The Passenger (16 page)

I figured wrong.

Clark didn't warm to me as I had expected after I pulled him from the lake. I used to catch him giving me sidelong glances whenever he was in my vicinity. I could always feel a cactus resting softly on my neck when he looked my way. If I tried to meet his gaze, he'd avert his eyes. If I offered a greeting, warm and friendly, he returned it with a mumble and an almost imperceptible nod.

Andrew had noted Clark's unease and commented one afternoon while we kept our vigil on the stoop, awaiting his mother.

“I think some boys don't like to be saved by girls,” Andrew said.

Even though we had just been discussing whether the Boston Tea Party resulted in a spell of overly caffeinated fish in Boston Harbor, the transition didn't shake me. I knew exactly what Andrew was talking about.

“Why do you bring that up?” I asked.

“Clark looks scared of you now or something,” said Andrew.

“I noticed that too.”

“Don't seem right, you saving his life and all. He should be grateful.”

“You don't save a person for the gratitude.”

“Have you done that before?” Andrew asked. “Saved a life?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“What did you do?”

It had been a long time since I had spoken anything true about my past. I could have evaded the question, but it was easy to be yourself around a child. Besides, I felt like Andrew of all people deserved the truth.

“I pulled someone out of the water who might have drowned otherwise,” I said.

“Did the person also fall off of a boat?”

“No, the person was trapped in a car after we drove off a bridge.”

“Why did you drive off a bridge?”

“That's a really good question,” I said as I realized I was saying too much.

“See, I knew you'd done it before,” Andrew said.

“Just that once.”

“Was it a boy or a girl that you saved?” Andrew asked.

“A boy.”

“Was he grateful?”

I felt a lump in my throat. For a moment I wasn't sure I could hold back the tears. “No. He was not.”

I could feel another question on the tip of Andrew's tongue, but then his mother pulled up in front of the schoolhouse and he gathered his books together.

“See you tomorrow, Ms. Maze.”

“Tomorrow, Andrew.”

I
SAW
the man after Shawna's Pontiac was long gone. He was standing across the empty street watching me, or maybe he had been watching Andrew. When our eyes met, he should have walked away. Any man these days knows that loitering outside a schoolhouse is suspect, no matter what his intent. Instead he just stood there, letting me memorize his face for a sketch artist.

He looked perfectly ordinary, aside from that unwavering gaze. He wore unflattering tan trousers and a button-down blue shirt with a wrinkled cardigan. He had on scuffed-up sneakers, perfect for making a quick and quiet escape. His cold brown eyes were stuck in a squint. We stared at each other across the asphalt divide. I stood up and walked down the steps, waiting for him to say something.

“Beautiful afternoon, isn't it, ma'am?” his said in a slow, lazy tone.

“Who are you?” I said.

I figured he'd run, but he didn't.

“I think the more pertinent question is,
who are you
?”

Then the ordinary-looking man nodded a good-bye and walked away.

I
WENT
to the Lantern for a drink to settle my nerves. I hadn't yet established a regular order at the bar, but Sean poured me a whiskey before I even sat down. As it turned out, that was what I was thirsty for. It went down so smooth, like gulping water after a scorching day in the sun. He poured me another. We had an unspoken exchange of head nods and eyebrow lifts. Sean thought I looked tired. I agreed. The constant vigilance of life as an impostor had begun to take its toll. Being a sentry even in sleep can only be sustained for so long.

The door to the bar whined open and shut. I felt the flash of daylight blink on and off. Wood-soled boots clopped slowly along the concrete floor, adding a beat to the John Fogerty song playing in the background. The man in the boots took a seat one bar stool away from mine. Before he spoke, before I recognized the voice; before I saw the face I had seen before, I could feel it was him. I also knew he had come for me, even though he held his gaze on the shiny stable of booze that hung on the mirrored wall behind the bar. If he'd tried to catch my eye through the reflection, I wouldn't have seen it. I stared straight down at my drink and tried to make myself as small as possible.

Sean approached the new patron.

“What can I get you?”

“Two of whatever she's having,” he said.

His voice scared me, even though I kind of liked the tenor of it. It was a deep and solid voice, missing some of that twang you often get in these rural parts. I remained mute with the foolish notion that I could somehow slip away unnoticed. Sean poured the man two whiskeys. I finished my drink and started a slow climb off the bar stool. Just when I thought I might be able to leave without any trouble, he slid the second whiskey in front of me.

“Have a drink with me, Debra.”

This caught Sean's attention, since I had yet to arrive or leave the bar with another person or show the slightest interest in getting acquainted with anyone besides Sean and a mixed bag of students.

“This a friend of yours, Debra?”

“We didn't know each other for very long,” he said. “But Debra here made an impression.”

“She does that,” Sean said.

He must have seemed more friendly than sinister to Sean. I've discovered that men don't always pick up on the dark subtext.

Sean extended his hand to the man and said, “Sean. Proprietor.”

The man said, “Domenic. Customer.”

“Pleasure meeting you. Now, how do you know our Debra?”

This time I had only Sean to blame for encouraging the conversation. From what I saw his pleasantries were a guise to feed his hungry curiosity about me.

“It's a long story,” Domenic said.

“Well, I'll leave you two to catch up.”

I finally looked Domenic in the eye, which must have been a shocker for him, and searched for his intentions. He didn't give anything away.

We were quite a pair.

Domenic scrutinized my new look with a shadow of amusement. Last time we met, I'd been blond and blue eyed, and didn't wear sundresses and sneakers that were covered in finger paint. Although I only noticed the finger paint when I looked down at my lap to avoid eye contact.

“You look different, Debra. What is it?”

“Haircut,” I said.

“I like it. What else is different? You look more
natural
or something.”

