Stay Close
Without warning, Ray broke into a sprint. She did the same as though suddenly released from some unseen gate. They ran into each other hard, the impact sending them reeling. They held on tight, neither speaking, her cheek against his chest. She could feel the muscles under his shirt. Supposedly, once a moment passes, it is gone forever, but the truth was, it startled her how fast the years could fall away, how quickly we can go back and find the old us, the true us, the us that never really leaves.
A friend once told Megan that we are always seventeen years old, waiting for our lives to begin. More than ever, clutching to this man, Megan understood that.
They didn’t let go. For nearly a minute they just stayed there, holding each other under Lucy’s watchful eye. Finally Ray said, “I have so much I want to ask you.”
“I know.”
“Where have you been all these years?”
“Does it matter?” she said.
“I guess not.”
The grip loosened a bit. She pulled back and looked up into the face. He had two, maybe three days of stubble. His hair was still tousled albeit with a bit of gray now at the temples. When she looked into those dark blue eyes of his, the jolt sent her into a free fall. She felt her knees buckle.
“I don’t understand,” Ray said. “Why are you back?”
She cleared her throat. “Another man is missing.”
She wanted to gauge his reaction, but all she saw was pain and confusion.
“It happened on February eighteenth,” she said. “The same day as Stewart Green disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” he repeated.
“Yes.”
Ray opened his mouth, closed it again. Behind him Ventura’s Greenhouse, a popular restaurant and what they called “beer garden,” was in full swing. People were watching them. Megan took his hand and walked to the far side of Lucy, near the old gift shop, where they’d be out of sight.
“So,” Ray said, something odd in his voice, “after seventeen years, you come back and now another man is, I don’t know, gone.”
Megan turned to him. “No, I came down after.”
“Why?”
“To help.”
“Help with what?”
“To help figure out what happened. I tried to run away from it, but now he’s back.”
Ray shook his head, looking even more confused. “Who’s back?”
“Stewart Green.”
His voice had a snap in it now. “How can you say that?”
“Someone saw him.”
“Who?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Ray looked dazed. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“Yes, Ray, you do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw the photograph you sent the cops.”
Again he opened his mouth. Again nothing came out. Megan turned toward the fence that surrounded Lucy. She put one foot on the wall of the gift shop and hoisted herself up and over it. She took out the old key and showed it to him. “Come on.”
“You think that still works?”
“Doubt it.”
Ray didn’t hesitate. He hopped the fence too. They moved under Lucy’s belly, the one that housed the structure’s largest room, toward her rear leg. As she put the key in the lock, Ray came up close to her. She could feel the heat from him.
He tried to keep the pain from his voice, but he couldn’t do it. “Why did you run away that night?”
“You know why, Ray.”
“Did you kill him?”
That made her stop. “What?”
“Did you kill Stewart Green?”
“No,” she said. She moved closer to him, looked into his eyes again. “I never told you how abusive he was. How he hurt me.”
He frowned. “You think I didn’t know?”
“I guess you did.”
The key didn’t work.
“Just tell me why you ran,” Ray said. “Tell me what happened that night.”
“I took that path up to the ruins. I heard a noise and ran over to that big rock on the right. You know the one.”
He didn’t need to nod.
“I saw Stewart lying there in a pool of blood.” She stopped.
“So you ran?”
“Yes.”
“Because you thought the police would blame you?”
A tear ran down her cheek. “In part.”
Megan waited, hoping that she wouldn’t have to say the other part, that he would see it. It took a second or two, but his eyes began to widen.
“Oh my God,” Ray said. “You thought it was me.”
She said nothing.
“You ran,” he said slowly, “because you thought I killed Stewart Green.”
“Yes.”
“Were you scared of me? Or were you trying to protect me?”
She thought about it. “I could never be afraid of you, Ray. You always made me feel safe.”
Ray shook his head. “It explains so much. Why you never came back. Why you never reached out.”
“They’d either think I did it. Or you. There was no other way.”
Ray took the key from her hand and tried the lock again. It didn’t open. He looked lost, devastated.
“I must have arrived right after you ran,” he said.
“Was Stewart still lying there?”
Ray nodded. “He was bleeding. I figured that he was dead.” He closed his eyes and turned away. “I ran down the hill. I went to your place, afraid, I don’t know. I just didn’t know. But you were gone. I came here, to Lucy. I thought maybe you’d be hiding inside or something. I waited. But you never showed, of course. I searched for you. For years. I didn’t know if you were dead or alive. I saw your face on every street, in every bar.” He stopped then, blinked it away, found her eyes again. “Eventually I moved across the country. To Los Angeles, as far away from this place as I could get.”
“But you returned.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Ray shrugged. “You know I hate all that mystical crap, right?”
Megan nodded.
“But something drew me back here. I don’t know what. I couldn’t help it.”
She swallowed. The realization was reaching her, sinking in even as she spoke. “And when you returned to Atlantic City, you went back to that spot in the park.”
He nodded. “Every February eighteenth.”
“You took pictures,” she went on. “Because that’s what you do, Ray. You see the world through that lens. You process things that way. And you took that picture—the one of Carlton Flynn the night he vanished.”