Page 12

12

MACK

“It stopped again!” I shout, startling Billy and he swerves slightly at the jolt before regaining control of the car. “Sorry, but he stopped.”

“Where?” he asks, rubbing his sleepy eyes. We have been driving for a couple of hours and haven’t said much because my mind has been reeling and he’s trying to be respectful and supportive, I can tell, but I’m sure he doesn’t know how the hell he’s supposed to act…so the hum of the heater and the low volume of a country station coming in and out on the radio has filled the silence for most of the ride.

On the tracker app it shows the phone is no longer moving down highway 10. My heart is beating frantically. The phone was stopped for over an hour when we first got on the road which allowed us to practically catch up to it, but then, when we were somewhere outside of Winnipeg Junction, it started again, and I was worried we’d be driving all night to God knows where. The stop it made was in the middle of nowhere it looked like from the location—just a roadside pit stop exit with a bar, strip club, and a gas station.

“It’s just this side of Fargo,” I say, practically shouting. “It looks like it’s in the parking lot of a diner called Toasty’s. We’re only twenty minutes away. Oh my God.” I take a deep breath and tap my nails on the back of my phone nervously, willing the location not to change.

“So what’s your plan when you see him…” Billy asks. “If I’m allowed to pry.”

“I mean, you are driving me across the state to help, so I suppose you’re allowed to pry,” I say. And then I don’t elaborate because I don’t know. “Am I supposed to have a plan?” I ask. “I’ve never tracked down a runaway husband before, so I’m not exactly sure how this goes.”

“Oh,” he says, flatly.

“Yeah.”

“Huh.”

“I know. But I just want answers. I guess… I’ll know what to say when I see him. I think. Or maybe I’ll just kill him if the opportunity presents itself,” I say, and he shifts his eyes over to me, then back to the road. I don’t say that I’m kidding. My blood is boiling at the thought of him living a secret life somewhere and making a mockery of the years and years we spent together, of Rowan, our families, our whole lives. Maybe I could just run him down in the Toasty’s parking lot once I see him.

Suddenly, I feel Billy’s hand on top of mine on the console. He squeezes it.

“You have me for backup if you need me,” he says, returning his hand to the steering wheel. Of course it’s crossed my mind why he’s going so very far out of his way to help me. I’m not a fool. Most people pity me, which is something that I detest, of course, but it’s something I have grown accustomed to. That could be it. Also, he wanted to catch up over dinner. We were friends once. I don’t know if Shelby’s assessment of his feelings for me are true or not, but that was many years ago, and time and grief have utterly deteriorated me now. I know how pale and bone thin I’ve become—I’m not blind—and preoccupied with Leo, and depressed, and unfriendly, and exhausted. Who in their right mind would turn their head for me now? Nobody, which is why I think pity is likely his motivation for being so helpful. And right now, I guess I’ll take it…as pathetic as that feels to say. I just want answers, and I need somebody’s help.

Toasty’s is right off exit 42 and sits across from a gas station and Norma’s Pie Palace. A series of lampposts light up the icy parking lot where a couple of big rigs are parked sideways along the side of the lot closest to the freeway, and only a handful of other cars are parked in front of the orange glowing windows of the diner. Billy parks and I stare at the app. I turn behind me and point.

“It’s…there,” I say, looking toward a parked tow truck. “Holy crap. It says it’s right there.”

I leap out of the car and run across the slippery lot and when I reach the place the dot on the app shows, I bang my knuckles against the truck’s passenger window and then swing the door open and step up into the rig.

“Jesus!” The man in the driver’s seat yells, gripping his seat and looking around in fear, probably to see if he’s about to be carjacked or something. He was watching a video on his phone and laughing with his feet up on the dash before I terrified him. The heat from the cab of the truck billows out along with the smell of Arby’s smokehouse brisket and sweet tobacco. I slide into the empty seat next to him and point at his phone. My mouth opens, but no words come at first and he just sits there frozen, his eyes bulging for a couple of moments.

“What the fuck?” he yells as I grab the phone from his grip in one fell swoop.

“Where did you get this?” I demand. “Is Leo with you? Is he inside?” I look to the diner doors, making sure he won’t escape me no matter what.

“Who?” he asks, shaking his head and trying to grab the phone back.

“Where is he?” I scream at the man, and he looks frightened now. “Where did you get this?” I yell, and I know it’s Leo’s because I bought him the stupid phone case with the purple Vikings logo on the back.