Run
, was the message my whole body was telling me. But I knew if I ran, I was chucking whatever life I had in the trash. A new life would be an unknown, and I had seen where the unknown could take me. I didn't like it all that much.

Domenic put his hand over mine. “Don't go,” he said. “Have your drink.”

I swallowed my whiskey, hoping it would settle me, but instead I felt like I'd stepped in quicksand. I tried to remind myself not to fight it.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

“Visiting,” Domenic said. He motioned for Sean to pour two more drinks.

“What do you want?” I said, looking him straight on.

“That's a complicated question. One I doubt I could answer in just one day.”

“Why are you here?”

“I have to say, you have the most beautiful b—brown?—eyes I have ever seen. Brown. Hmm, I have to admit I remember them differently. Still, they suit you.”

This didn't look good. A cop tracking me to a new town where I'd made a transformation that looked far more like a disguise than a makeover. Hell, it was even possible he'd found out who I really was, or at least who I once was. I had no idea what Domenic knew or didn't know, and I was pretty sure at that moment that the game was up. So I finished my drink because, as far as I knew, you couldn't get whiskey behind bars—at least the kind made in a barrel, not a toilet.

“That's more like it,” Domenic said.

A few more patrons fell into the bar—Glen, one of the mechanics at the local gas station, and his buddy George, the town electrician, although he got most of his work in Jackson. Both men had children at JAC Primary School.

“Miss Maze,” Glen said, tipping an imaginary hat.

“Gentlemen,” I said, nodding in return.

Domenic observed the exchange and smiled. He took the opportunity of new arrivals to take the seat right next to mine. This allowed us to converse in tones too quiet for even Sean to decipher when he'd lean on the bar, cleaning an imaginary spill.

“How's Recluse treating you?” Domenic said.

“Quite well, thank you. Recluse minds its own business. What more can you want from a town?”

“Maybe a movie theater,” Domenic said.

“We have all of the essentials here,” I said.

“That's enough for you?”

“What do you want?” I repeated, because we were going to get to that at some point and my insides were turning to rubble.

“I want to know what your secret is,” Domenic whispered in my ear.

It sent chills down my spine. The good kind, I hate to admit.

“Maybe I've got more than one,” I said.

“I
know
you've got more than one,” he said.

“Is there any way I could convince you to just leave?” I said.

“Sure,” said Domenic. “If you leave with me.”

“It's a small town, in case you didn't notice. I have something of a reputation to uphold.”

“Well, I wouldn't want to sully your reputation, Miss Maze. Why don't I meet you outside the schoolhouse in an hour.”

“The schoolhouse?”

“That's where you live, right?”

There was that quicksand again, only I was starting to struggle and sink.

“Half hour,” he said as he departed.

I
SHOULD
have cut myself off in the interim. A clear head—or at least a head as clear as mine had been two whiskeys ago—is generally wise when confronting an unknown human variable, but my nerves jangled like a set of janitor's keys. Sean must have noticed the vibration from my general direction.

“You okay?” he asked as he served me yet another dose of slow reaction time.

“I'm great.”

“Ex-boyfriend?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because you look like you're trying to stuff a bear in a gopher hole.”

“That's an unusual analogy.”

“I'm not sure anyone else can see it, if that makes you feel any better.”

“A little,” I said, tossing some bills on the bar.

“You leaving?”

“Well, it's a school night and I have exceeded my usual limit and tomorrow we have a long lesson on the Louisiana Purchase and I better get my numbers straight, because if there's one thing I've learned teaching kids this age, they like to know the cost of things. Even things that they'll never be able to buy, like one-third of the United States.”

I slipped off the bar stool and already felt my legs were far less trustworthy than when I entered the Lantern.

“Be good,” Sean said. He said it in a less casual way than I would have liked.

“Too late,” I said.

I beat a semistraight path back to John Allen Campbell. As I neared the stone steps of the Victorian building, I began searching for Domenic. I circled the house and returned to the front. I sat on the stoop where I sat with Andrew almost every afternoon and waited a few minutes. Maybe Domenic was running late. I had a foolish but hopeful notion that he'd decided against whatever he had planned. Or perhaps, as an officer of the law, he had been called away on a crime in progress. He had to have more pressing civic matters than a cagey schoolteacher with a new hairdo.

After fifteen minutes passed, I got up, dusted myself off, and strolled around to the side entrance, which led into my humble abode. I put my key in the lock, but the door was already open.

My reading lamp was on and Domenic was reclining on my bed, reading my battered paperback of
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
.

Domenic barely looked up when I entered my home. “What took you so long?” he said.

“I stayed for another drink.”

Domenic kept his eye on the paperback. “I remember this book,” he said. “Damn, when you're a kid, you think you can do anything. Live in a museum, become president, break into a used car lot and take a Corvette for a spin, fly.”

“You thought you could fly?”

“Briefly. I might have been under the influence at the time.”

“That explains it,” I said.

“But then you grow up and realize that you're bound by laws of nature and society. That could be quite limiting for some people, I would imagine.” Domenic closed the book and returned it to my nightstand. “We should talk,” he said.

July 30, 2013

To: Jo

From: Ryan

There's something you should know and I didn't want you to hear about it from your routine cyber strolls down memory lane. You've been declared legally dead. Your mom took care of it just after the seventh anniversary of your disappearance.

They're not looking for you anymore. I hope that helps you move on. People still talk about you, but no one believes they'll ever find you.

Maybe severing ties from your past will give you some peace. Maybe it's time for us to sever ties.

Always,

R

August 15, 2013

To: Ryan

From: Jo

I died seven years ago. I'm not interested in the official line. Out of curiosity, what do people say about me? How did I die?