Emily sighs. “That’s true. But two disappearances almost three years apart don’t make a pattern. Still, you know what you always say—the wise man prepares for rain while the sun shines.”
Does he always say that? He thinks he does, or used to. Along with one monkey don’t make no sideshow, a thing his father used to say, his father had that fabulous sky-blue Packard—
“Roddy!” The sharpness of her tone brings him back. “You’re wandering!”
“Was I?”
“Give me that.” She takes the jelly glass with its splash of wine from in front of him and pours it down the sink. From the freezer she takes a parfait glass containing a cloudy gray concoction. She sprays whipped cream from a can on top and puts it in front of him with a long-handled dessert spoon. “Eat.”
“Do you not want to share?” he asks… but his mouth is already watering.
“No. You have it all. You need it.”
She sits across from him as he begins to spoon the mixture of brains and vanilla ice cream greedily into his mouth. Emily watches. It will bring him back. It has to bring him back. She loves him. And she needs him.
“Listen to me carefully, love. This woman will hunt around for Bonnie, find nothing, take her fee, and go her way. If she should present a problem—one chance in a hundred if not in a thousand—she is unmarried and seems to have no significant other, based on what I’ve read. Her mother died earlier this month. Her only other living relative, an uncle, is in an elder care center with Alzheimer’s. She has a business partner, but he’s apparently hors de combat with Covid.”
Roddy eats a little faster, wiping a dribble that runs down a seam at the side of his mouth. He believes he can already sense a greater clarity in what he’s seeing and in what she’s saying.
“You found all that on that Twitter platform?”
Emily smiles. “There and a few other places. I have my little tricks. It’s like that TV show we watch. Manifest. Where the characters keep saying ‘everything is connected.’ It’s a silly show, but that’s not silly. My point is simple, dear one. This is a woman who has no one. This is a woman who must feel quite normally depressed and grief-stricken after losing her mother. If a woman like that were to commit suicide by jumping in the lake, leaving a suicide note behind on her computer, who would question it?”
“Her business partner might.”
“Or he might understand completely. I’m not saying it will come to that, only—”
“That we should prepare for rain while the sun is shining.”
“Exactly.” The parfait is almost gone, and surely he’s had enough. “Give me that.”
She takes it and finishes it herself.
5
Barbara Robinson is in her bedroom, reading in her jammies by the light of her bedside lamp, when the phone rings. The book is Catalepsy, by Jorge Castro. It isn’t as good as The Forgotten City, and the title seems deliberately off-putting—a writer’s declaration that he is “literary”—but it’s pretty good. Besides, the working title of her book—Faces Change—isn’t exactly Favorite Fireside Poems for Young & Old.
It’s Jerome, calling from New York. It’s quarter past eleven where she is, so it must already be tomorrow in the eastern time zone.
“Hey, bro. You’re up late, and you’re not partyin, unless it’s with a bunch of mutes.”
“No, I’m in my hotel room. Too excited to sleep. Did I wake you?”
“No,” Barbara says, sitting up in bed and propping an extra pillow behind her. “Just reading myself to sleep.”
“Sylvia Plath or Anne Sexton?” Teasing.
“A novel. The guy who wrote it actually taught up the ridge for awhile.” Up the ridge meaning Bell College. “What’s going on with you?”
So he tells her everything he already told his parents and Holly, spilling it out in an exuberant rush. She is delighted for him, and says so. She marvels over the hundred thousand dollars, and squeals when he tells her about the possible tour.
“Bring me along! I’ll be your gofer!”
“I might take you up on that. What’s going on with you, Barbarella?”
She almost tells him everything, then holds back. Let this be Jerome’s day.
“Barb? You still there?”
“It’s been pretty much the same old same old.”
“Don’t believe it. You’re up to something. What’s the big secret? Spill.”
“Soon,” she promises. “Really. Tell me what’s up with Holly. I kind of blew her off the other day. I feel bad about that.” But not too bad. She has an essay to write, it’s important, and she hasn’t made much progress. Much? She hasn’t even started.
He recaps everything, ending with Ellen Craslow. Barbara says yes and wow and uh-huh in all the right places, but she’s just half-listening. Her mind has drifted back to that damned essay again, which has to be in the mail by the end of the month. And she’s sleepy. She doesn’t connect the disappearances J is telling her about with the one Olivia Kingsbury told her about, even though Jorge Castro’s novel is facedown on her comforter.
He hears her yawn and says, “I’ll let you go. But it’s good to talk to you when you’re actually paying attention.”
“I always pay attention to you, my dear brother.”
“Liar,” he says, laughing, and ends the call.
Barbara puts Jorge Castro aside, unaware that he is part of a small and extremely unlucky club, and turns out her light.
6
That night Holly dreams of her old bedroom.
She can tell by the wallpaper it’s the one on Bond Street in Cincinnati, but it’s also the museum exhibit she imagined. Those little plaques are everywhere, identifying objects that have become artifacts. LUDIO LUDIUS next to the sound system, BELLA SIDEREA beside the wastebasket, CUBILE TRISTIS PUELLA on the bed.
Because the human mind specializes in connectivity, she wakes thinking of her father. She doesn’t often. Why would she? He died a long, long time ago, and was never much more than a shadow even when he was home. Which was seldom. Howard Gibney was a salesman for Ray Garton Farm Machinery, Inc., and spent his days traveling the Midwest, selling combines and harvesters and Ray Garton TruMade tractors, all in bright red, as if to make sure nobody mistook Garton farm gear for John Deere equipment. When he was home, Charlotte made sure he never forgot who, in her words, kept the home fires burning. In flyover country he might have been a sales dynamo, but at home he was the original Mr. Milquetoast.
Holly gets up and goes to her bureau. The records of her working life—the life she has made for herself—are either at Finders Keepers on Frederick Street or in her little home office, but she keeps certain other records (certain artifacts) in the bottom drawer of this bureau. There aren’t many, and most bring back memories that are a mixture of nostalgia and regret.
There’s the plaque she received as second prize in a speaking contest in which several city elementary schools participated. (This was when she was young enough and still confident enough to stand up in front of large groups of people.) She recited a Robert Frost poem, “Mending Wall,” and after complimenting her, Charlotte told her she could have won first prize if she hadn’t stumbled over several words halfway through.