Page 40 of Nothing Ever Happens Here

“Sure, we used to go over to Lady Luck after he got off shift most nights.”

“What the hell is Lady Luck?”

“The…casino? Down the road.” And some of it starts to make sense. Not the “him working here” part, but secretly gambling outside of town? That tracks.

“You were…friends with him?” I ask, only able to speak in short, stunned sentences, apparently.

“Well, I mean we played blackjack and drank Summit together. Not exactly close.” I can see the glossy yellowing in this man’s eyes that tells me he’s had a long relationship with alcohol, and rough skin that’s seen its share of cold and wind.No wedding ring, a pile of ones on the bar for more cheap beer to keep-a-coming. So, does he live in an RV behind the truck stop because he gambles? Or does he gamble out of boredom because he lives alone in an RV behind the truck stop? A question that is none of my business, but I see a life that easily could have been Leo’s reflected in this man’s eyes, and it makes me very curious how he got here.

“Name’s Ron,” he says, holding his hand out to shake.

“Mack,” I say, taking his outstretched hand in mine and shaking it once.

“Buy you a beer?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say without thinking, then figure I might be glad I had one before I open that locker. He pushes a few bucks across the bar and Tawny pours a foamy Summit from the tap and places it on a cardboard St. Pauli Girl coaster in front of me.

“Sorry, uh… Ron, did Leo, by any chance, tell you why he was working here? Did you know he has a family in Rivers Crossing—he ever mention that?” I ask as the thought starts to press down on my chest—one I have suppressed before—that maybe he has an actual second family somewhere. Like in that Lifetime movie where the stepfather murders his whole family, shaves his beard, changes his clothes, and drives to his other wife and kids like nothing ever happened. I mean, how can Inotthink that? It’s all so bizarre.

“Sure,” he says, and I feel my heart flutter, speed up.

“Oh,” I reply. That’s not what I’d expected to hear.

“Yeah, I mean. He talked about you and Rowan,” he says, and I feel something rise up in my stomach. Why does this man, with trembling hands and slurry speech at Pop’s Grill in the middle of nowhere, have my daughter’s name on his lips?

“I’m sorry. What exactly did he tell you?” I ask, sipping the foam off the top of my beer, trying to remain calm and conversational.

“Well, just that he loved his family and really screwed up, but he was determined to get it all back—I don’t know,get his shit together,” he says. I swallow back the teary lump climbing up my throat. He was actually trying to make it right? I want that to be true. I can see a scenario where he just got so deep into debt he felt forced to lie to me as he scrambled behind my back to fix his financial mistakes, and it just kept spiraling down. But I can also see the scenario everyone else sees—that he’s a maniac that got so greedy he screwed everyone in his life over and was just a thief and liar, and probably ran away with some college girl to a beach with my life savings. This is new information, though, and why would this guy lie to me?

“I don’t want to betray the guy,” he continues. “You should ask him yourself. You seemed surprised to know he hung around here, so maybe talk to him about it.”

“He’s missing. He’s been missing for over a year,” I say as calmly as I’m able.

“No shit? I wasn’t sure what happened. I figured he got his shit together like he said—decided to stay away from the casino or somethin’.”

“No, it appears he did not get his shit together, so if there is anything that you can tell me it might help find him. Please? Anything he might have said at all.”

Ron scratches at his chin, looking thoughtful. “Well, we chitchatted all the time. I don’t remember everything the man said. Alls I know is that he liked Lady Luck, you know? His whole thing was he said he had a master plan. He told me he usually drove out here to the casino in the middle of the night after you were asleep, and then he lost a bunch more money over time. He took a job here for cash that he kept using at the casino to make back his money—but I guess he never did.”

“He told you that he snuck to the casino in the middle of the night? Jesus,” I say, absolutely baffled at how I didn’t know this. He would get up and say he was going down to the den to watch TV ’cause he couldn’t sleep,and I would find him in the recliner in the morning. I never thought twice.

“Well, yeah, for a while. But then he said he told his wife—well, you—that he started a new investment opportunity, didn’t say what—and then he could leave most afternoons and come here and work for cash, gamble for a little bit, and be back home by dinner,” Ron says, taking a careful sip of beer from the glass in his shaking hand.

How did it come to this? He was so desperate to make some money back that he worked for measly cash at an hourly job to just suck that little more out of a slot machine and keep losing and keep trying. For the first time I feel a pang of empathy for what he must have felt—must have been going through alone.

“God, missing. I’m so sorry,” he adds.

“Was he…do you know if he mentioned owing anyone money? Like I mean of course he owed money, but like, a loan shark? Or did he get caught up in anything like that—drug running, I don’t know. A reason that would explain where he went, or if someone…had a reason to want him dead,” I ask, pushing my drink away from me and feeling a confusing blend of emotions.

“No, he never said nothin’ like that to me, sorry. I wish I could think of anything else that might help. God. Missing, huh? Wow.” He repeats.

“Thanks, Ron,” I say quietly, feeling a bit defeated and more perplexed than ever. I push my stool away from the bar and walk over to where the lockers stand outside a shower room. A hairy trucker walks past me in a towel, holding a Big Gulp and giving me a nod hello as he passes. I stare down the short hallway at the stack of old gym lockers and say a silent prayer that something in here gives me an answer. I walk over to them and find number 23.

I swallow hard, holding my breath as I click open the lock, and what I see doesn’t really surprise me. His missing workbag. The bag I have been wondering about all of this time is crammed sideways into the narrow opening, and I pull it out and hold it to my chest for a moment before hoisting it over my shoulder and walking quickly out to my car before anyone decides to stop me. It’s irrational, since I was given the key and permission, but everything is irrational lately. I just don’t want anyone to question what I’m doing or why I have it, and I find myself sprinting to my car and driving away as fast as I can.

A few blocks down, I pull into the parking lot of a Take ’N’ Bake Pizza and park. I grab the bag from the passenger’s seat and unzip the top, peering in at folders stuffed full of papers. I dig around them to see if there is another phone maybe, money, drugs; I don’t know what the hell I’m looking for, but there isn’t anything else. I pull out the three file folders and begin to riffle through them.

At first, I’m confused by what I’m looking at, and then it hits me. They’re printouts of “paperless” communication forms from our mortgage company, and I quickly realize Leo changed the statements so only he would get them electronically and hide them from me. I don’t understand why though—the house was paid off years ago. I realize what he’s done before I even find the document confirming it. There is a second mortgage he took out and defaulted on, and it’s been delinquent all these months. All of the notices only in his name, going only to his email address. I look deeper and see unpaid taxes too. My God. I gasp when I finally see the words “foreclosure.” I’m losing the house.

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