I’m fine with that. Because when you’re that certain of something, when you feel it in your gut”—he clutches his stomach, gives it a shake—“you have to see it through to the end.”
He leans back, grinning at me. He crosses his arms over his chest. “You know what I’m saying?”
Astrid could be in a cabin. One that’s like Cooper’s—somewhere overlooked, underloved. Right now, she could be locked in a basement, her red hair the only bright thing in all the darkness, and every day, every moment that goes by, the walls could be crumbling a little bit more. Is she worried she’ll run out of time? That they’ll collapse altogether, bury her in a tomb of wood and rot? Is she waiting for the witness, still, to tell someone what she saw?
“You get me, right, Brierley?” Cooper continues. “How when you know, you know?”
All these dead ends, but I’m certain—I know—that if I keep looking, I’ll find the road that leads me back to her.
“I do,” I tell Cooper. “I know exactly what you mean.”
* * *
It’s not until I’m driving back to Ted’s that I put it together.
Christy. Cuts by Christy.
That was the name of a place I saw in Foster today. One of the businesses made memorable by the alliteration on its sign. It was a few turns from Astrid’s neighborhood. A very short drive. A perfectly reasonable walk.
So there it is, then—more confirmation. I was close. I was there. And today, I drove down the same streets I traveled two decades ago.
I should feel validated. Or buzzing with the promise of this new puzzle piece. But I don’t. When I saw those businesses, those houses, those roads, I recognized nothing. Every sign might as well have been blank, every building empty and shuttered.
I can go back there, though. I can read the memoir. Find out more details about where she was taken, what the witness saw. If her words on the page don’t trigger a memory, they’ll at least give me a map.
My hands grip the steering wheel tighter. I step on the gas a little bit harder. My headlights slice through the purple dusk, the road ahead the color of a bruise that will take a while to heal. The houses are starting to space out, growing woodsy in between. A figure appears in the distance. Dark and difficult to distinguish from the backdrop of night.
I slow down. Let my lights creep up his body. Black boots. Black pants. Black raincoat. I check the temperature gauge on my dashboard—eighty-two degrees. I bet his body’s burning. Mine flushes just from looking at him.
Cooper called this guy a drifter, acted as if he was a suspicious intrusion to our town. But he has to be headed somewhere. And maybe his clothing is protection from mosquitoes, which in New Hampshire can seem as big as birds. I glance at my own uncovered skin. All of it so prickable. So close to the blood beneath—which suddenly flows faster.
He’s walking in the direction I’m driving, but now, bathed in my headlights, he stops. Turns slowly. As if he’s a knob that’s screwed too tight. My foot squeezes the brake. My car crawls.
In a few moments, he’s facing me. We’re the only two on this road and then—one second, two seconds, three—neither of us are moving. Why don’t I pass him? Why do I feel like there’s something about him I need to see? Ten yards, I think—that’s all that lies between us—but I can’t make out his face at all. His hood is so big, so dark, that it conceals his head completely. Falls over him like a mask.
Like a hard mask.
The kind that protects the eyes and nose and mouth.
The kind a welder might wear.
My pulse kicks and kicks. I blink, and he’s still frozen. His hood is just a hood again. His hands are the only skin I can see.
But there were gloves, once. Long, dark gloves. They went halfway to somebody’s elbows.
I lean over the wheel. My heart pounds against it. He’s a guy in a raincoat, a hood, black jeans. But he’s someone else, too. Dark gloves. A welder’s mask. And—overalls?
No. Waders.
A welder’s mask. Gloves. Waders.
I gasp a mouthful of air and instantly scream it out. The sound shoves the drifter out of his stillness. Sends him shooting away. I stomp my foot on the gas, but he’s through the trees before I reach him. An inky streak in a smudge of woods. I skid to a