You Only Get So Much (15 page)

Chapter 31

I pull on a pair of
jeans, splash some cold water on my face and drive to a diner downtown. The
whole way there I keep asking myself what in the hell I am doing. Why does the
mention of my late wife—by a stranger, no less—make me bolt to a
meeting with this caller? I guess that's the draw. An unknown. Something he
wouldn't say over the phone. I didn't even ask his name. He said he'd know me
when I got there. Why would that be? It doesn't make sense. But I have to go.
Regardless of why. You can't ignore or even forget calls like that.

I park in the lot at
Molly's Diner on Second Avenue. The restaurant is old and has a weird cat, dog
or skunk on its marquee out front. I've been here before and the food is
fantastic, which is not what you'd expect considering the skunk on the sign.
When I walk inside I see the familiar booths lined up around the place past a
counter with stools. I scan the counter—looking for who, I don't know.
Then a man stands up in a corner booth and looks me dead on. It's the same man
in the plaid shirt who stood at the back of my father's funeral. The guy I
thought I recognized, but didn't know why.

He nods and I start
walking toward him. If there is another person in that entire restaurant, I
don't see them. I am focused so intently on him that everything else is blocked
out. The clattering of plates. The cracking of eggs on the cook top. I hear
nothing. See nothing.

I slide into the booth
across from the man. He has weathered, cracked hands that have obviously seen a
lifetime worth of work. His face is round, which fits his stocky build. I'd
guess his age to be 40 or so. His receding hairline is speckled with gray,
which matches the goatee that surrounds his mouth. He's lost the plaid shirt
for a red cotton Henley with all three buttons closed to the top. He is not fit
by any means, but not quite rotund either.

"Coffee?" he
asks.

"Um, yes," I
say, forgetting that we're someplace that might just serve such things.

He waves over a waitress
who dumps the brew into a cup on the table. I decline ordering any food. I also
don't drink the coffee, which is fortunate, because I don't need caffeine to
rattle me even more. I wrap my hands around the sides of the mug and let the
burn of the cup distract me.

"Why did you call
me?" I ask. "What do you want to know about Jane? Who are you?"

"Hold on there a
minute," he says. "I've got some ground rules and if you don't like
them, fine, but I can walk anytime I want. And I think you've got it wrong. I
don't want to know anything about her. It's you who's in the dark."

"I don't
follow," I say.

"Ground rules
first," he says. "Today will be the last time you see me. I don't
want to be here and I won't leave you my contact info to find me. And don't
come looking. Got it? I'm finishing this and then I'm done."

"Why would I agree
to that?" I say, already annoyed. "You haven't told me why I'm
here."

"Trust me, you're
going to want to hear this," he says, looking a little more smug than I'm
comfortable with. "Do you agree to my terms?"

"Sure. Yes.
Whatever."

"OK, then. Call me
Frank."

"Is that your name?"
I ask.

"Yeah," he
says, with a half smile.

"Fantastic."

He places a blurry 3x5
photograph on the booth table and spins it around so I can see it. It's an
image of two people leaning out the driver's side of a semi-truck cab. It's
Frank, but in the picture he has on a hat and no goatee.

Frank's arm is around a
woman with light blonde hair, which falls just below her ears. It doesn't
matter how blurry the photo is or that the hair color is different, I'd
recognize Jane anywhere.

"When was this
taken?" I ask.

"Three years
ago."

"Fuck off," I
say.

"Hey, I get it.
This is a lot to process."

"Fuck off. What do
you want?" I demand.

I grip the cup of coffee
in my hand, imagining how much it might hurt Frank for me to hurl it at his fat
face at this very instant. My heart pounds like I've just run around the block.
Almost instantly a sheen of cold sweat covers my forehead.

"I'm not here
because I want something," he says. "I'm here to fulfill a promise
that I made to someone."

"Who?" I ask.

"Her name was Lisa.
You knew her as Jane."

*
* *

I can feel the eyes of
the diner patrons on us but I don't care.

"Fuck off," I
tell him.

"You need to stop
saying that," he says. "It's not polite and I could walk out of this
place right now and you'll never know why I was here."

"You're a
liar."

"I couldn't give a
crap if you believe me. I'm only doing what I promised to do. Hear me
out."

I say nothing, but given
that I don't stand up or toss a cup of scalding hot coffee in his face, he
continues.

