So I wanted to take a moment now, in the childhood stomping grounds of Mark Twain, and thank you for your WIT. You are truly the cleverest, funniest person I know. I have a wonderful sense memory: of all the times over the years you’ve leaned in to my ear—I can feel your breath tickling my lobe, right now, as I’m writing this—and whispered something just to me, just to make me laugh. What a generous thing that is, I realize, for a husband to try to make his wife laugh. And you always picked the best moments. Do you remember when Insley and her dancing-monkey husband made us come over to admire their baby, and we did the obligatory visit to their strangely perfect, overflowered, overmuffined house for brunch and baby-meeting and they were so self-righteous and patronizing of our childless state, and meanwhile there was their hideous boy, covered in streaks of slobber and stewed carrots and maybe some feces—naked except for a frilly bib and a pair of knitted booties—and as I sipped my orange juice, you leaned over and whispered, “That’s what I’ll be wearing later.” And I literally did a spit take. It was one of those moments where you saved me, you made me laugh at just the right time. Just one olive, though. So let me say it again: You are WITTY. Now kiss me!
I felt my soul deflate. Amy was using the treasure hunt to steer us back to each other. And it was too late. While she had been writing these clues, she’d had no idea of my state of mind. Why, Amy, couldn’t you have done this sooner?
Our timing had never been good.
I opened the next clue, read it, tucked it in my pocket, then headed back home. I knew where to go, but I wasn’t ready yet. I couldn’t handle another compliment, another kind word from my wife, another olive branch. My feelings for her were veering too quickly from bitter to sweet.
I went back to Go’s, spent a few hours alone, drinking coffee and flipping around the TV, anxious and pissy, killing time till my eleven P.M. carpool to the mall.
My twin got home just after seven, looking wilted from her solo bar shift. Her glance at the TV told me I should turn it off.
“What’d you do today?” she asked, lighting a cigarette and flopping down at our mother’s old card table.
“Manned the volunteer center … then we go search the mall at eleven,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her about Amy’s clue. I felt guilty enough.
Go doled out some solitaire cards, the steady slap of them on the table a rebuke. I began pacing. She ignored me.
“I was just watching TV to distract myself.”
“I know, I do.”
She flipped over a Jack.
“There’s got to be something I can do,” I said, stalking around her living room.
“Well, you’re searching the mall in a few hours,” Go said, and gave no more encouragement. She flipped over three cards.
“You sound like you think it’s a waste of time.”
“Oh. No. Hey, everything is worth checking out. They got Son of Sam on a parking ticket, right?”
Go was the third person who’d mentioned this to me; it must be the mantra for cases going cold. I sat down across from her.
“I haven’t been upset enough about Amy,” I said. “I know that.”
“Maybe not.” She finally looked up at me. “You’re being weird.”
“I think that instead of panicking, I’ve just focused on being pissed at her. Because we were in such a bad place lately. It’s like it feels wrong for me to worry too much because I don’t have the right. I guess.”
“You’ve been weird, I can’t lie,” Go said. “But it’s a weird situation.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “I don’t care how you are with me. Just be careful with everyone else, okay? People judge. Fast.”
She went back to her solitaire, but I wanted her attention. I kept talking.
“I should probably check in on Dad at some point,” I said. “I don’t know if I’ll tell him about Amy.”
“No,” she said. “Don’t. He was even weirder about Amy than you are.”
“I always felt like she must remind him of an old girlfriend or something—the one who got away. After he—” I made the downward swoop of a hand that signified his Alzheimer’s—“he was kind of rude and awful, but …”
“Yeah, but he kind of wanted to impress her at the same time,” she said. “Your basic jerky twelve-year-old boy trapped in a sixty-eight-year-old asshole’s body.”
“Don’t women think that all men are jerky twelve-year-olds at heart?”
“Hey, if the heart fits.”
Eleven-oh-eight P.M., Rand was waiting for us just inside the automatic sliding doors to the hotel, his face squinting into the dark to make us out. The Hillsams were driving their pick-up; Stucks and I both rode in the bed. Rand came trotting up to us in khaki golf shorts and a crisp Middlebury T-shirt. He hopped in the back, planted himself on the wheel cover with surprising ease, and handled the introductions like he was the host of his own mobile talk show.