She Never Left Read online

  Of course, first she had to come back.

  “So, here’s the set-up,” I said, nodding with insistence. “Divorced woman returns home for her twenty-year class reunion.”

  “Too old.” David turned to the windows and gazed down at the river. “Should be ten.”

  That stung, but I wrote it on my notepad. “Okay, ten. Divorced woman goes back home to her reunion. She’s the belle of the ball. But she’s forgotten all about the disappearances and the weird boy who fell in love with her in school. The one who can’t let it go. Well, there he is, and he still can’t let it go. Super creepy vibe. And now he’s a city councilman.”

  David tilted his head and peered back at me. Another agent nodded, chin in hand.

  My phone buzzed again.

  For God so loved the world,

  That he gave his only begotten Son,

  That whosoever believeth in him should not perish

  “And an evangelical!” Then, as if grabbing the waiter to add last minute appetizers to my order, I said, “With an extensive gun collection. Plus, he’s a Civil War re-enactor. Oh! And a tornado chaser.”

  The intern snickered through his nose.

  Ooh, that little worm in his NASA T-shirt!

  David clasped his head in his hands. “Okay, we got it! But she needs a first draft soon, Jane. Elaine called and she’s not happy. No more of this six-months crap or you’ll have to pay back the advance.”

  My cheek twitched. TJ had already blazed through most of the money.

  “You’ve got two months to present something workable.” He came back and poked the table until his knuckle bent white. “And the research is on your dime.”

  “Got it!”

  David clapped hands. “Okay, folks, since I have you all here, I have a little announcement. Well, actually”—he fidgeted, rattling keys in his pocket; he’d already forgotten his annoyance with me and had gone red-faced and, dare I say, frightened of our blank stares—“it’s a big one. Now,” he chuckled, “stay with me here.”

  He grabbed another marker, a red one this time, and blocked off a new quadrant on the whiteboard. There he scrawled:

  A NEW ERA: DOWNER’S GROVE!

  Audible gasps puffed throughout the room. The intern’s phone dropped to the hardwood floor with a clatter.

  The light in the train car flickered, then gave in to darkness. The crowd murmured as we rumbled down the tracks. I swayed with the train’s momentum and braced for a mugging.

  Instead I got the damn dream.

  Six feet above me, Lincoln looming in his baggy white tux, dirty at the knees. His mouth forms a simper that twitches with hesitation. He wags his finger, and because I won’t stop screaming, lets loose the trapdoor. With a slam, he leaves me suspended in a pit of black. I hang by the wrists, not in silence, but marinating in the continual loop of his mother’s easy listening records meant to tenderize me for his sham of a dungeon wedding.

  Nobody does it better. Yeah, my dreams are epic. They always have been.

  The lights flashed back on and everyone looked around at each other with sudden kinship, grateful to all be in one piece.

  Should I tell them we’re not?

  We never were. We’re all so many pieces.

  We’re relocating to Downer’s Grove, David had admitted to the staff.

  No. No. No. This couldn’t be happening.

  David moving the agency to the suburbs meant Stuben Lit was headed to the minor leagues. In two years, we’d be down to a couple agents, three if we were lucky. To our Manhattan-based peers, a Midwestern literary agent was already akin to a horse-drawn carriage salesman in Detroit circa 1915. But we had a (mostly) dependable crop of writers appealing to readers from Ohio to Utah. We knew our market. All the more reason for TJ and me to swing for the fences on her next book, and earn David’s downtown rent.

  But there was just so much to do, piles of words and dozens of chapters and drafts upon drafts and none of it starting without TJ’s skills.

  The train stopped at the next station. New strangers pushed together, our bodies jostling on the edge of intimacy. The car rattled beneath me while I gazed absentmindedly into the lush brown forest of a beard on the hipster a foot away. As we emerged from the underground and passed through downtown, sunlight flickered between the skyscrapers and strobed across my face. It reminded me of an ancient threat I had once known, but I was too distracted by every other thing in my life to place it.

