The bag of clothing was completely burned, there were only the tiniest scraps floating at the bottom of the fireplace. One white cotton square with a purple star sat in the ashes, defiant. Patty put on another log just to make sure, tossed the scrap right on the fire. Then she phoned Diane and asked her to come over extra early tomorrow, dawn, so they could look for Ben again.
“I can come over now, if you want the company.”
“No, I’m about to climb in bed,” Patty said. “Thanks for the envelope. The money.”
“I’m already phoning around about lawyers, should have a good list by tomorrow. Don’t worry, Ben will come home. He’s probably panicked. Staying overnight at someone’s. He’ll show up.”
“I love him so much, Diane …” Patty started and caught herself. “Have a good sleep.”
“I’ll bring some cereal when I come, I forgot to bring cereal today.”
Cereal. It was so normal it felt like a gut punch.
Patty headed to her room. She wanted to sit and think, to ponder, get deep. The urge was intense, but she fought it. It was like trying to fight a sneeze. She finally poured herself two fingers of bourbon and put on her thick layers of sleeping clothes. Thinking time was over. Might as well try and relax.
She thought she’d cry—the relief of it all—but she didn’t. She got into bed and looked at the cracked ceiling and thought, “I don’t need to worry about the roof caving in anymore.” She wouldn’t have to look at that broken screen window near her bed, thinking year after year she should fix it. She wouldn’t need to worry about the morning when she’d wake up and need coffee and find that the coffeemaker finally croaked. She didn’t have to worry about commodity prices or operating costs or interest rates or the credit card Runner had taken in her name and overcharged on so she could never pay it off. She’d never see the Cates family again, at least not for a long time. She didn’t have to worry about Runner and his peacock strut, or the trial or the fancy, slick-haired lawyer with the thick gold watch, who’d say soothing things and judge her. She didn’t have to stay up at night worrying about what the lawyer was telling his wife, lying in their goosedown bed, him telling her stories about “the Day mother” and her dirty brood. She didn’t have to worry about Ben going to prison. She didn’t have to worry about not being able to take care of him. Or any of them. Things were going to change.
For the first time in a decade, she wasn’t worrying, and so she didn’t cry. Somewhere after one, Libby banged the door open and sleepwalked into bed with her, and Patty turned over and kissed her goodnight, and said I love you, was happy she could say that aloud to one of her kids, and Libby was asleep so fast Patty wondered if she even heard.
Libby Day
NOW
Iwoke up feeling like I dreamt about my mom. I was craving her weird hamburgers we always made fun of, filled with carrots and turnip bits and sometimes old fruit. Which was strange since I don’t eat meat. But I wanted one of those burgers.
I was considering how one actually cooks hamburgers when Lyle phoned with his pitch. Just one more. That’s what Lyle kept saying: just one more person I should talk to, and if nothing came of it, I could give up. Trey Teepano. I should look up Trey Teepano. When I said it’d be too hard to track him down, Lyle recited his address. “It was easy, he has his own business. Teepano Feed,” Lyle said. I wanted to say “nice work” back to him—how easy would that have been?—but I didn’t. Lyle said Magda’s women would give me $500 dollars to talk to Trey. I’d have done it for free, but I took the money anyway.
I knew I would keep going like this, actually, that I couldn’t stop until I found some sort of answer. Ben knew, I was sure of that now, Ben knew something. But he wasn’t saying. So keep going. I remember watching a very sensible love expert on TV once. The advice: “Don’t be discouraged—every relationship you have is a failure, until you find the right one.” That’s how I felt about this miserable quest: every person I talked to would let me down until I found the one person who could help me figure out that night.
Lyle was coming with me to Teepano Feed, partly because he wanted to see what Trey Teepano was like, and partly, I think, because he was nervous about the guy. (“I don’t really trust Devil worshipers.”) Teepano Feed was just east of Manhattan, Kansas, somewhere in a squat of farmland wedged between several new suburbs. The developments were blank and clean. They looked as fake as the Western souvenir shops back in Lidgerwood, a place where people only pretended to live. To my left, the boxy houses eventually gave way to an emerald lagoon of grass. A golf course. Brand new and small. In the cold morning rain, a few men remained on the fairway, twisted and tilted as they swung their clubs, looking like flags of yellow and pink against the green. Then just as quickly as the fake houses and the fake grass and the pastel-shirted men appeared, they were gone, and I was looking at a field of pretty brown Jersey cows, staring at me, expectant. I stared back—cows are the few animals that really seem to see you. I stared so hard I missed the big old brick building labeled Teepano Feed and Farm Supply, Lyle tapping my shoulder, LibbyLibbyLibby. I hit the brakes on my car and hydroplaned a good fifty feet, that soaring feeling reminding me of Runner letting me loose after spinning me. I backed up wildly and swerved into the gravel parking lot.