When I finished dinner, it was still early, but I was exhausted. My plan was to go directly to the bed-and-breakfast inn, and, by eight o’clock, anesthetize myself with Valium and a slug of the innkeeper’s sherry. Although the weather was moderate for this time of year in north central Wisconsin, it was no day at the beach, as it were. Still, I decided on a short walk, just a couple of blocks, before getting into my car, to shake down the pound of macaroni and cheese I’d eaten and to clear my head.
I thought of the time back then, when he had just gone into the hospital, I asked Stefan, where did you get the drugs? I was so na?ve, I never dreamed he wouldn’t just come right out with it. Thinking about it with the remove of time, I’m shocked that he did, knowing I could have tracked the girl down, knowing that I might well have given the police her name. I could have told the police, and I should have.
Why didn’t I?
It honestly hadn’t occurred to me that the drugs were a crime as well. And no one had asked me.
“Emily,” he said. “Emily Lindquist. Or Lundgren. Or something with an L. Belinda’s best friend up there.”
“How did Belinda know her?”
“From…from before college. She met Bindy in cheerleading camp, I guess. I think she was from Chicago. But I didn’t realize at first she was the same person she used to talk about from cheer.
“We weren’t like insane addicts. It was just drugs like there are in a college town. Weekend drugs. Study drugs. It went fine, it was fun. Except for that night.”
I walked along. Maybe it was what I knew about the place, but the town felt creepy. Human beings really do have animal senses. You can tell if you’re being watched. I felt eyes on me from all those frowsy, closed, empty little places. Then my phone vibrated with a text in my pocket and I pulled it out.
I can see you, walking up Pottawatomi Street. What the hell do you think you’re doing?
Abruptly, I felt cold, but not from the weather.
I texted back, Why are you here?
She replied, Because you’re here.
Back when this girl told me that she wasn’t involved with bad people, I believed her. Now I didn’t. She was entangled in some way with a murder in a small college town. She was drawn back here. Or if she wasn’t drawn back here, she was following me, and her reasons for doing that couldn’t be pure. I found a little courtyard between two small brick houses and tucked myself into it.
How did you know Belinda? I texted her.
She texted, Cheer competitions.
So Stefan was right. Except he didn’t know that Emily was Esme was Emily.
I texted back simply: Call me.
She agreed, but said she had to go somewhere safe first.
It grew colder as the evening drew in fast. I found a bench and sat huddled. At last, my phone vibrated.
“Hi,” she said. “Please, I can’t talk long.”
She said she was enrolled in school that fall semester. She and Belinda were already making plans to study together in Paris for their junior year abroad.
I said, “Paris?”
“That was what we wanted. It was everything to us.”
I couldn’t stop thinking, Paris? What about Stefan, poor chump, who thought that Belinda just needed some time to stretch her wings before she settled down?
“I have to go now,” Esme said. She sighed. “I shouldn’t be talking about this. Just tell Stefan if he ever remembers anything, you know, to just not say it.”
“What do you mean, anything?”
“He’ll know what I mean.”
“Stop this! You’re following me even now. At least come see me.”
“No,” she said. “I’m scared.”
She hung up. I stood and glanced around me. The only buildings were those one-story commercial affairs, all of them still. From where was she watching me? All the cars parked along the street were dark and seemingly empty. I got up and went to my car, stuffing my phone into my pocket as I hurried along. A door slammed and someone else was running, their soles slapping in time with mine, whether toward me or away from me, I couldn’t tell. My keys were in hand: Another thing I’d always told myself was that I would never be one of those fumblers hauled out of her vehicle by the zombie because she couldn’t start the car. I threw myself into the front seat, locked the doors and smoothly stuck the key fob into the ignition…but the car wouldn’t start. It was that crazy gap that sometimes occurred as a result of good intentions, in this case, the anti-theft lock. Those painful prickles of bio-electric current raced up my throat and forearms. I wrestled with the wheel, jiggled the key.