Somebody I Used to Know (11 page)

“Oh, God,” I said.

“Do you need anything, Nick? Help? Advice? A lawyer?”

“I have one of those already.” And then I told her everything was fine, that it was all a misunderstanding and soon enough the police would be clearing me of everything. I tried to sound as confident as Detective Reece when I said, “It’s just election-year politicking.”

“You’re probably right,” Olivia said. “But since your job requires you to interact with the public so much and go into their homes, maybe you need to take a day . . .”

I got the point.

She was giving me a day off, whether I wanted it or not.

Then Mick Brosius called. He sounded like a man who’d woken up with a migraine.

“Did you talk to Reece?” he asked.

“Yes.” I felt guilty, like I’d gone back on a solemn vow.

“What did I tell you about that?” His voice rose higher. “Let me handle Reece. You stay out of it.”

“What am I supposed to do about what they’re saying on the news?” I asked.

“Ignore it,” Brosius said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

I wasn’t sure he sounded convinced.

“But everybody’s going to hear that stuff. My boss already did. And then there are my friends, my clients at the housing authority.”

“It was bound to be made public sooner or later,” he said. “Just ignore it. When this all blows over, if you want to pursue a civil case, we can look into it.”

“It’s not that,” I said, but he cut me off.

“Remember, not a word to the cops. Not without talking to me.”

He hung up.

*   *   *

I waited for Laurel to check in, but she didn’t. She had a job and a family. I couldn’t expect her to tend to my problems twenty-four hours a day. I worked from home a little, which always felt like playing hooky to me. I made plans with one of the guys from my basketball team to meet that evening and practice our shooting. When it was time to take Riley for an afternoon walk, I peeked through the closed blinds first. The coast looked clear, and indeed it was. No reporters ambushed me that time, so Riley could take a whiz in peace. On the way back, my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, so I decided to ignore it. Then the exchange registered in my brain. Someone from the Eastland campus was calling, so I answered.

“Is this Nick Hansen?” a man’s voice asked.

“It is.”

“I’m calling from the office of the registrar at Eastland concerning the information you requested,” he said.

“Information I requested? What information . . . ?” Then it dawned on me. “Oh, right. The information I requested.”

“Are you available to meet with me this afternoon?” he asked.

“Strangely, I am.”

“Do you know where Hammond Park is, just off campus?”

“Of course,” I said. “I know it well.”

“I’ll see you there at three,” he said. “I’m wearing a blue Eastland polo shirt.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

But he was already off the line.

*   *   *

Hammond Park occupied two blocks on the west edge of campus. It wasn’t much of a park. It was some green space with trampled grass and a few benches where students sometimes congregated to protest the government or big business by handing out flyers and chanting while the rest of the world went on with their lives. Most of the time the park sat empty. People passed through. Occasionally an old man stopped and fed birds or a mother with a stroller rested her feet.

I took Riley with me, and we arrived early. The day was warmer than expected, the high reaching the mid-fifties. Two students, a boy and a girl, sat on one side of the park, their thin legs in their tight jeans intertwined on a bench beneath a bare maple tree. The girl held a book of poetry by Pablo Neruda and appeared to be reading the boy passages and making overly dramatic gestures while she did so. The boy kept laughing. Then they’d stop and make out for a while, then go back to the book. Young love.

Marissa and I had spent a little time there. One semester we both had classes on that side of campus, and we’d meet in Hammond Park beforehand. We probably didn’t look much different from the kids in the park that day. We were young, thin, naive, and horny. We’d hold hands on a bench and tell each other what we’d been doing with our day, which was usually nothing important. Then we’d part, each going our own way, but not before kissing and kissing some more and then kissing good-bye as though we’d never see each other again. But I never really worried about that possibility back then. I figured we had forever, years and years stretching before us until infinity. Who didn’t think that at such a young age?

I looked down at Riley. His muzzle and feet were getting grayer by the day. He walked slower. He slept more. Time marched on.

