Chapter 44 Lindy
Lindy
“I’m sorry, ma’am, he doesn’t look familiar,” said the ranger in the small booth at the entrance to Quoddy Head State Park,
shaking his head as he looked down at the MISSING flyer Lindy had given him. “And we don’t have any campsites here.”
“No campsites?” Lindy felt like her lungs had been punctured. She glanced in the rearview mirror, saw Hailey and Jack through
the Protegé’s windshield, and tried to regroup. “Are there any campgrounds nearby?” The ranger shook his head, said not really,
not anywhere close. “Okay, well, can we look around the parking lot?” There were hiking trails; David could still be here.
Lindy paid the entrance fee for herself, Hailey, and Jack, then drove into the gravel lot and parked. Only a few cars were
in the lot, and David’s Subaru wasn’t one of them. Still, she needed a minute. She gripped the steering wheel, trying to breathe.
Because what she knew now, with Eli discovering the new charge on the new credit card, was this: Her husband was on an impromptu camping trip and, as of two days ago, had been in good enough health to go to town for supplies.
He’d gone off on his own without bothering to let her or anyone know, setting into motion the worst week of her and her children’s lives, even torpedoing their daughter’s wedding.
It wasn’t that Lindy had been hoping for death or injury. But to realize, after all this time, that this was how little regard
David had for her, their marriage, their family, their daughter, was, in this moment, simply taking her breath away.
As Hailey’s Protegé pulled into the parking spot beside the Volvo, tires crunching gravel, Lindy set aside the welcome brochure
the ranger had given her, which showed a map of the park’s trails. If the Subaru wasn’t here, David wasn’t here hiking, so
there was no need to set out searching the trails, imagining a broken ankle, a blown-out knee.
If only, she thought—because she did not want to hate David, and right now she hated him more than she’d ever hated anyone in her
life.
Hailey knocked on the window. “Mom?” Her eyes were full of tears. Jack stood off to the side watching her, looking distraught.
Lindy opened the door and got out of the car. She hugged her daughter tightly, then pulled back. “Let’s check out the view.”
If David had brought them to the end of the road, she thought, the least they could do was try to see what it was that he’d
been so hungry for that he’d left them all behind in search of it.
They walked together, the three of them, over toward the cliff’s edge, the candy-striped lighthouse with the old-fashioned
keeper’s house attached. It killed Lindy to see Hailey so upset, her high hopes that her dad would be here at this park shattered.
“There’s a lighthouse, Mom,” she’d said, as if she’d really placed faith in Reese’s prediction.
There was nothing Lindy could think to say to make any of it better.
She looked out at the broad channel before them.
The sky and water nearly merged in glistening shades of silvery blue as waves rolled in, crashing on the rocky cliffs below.
The air was damp and clean. This had to be one of the most beautiful spots in the entire country; the world, even.
And she realized then that David was right.
A new sense of clarity was descending upon her, here at the easternmost edge of the continental United States: her marriage was over.
Because, even if David ended up being okay, how could she stay married to someone who would do this to her, to their kids?
She heard his long-ago words: I thought if I could get to the end of the road, and to the beginning of something else, I’d feel better.
Well, here we are, David! she thought, feeling suddenly viciously angry, feeling as if divorcing him would be easy. Easy! She thought of Hailey’s canceled
wedding. Ironic that she and her daughter were both at a fracture point at the same time. And her mother, losing her husband
to dementia. They were all at the end of certain roads, the beginnings of others. They were all going to need each other,
more than ever before.
She reached for Hailey’s hand and squeezed it. “I really think we should get back to Grandma and Grandpa. And we need to take
care of canceling whatever we can for your wedding.”
Hailey shook her head, wiping tears from her eyes. “We can’t give up on Dad. Even if he was okay two days ago, he might not
be now! And we still don’t know if that was even him who made the charge, or if his credit card was stolen.”
Lindy tried to think what to say. The odds that David’s credit card had been stolen seemed so small.
Jack interrupted. “So, like, I don’t want to mention the obvious,” he said, pointing across the channel, “but that’s, like,
Canada over there. And we saw a bridge in town, in Lubec, that goes right to it. Do you think he might’ve crossed over to
camp over there?”
“You need a passport to get over there now,” Lindy said. It was a reflexive argument. Because there was clarity here, too:
If David had gone to Canada, she was going to kill him.
But Hailey seemed oddly excited by the prospect. “We should call Eli and see if Dad’s passport is at home in Cranston! If
it is, then we know he can’t have gone over there. Do you know where he keeps his passport at home, Mom?”
“Sure, in his top dresser drawer,” Lindy said, at the same time she was shaking her head. “But we don’t have our passports, so it’s not like we could follow him.”
“But we could at least rule it out!”
Lindy wanted to refuse. How dare David do this to them—send them on this wild goose chase, worry them like this?
But Hailey looked at her, eyes filling again, and said, “Please, Mom?”
They drove back to town and found a pay phone. It was at a gas station right beside the IGA where David had charged his groceries,
which made Lindy even more furious, to think he could’ve so easily called, at least to let them know he was alive!
If it was clarity he was looking for up here, it seemed he had found it. It seemed he had found that he didn’t care about
his family at all.
Hailey placed the call and reported back, her face ashen. “Eli says his passport isn’t there.”
Okay, I am divorcing him for sure, Lindy thought, because if he’d grabbed his passport, that meant premeditation. It meant he had lied when he’d called her at
Innisfree on the morning of his party and said he was on his way. It meant he had caused all this pain—all this searching, all this heartbreak—on purpose.
She tried to unclench her jaw. “Let’s grab some breakfast.” She wasn’t hungry, exactly, but she knew they’d all need fuel
to get through the day—and get back to her parents, who actually needed her. “Then, we are heading back to Innisfree.”