Chapter 40 Lindy
Lindy
Being alone—really alone—was weird. No kids, no David. Nobody. And, without cell signal, no possibility even of anyone calling
to say they needed something.
Lindy turned on the car radio, and every station was playing songs from her teenage years or earlier. She sang along to “What
a Fool Believes,” “Lay Down Sally,” “I Want to Know What Love Is,” “More Than a Feeling.” All made her think of her parents,
of the nights both in New York and at Innisfree when her mother would put some new LP on the stereo and, always with a martini
in her hand, pull Lindy’s laughing father up to dance. Of the days when her mom would bring her to smoky-smelling record shops
in the city and lift her up to file through the bins, telling her some piece of trivia about nearly every artist. Her mother
was no classical music snob; she thought Dylan was a genius, and she loved The Jackson 5, The Moody Blues, Foreigner, Diana
Ross, and on and on. Lindy had found it all very embarrassing.
Now she would’ve loved to see her parents dancing again, would’ve given anything to know they had years and years of dancing
ahead of them.
When “Like a Rolling Stone” came on, she sang along until the line about being “on your own” made her start to cry.
Her eyes already burned with exhaustion; the last thing she needed was more tears.
She flipped off the radio, wiped her eyes, and drove in the quiet through the rolling blueberry hills.
She’d never been farther east than Blue Hill before.
The landscape was growing increasingly wild, rough, and beautiful, and the sky was broad and cloud-studded.
As the horizon stretched wider and wider, her decision to come up here—especially alone—began to seem more and more foolish.
The odds of finding David up here were obviously slim.
What was beginning to seem more likely was that this vast wilderness would swallow Lindy up instead.
Eastport was definitely the end of the road. It was located on an island, accessible only by a causeway, according to the
map. Lindy turned off the main highway onto a flat, broad road lined in short, leafy trees and tough-looking pines. Soon,
she passed a sign that said Eastport was seven miles away.
Seven more miles! She had to pee. She’d had to for the last hour; there’d been no place to stop.
Seven more miles. And then, maybe, she’d find David’s car.
She tried to convince herself it was possible. A small town on a small island. Of course she could travel every road! Of course
their paths would cross, inevitably!
If he was there.
The sun was bright and hot. It was the middle of the day, and even this far north, everything shimmered in the summer heat.
The road was lined in white bursts of wildflowers, with just the occasional small house punctuating the wilderness, quarter
mile by quarter mile.
Lindy felt a million miles from Summerland Cove.
To her right, the beginnings of a marshy-looking bay came into view. This was Passamaquoddy country, a sign had said, and soon she was passing a cluster of low-to-the-ground houses, then a large maintenance building that announced itself as the Passamaquoddy Tribal Public Safety Building.
In the distance, past another small collection of neatly kept trailer and ranch-style homes, came the view of a larger bay,
and then she was on the mile-long rock-lined causeway, blue water gleaming to either side. The tide was low, exposing mud
flats; the expansive view was breathtaking. If she and David had been on vacation, she would’ve insisted they stop to take
a photo.
He could be anywhere, she thought suddenly, shaken. A fresh stack of MISSING posters fluttered in the passenger seat, weighed down by her purse. He might not be near here at all. And his heart. His knee. God knows . . .
Was she just wasting time? On a fool’s errand, as David would say?
She couldn’t think that. She bit her lip, squared her shoulders, and kept driving.
Entering town, she stopped at a small IGA supermarket, used the bathroom, bought an iced tea. She posted a MISSING flyer on the bulletin board in the foyer, touching the picture of David’s face lightly before she turned away. Did she know
him anymore? How could she even begin to imagine, after all this, that she could predict what he would have done, where he
might have gone?
But she was here now. She had to try.
She climbed back into the Volvo and drove slowly along the quiet street, passing a couple small, abandoned-looking warehouses,
a pretty white church, a new-looking little bank, and a series of old frame houses. Some had gardens of phlox and coreopsis,
daylilies and hostas. Most of the gardens looked overgrown, tired of making a stand.
