Chapter 3 #2
I gave her a version of what had happened with Nolan, except I didn’t include the bread-making part (the reason that I’d had to leave my house) and I didn’t include the part about him swallowing whiskey in one gulp (and my belief that his drinking was habitual).
I only said that I’d encountered a guy walking down a road out in the boonies on his way to some unknown destination.
I explained that afterwards, he had come to say thank you but I didn’t add that he wanted to get the details about what had gone on because he couldn’t remember that night very well.
“He was really nice to me,” I told her. “I wanted to look up where he lives, just to—I guess to check and make sure he has somewhere. I don’t think he’s living rough or anything, but just to check.” I couldn’t describe it better.
I hadn’t ever mentioned his name, but the librarian was nodding a little, like she knew this story. How could she have known this story?
“I went to school with a guy like that,” she said.
We were in a library so we hadn’t been talking loudly, but she had dropped her voice even further.
“He was a really smart kid but he had problems...” Now she glanced toward the main room and started whispering.
“He started at our local high school as a sophomore because he had gotten kicked out of his boarding school. You have to renew a contract with them every year and they didn’t give him a new one, so he was disenrolled.
” She picked up one of her long, dark curls and wound it around her finger, then let it drop before winding it again.
“He would never tell anyone why he had transferred and I only found out because my neighbor is an admin in one of the elementary schools. Anita knows everything.”
“It’s too bad that he had to switch,” I said. As much as I liked to talk, I was also interested in hearing other people’s stories, so I had questions. “What happened to him?”
“Academically, he was way ahead of us. He had taken things that we had never heard of, like college-level classes in the ninth grade.” She nodded as if she was still impressed and she twirled her hair faster.
“But he didn’t do any homework, he never studied, and he never paid attention to the teachers.
He didn’t put in any effort but it was very obvious that he was capable.
He would ace tests but he didn’t get good grades because he never handed anything in.
He ended up graduating anyway and went to college.
I bet that he did really well there since he was so smart. ”
“Like, he would have been on the honor roll?”
“Exactly,” she agreed. “Your story made me think of him because he had a thing about disappearing. He would end up on the other side of the state or sometimes out of the state, just doing wild stuff. He would drive to Chicago or the UP in the middle of the night, for example. I think he still travels all the time. He has his own plane.”
“He’s a pilot?” I asked.
“No, he has a private jet and hires pilots. The reason he was able to wander around as a high school kid was because his family had a lot of money,” she told me. She looked up at the sign above us: Whitaker Reading Room.
“Are you still friends with him?”
She looked surprised, but then she blushed. “We weren’t ever friends. I just…watched him. Not in a creepy way!” she insisted, as I had. “He was interesting. I thought he looked like he should have been in a black-and-white movie, like the lead in The Hustler.”
I didn’t know what that was but it reminded me of Vegas. “He was handsome?”
She nodded seriously. “Very. He was kind of strange with how he acted, though. He was morose—maybe I would say ‘pensive.’”
I wouldn’t have said either one, since I wasn’t exactly sure what they meant. But I nodded because I thought I understood that he’d been sad.
“But he was also a nice guy and he helped people,” she told me. Now she was winding and pulling her hair at double time. That curl had gone almost totally straight.
“Like what? What did he do to help?”
“Well, he got involved with volleyball. The girls’ team at our school was really bad. I know, because I was on it,” she told me. “I was so terrible that the coach suggested that I should go out for cross country instead, but I’m also not a good runner.”
“I never played sports either,” I mentioned.
“Not everyone should. I’m talking about myself,” she clarified.
“We were trying to raise money for new uniforms and we sold wrapping paper but no one really bought any, and there was no way that we were going to reach our goal. But he heard some of us talking about it and he bought like, five thousand dollars of ugly wrapping paper.”
“Five thousand? Five thousand bucks?”
She nodded again. “Then the nicest part was that he started coming to all our games. It was him and some parents, and that was it for our side. He would clap and try to start chants, too. I really, really liked Nolan.”
“Nolan,” I said. “Nolan Whitaker.”
“Are we talking about the same person?”