The man with the Eastland polo shirt showed up five minutes after three. He looked younger than me, maybe thirty-five, and he walked with his hands in the pockets of his khaki pants in a way that made him seem not to have a care in the world. He noticed me and acted like he recognized me, nodding his head and walking over, still as nonchalant as anything. I had no idea who he was.

“How’re you doing, Mr. Hansen?” he asked.

“Good. How are you?”

He sat down next to me on the park bench. “Not bad.”

Our surreal conversation made me feel like we were in a spy movie, and I wanted to look around for enemy agents. But my new friend seemed unconcerned with such things. He bent down and scratched Riley’s ears. Then he straightened up and crossed his leg, left ankle on right knee.

“How do you know Gina?” I asked.

“She and I . . . well, we’re friends.”

There seemed to be more to it. “Friends? Did you meet through Eastland?”

“We’re good friends,” he said, almost mumbling the words.

Suddenly I saw the light. I’d had the feeling lately there was someone new in Gina’s life, someone besides her babysitters and her Zumba instructor. I studied the man in profile. His face was unlined, his hair full and neatly combed. I could imagine his blue eyes scanning the ocean waves while his yacht skimmed across the water.

He probably spent time with Andrew. More time than I did. I had no doubt he’d seen Andrew’s latest trick football play.

He held out his hand, and we shook. “Dale Somners.”

“Nick Hansen. But I guess you already knew that.”

“Gina told me you’re a good guy,” he said. “She wanted me to help you.”

“I’ll have to thank her,” I said. “It can be a tough trick to get your ex-wife to speak highly of you.”

“She told me you needed to know something, and she also assured me that you could be discreet. It’s not like these are the nuclear codes, but it wouldn’t look good to find out that just anyone could call and get access to our records.”

“Of course,” I said. “I don’t want to make trouble for you or put you in an awkward position.”

“Thanks. So what did you want to know?” Dale asked.

“I guess Gina told you the name of the student I was interested in,” I said.

Dale nodded.

“I just wanted to know if her records said anything about why she decided to leave school that year. 1993.”

“I checked for you,” Dale said. “The file mentioned financial difficulties at home. That’s what she told her advisor.”

“That’s what she told me back then,” I said, somewhat to myself.

“A friend of yours?” he asked.

“She was,” I said. “A very good friend.”

“It’s a shame,” he said.

I figured he meant the fire. “Thanks.”

He looked over at me, his face puzzled. “For what?”

“I’m sorry. What’s a shame?” I asked.

“That she dropped out,” he said. “Withdrew. She came from an Eastland family. That’s what they call them down in the admissions and development offices. Eastland families. Legacies. Your friend’s parents went to school at Eastland, and so did she.”

“I remember that,” I said. “If I recall correctly, her parents met here as well.”

“Exactly,” Dale said. “We push that tradition hard. Meet your mate here; send your kids here . . .”

“Kiss on the Kissing Bridge at midnight; spend the rest of your life together.”

“You remember,” he said.

“Sure,” I said. “I did it once.”

“With . . . Marissa?” Dale asked, treading lightly.

“Yeah.”

“I see. Gina mentioned that your friend died shortly after she withdrew from school,” Dale said. “The file just says she’s deceased, but it didn’t give any details. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks.”

I wanted to tell him we didn’t need to bond, and he was welcome to step into my place in Gina’s life. Be her husband, be the new stepfather to her son. It happened, and like two grown men, we could just shake hands and move on, pretending that none of it bothered us.

“Did you know Marissa’s sister?” Dale asked.

“Jade?”

“I think that was the name,” he said. “I took a quick look at her file as well.”

“Marissa did have a sister named Jade. She was three years younger, still in high school when we were at Eastland.”

“And she was supposed to come to school here, too? Right?” he asked.

“Jade? Yes, she was. I remember now that you mention it,” I said. “I know she came to visit and applied, and that meant a lot to their father. He used to say he bled Eastland blue. It would have been his dream to have both his girls go to school here. But it was fall when Marissa died, too early for a high school kid to know if she was getting in or not. I figured once Marissa died here, Jade and her family wanted nothing to do with the place. Too many bad memories. They moved out of state right after the funeral.”

