Lily was gone when I woke up. Her side of the bed was empty, her robe removed from the end of the bed. The bedroom door was open.
I found Lily downstairs, in the kitchen with a mug of decaf coffee, having a stare down with a piece of toast. She was sitting at the table in her robe and bare feet, her hair thrown up in some sort of messy knot.
The world outside looked different somehow, as if nothing was safe anymore.
“I don’t know,” Lily says now, drawing her eyebrows together. “It was just a coincidence. It happens. Why?” She doesn’t wait for me to tell her before she says, “Jim Brady saw me there too. Remember? What are the odds of that? It’s popular and it’s close. People I know go there all the time.”
Some people say there are no such things as coincidences in this world. That everything happens for a reason and is just part of some big, calculated plan.
But whose plan?
“I mean, Lily,” I say as I pull out the chair next to her and sit, leaning into her, having to get this out, “how much do we really know about this guy?”
I spent the two hours I was awake thinking about this. The reason I ask is because in the middle of the night, I remembered something he said to me once, about Lily. At the time, it just went to my head and I thought,Yeah, I am pretty damn lucky. I don’t remember the exact words Jake used, but it was something about me hitting the jackpot with Lily.
While I don’t remember the words, what I remember is the look in his eye. It was green with envy. He wasn’t looking at me as he said it. He was looking intently across the room at Lily, staring intensely. I followed the gaze of his eye to where she stood, talking to someone who wasn’t Nina, so that there could be no mistaking who he was looking at. Lily must have felt our eyes on her because she gazed back, over a bare shoulder. She was wearing this long, strapless black dress that hugged in at the waist, but was otherwise effortless and flowy. It was summer and her skin was a golden tan, flawless, sexy. I can picture it even now, the stillness of her eyes and the way they held mine when she smiled wistfully back, making a face to suggest that this conversation with whoever she was speaking to had gone on too long and she needed me to save her from it, which I did. Gladly.
At the time I was oddly happy that I had something he should envy. He had the fancy house and the fancy car, a lucrative salary and an impressive fucking career.
But I had Lily.
“Not much, now that you mention it,” Lily says. “We hung out with them what, maybe ten times?”
“Less.”
There were a few dinners at their house and maybe two at ours. A couple dinners out. Maybe three faculty parties. We were friends. We always had a great time together and shared lots of laughs. But it’s not like Jake and I were best friends.
Lily nods. She realizes I’m right. “I think because of Nina,” she says, standing from the table to pour me coffee, which I take from her, grateful. “Because of all the things that Nina has said to me over the years about Jake. I feel like I know him better than I do.”
The reality is that we don’t know anything about him.
We only knew what he and Nina wanted us to see.
Later, I walk the property searching for something amiss, for some sign of who was here last night. I find nothing other than an empty can of beer and decide it was probably just some kids or some drunk or homeless person who had lost his way. It’s not unreasonable to think. This trail that we live on spans nearly fifty miles, north to south. It runs through something like two counties and a dozen towns. Though the suburb where Lily and I live is middle-to upper-middle-class, each of those twelve towns is not. Some towns that the trail passes through have a pretty decent percent of their population living in poverty. It’s sad. The demographics are much different here than elsewhere, where the rate of crime is higher. I’ve biked the length of the trail before and discovered transient camps—encampments with people living in tents—further down. They’re usually single men. The police chase them away, but inevitably, they come back, taking up residence under bridges and in the woods. I never like Lily to run alone too far down the path. If it was a short run, okay, but not her long runs. When she goes for long runs or when she used to go for long runs, I’d bike behind her to make sure she made it home safely.
Ordinarily if I thought someone was trespassing on my property in the middle of the night, I’d call the police and maybe I should have called them last night. But police ask questions, like do I have a reason to believe someone might be trespassing on my property in the middle of the night and why? I don’t know that I want them coming to my house anyway, not when I, myself, am guilty of things like breaking and entering and evidence tampering, and have a complete inability to lie.
I didn’t think I had a reason to believe someone might be trespassing on my property, not until a few hours ago when my thoughts got the best of me in the middle of the night and I started to wonder if there is any chance, no matter how remote, that Jake isn’t dead.
NINA
Monday after school, I have to take my mother for a biopsy of the mass in her breast, so that we’ll know decisively if it’s malignant or benign. The doctor has already told us not to worry too much yet, that most masses are benign. I know the doctor means well, but with my mother’s family history of breast cancer, I have trouble believing hers is. I keep it to myself. I don’t want to worry her for now. If the mass is malignant, we’ll deal with it.
The doctor’s appointment is at three thirty in the afternoon. It takes thirty minutes to get there, and I have to pick my mother up on the way.
I feel rushed as I leave work. I packed my bag during the last period of the day so I could leave as soon as the bell rang. Now I’m hurrying—practically running—to my car in a futile attempt to get out of the parking lot before the buses start to leave and I’m stuck in traffic. My eyes are on my car. I’m not looking where I’m going, so that I trip over a crack in the parking lot and stagger forward, my travel mug getting thrown from my hand, hitting the pavement and rolling under my car. It was empty, thankfully, otherwise the coffee would have sprayed everywhere when it fell. Still, I have to get down on my hands and knees to reach under the car for the mug, which feels like a fitting end to a bad day. I just hope no one sees me. My hand wraps around the mug but then, as I’m about to get up from under the car, something else beneath it catches my eye, and I become motionless, feeling a heaviness in my stomach and in my chest, a sense of dread.
I come up with the coffee mug. I set it aside, on the asphalt. I dig my phone out of my purse, and then I lean back over to shine the flashlight on the object beneath my car for a better look, forgetting for a moment all about my mother’s biopsy.
“Should I even ask why you’re crawling around in the parking lot on your hands and knees?” a voice banters.
I jump, almost hitting my head on the car. I look up to find Ryan standing there in the glow of the afternoon sun. I shade the light from my eyes with a hand to see him. He looks down in amusement at me, though his droll smile and his raised eyebrows fade away when he sees the expression of shock on my face.
Ryan’s words are tempered. “Nina?” he asks, cocking a head and pulling his eyebrows together. “What is it? Is everything alright? Did you lose something?”
My jaw is clenched. “Can you... Could you just look at this for me? Can you tell me if it’s what I think it is?”
“Yeah,” he says gently, nodding. “Sure.” He sets his bag down, and then he lowers himself to the ground beside me, on his knees, asking, “What is it you want me to look at?”