date—that maybe the appointment had passed. He’s turned his attention to the main event: a photo tucked into the billfold. It’s a high school graduation photo, the Jeremy in it younger than the one I encountered. He has the kind of face that wouldn’t be worth another look if I hadn’t already seen him before, but because I have, there’s something about it. Jeremy doesn’t look happy, but he doesn’t look sad. There’s an absence of intensity. I could believe a smile on his mouth goes all the way up to his eyes. My throat tightens as I hand the photo back to Arthur.
“You never mentioned him,” I say.
Arthur purses his lips.
“We’ve been estranged a few years. We rarely spoke.”
A cold feeling settles over me.
Do I know you?
Arthur shifts, misinterpreting my sudden tension.
“Because—he was complicated. Jeremy. He suffered from major depression. He attempted to take his life a few times and sometimes I had to intervene against his will. He never quite forgave me for that, so … so as soon as he could get away, that’s what he did. And that was just fine with me as long as he was—as long as he was here.”
“I’m so sorry, Arthur.”
“He got in with this real bad crowd.” He closes his eyes and then, just as quickly, opens them. He takes his phone from his pocket. “Look at this.” He angles the screen so I can see. “They kept him from me. They wouldn’t let me see my son.”
He opens the gallery and starts swiping through pictures of Jeremy. All of them have been taken in public, and in all of them Jeremy is surrounded by a small group of people of varying ages, races. Real bad crowd wouldn’t be the first words they called to mind. Jeremy wears the smile I bet on before, the one that goes all the way up to his eyes—but this is a much more recent Jeremy than the one Arthur keeps tucked in his wallet. There’s an unsettling, watchful distance to the photos themselves.
“Did you take these?”
“I hired someone.”
He keeps moving through the gallery, going further and further back, the change of seasons evident by each shot’s surroundings. Jeremy is the constant, unaware and seemingly happy in these small, captured moments. I can’t even glimpse his future in this past.
“See?” Arthur asks. “Do you see?”
No, I think—but then a woman appears on Jeremy’s right, her arm around his shoulder, her face close to his. My heart stops completely and everything around me seems to fall slowly away, the sounds of the bar buried by the buzzing in my head …
I know you.
I grab the phone from Arthur and as soon as it’s in my hands, my heart starts up again, beating wildly. The sounds in the bar come rushing back louder than before. I stare at the picture for a long moment and then I swipe back through time, and there she is again … and again …
“He was in The Unity Project?”
“How did you know?”
I shake my head, the answer to Arthur’s question residing in a place beyond my voice while my eyes stay stuck on the screen, on a face I haven’t seen in …
“Lo?”
Years.
“Sorry,” I finally manage. “It’s just so…”
“I know,” he says, but he doesn’t. Arthur takes his phone back and I have to let him do it, even though everything inside me wants to look a little longer. Forever. I raise my eyes to meet his and he stares at me intently. He reminds me so much of his son, I have to look away.
“I just don’t understand,” he says. “Why would he jump? Why?”
The edges of the storm have found their way inside and the air thickens with the musty, almost metal-tinged scent of rain and pavement. That musty, metal-tinged scent of rain and station. I close my eyes and I see Jeremy, but it’s different now.
“They murdered my son.”
I open my eyes.
Arthur wraps his arms around his head and he starts to cry.
“Project’s clean,” Paul tells me.
I stand in the corner of his office with my arms crossed while he stands at his window staring at the dismal scene outside. Figures one of the rare times he’d allow himself the pleasure, there’s nothing there worth looking at. He turns from the window and settles at his desk, his eyes fixed on his computer screen, hands over the keyboard. Usually, I take the hint—conversation over, get back to work—but I’m off the clock and I’m not leaving this