“Yes,” Milo said. “I had dinner at the Town Chef. On Main Street.”
“Good. I know the place. I’ll meet you in fifteen minutes. All right?”
“Sure,” he said. “Fifteen minutes.”
As Milo brushed his teeth and pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, he tried to imagine how this woman could have known that he was here. Not only in Chisholm, but at the Pinecrest Motor Lodge. Room 14. He had left his name and phone number with Kelly Plante and Emily and Michael Bryson, but even he didn’t know the name of the motel until he arrived late the night before, after his visits to their homes. How could this woman have found him so fast?
Then it dawned on him. Macy, the waitress at the Town Chef. The one who had recommended the motel in the first place and therefore knew where he was staying. Like the Brysons, she also knew that Milo was looking for Tess, and since Kelly Plante and Emily and Michael Bryson had all seemed genuinely befuddled by Milo’s questions, and none of them knew where Milo was staying, it must have been Macy who had led this woman to him. Feeling defeated and dejected just hours before, he now wondered if his original plan had worked after all. Pull into town, find the right person to ask a few questions, and locate his target. It wasn’t exactly how he had envisioned things, but it was close.
As he locked the motel door and walked across the parking lot to his car, Milo wondered what hoops he might have to jump through in order to meet Tess Bryson. What questions might this representative ask? How might he convince her of his sincerity?
When he arrived in the parking lot of the Town Chef, Milo scanned the dozen or so cars parked there, hoping to catch a glimpse of a woman, possibly Tess Bryson, sitting behind the wheel, waiting for the signal that Milo’s credentials checked out. Not surprisingly, all of the cars appeared to be empty. If Tess Bryson was cautious enough to send a friend in her place to establish contact and ascertain the truth, he didn’t think there was much of a chance that she would be foolish enough to be sitting in the parking lot when he arrived. But he also didn’t think that she would be very far, either.
In stark contrast to the previous evening, the Town Chef was alive and jumping on this warm spring morning. All but one or two stools were occupied by men and women who were most certainly diner regulars, based on the ease with which they all sat in relative silence. No need for small talk among this group. Many of the booths were also occupied by customers, sitting in pairs, threesomes, and one loud gaggle of old ladies along the back wall. Macy had been replaced by a team of three fast-moving, fast-talking women who were scurrying about the diner like mice, delivering food, refilling coffee, and pounding on the keys of the cash register in a uniform rhythm that bespoke of many years together. There was a buzz in the restaurant this morning, the sound of people chatting about the coming day, accompanied by the clinging of dishes, the dinging of pots and pans, and the clanking of plates and silverware. The way a diner is supposed to sound, Milo thought.
He spotted Emma almost immediately, sitting in the same booth that he had occupied the afternoon before. Sipping coffee from an oversize mug, she motioned him over.
“Hi again,” Milo said, immediately feeling like an idiot. Why could he never open a conversation like a normal person?
“Hi,” Emma said, the greeting sounding more like a question. “I ordered you a cup.” She pointed to an identical mug of coffee set in front of Milo.
“Thanks, but I don’t drink coffee.”
“No?”
“Afraid not,” Milo said. “I don’t drink any adult drinks. No coffee, no tea, no wine. Pretty much no alcohol at all except for the occasional beer. I’m basically a soda and juice man. It’s actually a bone of contention between me and my wife.”
“Really? How so?”
Milo hesitated but then took a deep breath. He didn’t see any reason not to tell the truth, to himself and to Emma. Yesterday, while sitting in this very same booth, he had told Officer Eblen that his marriage was over. He could certainly tell this woman a little bit about the reasons why. “Well, my wife says it would be nice if we could have a cup of coffee together at Starbucks, or share a bottle of wine at dinner, or even some tea with dessert. But I just don’t like the stuff. She thinks … I don’t know. She thinks it’s sort of juvenile, I guess. And I think she wishes that I could be more of an adult at times. More of a man.”
