I whip around in my seat and look to the back row of the theater. The seat he was in is empty, but the back of a figure in the same jacket and beanie is standing, walking up the stairs, moving past a few people coming back to their seats with wine and small pieces of cake on cocktail napkins from concessions. He rushes, almost knocking the cups out of their hands as he takes the stairs two at a time and disappears into the lobby.
I leap to my feet and run up the stairs after him.
“Jack!” I yell over the heads of the people in my way. “Jack!” I practically scream, and a handful of people are looking at me now—people I only vaguely know, but they know everything about me, of course, because that’s what happens when you’re the victim of a tragedy. Everyone knows Jack is long gone, dead. And the looks of pity I receive are not lost on me even though I’m focused on stopping him before he vanishes.
I burst through the door into the lobby and shout after him again. All of the parents standing around drinking wine are stunned into silence. I see Sasha cover her mouth with her hand, wide-eyed, as I stumble desperately through the theater doors and out onto the wet street. “Jack!”
But I see him, already a distance away down the sidewalk, his jacket pulled up on one side to shield his face fromthe rain. He’s jogging. I watch him hail a cab; they’re usually nonexistent in this neighborhood, but they hover around these sorts of events to drive the tipsy moms home, so he gets one straightaway. I pause a moment too long, thinking about whether I can leave Hallie’s big night to chase him, but I have to! Of course I have to. I don’t say anything to Sasha or turn back around. I’ll be back before the second act of the show is over, but I have to go now. I run to my car in the lot and pull out to the street, where I see the cab pull away from the curb and start east down Sixth Street. I’m a few cars behind them, so I try to swerve and pass to get closer, but I’m also trying not to be reckless, especially since the streets are slick.
Jack? How can that be? It wasn’t just me. I’m not delusional. Andi saw it, too. He was there. I feel my eyes blur from the tears welling up, and I blink them away and try to focus—to catch him. I see the stoplight ahead turn yellow and I have a moment of hope that the car will stop and I’ll be able to pull alongside and see him—stop him. But the driver just barely makes the light and I’m stuck on red. But I don’t stop. I race through the red light and hear a symphony of honks as I pass.
After a couple of miles, I have maintained a few car lengths of the cab and then I see him signal; they’re turning into the Amtrak station. Who takes a train anymore? Like a regular train, not a subway or the L. I can’t make sense of any of this. It feels so surreal and otherworldly that I am watching my dead husband... do what, exactly? Run away from me? What the fuck is actually happening here?
The cab pulls up at the front entrance of the station, and I’m about to step my foot on the gas when I hear the bell of a train crossing ring out and the arms over the tracks begin tolower in front of my car, stopping me cold before I can reach him. I’m stuck watching a train pass between me and Jack on the other side. I watch him, in the gap between train cars. It’s like a flip-book from childhood—I can only view him in bursts of movement that seem to fast-forward, disjointed with every short glimpse I get.
I register him getting out of the back seat and walking in through the front doors, which are a wall of glass, so I can see him approach the ticket counter. He exchanges brief words with the attendant, and then I watch him walk to a platform and sit on a bench and wait. Shit. I can still reach him. My heart pounds so hard I can hear the blood rushing between my ears. I pound the palms of my hands on the steering wheel, screaming, “Come on! Come the fuck on!” but it’s another few minutes before the train finally passes and the arms lift.
I squeal into the parking lot and jump out of my car without even turning it off or closing the door, and I run, breathless, to the platform. I clock the bench Jack was sitting on, but he’s not there. I run down the length of the platform, calling for him. I rush into the small snack bar, where a couple men sit drinking cans of beer and eating fries from a paper plate between them. The woman behind the counter starts to look up from her phone and ask me what she can get for me, but she must register my wild eyes and panic, because she just takes a step back and stares a moment. Before she can say anything else, I’m out the door and charging into the men’s restroom, calling out for him.
