Page 39 of Nothing Ever Happens Here

“I found it down the side of Riley’s couch,” Herb says, and before he even explains what it is, I recognize the telltale pink daffodil case.

“It’s Shelby’s missing phone.”

15

MACK

When the girl said Leo worked there, I was stunned into silence, but then I stuttered out a response and asked if he was there now. She told me to hold on and I heard her ask someone. Her voice came back on the line and she said she guesses he’s not there now.

“I don’t ever see him, so call back on the day shift,” she said. I was ready to tell Billy to go on home—and that I would sit at Pop’s Grill all night and wait. From what the GPS read, the place was back toward Rivers Crossing anyway—just thirty minutes outside of town, and he could drop me there, but then the call from Clay came and we rushed to Shelby’s. Clay was asleep at her mother’s and not answering, so I had Billy drop me off at her house. After the police finally left her place it was close to midnight, but she insisted on sleeping at the hospital so we both went. I slept sitting up in a padded window seat with Shelby’s head in my lap,stroking her hair and thanking God, again, that she’s okay, and angry as hell that this could happen again.

Now I’m two nights sleep-deprived, and I can’t think clearly. I called my neighbor, Sandy, and asked if she could take Nugget and Linus last night. I’m home after leaving the Oleander’s, and more police questions, and Leo finally turning up, and the pups aren’t here, and it all feels so surreal. There are no clicking nails on the hardwood, no relentless barking, and the silence echoes. My heart aches. I turn on the TV to fill the void. Dr. Phil is telling some poor old man that he’s being catfished and has given his life savings to some scammer in Nigeria and I don’t have the energy to walk over and change it to the news, so I listen to the man denying it’s true. He promises Dr. Phil that Jenny Smith loves him and when she can access her million-dollar bank account, she’ll pay him back and they’ll finally be together, and it’s so brutally sad and also annoyingly exploitative, and then I think: that’s me. How am I any different? I’m a fool. Imagine what he’d be saying to me if I were sitting there on that stage—how did you not see the warning signs? There must have been something!

I start a pot of coffee and listen to the machine gurgle to life, sitting on the window seat in the kitchen nook as I wait for it to brew, and the tears begin to fall.

“Stop,” I say out loud to myself. No, I’m done doing this. It would be so easy to pick up the dogs next door, order a pho soup from The Wok, and curl up in front of the bedroom fireplace for the next forty-eight hours with a couple of bottles of wine and a marathon ofThe Great British Bake Off, but I can’t. That would signal the beginning of a downward spiral for me, and a depressive episode will not be helpful right now. So instead I take a scalding hot shower, dress, pour my coffee into a travel mug, and head to Pop’s Grill…where my once-millionaire entrepreneur husband apparently works flipping hamburgers next to a truck stop and a discount liquor depot.

When I pull up to Pop’s it’s afternoon, and the sky is low and overcast. It’s dark enough for the streetlamp to be illuminated in the snowy parking lot where there are only a few cars parked. The Pop’s sign blinks in red neon above the building and a Hamm’s Beer sign buzzes electric in the diner window. I sit in the car and look at it for a few minutes, trying to understand what double life he could have been living that would bring him here. How would he even find this place? What possible reason could there be for him working here? I mean, I would be certain it was all a mistake, but Leo Connolly isn’t the most common name, and this number is in his phone. What if he’s really in there?

Steeling myself, I open the car door. The blast of frigid wind forces me to pull my parka tighter around me and run across the lot to the front doors. Inside, I scan the room for Leo. It’s a big place—the sort of truck stop where truckers can shower and use pay-by-the-minute massage chairs tucked back in a nook where there is a TV mounted to the wall. On the other side is a convenience store with fountain sodas and Minnesota memorabilia; shot glasses with walleye pike on them, or Great Lakes ball caps. In the very back is a cafe. I walk through and see a handful of truckers sharing pitchers of beer at vinyl tables in the middle of the room, a few folks on bar stools at the counter eating plates of beige food. And then, I see a couple of slot machines on the wall. One guy is playing the Luck Of The Irish quarter slots, and it beeps and trills like an old ’80s video game.

I think about Leo’s gambling habit that I didn’t know about, and my stomach lurches. I walk up to the counter and ask a woman whose name tag reads “Tawny” if she knows if Leo Connolly is working. She curls her lip in confusion.

“Uh… Hey, Chad, is some guy named Leo working?” she calls to the back,and a young man with a pimply face and a Pop’s apron appears in the doorway to the kitchen.

“Leo? Old guy?” he asks, but my attention has flipped, and I strain to see what I think I just fucking saw when Chad opened the kitchen door. I walk to the side of the counter with wide eyes and my mouth hanging open as I push the kitchen door open and see it.

“Him,” I say, pointing to his photo on the wall alongside a half dozen others that say “Employee of the Month” above them.

“Oh, Connolly! He hasn’t worked here in forever,” Chad says.

“I called and asked for him yesterday and the woman on night shift said he worked here.”

“I mean, hedid. Maybe she assumed he still does ’cause the employee photos are there forever. We stopped doing employee of the month, but Randy hasn’t bothered to take those down yet.”

I feel again like I’ve been punched in the side of the head. Another dead end. Another trick.

“How long did he…work here for?” the words are hard to even say, but I quickly jump into getting as much info as I can out of this kid instead of starting to throw the blueberry waffles on the counter at everyone’s face and pulling my goddamn hair out, which was my first thought.

“Uhhh, a few months, but that was over a year ago. Hey, if you know him, can you tell him to pick up his stuff? He left his bag in one of the lockers. I would have tossed it, but it’s not bothering anyone, and he’s a nice dude, so I just left it there. He never returned my messages to come get it.”

“He has a bag here?” My heart skips a beat.

“Yeah, he just sort of stopped showing up one day,” he says.

“Last October,” I ask, and the kid nods. “I can take the bag. I’m his wife,” I say, and both Chad and Tawny give me a sideways glance. What kind of wife doesn’t know their husband makes Pop’s bacon burgers behind her back?

Chad finally shrugs. “Sure. There’s lockers between the shower rooms. It’s number 23.” He hands me a small key attached to a rubber spiral keychain, and tells me to just leave it in the lock when I’m done. He disappears into the kitchen again, where I get one last brief glimpse of Leo’s face on the wall. Leo, wearing a name tag and a Pop’s apron, and the whole world feels a little less real…hazy around the edges.

I sit heavily on the bar stool behind me and stare at the key for a long moment before looking around the room. I feel like I might be ill.

“Good guy, that Leo. You’re the wife, huh?” I snap my head to the right and see a man in a purple Vikings cap and matching parka. He’s holding a mug of draft beer and dabbing his mustache with a napkin.

“Sorry?” I say.

“I’ve been comin’ here every day for years. I live in the RV park back behind the place there. Not a lot of dining options,” he laughs. “The chicken fried steak’s not bad. I’ve had better, though.”

“You know him?”

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