"I'm a long-haul
truck driver stationed out of Port Orchard. You know where that is?

"The other side of
the state near the Puget Sound."

"Right. I haul
loads from Seattle to just about anywhere in the country. Get to see the U
S
 
of A that way. Meet a lot of
people—like this woman named Lisa. Sweetest thing you'll ever meet. But
you know that."

"Watch it, jackass.
I don't believe you anyway," I say, trying to believe my own words.

"OK, I get it.
Anyway, I meet this girl who sort of appeared out of nowhere. Nobody really
knows her. She's working at this bar. One thing led to another and we start
dating. She tells me that she's from back east and came out west to get away
from her troubles."
 

"She was
alone?" I ask, thinking of Aspen.

"No."

"Fuck off."

"Stop saying that."

"My Aspen?" I
ask.

He nods. And that's when
it all changed.

*
* *

Maybe it's a sixth sense
or just plain old gut instinct, but I can read people pretty well. He's not
lying. Damn it. He's not lying.

"Aspen's in trouble
Billy. That's why I'm here."

"She's . . . she's
alive?" I stutter out.

"Yes, but she needs
her dad. I can't help her anymore."

"Is she here? Where
is she? I want to see her immediately. Take me to her now!"

"You can't see her
right now. She's in Seattle," he says.

"Why?"

"That's where they
are keeping her."

"Who?"

"The court. She
broke into a house and got arrested."

My head is spinning.
Jane and Aspen are alive? Aspen's a criminal in jail? This can't be real. I
stare at the photograph. Looking at my wife's face, searching for an answer
that isn't going to come.

"Do you have a
picture of Aspen too?"

"No, I'm sorry. I
didn't bring one," he says, sheepishly.

"Where's
Jane?"

"You've got to
promise me you're not going to lose it," he says, but doesn't wait for me
to promise anything. "This is what I've been worried about telling you.
Lisa—sorry, your Jane is . . . well, she passed a little over a year ago.
She drowned. She's gone."

"That's got to be a
lie. Why would you come here, show me that picture and tell me she's been alive
all this time and now she's dead again. Screw you pal. What proof do you have?
I don't even know why I'm entertaining this conversation."

I'm fighting two sides
of my brain. This is a lie and chubby Frank here is a con man. Or this is true
and the worst thing that could possibly happen—except Aspen. Alive? So
maybe the best thing? I don't know.

"You're listening
to me because you know I'm telling you the truth, Billy," he says.
"Do you really want to go there? For me to prove it? Because I can prove
it to you and it's not going to be comfortable for either of us."

"Yes,
Frank—that's exactly what I want you to do. You're a fucking liar."

"Jane had a scar on
her lower abdomen from when her appendix burst when she was a kid. She had a
yin-yang tattoo on her right ankle. She liked her grilled cheese sandwiches
burnt to a crisp. She would always read the last chapter of a book first to see
if she should read it. She would become quiet and distant for long
periods-"

"Enough. Just
stop," I say.

That's my Jane. No
doubt. My head is spinning and it seems like the diner walls are closing in on
me.

"I want you to know
that I can't answer the one question you haven't asked me yet," he says.

"And that question
is what exactly?" I ask.

"If there was one
thing you could ask me right now, what would it be?"

This is not obvious. I
have so many questions racing through my mind that I'm not sure where to even
start.

I want to ask if this is
real. Why did she fake her death? Is that really what she did? Why did this happen?
What happened to my daughter? Is she OK? Who the hell are you really, Frank?
One question? Yeah, right.

"Why did she
leave?" I ask.

I guess that's the one
that would help me understand everything.

"That's the
question," he says. "I don't know. She never told me. We'd been
together awhile. She told me one night. She was pretty wasted at that point. It
was a long night out. Sorry, man. She said that if anything happened to her
that I needed to take care of someone named Aspen. I asked who that was and she
said it was her daughter's real name. The girl living with us went by the name
of Libby, not Aspen. I didn't know anything about that and she never mentioned
it again. She told me if Aspen ever needed something and she couldn't do it, to
find a guy named Billy Redmond. She made me promise to find you. That's why I'm
here. I didn't think much of it at the time because everything was going fine
with us. She was drunk and I thought she might have been messing with me. I
thought that maybe it was just something that she made up. Then after she died,
it came back to me. I tried to find you—honestly, but until I saw your
name on your father's obituary in the paper, I didn't know where you
were."

