a young daughter of his own—that night Gordon had drunk too much wine and was just falling asleep when Eileen said she wanted to tell him something, something she’d never told anyone, not even Brad. And then she told him about the man who’d given her a ride. Fifteen, she’d been, and the man wore a tie and his car looked like her father’s silver Buick and he wore a wedding band and so when he pulled over she’d gotten in. But when they reached the turnoff for her house the man kept going, fast. Don’t, she said. You’re a nice man. She could tell by his face he hadn’t planned it, didn’t know what he was doing, or even where to take her. She knew it was his first time. You’ve seen me now, the man said, and she said, No, I never did. I never saw this car either, I swear to God. He looked at her and said, Do you believe in God? and she said, crying now, Yes, sir, I do, and the man slowed down. He pulled over and stopped the car. Sat there with his hands on the wheel, looking straight ahead. After a while, Eileen simply got out of the car, shut the door, and walked home.
And you never told anyone? Gordon said after a long silence, lying there in the dark. His heart drumming.
Not a soul, she said. She’d watched the news to see if some other girl would go missing, but none did, not around there.
Dumb, dumb girl, she said in the dark, dreamily, and Gordon said nothing.
Then he said, You should of told your parents. You should of told the police, what in the hell were you thinking?—his heart pounding, his voice rising, until she switched on the lamp and said to him, Gordon, Gordon, as if to wake him from a dream, and he was up on his elbows and she was a frightened forty-year-old woman, and then she understood—Oh, Gordon, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you that story . . . Because his own daughter was sixteen and would get drunk, would get high. Would get rides home in cars he’d never seen before and would never see again, and every night that she wasn’t home by midnight was the longest night of his life and he was all alone in this and had no idea what he was doing, only that he was doing it all wrong.
Anyway it wasn’t long after that night—the night of the story—that whatever it was between him and Eileen Lindeman ended, just ended, like a bulb burning out. And the next time she called him, a year or two later, it was a busted pipe spraying water into her basement, she didn’t know who else to call, and he’d done the job and that was all. Like none of it had ever happened.
Which was how he came to be in her house again today, easing his head around her bedroom doorjamb and saying, over the TV, “Eileen—?”
She sat in the same white reading chair with her bare feet up on the footrest. Only the feet were bare; otherwise she was dressed as she’d been when she let him in, the black pants and green sweater she’d worn to work. A glass of wine on the small table there, its shadow dark red on the white tabletop. The big white bed neat and smooth. The six o’clock news was on the TV and when he looked finally at her face he saw the stains under her eyes—dark streaks on her cheekbones like big fallen eyelashes.
“You all right?” he said, and she looked at him strangely, wet-eyed, and turned back to the TV.
It was a story about an accident, the night before: two young women in a car, just across the border in Iowa. Slick roads. The Lower Black Root River. College girls. One of the girls was local. He knew who she was. He knew her father. Everyone did, of course; he was the county sheriff, or had been, and hearing his name in the news again—or his daughter’s name—opened a crack of memory, of old misery, in Gordon’s heart.
Eileen pushed up out of the chair and stood holding the back of it with one hand, as if she needed to. “I heard about this at work,” she said, “but they hadn’t said any names.” With her free hand she wiped at her face and then wiped her fingers on the back