“And a cup of coffee might do that?”
“She seems to think so,” Milo said, trying without success to find a way to gently change the subject. As much as he might be willing to share a bit of his life with Emma, this wasn’t why he had come to North Carolina. “But I think it’s more about image than anything else. When we go to a nice restaurant, she’ll order a martini or a glass of wine and I’ll order a Coke. I guess it just doesn’t complete the picture for her. I swear that she cringes every time I order.”
“No marriage is perfect. Right?”
“Nope,” Milo agreed. “That’s probably why my wife and I are separated. Maybe we were foolishly expecting perfection but never found it.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. And we’re not divorced yet, so there’s still hope,” Milo lied. “But that’s not why we’re here. Right?”
“Are you hoping that it works out? Your marriage, I mean.”
Milo paused for a moment, wondering how to answer the question, looking for a way to turn the discussion to Tess Bryson. Finally he surrendered, hoping that his willingness to answer Emma’s questions honestly and candidly would pay dividends later. “Sometimes I do. Or I did, until recently. I don’t know. Sometimes I wish that we could go back to how things used to be, before we started having trouble. I know that I wasn’t the happiest guy in the world, but things were set back then. Everything was in its place. And even though we could’ve been happier, we weren’t miserable either. So yes, there are days when I hope that we can work things out.”
“And there are days when you don’t?”
“Yes,” Milo said, resignation tainting his voice. “There are days when I’d love to make a clean break from Christine. More days like that than not, to be honest. Most days, I suspect. And it’s looking like that’s where we are headed. But you never know what might happen. Besides, I assume that my marital problems aren’t the reason we’re here. Right?”
“That’s true,” Emma said, sitting up and assuming a more serious disposition. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I have that way about me. Always asking questions without thinking about how they might make someone feel. I should’ve been a newspaper reporter. I guess that’s why Tess chose me to speak to you.”
“So how does this work?” Milo asked.
“I ask and you answer. Then I report back to Tess. Then she decides what happens next. Okay?”
“Fair enough,” Milo said, hoping it would be.
“I have to tell you that Tess was shocked to hear Cassidy’s name after so many years. Can you tell me how you know her?”
“Sure, but let’s order first. It’s a complicated story.”
A woman who introduced herself as Nancy came by a moment later to take their orders. Though the woman had about a dozen pencils protruding from the tight bun of hair atop her head, she committed their orders to memory before scooping up their menus and leaving the table. Emma then excused herself to use the restroom, and Milo readied himself to tell the story that this woman wanted to hear.
He hoped it would be enough.
“You’re staring at my sweater. Right?” Emma had resumed her position in the booth opposite him, and it was true. As she returned from the restroom, he had been staring.
“Yeah. I’m sorry. It’s just different. What’s the deal, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I was at a bad sweater party last night. My friend Taryn hosts it every year. We all spend the year hunting down the most atrocious sweaters possible. You know. Thrift shops. Craft fairs. One of my friends checks the lost and found at every restaurant and movie theater she goe
s to and has found a couple dandies. Then we show the sweaters off at the party. Taryn lives about four hours south of here, so when I got the call to come and meet you, I had to drive straight through the night. I got in around five A.M. and grabbed a couple hours of sleep in my car outside your motel room. I didn’t want to knock on your door too early.”
“Did you have the best sweater at the party? Or the worst, I mean?”
“It was pretty good. Top three, I’d say. But my friend Sandy had a sweater with an elephant and a pygmy rhinoceros having sex under the Eiffel Tower. That was the best. But she cheated. She took up knitting last year and made it herself. Paid someone a hundred and fifty bucks to design the pattern for her.”
“She takes this bad sweater stuff seriously,” Milo said.
“Sandy takes everything seriously.”
“What do you do with the sweaters after the party?”
“Actually, I keep on wearing them. A couple of my friends give me theirs to wear too. I kind of like them, as kooky as they are. And I get some of the funniest looks from people.”
