his mouth. His cheek bulges with the meat as he considers. After a moment, his eyes brighten.
“I know what you’re talking about now,” he says. “Christy Miller.”
“Christy? No—Astrid.”
“Who?”
“Astrid Sullivan. Did we see her that day?”
He’s slurping his soda but stops when he hears her name. “The missing chick?”
I nod. Watch him turn his head a little, look at me out the side of his eyes.
“Uh, I don’t know who you did or didn’t see, Brierley. But there’s only one girl I remember seeing that day.”
“Who? Did she have red hair and freckles?”
“No, she had blond hair and incredible tits.”
“What?”
“Christy Miller. She was this girl whose family always went to the lake the same time ours did. Shit, she was, like, supermodel hot. You should’ve seen her in a bikini.”
I’m trying to process what he’s saying. Find some connection between Christy and Astrid. But I’m struck by how young he sounds. Forty years old and still talking like he’s half that.
“Anyway.” He picks up his glass, jabs at the ice with his straw. “We finally hooked up that summer, and then I saw her at the gas station.” He shrugs. “I must’ve told you to scram and that’s why you don’t remember her.”
“But where did I go?”
Another shrug. “Fuck if I know. I was pretty preoccupied.”
I lean forward. Put my hand on the table. “Well, how long was I gone?”
Cooper smirks. “A while,” he says. “Definitely a while.” His eyes go hazy. “Christy Miller, man. I wonder if she’s on Facebook.”
“So you have no idea where I went?”
He focuses on me again. “No, Brierley. I wasn’t your babysitter.” His gaze narrows. “What’s this even about? Why were you asking about Astrid Sullivan?”
I slump back against the booth. Cooper’s another dead end. Like Foster. Like all the roads in my mind that stop right when the memory should start. All he’s done is confirm that I had time and opportunity to see Astrid. Maybe I should take that as a victory. But I was already sure of that.
“Where did we meet back up?” I ask, ignoring his question. Now that I know he didn’t see anything, I don’t want to tell him more than I have to. Don’t want him to glimpse the source of my anxiety so he can gnaw on it like a bone.
“Who knows,” he says. “I left so me and Christy could—you know.” He bites his lip, closes his eyes, bobs his head. I wait through the gesture. “So I guess I would have gone looking for your skinny ass afterward. And then we went back to Christy’s.”
I wrinkle my brow. “You took me back to your girlfriend’s place?”
He chuckles—a single slap of sound. “Christy Miller was not my girlfriend. But no, I mean the haircut place. It had Christy in the name. I remember that because, well… I thought it was funny that my sister and I were both getting blown by someone named Christy that day.”
I squint at his crudeness. He picks up three fries and crams them into his mouth. Then he looks at his hand, flecked with the same blue paint that freckles his face.
“Oh—before I forget,” he says. “I wanted to thank you.”
His lips shine with grease. I have to concentrate on my breathing. Between Cooper’s eating habits and the smell of corned beef, I’m close to losing what little I’ve gotten down today.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
He picks up his napkin, wipes his hands. Smiles like he’s got a secret. “You inspired me.”
“Inspired you.”
“Mm-hmm. The way you reacted to the cabin yesterday. My dream flip. It gave me the push I needed.”
“The way I reacted?”
All I can remember is my body stiffening as Cooper plunged his truck through the woods.
Cooper nods. “I saw the way you looked at it. So serious. And so… awed. I could tell you felt the same as me about it. That it’s special. That little house tucked into the woods. Peace and privacy for miles. A person could get lost there.”
His tongue cradles the word lost like it’s something precious. Something desired.
“I’m not following,” I say.
He smiles again. A twitch of his lips. “I went to Town Hall today. Started the process of buying the property. I even took my folks to see it this morning. They think it’s a fool’s errand. Too much work, my dad says. No way I’ll turn a profit. But, man, I’m telling you… sometimes you just know something, you know? And yeah, the property’s gonna cost me a lot, but