Just when I think to myself again that it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of and the last place anyone would reunite with someone, I get a notification. My heart skips a beat as I open the message. It’s from a woman named Beatrice who lives nearWindsor Locks and has a profile picture of herself in a purple crochet hat holding a ferret. I click to open it.
Dear anonymous woman, it starts, because I didn’t leave my name, only an encrypted email they can respond to.
I’m such a hopeless romantic that I usually check thechance meetingsection and themissed connectionboard every day in hopes that some handsome prince out there might have seen me reading on a park bench somewhere or maybe lost sight of me just as the bus doors were closing... or something else romantic like that, and sadly, I have not yet found my knight in shining armor, but I did see your post and I recognized the man.
I scroll down and see she’s attached a photo. Of Jack. Oh, my God. I don’t believe what I’m looking at. She goes on.
I snapped a photo of him this morning after I saw your post. He’s sort of turned away in the shot, but I didn’t want him to think I was stalking him. Been there, done that. Anyway, I work at the Bluebird Café and he comes in all the time. Orders coffee. Cream no sugar, and an apple turnover.
I stop reading and clasp my chest at the utter shock. That’s him. That’s his coffee order. Apple turnovers are his favorite. What is happening? I finish reading.
I asked if his name is Jack and he said no, but he looked freaked out by the question and has nevergiven me a name even though I’ve asked once or twice before. He just changes the subject and that’s why I started calling him Apple Turnover when I see him come through the door. I get a good chuckle out of it. Anyway, how romantic. I hope you find him. He usually comes between eight and nine in the morning, when he does. Please let me know if you find him and fall in love.
Electricity buzzes between my ears and I feel lightheaded and enraged all at once and I think I could almost faint but simultaneously feel like punching the drywall on all of the walls into dust and screaming until my throat aches, but I can’t do any of that or even respond back to this very kind but lonely-sounding woman because the doorbell rings and I hear Hallie calling, “Mom, come on,” and I have to go put on an act for at least an acceptable three hours before I’m allowed to fall to pieces.
Once things are in full swing and Kathy has exhausted a balloon dance party and painting activities, the kids have moved on to running around and screaming, hopped up on cake sugar, I guess playing some form of tag. The parents poke toothpicks into cocktail wieners and stand around with wineglasses, although most of the men are out on the deck watching the game on the big TV or playing pool. Andi looks like a ghost across the living room sitting in an armchair. Sasha sits next to her stirring a martini and hollering at the pack of wild-eyed ten-year-olds chasing each other around the coffee table to “take it to the rec room”... which they do, the hoots and squeals disappearing down the hall.
I perch on the edge of the coffee table opposite Andi and place my hand on her knee. “No word about Tia yet?” Sheshakes her head and looks out the window at the fingers of drizzle streaming down the glass.
“No one’s blaming you,” Sasha says, even though word is that Tia wouldn’t have gone on that run if she wasn’t blowing off steam from the argument with Andi that the whole world apparently knows about now, and some people probably are sort of blaming her.
“Obviously, she’ll turn up,” I say, but I don’t know that at all. I didn’t think Andi would be in this much despair over Tia. I mean, of course it’s human decency to worry about someone who’s missing even if you hate them—you don’t want them dead or anything, but Andi’s barely functioning, it seems. Having your name in people’s mouths is very unsettling.
I’m sure she’s most worried about how it affects her kids, but we’re talking about Cloverhill Lakes. The crime rate has to be near zero. Until recently, of course. Still, surely Tia will turn up.
“Yeah,” Andi says mindlessly. We all sit in silence and listen to the sound of small talk from the folks mingling and the cheers from a football audience muffled through the glass doors. I stare out at Carson and Tom, clinking their beer bottles together at what I imagine is a touchdown. I think about how Ray should be here and wonder where he is exactly? Driving around hopelessly, bawling his eyes out at home, drunk somewhere. My heart aches for what he’s going through. And then I think about how Jack should be here, too, and usually that’s when grief starts to take over and I have to excuse myself a moment, and sometimes it happens with bursts of white-hot rage, but right now I’m just very numb from the double dose of lorazepam, and I wish everyone would leave my house so Ican process Beatrice and the Bluebird Café and what the hell it all means.
I do think twice about telling the girls about the message until I know more, but I feel like they’re a part of this now. It was Sasha’s idea to ask around online. I want to have allies and not go it all alone, even if they are starting to wonder if I need to be committed somewhere. I need their support.
“I have something to show you,” I say, looking over my shoulder to make sure nobody else is within earshot. I click open the message from Beatrice and turn my phone around for them to see. They both lean in and read it. Sasha scrolls past my initial post and I watch them read the woman’s reply.
“No fucking way,” Andi says, perking up a little bit. She grabs the phone and zooms in on the photo of Jack, who is turned slightly away, sitting at a café table with a cup of coffee, but you can still tell it’s him. She squints at it. “Jesus, fuck, Regan.”
“I know,” I say. Sasha didn’t know him, so it’s hard for her to offer much feedback, I’m sure, but she gives a sympathetic shake of her head and hands the phone back.
“How is that possible?” she asks.
“I’m gonna say something you probably won’t like,” Andi says. “Not to be a total dream-crusher dick here, but... we attended his funeral, honey. This is someone who looks like Jack. What other explanation could there be?”
I grab my phone back and sigh. “Something. It’s something,” I say.
“Reg, he was transported by air... by a US consular officer,” she says, I guess to remind me that what was recovered of his body was officially chaperoned from Colombia by the US Government. She thinks that should shake me out of thinking his death was a hoax. It’s not like he’s missing. We were all there. He was said to be unrecognizable so I didn’t see his face, but I got his clothes and his watch and his wallet, and I threw a rose on his casket. The US Consulate doesn’t bury the wrong guy.
“We’ll go with you,” Sasha says.
“What?” I say.
“To that coffee shop. We’ll go with you. We’ll find him,” Sasha says with kindness and optimism in her eyes.
“Dude,” Andi says. “Ifthat’s him. Big giant-ass if. Then that woman who wrote youaskedhim if his name is Jack. If it is him, she spooked him. You think he’ll go back there if he’s on the run?” she asks, and my heart sinks. I hadn’t thought of that, but she’s right.
“We have to try,” Sasha says.
“What a moron this chick is. Fucking Beatrice. She scared him off,” Andi says, then feels the need to add, “which is fine because I’m sure it’s not Jack.”
“Right,” I say, pushing my phone into my pocket.
“But you’re going, right?” Sasha says.