Milo couldn’t help but marvel over how different this woman was from his wife. Perhaps it was because Christine worked in the corporate world, or maybe it had something to do with living in Connecticut, but she insisted on looking her best at all times, regardless of the situation. Even a sunrise visit to the Quaker Diner or a late-night run to Carvel for an ice cream sundae required a ten-minute visit to the mirror to ensure that every lock of hair was in place and her makeup was even, whatever the hell that meant. Milo often wished that Christine could be one of those women who could toss on a T-shirt, a pair of sweatpants, and a baseball cap and head out the door, perhaps even willing to grab a couple hours’ sleep in her car before knocking on a strange man’s motel room door, but sweatpants and baseball caps were noticeably absent from her extensive wardrobe.
Maybe if she had owned a baseball cap or was less concerned about Milo’s choice of drink or had worried a little less about what others might think of her panic attacks, he wouldn’t have felt the need to be so vigilant about hiding his demands from her. And perhaps this was why he already felt more at ease with this woman, complete with an Orioles cap, a hungry cat, and a dying mouse.
“I think the waitress gave you one of those funny looks when she took our order,” Milo said.
“I think so. But let’s get back to the subject of Cassidy, if you don’t mind. Can you tell me how you know her? And how you found out about her and Tess?”
Milo had decided long before he’d even left Connecticut that if he found Tess Bryson, he would be completely honest with her. If he was right and she had run away to escape an abusive father, then she was unlikely to be the trusting sort, especially when it came to strange men. If he attempted to falsify or even embellish his relationship with Freckles and was caught in a lie, he might lose his chance to convince Tess to call her old friend. Sticking to the truth would be the easiest and the safest strategy, and so this is what he did. Beginning with his discovery of the camera on the bench on an afternoon that seemed eons ago, Milo told his story with as much detail as he could muster, leaving out only those parts of the tapes that he thought Freckles would want to remain secret. Her love for hospital food. Her involvement in exposing Sherry Ferroni’s first period. The blame she placed on herself for Meera’s death. But he kept in the rest, including his decision to continue to watch the tapes, the story of Tess Bryson’s disappearance, and the means by which he was able to locate Cassidy and Tess and learn the fate of Tess’s father.
Emma remained nearly silent throughout the story, only asking for clarification when Milo accidentally referred to Cassidy as Freckles. She reacted very little to the story, which made sense, Milo thought, since she didn’t play a role in it. But the lack of any reaction to the events that Milo was describing made it difficult for him to press on. He couldn’t help but wonder if he was boring the woman, or if she didn’t believe his story, or if she found his decision to watch the tapes reprehensible and was simply counting the seconds until she could get up and leave, offering Milo no hope in finding Tess. Then he’d be left trying to convince Freckles that he, the man who had taken her video camera from a park bench and listened to her deepest, darkest secrets, had found a woman five hundred miles away who claimed to know Tess Bryson but refused to allow her to be contacted.
Not exactly compelling.
Plates of eggs, pancakes, and bacon arrived in the middle of the story, but both Milo and Emma left the food untouched until he was done speaking. After describing the events of the last twenty-four hours, including his fruitless visits to the Brysons and Kelly Plante, Milo raised his fork and knife and began cutting his pancakes into smaller squares, waiting for Emma to respond.
After a moment, she did. “Why did you come all this way, Milo? I mean, you don’t even know Cassidy. Not really. What made you think that this was your job? What made you think that this was any of your business?”
“I don’t know,” Milo said, not anticipating this sort of question. “It’s not like I listed the pros and the cons. For twenty years, this girl has blamed herself for the disappearance and death of her best friend. But after I found out about Tess’s father and realized that she may have disappeared for a reason, I thought that there was a chance that she was still alive and well. Cassidy has been carrying around this secret for most of her life. Hell, she still thinks that Sean Bryson was treated unfairly when Tess disappeared. She’s got this enormous burden on her shoulders and I had a chance to get rid of it for her. It was just what I had to do. I felt like it was the responsibility that I took on when I decided to keep watching the tapes.”
