Six Years

“Uh, excuse me,” he said.

I moved to the side to let him pass. My eyes found the coffee bar. A woman with wildly curly hair wearing, yep, a purple tie-dyed shirt had her back to me. No doubt about it. It was Cookie. My heart picked up a step. She turned, saw me, and smiled. “Can I get you something?”

“Hi, Cookie.”

“Hey.”

Silence.

“Do you remember me?” I asked.

She was wiping frosting off her hands with a hand towel. “I’m bad with faces, but even worse with names. What can I get you?”

“I used to come in here,” I said. “Six years ago. My girlfriend’s name was Natalie Avery. We used to sit at the corner table.”

She nodded but not like she remembered. She nodded like she wanted to appease the lunatic. “Lots of customers in and out. Coffee? Doughnut?”

“Natalie loved your scones.”

“A scone it is. Blueberry?”

“I’m Jake Fisher. I was writing my dissertation on the rule of law. You used to ask me about it. Natalie was an artist from the retreat. She’d break out her sketchpad right in that corner.” I gestured toward it, as though that mattered. “Six years ago. Over the summer. Heck, you were the one to point her out to me.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, her fingers toying with her necklace as though they were prayer beads. “See, that’s the good part of being called Cookie. You don’t forget a name like Cookie. It sticks in the mind. But the bad part is, since everyone remembers your name, they think you should do the same. You know what I mean?”

“I do,” I said. Then: “You really don’t remember?”

She didn’t bother replying. I looked around the café. People at the tables were starting to stare. The guy with the maroon baseball cap was over by the magazines, pretending he wasn’t hearing a thing. I turned back to Cookie.

“Small coffee, please.”

“No scones?”

“No thanks.”

She grabbed a cup and started to fill it.

“Are you still with Denise?” I asked.

Her body stiffened.

“She used to work at the retreat up the hill too,” I said. “That’s how I knew her.”

I saw Cookie swallow. “We never worked at the retreat.”

“Sure you did. The Creative Recharge, right up the path. Denise would bring in the coffee and your scones.”

She finished pouring the coffee and put it on the counter in front of me. “Look, mister, I have work to do.”

I leaned closer to her. “Natalie loved your scones.”

“So you said.”

“You two used to talk about them all the time.”

“I talk to a lot of people about my scones, okay? I’m sorry I don’t remember you. I probably should have been polite and faked it and been all, ‘Oh sure, you and your scone-loving girlfriend, how you guys doing?’ But I didn’t. Here’s your coffee. Can I get you something else?”

I took out my card with all my phone numbers on it. “If you remember anything . . .”

“Can I get you something else?” she asked, more bite in her voice now.

“No.”

“Then that’s a buck fifty. Have a nice day.”

Chapter 9

I now understand when someone says they feel as though they’re being followed.

How did I know? Intuition maybe. My lizard brain could sense it. I could feel it in almost a physical way. That, plus the same car—a gray Chevy van with a Vermont license plate—had been behind me since I left the town of Kraftboro.

I couldn’t swear to it, but I thought that maybe the driver was wearing a maroon baseball cap.

I wasn’t sure what to do about this. I tried to make out the license plate number, but it was too dark now. If I slowed down, he’d slow down. If I picked up speed, well, you get the drift. An idea came to me. I pulled over at a rest stop to see what the tail would do. I saw the van slow and then drive on. From that point on, I didn’t see the van again.

So maybe he wasn’t following me.

I was about ten minutes away from Lanford when my cell phone rang. I had the phone set up to go through the car Bluetooth—something it took me much too long to figure out—so I could see on the radio screen that it was Shanta Newlin. She had promised to get back to me by the end of the day with Natalie’s address. I answered the call with a press of a button on the steering wheel.

“It’s Shanta,” she said.

“Yeah, I know. I got that caller ID thing up.”

“And I think my years at the FBI make me special,” she said. “Where are you?”

“I’m driving back to Lanford.”

“Back from where?”

“It’s a long story,” I said. “Did you find her address?”

“That’s why I called,” Shanta said. I could hear something in the background—a man’s voice maybe. “I don’t have it yet.”

“Oh?” I said, because what else was I going to say to that. “Is there a problem?”

“I need you to give me until the morning, okay?”

“Sure,” I said. Then I repeated: “Is there a problem?”

There was a pause that lasted a beat too long. “Just give me till morning.” She hung up.

What the hell?

I hadn’t liked the tone. I hadn’t liked the fact that a woman with enormous contacts in the FBI needed until morning to find the address of a random woman. My smartphone dinged, signaling that I was getting a new e-mail. I ignored it. I am not a goody-goody or any of that, but I never text or e-mail and drive. Two years ago, a student at Lanford had been seriously injured while texting and driving. The eighteen-year-old woman in the passenger seat, a freshman in my Rule of Law class, died in the crash. Even before that, even before the wealth of obvious information about the downright stupidity if not criminal negligence in texting while driving, I was not a fan. I like driving. I like the solitude and the music. In spite of my earlier misgivings about technological seclusion, we all need to disconnect more often. I realize that I sound like a grumpy old man, complaining that whenever I see a table of college “friends” sitting together they are inevitably texting with unseen others, searching, always searching, I guess, for something that might be better, a perpetual life hunt for digital greener grass, an attempt to smell roses that are elsewhere at the expense of the ones in front of you, but there are few times that I feel more at peace, more in tune, more Zen, if you will, than when I force myself to unplug.