We were. “I’m not trying to be weird and stalk him.
I was concerned,” I said. “And I’ve been thinking about him a lot.
” At night, as I curled into the smallest ball possible to stay warm, I would remember how he’d held doors open for me.
I had also thought about the silver flask he’d carried in his pocket and how he’d patted the bottom of his cup to get the last drops of liquor.
“I think about him sometimes, too,” she told me, and then she blushed again. “The Whitakers are always making news. Usually it’s for good things, like donations or other charity stuff. Nolan lies low but I’ve seen him around a few times. I doubt he remembers me.”
“What’s your name?”
It was Cadence and I introduced myself, too.
“It’s nice to meet you, Vivi.” She squinted at the letters on my T-shirt. “Does that say…”
I zipped up my coat so she could no longer read where it said “DILF.” “I got it for free. It was probably supposed to be for a man to wear.”
She looked down at her screen again. “Um, probably. I’m going to bet that if he owns a home, he paid cash for it. That means we wouldn’t be able to track a lien against his property. Those are public record and of course, a mortgage is a type of lien.”
She had stated that as if it were obvious and I nodded as if I understood what she meant.
“And I would bet that his house is held in a larger trust, too, so we won’t be able to look for tax records under his name, either,” she said, typing.
“But unless he’s actively hiding, he wouldn’t have gone to crazy lengths—aha!
” She grinned. “He’s registered to vote and Michigan voter rolls are public. I found his address.”
I would never register to vote, then. As I made that mental note, I saw that her smile of triumph had faded. She was looking at me closely and now she seemed slightly hesitant. Her hand in her hair had frozen.
“I’m not going to his house,” I said. “I just wanted to look at pictures.”
She nodded and typed, then turned the monitor so that I could see the image there. “I know this street. It’s a little north of here and on a peninsula. He overlooks Lake Michigan.”
That was the biggest body of water I’d ever seen.
In Nevada, I had been fairly close to the Pacific Ocean, but I had never gone any further west so I had missed it.
Now I studied the picture of the house that had a view of that amazing lake.
It was nowhere as big as the place I’d thought he owned, the one that had belonged to his grandparents.
But it was also in no way small. In no, no, no way.
If I stacked three of Kolter’s houses on top of each other, like a cake I might bake someday, and then tacked his mom’s onto either side of each story, that was more of the size.
Plus, it was a pretty house. It looked like it was on a street with neighbors, not close ones but with other people so you didn’t feel quite so middle-of-nowhere.
It was just nice.
“Thank you,” I told the librarian. “I appreciate you helping me.” I went and sat in one of the big chairs next to the fire where it was so warm and cozy.
I imagined that Nolan also had a fireplace, and that he could have sat in front of it on a day like this.
But then I imagined him taking out his flask.
“Vivi?”
I opened my eyes, startled. Cadence stood in front of me, holding out a piece of paper. “This is the address,” she told me.
“What?” I sat up straight and looked at the fire, which was a lot smaller. The big logs had disappeared—they’d burned down to ashes.
“This is the address,” she repeated. She still offered the paper to me. “I figured that if I can find it online then anyone can. You could yourself, too, so why would I try to hide it? It was a mean thing for me to do.”
“No, that made sense. You thought I was going to do something bad,” I said. “You were being…” I had to stop to yawn. “You were being a good friend, even if you said that you two aren’t really friends.” I reached and took the Post-it from her. “Thank you.”
“You’ve been asleep for a while,” she told me next, and I sat up straight.
Had I? I looked through the window at the snowy lawn and it did look quite a bit darker.
“We close at five today, and it’s almost—”
“It’s almost five?” I jumped up and got a little dizzy, since it had been a while since I’d eaten. “I have to go. Thank you for your help, Cadence.”
I rushed but as soon as I could see the house in the distance, I knew that I was ok.
Kolter’s car wasn’t in the driveway. Since I didn’t have a working phone, I didn’t know where he was, but I wasn’t concerned.
He also hadn’t known where I was, so there was no reason for me to be nervous.
He wouldn’t be angry that I’d been at the library for most of the day, resting in warmth and safety.