A few blocks later, past a big building made of giant granite blocks—maybe an old customs house—the street ended at a row
of brick storefronts labeled 1887. The harbor was visible behind them.
Lindy turned right and drove slowly along a downtown street lined with restored historic buildings.
She searched for David’s Subaru among the parked cars angled in toward the curb on the right-hand side.
Families meandered the sidewalks in front of the shops and galleries, eating post-lunch ice cream cones.
At a break in the buildings on the water side was a twelve-foot-tall statue of a bearded old salt in a yellow rain jacket and nor’easter hat clutching a giant fish.
Another thing she would’ve stopped to take a picture of, in normal times.
She saw a few green Subarus, but none had Rhode Island plates. As the storefronts dwindled, she passed a diner where people
sat on a deck under red-and-white striped umbrellas, enjoying fried seafood for lunch. Opposite the diner, on the crest of
a slight hill, stood a stately old brick library. As Lindy crawled along another block, she spotted a two-story motel that
faced the water, a Vacancy flag fluttering.
Now this was an end-of-the-line place. If David was using cash and not camping, this was exactly the kind of place he would likely choose to stay, she thought. She pulled into the parking lot.
Her legs trembled as she got out of the Volvo. Heat radiated from the asphalt at the same time a cool breeze drifted in off
the water. She got the feeling that this was a place where ghosts lived, and a shiver went up her spine.
“No, he doesn’t look familiar,” said the lady behind the desk inside the motel office when Lindy showed the picture of David
on the MISSING poster. The office’s brown-paneled walls were covered in framed images of lighthouses and lobsters, plus a variety of illustrated
signs that all said the same thing: Welcome to Maine, The Way Life Should Be.
“Are you sure? Can you take a closer look?”
The woman peered in again. “No, I’d have remembered him. I like that curly salt-and-pepper hair.” She shoved the poster back
across the desk. “You need a room?”
Lindy was folding the poster into her purse, feeling defeated already. She had to remind herself: She was just getting started.
He was probably camping, anyway. “Um, I don’t—”
“We got just one left for tonight. A double queen. Probably the only room in town.”
Lindy hadn’t thought through where she might spend the night. She had a lot more searching to do in this area, and, even if she didn’t, driving back to Innisfree tonight was out of the question. And there seemed to be few, if any, more towns within an hour’s drive. “The last room in town?”
“I’d wager.”
“I’ll take it,” Lindy said, pulling out her wallet.
After signing for the reservation—it was too early to get into the room—she drove up and down every street in town looking
for the Subaru. She showed David’s picture to shopkeepers and innkeepers. She drove the couple miles out of town to a campground
on the northeast side of the island. One of the shopkeepers had told her about it, saying it was the only one nearby. Lindy
spent half an hour walking the grounds, which featured beautiful waterfront sites with views of Canada in the distance. David
would’ve loved the place, but she saw no sign of his car. She asked at the office, and the host graciously searched her papers
from the past week but found no record of David or his Subaru. She said they’d had few vacancies, so if he’d shown up without
a reservation, he probably wouldn’t have gotten a spot. She also said she didn’t remember seeing his face and that she was
the one who was in the office most all the time.
It was six o’clock when Lindy gave up on the campground. If David really had set out to go camping, he probably would’ve chosen
a wilder place, anyway.
She realized she was exhausted, ravenous. She’d been on the road since 5:30 this morning, and the campground host had told
her to be sure to get dinner soon, because every restaurant in town was apt to close by seven. Lindy made her way back to
town and the diner she’d noticed earlier and sat in a booth inside, making notes while she waited for her fish and chips.
What she’d learned today: Eastport would’ve been the perfect place for David to escape to, if escape had been his aim. But
it sure didn’t seem like he was here now, or like he’d been here at all this past week.
Did that mean he’d escaped to somewhere else?