“Jesus, lady. I found it, okay? All’s I did was find it, and then I turned it on, but it died pretty quick and then I went and got a charger at Dollar General ’cause it had Netflix on it and I thought why not?”

“When?” I ask.

“Couple weeks ago.”

“You thought, why not steal a phone?”

“Yeah, I did. I thought why the fuck not because you know why? Because I ate a piece of peanut brittle my aunt Rhonda made for Christmas that I left in my glove box too long so it was kinda frozen and when I took a bite, I broke my tooth. And when I called the dentist, he said it will cost six hundred bucks that I don’t have, and now I got an exposed nerve that hurts like a motherfucker and I don’t even get back to Brainerd for four more days anyway. And I have to ask my sister, Linda, to borrow money, and she’s gonna give me a lot of shit about it before she’ll give it to me and she’ll make me babysit her fucking kids…and they’re repulsive, and I can’t even enjoy the rest of the damn Christmas freakin’ peanut brittle. So, yeah. I saw it sitting there and thought I would watch some free Netflix so my ninety-minute break wouldn’t be so fucking miserable. Sue me!”

“You found the phone in Brainerd?” I ask, ignoring the rest of everything he said.

“No. It was in a motel room I was staying in outside Riv ers Crossing. In a nightstand drawer, so I didn’t really steal it then, did I?”

“What’s the motel?” I asked, stunned, unable to think straight, trying to make sense of how he has Leo’s phone.

“Lumberjack’s over by the Waffle House and that new brewery,” he says and I shove the phone in my pocket, then climb down from the cab of his truck and slam the door behind me. I walk numbly back to Billy, who stands nearby, hugging himself against the cold wind and watching me without interfering, which I appreciate because most men would have tried to play hero or attempted not to let me get in this guy’s truck or interfered in one way or another.

“Not Leo?” he asks as I approach, and I shake my head and walk past him toward the warmth inside the front doors of Toasty’s. He follows, jogging ahead a few steps and opening the door for me.

Inside, we sit at an old weathered booth and I don’t speak yet. I think the shock is still settling in. I was sure it would lead to him. I saw it all unfolding. The details are fuzzy; the whys elude me, but I clearly envisioned him in front of me again: not dead, not on the arm of some secret girlfriend, not high on drugs. Not any of the other explanations I have come up with over the months about why he would have vanished like this, but just there, alone, and so, so sorry. He got in way over his head with the money and the lies, and thought it would be better for me if he disappeared, and then he’d beg my forgiveness. But all I got was a tow truck driver watching Love Island on Leo’s phone in a diner parking lot. How is this my life?

I look at the giant plastic menu on the table in front of me. The walls are papered forest green with a pine tree pattern and the floors are old, chipped linoleum. A cat rubs itself against one of the vinyl stools at the dessert counter and then disappears into the back. There are only two other customers, an elderly man smoking a cigarette, hunched over a cup of coffee at a two-topper and another man sits at the bar, pouring copious amounts of syrup onto a stack of hotcakes. The waitress finally puts her phone in her apron and notices us.

“A double bourbon on the rocks,” I say as she approaches, before she even asks.

“Uh. It’s a diner, sweetheart” is all she says, and I’m supposed to know what that means, I guess.

“What?”

“It’s 24/7 breakfast. Ain’t no booze here, sorry,” she says, placing a pot of coffee in front of us instead, and my skin prickles with annoyance.

“Scooter’s across the highway is your only option. There’s a polka band tonight though, so go at your own risk.”

“I, for one, love polka,” Billy says, trying to make it okay if I want to drag him around the middle of nowhere for even longer and drink myself to oblivion, so just to make sure he doesn’t think I’m completely unstable or some kind of alcoholic who needs to run to the polka bar to numb myself when we could both use a cup of coffee or better yet, some sleep, I just sigh and look at the menu again.

“I’ll have the big country breakfast with the fried eggs, hash browns, and the strawberry pancake slam.”

“Whipped cream?” she asks.

“Absolutely,” I say.

“It comes with pecan or blueberry pie?”

“The three-thousand-calorie country breakfast with a strawberry pancake slam comes with pie as a side?” I ask. She just stands there waiting for my answer, tapping her foot with her pen in hand.

“Pecan,” I say, then look to Billy.