  I nibbled the inside of my cheek. Maybe I wouldn’t need to tell TJ that I’d stolen her chapter. I could interject ideas for this manuscript, and she would believe she’d thought of them. It was a common tactic. How hard could it be on this one? I’d helped her research her last novel so extensively I could pass as a hard-boiled lesbian detective if pressed into service.

  Around the car, stares alighted on me: some greedy, some apathetic; mostly men, a few perturbed older women. With wild red hair, I’m hard to miss. Some days I swear Lincoln is lurking behind the window of the next car, and I will cower in a corner seat until my stop, and then dash to my apartment, glancing over my shoulder all the while. I hadn’t sensed him today but I still felt a strong presence behind me. Or rather, smelled one. The burning juniper stench of gin. Fanfuckingtastic. At least my stop was next. The engine disengaged as momentum carried us to the station.

  I held my shoulder bag close and pretended great interest in my phone, only to be greeted by Lincoln’s latest:

  What dress did we choose today?

  Something pink to match your freckles, I hope.

  I yearned to respond, just once, We chose my black suit, asshole. And pitted out my favorite blouse. Sexy, huh?

  The man behind me moved closer, his fermented whisper in my curls. “Does the carpet match the—”

  I dug my heel into the stranger’s toe.

  “Yeowch!” The man bent over to grab his foot. The brakes screeched and the train lurched to a stop, sending him tumbling. TJ would be proud. In fact, I could swear her brand of giggles erupted from one of the other women in the car.

  I stepped over the man and his wet paper bag of Seagram’s, pushing my way out before the doors shut. Emboldened, I willed Lincoln to be here too so I could unload my can of mace in his eyes and demand to know why he was still emailing me, why he was invading my dreams, why he wouldn’t give up after two fucking decades. If he were here, I would push him off the platform, onto the third rail, into the path of an oncoming train.

  Okay, maybe just into the eternal puddle of piss that’s always pooling by the turnstile.

  I slogged down the metal stairs onto the sidewalk by Belmont Avenue, tears welling in my eyes. I tried to be brave, but with TJ absent without leave, the nightmares were getting worse. They felt so real; half of them were recollections, if we’re being truthful.

  “TJ,” I said to the sky. I didn’t care how it looked. “I can’t do this without you.”

  Chapter Three

  In the foyer, my keys hit the sideboard next to the class reunion invite. I’d left it there to entice TJ when she sauntered in. It hadn’t moved, and was only collecting dust. So were my credit card bills and a manila envelope addressed to TJ Render marked, Foreclosure: Final Notice.

  The room rang with silence, but maybe that was just me feeling sorry for myself. I bolted the door, slipped out of my pumps, and padded to the bathroom. I splashed water on my face but the mascara refused to budge, and I opened the medicine cabinet to look for the make-up wipes. There, a honey-colored bottle stared at me, as it had every day for a month:

  NICK STONE

  * * *

  TAKE 1-2 TABLETS EVERY 4-6 HOURS

  * * *

  OXYCODONE

  Just one would feel so good, would smooth over the day’s humiliation, soften my newly single status, blur my financial woes, and transform it all into a warm chuckle on the couch. Two would ease me down to the edge of sweet oblivion. And three? Oh, three…

  My hand hovered by the bottle. I would du
mp them in the toilet. No, that contaminates the water. Makes the fish high. I could turn them in at a hospital. No, why let them go to waste? I should call him, give them back. No! I’m so done with him.

  I slammed the medicine cabinet shut and closed my eyes. The pressure dropped. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes, slowly exhaling between my lips.

  In the mirror’s reflection, TJ sat hunched behind her computer in the darkness of my den, her sometimes place of residence. She wore a tank top and cut-offs, an act of defiance this early in spring, as if she could summon summer just by dressing for it. Her gaming headphones smushed the middle of her spiky blonde hair as she peered at the screen, clicking away at the online game World of Warcraft.