Lindy still hated to think of him being so thoughtless. But what were the alternative scenarios? Nothing she liked to think
about, either. Murder, injury, heart attack in the backcountry somewhere? All of those ended up with him dead in the woods
and never being found at all.
Her fish and chips arrived in a paper-lined red plastic basket. She felt hollow now rather than hungry, but she knew she should
eat. She forked into the breaded haddock, steam escaping as the white flesh was exposed. The fish tasted salty and fresh and
restorative, and she tried to encourage herself: Even the police knew that a fifty-year-old white man on his own was no doubt
fine.
Also, there were a lot of other places Lindy could still look, even if not in Eastport proper. She’d learned there was another
significant town nearby, Lubec. Just a couple miles away across the water, it was an hour’s drive on land—twenty minutes west
back to the main highway from Eastport, then twenty minutes south, then another twenty minutes east down a peninsula from
there. One of the innkeepers she’d spoken to had said that a point over there was actually the easternmost point in the continental
U.S. because it was two miles farther east than Eastport.
So, maybe that was where David would’ve gone. It had been twenty-five years since he’d told her about Eastport being the first place in the
continental U.S. to see the sun rise every day. It seemed likely he would’ve since learned that he’d been slightly mistaken
about that.
LUBEC, Lindy wrote in her notebook in all caps, underlining the word three times for good measure. Yes. She would gather all the
brochures and materials she could find about the entire area, and about Lubec in particular—any campgrounds, hotels, hiking
trails, bed and breakfasts, anything—and spend the night studying them. She’d make a plan and set out fresh tomorrow.
She would try to keep her hopes up that David wasn’t gone forever.
“Mom?” Lindy heard a familiar-sounding voice, and she looked up from her half-eaten haddock to see Hailey walking into the restaurant, trailed by Jack Westfield.
For a second, she had the strange sensation that she might be dreaming.
Or that maybe she wasn’t actually in Eastport, because why would Hailey and Jack be in Eastport?
Hailey slid into the booth across from her, looking flushed, sweaty, and very real. “There you are! We’ve been looking all
over for you. We saw your car parked outside.” Jack slid in beside Hailey and gave Lindy a little smile in greeting.
Okay, you are not my daughter’s groom, Lindy thought, but she didn’t have it in her to ask questions right now. “It’s a good thing I wasn’t trying to hide out, I
guess,” she said, still feeling off-balance and strange. If they had found her this easily, why hadn’t she been able to find
David? And then she knew for certain: He simply was not here.
“Any sign of Dad?” Hailey said, in a tone that implied she would be speaking to Lindy seriously about Lindy’s actions after
the dust of all this had settled. It was a tone so like the one Lindy would sometimes take with her kids that it almost made
her smile, despite the bad news she had to deliver.
“No, honey, I’m sorry.” She slid her basket of remaining french fries across the table, but Hailey and Jack just looked at
her with sad eyes, and Hailey let out a big sigh.
Lindy hated to see Hailey’s sorrow, at the same time she hoped the fact that Hailey and Jack had followed her up here was
a sign that at least Hailey might be in the process of forgiving her. But seeing them across the table also made her realize
that she’d come up here on her own in hopes that, if she could find David, she could redeem herself in everybody’s eyes for
the lie she’d told—and even keep Kate and Josh from finding out about it at all.
Now that fantasy was over, and Lindy was stuck with the reality: She had not the first clue where David actually was.
Trying to keep the worst possibilities at bay, she told Hailey and Jack about Lubec.
It was too late to search there tonight, she explained.
It would be dark before they could get over there, and, if that town was like this one, everything would be closed, and there wouldn’t be anywhere to stay.
But, tomorrow, maybe they would find him there.
“He told me he was looking for the end of one road and the beginning of another. He said he wanted to be in the first place in America to see the light!”
“Okay, Mom,” Hailey said patiently, though the look she gave Lindy was the kind you’d give someone when you were wondering
if they’d lost their mind.