I go into the front hall and sit down in a sweaty-gross heap beside the telephone.
I dial information and ask for the owner of the apartments on Oak Tree Lane. I scribble down the number the operator gives me and dial it. The secretary tells me that the owner isn’t in his office, but she can check her records to see if any of the tenants have put in a move-out notice.
While I wait, I absently tap a pencil on the table, the knot in my stomach beginning to loosen only slightly. I turn in the chair toward the kitchen, where I only have a sliver of a view of the apartment building. It’s suddenly the most important place on earth as if all of humanity sprouted from its foundation.
The secretary comes back to say there have been no notices in months. I thank her and hang up, the knot in my stomach getting looser by the second. I dial information again and ask for the number for the garage on Commerce Street. And as the line rings, I feel like a boulder rolling down a hill, gaining speed, bouncing off ruts, tumbling, rushing.
Once again, another secretary answers. I ask to speak to the owner.
The owner of what?
The garage?
Which garage?
That…one?
She says to hold, and I hold my breath. Almost five minutes go by before a man comes on the line. He sounds like a gruff man, the kind of man I picture rubbing off his greasy hands on a towel and then scratching his scruffy face. He seems more than bothered when I start questioning him about Asher.
“Yes, yes,” he says. “I know Asher.”
“Has he been there at all?”
There’s an exhale, like he’s blowing smoke, the annoyance in his tone growing. “Hasn’t been by all week.”
I press the phone to my ear. “Do you know where he is?”
There’s a hesitation. “Who is this?”
I think about it for a second. “A, um…a friend.”
And that’s when the man seems to be holding back a little, hesitating, and so I press him until he’s so annoyed with me he gives up and says, “He went home to Lancaster. Okay? It was something to do with his family. Look, I gotta lot to do, mister.” He hangs up.
I feel the knot completely unravel, straightening into a smooth line, one I can now work with. One I can now weave into whatever I wish.
It’s an avalanche of relief. A damn torrent.
But it’s quickly replaced with worry.
Hisfamily?
That word could mean many things. What kind of family? Like…just his mother and father? Or…his wife and kids? That last part just couldn’t be. Wouldn’t be. But the knot threatens to twist back up again as it becomes more likely, more clear that maybe, maybe I’d read into this all wrong. But surely he meanthisfamily, the one he was born into, the mother he was sure he’d never see again.
I feel frozen for a second with the fear that I’m wrong.
Possibilities of who this man is flood my brain. I don’t really know him, after all. He had just seemed to me to be the loner type. The type that’s too cool for anyone and especially the likes of me. And maybe that’s exactly it: he’s skipped town because that’s what he does.
A helpless feeling takes over, but I brush it aside.
No. He didn’t just leave me like this, he doesn’t have a secret wife, and I will find him.
I pick up the phone and make another call. This time, to the bus station.
CHAPTER TEN
Asher
WILLOWS ARE PERHAPSthe saddest of all the trees.