There was more that Milo could have said, but he hoped that that would be enough. Saying more would’ve meant exposing his secrets to this stranger, and this was not something he wanted to do.
Had he the courage, he might have spoken to Emma about secrets, and how he finally understood the debilitating nature of living a secret life. He could’ve explained that even if a person appeared to be living a normal life to outsiders, someone with a secret like his or Cassidy’s or even Tess Bryson’s operated behind a veil of constant fear and shame, and it lingered over everything the person said or did. For people living with secrets, Milo knew that nothing was what it appeared to be. Happiness was a shallow, falsified state of being that was adopted only for the sake of others. For the sake of normality. Milo thought that this was what Cassidy was living with on a daily basis. If so, how could anyone allow it to continue?
Or he could’ve told Emma about how Cassidy had entered his life just when he was feeling the most alone, and how even though her revelations were meant to remain private, he couldn’t help but admire the courage that she demonstrated in committing them to tape. He could’ve talked about the bond that he felt with Cassidy, a connection that was indescribably strong despite its improbability, and how he sometimes thought that she might be the only person in the world who was capable of truly understanding him and the inexplicable demands placed upon him. His secrets. Though it wasn’t a full-blown crush, he could’ve spoken about the affection that he felt for Cassidy Glenn, and how there was little in the world that he would not have done to secure and defend her happiness.
Milo said none of these things. He took two more bites of his pancakes, waiting for Emma to speak, but when the silence grew more protracted than he could stand, he finally spoke again. “Look, all I want is to convince Tess to call Cassidy and tell her that she’s okay. Alive and well. That the plan had worked and that Cassidy has nothing to feel guilty about. No need for details. No need for a location or a secret identity. I don’t even need to meet Tess. If you could just call her and explain things, or just take Cassidy’s phone number to her. I’m sure that when she hears this story, when she hears how much Cassidy has been suffering, and for how long, she’ll be willing to make the call. Please, can you just do that for me?”
“I’m afraid not,” Emma said with abject finalit
y.
“Please,” Milo said, frantically searching for some other means of coercion. “Just take the number and go.” He held the slip of paper out for Emma, shaking it when she failed to reach for it. “Please. I don’t care if I never meet Tess. Just give her the number. Tell her to call. Call from a pay phone. Use a stranger’s cell phone. Whatever. Please, just take the number and convince her to call.”
“Relax, Milo. I don’t need the number. I’ve decided to go back to Connecticut with you.”
“What?”
“Milo, I’m Tess Bryson.”
chapter 27
The euphoria that Milo should have felt on learning that he was sitting across from Tess Bryson was immediately tempered by her declaration that she was returning to Connecticut with him. Once the shock of the moment had passed and the two had eaten a little food, Milo addressed his concern.
“I don’t understand. Why don’t you just call?”
“I haven’t been back north since I ran away as a kid. I missed my mother’s funeral and haven’t even visited her grave. It’s time for me to go back, Milo. And now I have a reason to go.”
“But I could just give you Cassidy’s address and you could drive up whenever you wanted? Wouldn’t that be more convenient for you?” The truth was that Milo did not want to be trapped inside a car with Tess Bryson for more than twenty-four hours, with no telling which demand might suddenly light up and force him to start smashing Weebles or tossing a bowling ball or singing karaoke.
“There’s no time like the present. And besides, I think I need to go now. And go with you. Just the thought of New England scares the shit out of me, even with my father in jail. I’m not sure that I could go alone even if I wanted to. And besides, you deserve some credit. Making the effort to reunite me and Cassidy was above and beyond the call of duty. I want you with me when I knock on her door.”
“What about your job? You can’t just up and leave. Can you?”