“Oh, awesome, another lie,” Go said. “I didn’t realize you were such a … What you’re saying, Nick, it makes no sense. I was there, at the dinner to celebrate The Bar, and Mom misunderstood, she thought you guys were announcing that you were pregnant, and it made Amy cry.”
“Well, I can’t explain everything Amy ever did, Go. I don’t know why, a fucking year ago, she cried like that. Okay?”
Go sat quietly, the orange of the streetlight creating a rock-star halo around her profile. “This is going to be a real test for you, Nick,” she murmured, not looking at me. “You’ve always had trouble with the truth—you always do the little fib if you think it will avoid a real argument. You’ve always gone the easy way. Tell Mom you went to baseball practice when you really quit the team; tell Mom you went to church when you were at a movie. It’s some weird compulsion.”
“This is very different from baseball, Go.”
“It’s a lot different. But you’re still fibbing like a little boy. You’re still desperate to have everyone think you’re perfect. You never want to be the bad guy. So you tell Amy’s parents she didn’t want kids. You don’t tell me you’re cheating on your wife. You swear the credit cards in your name aren’t yours, you swear you were hanging out at a beach when you hate the beach, you swear your marriage was happy. I just don’t know what to believe right now.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Since Amy has disappeared, all you’ve done is lie. It makes me worry. About what’s going on.”
Complete silence for a moment.
“Go, are you saying what I think you’re saying? Because if you are, something has fucking died between us.”
“Remember that game you always played with Mom when we were little: Would you still love me if? Would you still love me if I smacked Go? Would you still love me if I robbed a bank? Would you still love me if I killed someone?”
I said nothing. My breath was coming too fast.
“I would still love you,” Go said.
“Go, do you really need me to say it?”
She stayed silent.
“I did not kill Amy.”
She stayed silent.
“Do you believe me?” I asked.
“I love you.”
She put her hand on my shoulder and went to her bedroom, shut the door. I waited to see the light go on in the room, but it stayed dark.
Two seconds later, my cell phone rang. This time, it was the disposable cell that I needed to get rid of and couldn’t because I always, always, always had to pick up for Andie. Once a day, Nick. We need to talk once a day.
I realized I was grinding my teeth.
I took a breath.
Far out on the edge of town were the remains of an Old West fort that was now yet another park that no one ever went to. All that was left was the two-story wooden watchtower, surrounded by rusted swing sets and teeter-totters. Andie and I had met there once, groping each other inside the shade of the watchtower.
I did three long loops around town in my mom’s old car to be sure I was not tracked. It was madness to go—it wasn’t yet ten o’clock—but I had no say in our rendezvous anymore. I need to see you, Nick, tonight, right now, or I swear to you, I will lose it. As I pulled up to the fort, I was hit by the remoteness of it and what it meant: Andie was still willing to meet me in a lonely, unlit place, me the pregnant-wife killer. As I walked toward the tower through the thick, scratchy grass, I could just see her outline in the tiny window of the wooden watchtower.
She is going to undo you, Nick. I quick-stepped the rest of the way.
An hour later I was huddled in my paparazzi-infested house, waiting. Rand said they’d know before midnight whether my wife was pregnant. When the phone rang, I grabbed it immediately only to find it was goddamn Comfort Hill. My father was gone again. The cops had been notified. As always, they made it sound as if I were the jackass. If this happens again, we are going to have to terminate your father’s stay with us. I had a sickening chill: My dad moving in with me—two pathetic, angry bastards—it would surely make for the worst buddy comedy in the world. The ending would be a murder-suicide. Ba-dum-dum! Cue the laff track.
I was getting off the phone, peering out the back window at the river—stay calm, Nick—when I saw a huddled figure down by the boathouse. I thought it must be a stray reporter, but then I recognized something in those balled fists and tight shoulders. Comfort Hill was about a thirty-minute walk straight down River Road. He somehow remembered our house when he couldn’t remember me.
I went outside into the darkness to see him dangling a foot over the bank, staring into the river. Less bedraggled than before, although he smelled tangy with sweat.