I left—never to contact each other and never to talk about anything that happened with anyone.
Jocelyn was adamant that we never cross paths again, and it looks as though she made sure we wouldn’t.
As if on cue, my phone vibrates. It’s Sam. I haven’t heard from him since I canceled getting together last week.
Sam: Any chance you’re free tonight?
My first instinct is to say no. But then I glance again at the screen in front of me.
Seventeen thousand, one hundred and forty-eight hits for Jocelyn Burton.
There must be a better way to find her, and to find Hannah Greer.
Who better than a police detective to give me some guidance?
I nibble on my lip, debating for a few minutes, before finally typing back.
Elizabeth: Sure. My place or yours?
I wind up meeting Sam at a restaurant, rather than one of our apartments like we usually do when we get together.
“This is nice, isn’t it?” He smiles as we eat. “I mean, what we usually do is pretty damn nice, too. But I like taking you out. We should do it more often.”
Shoot. This was a mistake. I knew it when he suggested meeting for dinner, but I didn’t push back.
Sam seems like a great guy. Not once in the few months we’ve been getting together has he shown any red flags.
He’s been a perfect gentleman, except in the bedroom, where he’s aggressive, which I rather like.
But I learned years ago to be up front with the expectations I have of men.
Most are thrilled to find a woman only looking for sex.
Once you take the next step, it’s difficult to pull back without upsetting the other person.
After we’ve finished, I look him in the eyes. “I like you, Sam. You seem like a genuinely nice guy.”
He frowns. “I hear a but coming . . .”
I smile sadly. “But I’m not looking for a relationship.”
“It was just dinner.”
“I know. But I want to be up front with you.”
He sighs. “Is it me?”
I shake my head. “No, it’s me.”
“We haven’t talked too much about our previous partners. Did something happen to sour you on relationships?”
You mean like a deadbeat dad, a string of “uncles” who used my mother, and a teacher who abused the trust of my best friend? Yet I shake my head. “No. I just like to keep things simple.”
Sam rakes a hand through his hair. “All right. If that’s the way you want it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.” He smiles, trying to make light of the moment, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “The alternative isn’t a bad consolation prize.”
A few minutes later, the waitress brings the check. Sam takes out his credit card and sticks it in the leather padfolio.
I hold out my hand. “I’d like to pay half, if you don’t mind. I’ll give you cash.”
Sam frowns. “Really? You can’t let me pay for one meal? Do you want the receipt for the condoms, too? Maybe we can calculate how much one from the box costs and you can leave the cash on the nightstand before you slip out each time?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just prefer to pay my own way.”
Sam says something under his breath and tosses a few twenties into the check holder, taking his card back out. “Whatever. It’s fine.”
I open my wallet and count fifty dollars. But as I pull the cash from the compartment, something tucked between the bills falls out—a slip of paper. It floats to the floor, closer to Sam’s feet, and he reaches down and picks it up, extending it to me across the table.
“Louisiana, right?” he says.
I freeze. “What?”
He looks down at the ink on the paper, at Ivy’s phone number. “The area code. It’s Louisiana, isn’t it? My ex-partner retired there to be near his kid who went to college at Tulane and stayed. His area code is 337.”
I snatch the paper back. “Yes, it’s Louisiana.”
“That’s where you were born, right?”
I blink a few times. There is no way in hell I told him that. I don’t tell anyone where I’m from. “How do you know that?”
Sam looks away, clears his throat. “You must’ve told me.”
“I absolutely did not tell you.”
His shoulders slump, and he hangs his head. He knows he’s been caught in a lie. “I, uh, ran you when we first started dating.”
“Ran me? What does that mean?”
“Through the system. At work. I do it to everyone I date. You can never be too careful, especially in New York.”
“You investigated me?” My heart thumps around in my chest, but not just at the indignity of being spied on. What if he found something about what happened before?
“Not investigated. Just punched you into the system. You know, to see if you had any priors or anything. System also gives all last known addresses. It showed you grew up in Louisiana. I was surprised. You don’t have a Southern accent.”
It feels like I’ve just had my clothes unwillingly ripped from my body, and I’m standing naked.
I should have known better than to date a detective .
Of course he’d look me up. My head spins while I take in the fact that Sam has known where I grew up for the three months we’ve been spending time together, and yet never once mentioned that he knew I’d lied to him about being from New York.
Paranoia creeps in. I start to remember other things—like that time we were at his apartment and I went to the bathroom.
When I came out, he had my phone in his hand.
He claimed he’d picked it up instead of his by accident.
Was he lying? And another time when he stayed over, and I found him looking through the end table drawer in my living room.
He claimed he was looking for the remote, but the remote was sitting right on the coffee table.
The waitress comes over to collect the check, but I haven’t yet put my half inside. The cash is still in my hand. I open the padfolio, then look up at Sam’s face. “On second thought . . .” I shove the bills back into my purse. “You can pay the whole damn bill.”
“Elizabeth—”
Sam says more, but I don’t stick around to hear it. I’m already out of my seat and taking long strides toward the restaurant door. He catches up to me outside, just as I lower my arm and a cab pulls to the curb.
“Elizabeth, wait!”
“No, Sam. I’m leaving.”
“Just come home with me. Let’s talk about this. It’s really not a big deal.”
I ignore him and climb into the back of the cab, slamming the door shut.
“Twenty-Second and Second, please,” I say to the cabbie.
He looks in the rearview mirror. “The guy outside is still talking to you.”
“Just drive. I’m done talking to him.”