  I leaned against the bathroom doorframe and barked across the hall, “When did you get back?” All around the den lay bags of clothes, licorice wrappers, and empty Pringles cans.

  TJ pushed one headphone aside. “Huh?”

  “Where the heck have you been?” I demanded. “It’s been two weeks!”

  She wiggled her eyebrows. “Here and there.”

  A bed here, a bed there, no doubt.

  TJ tapped the keyboard with rapid-fire blows. If only I could stand before her with a big yellow question mark above my head, a dangerous quest to accept, a shiny new set of armor for her to earn.

  “Goddammit,” I whispered and stomped to the foyer, bare heels pounding the floor. I snatched the invite and thumped back to the den.

  I slid the card next to her keyboard.

  TJ kept on clicking, her face made lavender by the monitor light, her lip piercings like gleaming pinpoints. My best friend of three decades—once the hammer to my nail, the drama to my peace, the gravity to my orbit—TJ sat there, a slave to the endless quest for e-gold and e-glory, as entranced as an assembly line worker wishing on the lottery.

  After a while of my glaring, she looked down at the invite then back to the screen.

  “Mmm,” she said. “Pass.”

  I forced myself to merrily state, “Oh, we’re going.”

  TJ grumbled. “Eh, I blacked out at the ten-year reunion. Really not keen on discovering what brand of asshole I made of myself.”

  “Come on. I’m sure everyone has forgotten by now.” They hadn’t. “How’s the book coming?”

  She returned a nudge of the shoulder. “I toldya, April. April … fifteenth.”

  “When taxes are due.”

  “Yeah, so?” TJ mashed the keyboard buttons. “I can last-minute more than one thing at a time.”

  “Actually, you suck at that. Seriously, Teej, I got my ass handed to me today because of you.”

  I wished I hadn’t said that. This whole agent/author arrangement had wedged a burr into our relationship. Before I took her writing on, we had never questioned each other’s life choices. If I chose a twit for a boyfriend, TJ made every effort to like him, and never said, “I told you so” when it fell apart. If she picked up goat yoga or poetry slams or—dear, God—absinthe, I tried it too. Now it was all me harrying her like a mom. Come to think of it, that’s also how it went with her lovers too until they nagged her out the door and on to the next.

  “Really?” she said. “Really? You’re going to do this?”

  “Listen—”

  “Not you, Janey.” Click-click-click. “The healer. Oh my God, what a nozzle! Ha, I’m droppin’ group. Try to find another tank now, ya newbs.”

  Thirty-seven and still playing axe-wielding Brunhildes. I turned to the hall. Plenty of laundry needed doing. “Okay, you seem busy with very important stuff.”

  “You know this is how I relax, Jane,” she said.

  Yes, I knew she had her reasons. We both knew what she was running from. Over the years, we’d talked so much and yet broached so few topics concerning her father. But a trip back home could equalize us, remind her why we sought the yellow brick road instead of the small-town life in Ketchum, Illinois.

  I poked my head back in. “Did you know the Norway gunman played Warcraft to relax? He killed seventy-seven people.”

  “Uh, I’m sure he ate Nutella too. Am I supposed to stop using spreadable chocolate?”

  “It is high in processed sugar.”

  The clicking stopped. “Hold up.” TJ sat back, crossing her arms so that the thorny tattoos encircling her biceps bulged. “Okay, now let’s think about this, Jane. Why exactly do we need to go back downstate? That’s like the definition of loser in Dictionary-dot-com.”

  “Since when is visiting friends and family being a loser? You haven’t seen your mom in years!” How deft I am at switching arguments, I thought, then realized we were no longer talking about her writing. “It might be good to make peace with it all.”

  “I’d rather visit your parents in Boca.”

  “Okay, we could drive to Florida after the reunion,” I nodded, “drop off the rental, pull up some beach chairs, get down a solid fifty pages, then fly back?”

  She puffed air at her bangs. “Heard from Lincoln lately?”

  “All effing day. Going on and on about the evil in the woods and the end times. I’m sure he’ll email me again this weekend for his birthday.”

