On or around 4:30 p.m. that afternoon, you left the Tate. You walked home, leaving your bike outside the student center, likely because it was getting colder and you didn’t want to freeze going down Baxter Hill. (Two weeks later, your bike was found chained to the rack outside the center.)
According to the desk monitor, by 5:00 p.m., you were back in your dorm room. Your roommate Nancy recalls your excitement when you told her that Michael Stipe was going to be at the Manhattan. You both decided you would get a group together and go later that night. You were all underage, but you knew John MacCallister, a townie who worked the front door, from high school. Nancy made several calls to friends. A meeting time of 9:30 p.m. was arranged.
Since your psych professor had scheduled an exam before Spring Break, you and Nancy went to the North library to study. Around 8:30 p.m., you were both seen at the Taco Stand, a restaurant catty-corner from the black iron arch that stands at the main campus entrance. You took the food back to Lipscomb Hall. You entered through the back door, which was propped open, so the night desk monitor, a woman named Beth Tindall, did not record your entry.
Upstairs, both you and Nancy showered and dressed for the evening. You were wearing saddle loafers, black jeans, a man’s white button-up shirt, and an embroidered silver and gold vest. You had silver bangles on your wrist and a locket that belonged to your sister around your neck.
Later, Nancy could not recall whether or not you brought back from the communal showers the wire basket you kept your toiletries in (they were not found in your dorm room). Nancy mentions in one of her statements that abandoned items in the bathrooms were generally either stolen or thrown away.
At 9:30 p.m., you met your friends at the Manhattan Cafe, where you were told that the Michael Stipe rumor was false. Someone mentioned that the band was touring in Asia. Someone else said they were in California.
There was an overall sense of disappointment, but it was agreed that you all might as well stay for drinks. It was Monday night. Everyone but you had classes the next day, a fact that later worked to your disadvantage, because Nancy assumed you had gone home to finish your laundry and we assumed that you were at school.
The first round was Pabst Blue Ribbon, which the Manhattan served for a dollar each. At some point later, you were seen holding a Moscow Mule, a cocktail that sold for four dollars fifty and featured vodka, Blenheim ginger ale, and lime. Nancy Griggs indicated that a man must have purchased the drink because all the girls had a habit of asking for the expensive cocktail whenever a man was paying.
A song you liked came on the jukebox. You started dancing. Someone said the song was by C+C Music Factory. Others said it was Lisa Lisa. Regardless, your enthusiasm was contagious. Soon, what little floor space there was in the club was taken up with dancers.
That night, there was no particular boy you seemed to favor. All of your friends told the sheriff that you danced because you loved dancing, not because you were trying to attract men. (So, you weren’t an evil temptress, though the sheriff tried his best to make that part of your story.)
At exactly 10:38 p.m., you told Nancy that you had a headache and were going to return to the dorm. She knows this was the time because she looked at her watch. She asked you to stay until eleven, at which point you could walk back to the dorm together. You told her you couldn’t wait that long, and to try to be quiet when she got in.
The sheriff must have asked Nancy about your level of intoxication, because he writes in his notes that Nancy said you were not showing a high level of intoxication, but that you kept yawning and seemed unfocused.
The last sentence in Nancy’s signed statement simply reads: After 10:38 p.m., I never saw her again.
No one saw you after that. At least no one who didn’t mean you harm.
Nancy’s last sentence is on the last page in your file. There is nothing more we know. As the sheriff might say, we don’t have anything farther.
Here is something the sheriff does not know and that your mother refuses to believe: I remember looking at my watch that night. It was a few minutes later, closer to eleven, most likely the time you were taken.
We were having a late dinner at Harry Bissett’s Grill on Broad Street, roughly five blocks away from the Manhattan. Your mother was downstairs using the restroom. The waiter offered to bring the check. I looked at my watch—that was when I noted the time. Your little sister was home studying with a friend, but she was old enough to put herself to bed, so I decided to order your mother’s favorite dessert.
I remember watching her walk back up the stairs. I couldn’t stop smiling, because your mother was particularly beautiful that night. Her hair was pulled back. She was wearing a white cotton dress that curved around her hips. Her skin glowed. There was so much life in her eyes. When she smiled at me, I felt like an explosion had gone off inside my heart. I could not possibly love her more than I loved her in that moment: my wife, my friend, the woman who had given me such kind, thoughtful, beautiful children.
She sat across from me at the table. I took both her hands in mine.
“Why are you smiling?” she asked.
I kissed the inside of her wrists and answered what I felt at that moment was the absolute truth. “Because everything is perfect.”
This is what I know that I am:
A fool.
THREE
She had just buried her husband.
Claire kept repeating the words in her head as if she were narrating a story rather than experiencing the event in her actual life.
Claire Scott had just buried her husband.
There was more, because the service had been long, with many moving parts that Claire recalled with her cold narrator’s eye.
The casket was gunmetal gray with a blanket of white lilies covering the closed lid. The smell of wet earth was pungent as the machine lowered his body into the grave. Claire’s knees went weak. Her grandmother stroked her back. Her mother offered her arm. Claire shook her head. She thought of strong things: Iron. Steel. Paul. It was not until they were climbing into the back of the black limousine that Claire truly understood that she would never see her husband again.
She was going home—back to their home, the home that they had shared. People would meet her there, parking their cars along the curving driveway and spilling into the street. They would make toasts. They would tell stories. In his will, Paul had requested a wake, though Claire had been too hung up on the derivation of the word to call it that. She asked herself: Wake as in, maybe Paul will wake up? Wake as in, the disturbed trail of water left behind a boat?
Claire felt the second wake made the most sense. The calm had been disturbed. She was trapped in turbulent waters. Swimming against grief. Drowning in sympathy.
There had been so many phone calls and cards and flower arrangements and notices of donations that had been made in Paul’s name. Architecture for Humanity. Habitat for Humanity. The American Cancer Society, though Paul had not died of cancer.
Was there a charity for murder victims? Surely this was something Claire should’ve looked into. Was it too late? Four days had passed since that awful night. The funeral was over. People she hadn’t seen or heard from in years had already sent their respects. They kept telling her that she was in their thoughts, that Paul was a good man, that they were there for her.
Claire nodded when they said this—at the police station, at the hospital, at the funeral home, at the graveside service—though she wasn’t quite sure where there was.