Page 46 of The Night We Lost Him

“Definitely,” she says. “But, putting that aside, I wouldn’t get this anymore. All the good.”

“What’s the good?”

“You.”

She looked at him with such love. Such understanding. That for a brief, shining moment, he believed her.

What did Cory like to say? Fidelity is who you tell your stories to. If he never stopped listening to hers, would she eventually trust that being here (with her) was the only thing he truly wanted? That it would never make him feel trapped. That it was, in fact, the thing that made him feel free.

“What if I told you I have a ring?”

“You have a ring?”

He nodded. He had it in his pocket. He often had it in his pocket. A simple band. Nothing to gawk at, but what he had to offer. His proof that he would know how to sustain it. To do his part to sustain them.

“I would tell you I don’t need a ring. And, if you pushed me, I’d remind you that you’d be terrible to be married to.”

“Thank you for that.”

“You’re welcome.”

He kissed her neck, his hand cupping her head. “So… you’ll think about it?”

She started to laugh, her cheek pressing into his face. “Ask me again when the right answer is yes.”

“What if I don’t want to wait that long?”

“Then you can go ahead and throw that ring of yours away.”

Eleventh Avenue Freak-Out

On the way to the taxi line at JFK, my phone buzzes with an incoming call.

A blocked number shows up on the screen. And I pick up to a voice I don’t recognize.

“Nora? It’s Meredith Cooper.”

Meredith Cooper, who found my father on the beach. The EMT. The wife. I look up at Sam and put the phone on speaker, between us, so he can hear too.

“Meredith, I really appreciate the call back—”

“Sure, happy to help. But I should warn you. We are in Tuscany with very poor cell service so I may lose you.”

Her voice is coming in crackly—and I’m missing every few words. I start to say thank you for trying to help our father, for being there even when no one could. But either she doesn’t hear me through the poor connection, or she doesn’t have time for that. Because she starts talking over me.

“I went over it with my husband,” she says. “Both of us tried to recall anything specific about the jogger. We were focused on your father, to be honest. But we both remember that he was tall and Caucasian. He was wearing like these green cargo pants and a sweatshirt. Something like that.”

Sam mouths, “For jogging?” Just as I have the same thought.

“And you had never seen him before?” I ask.

“No. Never. We were only there for a couple of months, but it’s a small community…”

“You usually see the same people?”

“Well, we walked our dog pretty much the same time every night. People have their habits.”

I lock eyes with Sam, who is staring back at me, like this proves something. At the very least, it proves that this man—who Detective O’Brien and the police haven’t managed to track down—wasn’t usually there at eight thirty at night.

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