Dale leaned in closer. He acted like he didn’t want Riley to hear what he was about to say. “She
did
know her admission status in the fall. The sister. Jade. She learned it early.”

“How?”

“Have you ever heard of the Presidential Scholarships at Eastland?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I clearly didn’t get one.”

“It’s a full ride,” Dale said, “and I mean
full
ride. Room, board, tuition. Even books. They use them to lure the best in-state students to Eastland. And they use them preemptively, meaning they hand them out in the fall
before
the best students are hearing from more prestigious schools. It makes sense, right? Eastland can’t compete with Kenyon or Oberlin or DePauw, so they start handing out the big money up front.”

“Sure.”

“Guess who got one of those offers in the fall of 1993?” Dale asked.

“Jade?”

Dale nodded. “And she accepted it. She was planning to go to Eastland in the fall of ninety-four just like her parents and her sister. But then she called the admissions office in October and informed them she
wouldn’t
be coming, that she didn’t need the scholarship or the offer of admission or the spot in the dorm. None of it. She walked away and left all that on the table.”

“She called and told them this in October of ninety-three?” I asked.

Dale nodded. “Why turn that down if your family is having financial trouble? No other school was going to offer that sweet of a deal. She was a legacy and her sister was here.”

“That’s a lot to pass up,” I said, “but would she want to walk by the spot where her sister died every day? Would she want to be reminded of that?”

“No, I guess she wouldn’t,” Dale said.

But he seemed to be holding another card, something he was just waiting for the right moment to lay down in front of me.

“What?” I asked. “There’s more?”

“She made that call, the one in which she turned down a full ride and everything else, the day
before
her sister died.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I
wanted to talk to Laurel and tell her what I’d learned from Dale Somners, but she still wasn’t answering her phone. She may have been off somewhere, forcing a minimum-wage clerk to confess to skimming from the till, so I left her another message.

Then I found myself with little to do. No work for the day, just me and my dog. Hammond Park and the area around campus had made me feel nostalgic, and I didn’t like feeling that way. It hurt too much. Even though I lived in the same town where I had attended college, I avoided the campus as much as possible. Too many memories. Places I’d walked with Marissa. Places we’d made out, places we’d laughed. The parking lot we used to go to in her SUV when our roommates were around and we needed—wanted—to have sex.

And the memories weren’t just of Marissa. It was everything. The passing of time, the unfulfilled dreams, a swirling vortex of nostalgia and regret that could swallow me if I let it.

Could I have ever imagined I would end up where I was? A middle-aged divorced guy, living alone? A murder suspect?

Riley and I wandered the winding paths through campus. Students streamed by at the change of class, looking so young, so happy, so much like babies I would have sworn they weren’t any older than Andrew. They laughed. They shoved one another playfully. Boys and girls held hands. Some of them stopped to scratch Riley’s ears. He loved it. I wondered what they thought of me, the guy gripping the leash. Did they think I was a professor? A parent? Did they assume I was an alum strolling down memory lane?

So much had changed on campus. New buildings. New landscaping. But familiar places remained. Parker Hall, where I took most of my philosophy classes, the building where I first met Laurel. Culpepper Hall, where I lived freshman year. I’d learned recently, from an alumni newsletter or someplace, that Culpepper had gone coed in the previous five years. I felt certain it made living there more pleasant.

And then I was on the far side of campus, where the university gave way to single-family houses and small apartment buildings, all of them taken over by students. Someone, maybe Laurel, had told me that six or seven years after the fire a new house was erected on the old lot, and students lived there as well. I wondered if anyone knew what had happened there on a distant fall night. Did the students exchange ghost stories about the fire? Did they claim to hear the muffled screams of four young women in the middle of the night?

College campuses were full of such lore. Culpepper Hall had a ghost story, one that said the fourth floor was haunted by a young man who committed suicide in his room in the 1940s. We used to share the story around Halloween, or during finals week when everyone was tired and on edge, joking about the poor sap who found college so stressful that he fashioned a noose out of a bedsheet and stepped into his closet. We laughed because we were young, but also because we were afraid. The laughter held off our own mortality—while we made fun of someone else’s, someone we never knew.