I hear a couple of men mutter “Hey!” and “What the hell?” from inside the stalls, but I don’t care. I run back to the ticket counter and ask about the schedule. A train bound for Windsor Locks, Connecticut, just left, and the next one isn’t untiltomorrow. The man behind the Plexiglas window hands me a paper schedule.
“Did a man named Jack Hoffman get on the train? Please? Can you tell me that?” I beg.
“Ma’am, I can’t give out information like that. Come on,” he says, more condescendingly than necessary.
I’m so utterly shocked that I look around the station one more time—a few people who arrived on the train from Newark stand with luggage, presumably waiting for a ride. One woman pulls her kid closer to her like I’m some wild animal about to attack, and my heart drops. Jack’s gone. I’ve lost him.
I walk numbly to my car and drive the five miles back to the theater. I’ve been gone less than an hour, but I don’t have time to process any of this or drive to follow each of the train’s stops like I thought about doing for a split second. I have to get back to Hallie before she knows I was gone.
The drive back is a blur. My head spins, creating far-fetched scenarios and reaching for explanations—anything that could make this logical. There has to be a reason. Losing my mind and hallucinating is top of my list, but I know what I fucking saw.
When I get back to the theater, I rush in and stand in the back and watch the last song of the show and the curtain call, and I clap and clap and try not to fall apart in front of my daughter and her peers and the parents who are already forming texts in their minds if they haven’t already sent them to friends and spouses about Regan Hoffman going mental at the school play. They pity me too much to let me get wind of this, but I know.
The house lights come up and the kids are milking their standing ovation, and I think about what could have possiblyjust happened and why? Is Jack really alive and well? Did he show up here because he’s been keeping tabs on our life and couldn’t miss Hallie’s milestone event? How can any of this possibly be? I was at his funeral. If this is some elaborate hoax or scam, then why? The man I was best friends with since college and knew better than anyone in the world is a fraud? That’s not possible.
If he’s capable of disappearing for two years and having the world think him dead... then he is completely unknowable and a stranger to me. If that’s true, he has to be involved in some very serious shit. And now so am I, because someone is trying to have me killed. Right before he shows back up. It has to be connected. What the hell is he running from?
Chapter Five
Sasha
When they get home from the play, Sasha can’t stop thinking about Regan. She didn’t say anything to her afterward, but she saw Regan standing in the back and then waiting for Hallie outside the dressing room, going out of her way to avoid the judgmental gazes from the other parents after her outburst. Sasha’s heart aches for Regan’s loss. She’s in such desperate despair that she thought she saw her dead husband at her daughter’s play. Maybe the event triggered something. It’s unimaginable.
Tom’s on the sofa in sweats and a T-shirt when they come in wet and starving, and Sasha’s envious and can’t wait to be in a bathrobe drinking something hot out of a mug. Every time she looks at him, though, she feels a twinge of guilt for not yet telling him about what she found in Drew’s room. She doesn’t know if she should involve Tom. Drew’s not his son,and he loves to remind Tom of that any chance he gets. She’s sure it can’t be easy for Drew that Chloe is Tom’s biological daughter—he must feel somehow second fiddle, even though he swears up and down he never thinks of it that way. Of course he’d say that, though.
They get along, Tom and Drew, but there’s a small chance Tom would want to go to the police, and Sasha can’t let that happen. She needs to find out if it’s a cause of concern first. Chloe has a stack of orange and red construction paper she cut autumn leaves and pumpkin shapes from, to decorate her bedroom door with for Halloween. What if that’s all it is? She needs more information before she overreacts.
“Hey, any leftovers? We’re starved,” she says to Tom, shaking the rain out of her coat as Chloe pops into the kitchen and opens a juice box.
“Hey, guys.” He gets up and comes to kiss her on the head and take her coat. Still such a gentleman. “Sorry, thought you ate,” he says.
“We were running late, and then... things got weird,” she says, peering into the fridge at a couple raw chicken breasts.
“Where’s Drew?”
“Hanging out at Blanc’s, he said.”
“I’ll just go pick something up,” Sasha says.
