While they waited, Noah asked the question that would end the conversation and start the next one.
"Where is Liam now?"
Connor shrugged. "He mentioned he'd been staying with his aunt for a while after he came back. Wendy Sutton. In Elizabethtown."
"Is he still there?"
"No idea. He didn't keep in touch." Connor ejected the flash drive and handed it to Noah.
"One more thing," Noah said. He watched Connor carefully. "When Liam was here, what was your impression of him?"
Connor thought about it. He wasn't performing. He was genuinely trying to find the right words “He didn’t talk much,” Connor said. “Just watched. Took things in.” He paused. “You ever meet someone who’s already made up their mind before they walk in the room?” He looked at Noah. “That was him.”
Noah stood. He picked up the flash drive from the table.
"You were right to hold onto this."
"Was I?" Connor didn't stand. He looked up at Noah from the chair with an expression that was not hope and not resignation but something in between. "Because I've heard that before."
"This time is different."
"Yeah." Connor lit another cigarette. "That's what the last guy said too."
Noah let himself out. The morning air hit his face. The cat on the shop windowsill watched him walk to the Bronco. The Honda SUV gleamed in the thin sunlight. The faded sign on the shop creaked in a gust of wind.
He got in the Bronco and set the flash drive on the passenger seat. His thoughts turned to Wendy Sutton in Elizabethtown. It was a solid lead.
Noah started the engine and pulled out onto Route 9. The mountains rose on both sides of the road, their colors muted under the pale sky, and the river ran beside the highway, flat and moving the way it always moved, carrying everything downstream whether anyone noticed or not.
28
The house was small and warm and smelled like cinnamon.
Noah was already seated when Wendy came back from the kitchen with two mugs. She was in her early sixties, thin, with silver hair cut short and practical. She wore a cotton apron over a flannel shirt as if she had been baking before he arrived. Her face carried the kind of tiredness that didn't come from a bad night's sleep but from years of carrying something heavy and never setting it down.
"Here you go," she said, handing him the coffee.
Her husband was in a recliner near the window. He hadn't moved since Noah arrived. He sat with his hands in his lap, looking into the distance at something only he could see. His eyes were open but unfocused. A blanket was folded over his knees.
Wendy noticed Noah's gaze drifting between the two of them.
"It's his memory." She sat in the chair across from Noah and wrapped both hands around her mug. "Some days are better than others. Today's not one of the better ones."
"I know about that."
"You do?"
"My father is in the early stages."
Wendy studied him for a moment. The way people study each other when they discover a shared wound. "Yeah, well. I'm planning to have him placed in a home. It's going to break my heart but I just don't have the ability to care for him like I used to." She glanced at her husband. "He was a carpenter. Built half the porches in Elizabethtown. Now he can't remember where the bathroom is." She turned back to Noah. "Have you done that for your father?"
"Not yet," Noah said, taking a sip of his coffee.
A silence settled.
"So you mentioned you had questions about Liam," Wendy said.
"Yes." Noah set his coffee down on the side table. "Just a few things I was asked to follow up on."