“I’ll have the same.” He smiles, closing his menu and handing it to her. We both glance at the phone sitting in the middle of the table. I nervously peel open a bunch of Splendas and pour them into my coffee. I flick the empty paper squares around the table mindlessly, the way we used to do as teenagers when we took over the corner booth of a Perkins late at night and only had enough pocket change for pots of coffee to earn our right to hang out there to escape our parents and the cold nights.

“That guy found it in a motel room near Rivers Crossing.”

“What? Wait. It’s been… When did he find it? That doesn’t add up,” Billy asks.

“Couple weeks, he says.”

“Why was his phone there? How could it have not been noticed for over a year, almost a year and a half?” he asks.

“It makes no sense,” I say. “I mean, did someone plant it there in a motel drawer? Why? If someone killed him, they wouldn’t leave his phone behind. If he’s running, he doesn’t leave his phone behind. I mean, what the actual fuck?”

“What if he stayed there and whatever happened, he didn’t mean to leave it behind? You said it was in a drawer. I mean, what if it was stuck in the back and really did get missed all this time, turned off, wedged behind a motel Bible or something?” he says, and I think about it a minute.

“Well, Love Island Tow Truck Guy said it was in a drawer, and assuming he’s not lying, then, I don’t know. Maybe. But what the hell was Leo doing there between drinks with the guys that night and disappearing? Was he there doing some dirty business with a scuzzy loan shark, or what we’re all thinking—having an affair, because why not throw that into the mix of all the unthinkable things this man I thought I knew was actually capable of?”

Billy is quiet, but gives me a sympathetic look. The food comes, and the waitress, who has plates balanced all the way up both arms like a circus performer, somehow makes room for them all on our table. As I stare at enough food to feed a family of eight, I want to start sobbing into my pancake slam. It’s so stupid and out of place to think about this right now, but every year for Thanksgiving we used to drive to Grand Forks, me and Leo and Rowan, and we’d always stop at Applejack’s Diner for Rowan’s favorite French silk pie, and the place had the same dusty curtains and old records on the walls, just like this place. Leo would stuff himself with bananas Foster and sausage biscuits so he didn’t have to eat my aunt Minnie’s turkey hotdish or fruit Jell-O mold. He could probably eat all of this. Even the pecan pie. Or he’d save some and feed it to her dog, Harold, when she wasn’t looking.

I try not to cry. I look at Billy, of all the people in the world, sitting across from me in this moment, and it’s so surreal. I am getting accustomed to surreal, I suppose, but this life I find myself in—this complete one-eighty is so crippling some days it doesn’t feel real at all. I question what I’m even doing here, why I don’t just let Leo go if he wants to be gone so badly. Billy watches me stare down at the greasy plate with a blank look on my face.

“Are you gonna…see what’s in it?” he asks, nodding to Leo’s phone.

“Well, it’s almost dead and needs a charger, and I could probably use a drink first,” I say, and then he asks the waitress for some take-out containers and pays the bill, and before I know it we are both drinking bourbon on the rocks at Scooter’s across the highway.

I picked up an iPhone charger at a Wally’s Gas ’N’ Go because for some reason Billy has an old Samsung, and I didn’t bring one. So now the phone is charging on the floor under the bar and I am in no rush to look at it because right now there is a flicker of hope that something important could surface, but when I look, if nothing is there, I don’t think my heart can take anymore.

We watch a few truckers bustle in in big coats, rubbing their hands together from the cold and sharing a round wooden table in the middle of the dark, drafty dive bar. They order tap beer and talk quietly to one another. I wonder about the young woman bartending—where she must live and what life circumstance landed her this particular job in this middle-of-nowhere frozen tundra. She wears a hoodie with a hole in the elbow and leans against the end of the bar, plucking away at her phone with her press-on nails and a sort of scowl. Can’t say that I blame her. Do they still call them press-on nails? Probably not.

“I’m sorry you’re going through this,” he says, tracing the rim of his lowball glass with his finger. I offer a tight smile and nod, then I look down at my drink and take a sip. What is there to even say anymore?

“You have a really great support system in a place like Rivers Crossing at least. Everyone seems to be rallying behind you,” he says, and a small, sharp laugh escapes my lips, making his eyebrows rise.

“No, sorry. I do.”

“What?” he says with a tilted head, a genuine question.

“No, I just—I think most people enjoy gossiping about it. I mean…I see it. I hear the stories. You knew him…once upon a time. What do you think happened?” I ask, and I see some color drain from his face. I don’t usually ask people point-blank “what do you think happened?”