  TJ snickered. “To tell you what presents he got from himself?”

  “And what steakhouse he went to. Party of one.”

  “Bake potata.” Her head shook, mockingly.

  I snorted. “Side a corn.”

  “Slice a pie.” TJ straightened up. “Why don’t you just fucking block him?”

  “He keeps changing his email address!” I shook my phone at her. “This is the second one this month. Remember the woman in Lake Forest who blocked her husband on Facebook and he shot her? Maybe if Lincoln feels like his messages are being read then that’s all he needs. He just wants to be thought of.”

  “You still feel guilty about high school.” TJ nodded, so assured of knowing my every thought. “You don’t owe him any—”

  I closed my eyes and moaned. “Can we talk about something else?”

  “Well, we’d be going right down there to him. You sure you wanna tickle that bear?”

  “No! But why should we let him ruin it? Besides, if the others see that he’s still doing this to me, maybe they’ll help. I can’t run forever.”

  “What about Nick?”

  “That’s over. And you know I can’t go alone. Lincoln might … abduct me.”

  TJ’s eyes slid left to right. “Could be source material for a homecoming romance, I guess. Or a story about stalkers.”

  “Exactly!” I looked away, out into the hall again, trying to tamp down my enthusiasm. I have a terrible poker face and TJ’s moods were as skittish as those of a stray cat. “Plus, it could be fun?”

  “Or it could be a massacre,” she said, eyes now half-lidded.

  “Both, most likely.”

  TJ pulled her best geek voice, lisping and nasal, “I do have the highest damage-per-second.”

  Go deeper.

  We stared at each other like that, sarcasm teetering on something more honest. The last thing I needed to do was mention her dad right now. Her stare drifted back toward the monitor, the game flickering in the blue-gray of her eyes. Play me!

  And then I thought of the one word that could yank this once-promising novelist out of her video game and make her cough up a magnificent hairball of sentences that might save both our careers.

  “Also,” I said, waiting. I wanted her full attention for this.

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Mushrooms.”

  Her gaze drilled through me. “Dude,” she whispered, “I haven’t tripped since we left Ketchum.”

  “Me neither.” A half-truth. I watched her ponder it as she pushed back her cuticles with a thumbnail.

  “You could stand to loosen up a bit, Jane,” she said. “Widen your horizons.”

  I nodded with a shrug and a good-natured smile. “So?”

  She chuckled. “Oh, don’t get your tits in a knot.”

  I raised a fist int
o the air. “Quest accepted!”

  Chapter Four

  Ketchum

  Lincoln Metzger sat in the fortified basement of the Metzger family’s abandoned farmhouse and logged into World of Warcraft. TJ Render was on. Unlike his dear Lady Jane, TJ had been easy to watch. Egotists always were. Her blathering in an interview about videogames had opened the door and then it had taken only a few weeks of combing servers until he found her character. He didn’t chat with her at first, just followed at a distance and joined her guild: Eats Shoots And Leaves. Over the months, he moved up the ranks and didn’t engage her, even after becoming an officer under her reign. Then she asked him for a favor—ever the user—and now they were friends of a sort. And that put him one step closer to his beloved.

  Not that Jane would ever play. Sometimes a low-level sorceress did show up in the guild, and Lincoln would introduce his paladin only to find out she was some guy in Topeka or Orlando. And then he would scoff at himself for thinking Lady Jane would ever waste her time killing pretend dragons and battling through imaginary dungeons.

  It wasn’t that Jane couldn’t be found online, with the right techniques. Her bio and literary agency popped up in search engines, but while Jane had been easy to find, the depth of information stopped at her work. She did not need to exist online. Unlike TJ, Jane had a professional reputation to protect, not an ego to burnish. Jane existed in the real world. In Chicago, two hundred miles away of course, but right now she felt as close as the next room. The idea that she could be just upstairs, in the kitchen frying up liver and onions, or in the laundry room folding their towels, filled him with pure love.