"When did she tell
you her real name was Jane?"

"She never did,"
he says. "I found you and did some digging. I just Googled it. Saw that
you had a wife and a daughter who died in a fire. I did the math on the years
and it all lined up. I couldn't believe it. She was living some other life. I
searched Facebook and found an old scanned picture of you and her at a holiday
party on some lady's page. I figured you guys were friends from before. You
weren't tagged in the photo, but seeing you today, I know it was you."

"I'm not on
Facebook."

"Good for
you," he says.

"And you came to my
father's funeral?"

"I needed to know
that the Billy Redmond I was looking for was the kind of man who could actually
help Libby, well, Aspen. She's not on the right path, Billy. She needs her
father back."

Chapter 32

I waited the rest of the
afternoon for Michelle to get off work. I couldn't go home, so I sat on her
couch and waited alone. No phone. No web searches. I needed to talk this out
before I did anything. I was frozen, unsure of what to do next. I knew I didn't
want to share this news with my mother, not before I had anything concrete to
tell her.

I texted Michelle that I
needed her the second she could leave school. I'd been holding it together as
best I could for a few hours now, but the moment she walked into the house, I
lost it. I couldn't talk. My sobs were deep and uncontrollable. Both terrified
and excited—a battle raging in my head.
 

"What is it?"
She asks, sitting beside me. "What's wrong?

After I long while, I
finally answer.

"This is going to
sound like the craziest thing anyone has ever told you," I say.

And I begin telling her
everything. I tell her about Frank and every word he said about Aspen and Jane.
I tell her about the photo he showed me. And I curse myself for not taking it
with me. Retelling the story makes it feel real, like it actually happened.

"So where is Aspen
now?" she asks.

"In a jail in
Seattle, King County."

"That's only 5
hours from here. Let's go. Now."

"So you believe
him?" I ask.

"I believe you. I
don't think that you'd just buy any story. You have doubts?"

"Yes. I have to
have doubts. Until a few hours ago my daughter was dead. Now she's alive?"
I say.

"You're not going
to get answers to any of this if you don't start looking," she says.

I don't want to tell her
that I'm terrified. I'm scared like a little baby afraid of the dark. If this
is real, I can figure it out. But what if it's a game? Some sick joke? I don't
think I could handle it. I want this to be real and a lie at the same time.

"I can't imagine
what you're going through," she says. "I know you buried this a long
time ago. You said before that you hid from the reality of it all. And now to
have it come back like this . . . I understand you're going to be put through
the wringer. But this is your daughter we're talking about. And she needs
you."

"I know, but how is
this supposed to play out? Let's assume that it's real. Jane hid Aspen from me
for years. Started a new life. Who am I to her now?"

"I didn't think
about that," she says. "But you're her father. That's who you
are."

"Is she even going
to recognize me? Jesus. What did Jane tell her about me?"

"How old was she
when you lost her?"

"She'd just turned
6. Just a little older than Gracie. She would have had a birthday in November,
so she's 19 now."

"Older than
Kendall."

"Yeah. They're just
over a year apart. I can't believe it. They used to play together."

"She'll recognize
you no matter what," she says. "No question. That's not very long if
you think about it. It doesn't matter anyway. We're going over there. You can't
sit on this."

Michelle gets out her
laptop without a word and within five minutes finds a Libby Taylor arrested for
residential burglary and being held in the King County Jail.

"This could be
anybody," I say.

"And it could be
Aspen. Are you willing to give up this chance?"

"Of course
not."
 

"Then let's
go," she says.

"Thank you," I
say. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

"I know you don't.
Kinda scary, huh?" she says, smiling. "If we leave tonight we can be
there for visiting hours first thing in the morning. We've got 15 hours."

"What am I supposed
to say to her?" I ask. "Hi, remember me? Dad?"

"It'll come to
you."

"I hope so," I
say, stroking my beard. "I need to borrow a razor. If I want Aspen to
recognize me, this thing has got to go."

"Nice to see
something positive is already happening on this adventure," she says.
"No more whisker tickle."

"Very funny,"
I say.

"Are you going to
tell your mom?"

"About shaving my
beard?"

"Yeah, because
that's the big news of the day."

"Mom's been through
enough," I say. "I can't tell her about a
maybe
. I need to know for sure."

"That makes sense.
Now let's shave that thing off."