“Uhhh. I mean, I don’t really know him anymore. After college, I went in with him on that first pizza place for a summer until I met Nora on a trip to Milwaukee, and the rest is history… I think the last time I talked to him was a few years ago, when he was trying to buy the Trout from my parents.”

“Yeah,” I laugh. “I told him Lou would laugh in his face at that offer which is exactly what happened.”

“I guess I shoulda stayed in the pizza business, considering how you two made out on it in the end,” he says, and has no idea how I really made out in the end. I’m sure most people think we built a little empire on all of his business investments. I mean, we did, of course, but they don’t know how it ended. I don’t tell Billy that Leo probably only wanted the Trout be cause it was an established, rock-solid business in town, and he’d fucked up everything else by then.

“Sorry to hear about Nora” is all I say instead.

“Thanks,” he says, and picks at a bowl of pretzels on the bar. I don’t ask what happened. I heard about her running off with an anesthesiologist. I mean, if that’s true, but it’s probably a variation of that—an affair of some sort. I’ve come to learn the rumors in Rivers Crossing are usually rooted in some reality and then liberties are taken. I should know.

“You like being back?” I ask.

“Hmm,” he says, looking at the ceiling and thinking a moment. “I haven’t really figured that out yet.”

“Well, it should feel like home, not like a punishment,” I say with some weird sense of authority. And I suppose I mean the words, but living here feels more like a punishment than home to me these days, so I guess I’m just reciting something I’m conditioned to say.

“Yeah. Good point. I’ve known you since middle school, so spending time with you definitely feels…more like home than like a punishment,” he says and his eyes meet mine. I feel myself blush against my will and I look away.

“Well then, you’re a real nut, because you’re drinking bottom shelf bourbon at a roadside bar after a wild-goose chase with the biggest pity case the town has ever seen…and you should think I’m crazy and should absolutely feel like you’re being punished right now.”

“Don’t say that. You’re not a pity case. People just care…but in weird ways, because we’re all hardwired to be really bad at handling this sort of…trauma. It makes people uncomfortable, but that’s on them, not you,” he says.

“Thank you,” I say, feeling my heart lift just a tiny bit.

“Plus, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be,” he adds.

“Well, I did get you through ninth grade math, so you owe me.” I smile, and he chuckles at this.

“It was a dumb class. Why are we discussing Bobby buying forty watermelons and eating six of them and trading twenty of them for two coconuts each… I mean.”

“It was practical problem solving,” I laugh.

“What’s practical about buying that many watermelons? And why would Bobby be trading them with anyone? What sort of currency is that?” he asks.

“And how could he have managed any of that after eating six of them,” I say, realizing I’ve had a few too many sips of bourbon to the one Billy has been nursing. I feel suddenly a little bit woozy and lightheaded. “Okay,” I say, pushing the glass away and taking a deep breath. “I think I’ve amply prepared myself to open the phone.” I try to slide off the stool to crouch down and pick the phone up from where it’s propped by an outlet on the floor, but I lose my footing and stumble. He grabs my arm before I topple over.

“Yeah,” I say. “Okay then. I think I might be a little…buzzed,” I say, and he keeps hold of me until I safely sit back down. I turn on the phone and wait for it to come to life.

When it does, my hands shakily scroll through, clicking on contacts, texts, call history. I don’t see anything that stands out. I immediately wonder if he had a second phone for all these dirty dealings of his. He must have.

“No activity since it was turned on two weeks ago except the Netflix the tow truck driver was watching,” I mumble out loud. His last call was to me three hours before I got home that night to find him gone. Just calls to the guys, local businesses…then I see a number that he’s called a few times in the week before he disappeared—a number that’s not saved, but is local. I stare at it for a moment, then put a finger up to Billy to tell him “hold on a sec here” and I push the call button.

It rings twice before the upbeat voice of a young woman answers.

“Pop’s!”

“I’m sorry, what?” I ask confused.

“Pop’s Grill. Can I help you?” she asks, Billy looks at my perplexed expression and gives me a quizzical look back.

“Uhhh. I’m…sorry. Grill? No… I was looking for Leo Connolly. I must have…”

“Oh okay, hold on,” she says.

“What? He’s there?” I gasp.

“Well, he works here.” And I’m so stunned by her words that my grip loosens and the phone drops from my hand.