My fingers tightened around my phone as my patient mind began to lose its focus. Did she suspect that I liked that angelic boy she’d seen? Was she trying to remember?
I could imagine her narrowing her eyes.
“Well… let’s see…” she mused.
Relief unfurled in my gut as I realized she was just trying to remember.
“I saw Nancy first, and learned that her daughter didn’t get into Julliard like she wanted… poor thing… now she’ll have to go to her second choice.”
But Mrs. Carr didn’t sound like she was sympathetic. She sounded like she was relishing in it; delighted that one of her friends’ kids didn’t get what she wanted.
I frowned.
Mrs. Carr continued, “It’s so dreadful; I know their family has been struggling with money, so this is probably all for the best anyway.” She finished, and the way her voice went up at the end, I could tell she was smiling.
“Was Nancy the only person you talked to at the cafe?” I asked, my patience beginning to fray.
“Hm, no, then I saw Beth, and she was telling me about how Martha Patel and her husband are trying to renovate their kitchen, a dead-end project if you ask me…”
I rubbed one of my temples as I listened to Mrs. Carr drone on about neighborhood gossip I didn’t care about.
Then finally, she punctuated her boring story with “Oh!”
I sat straight up in my seat, the ice in my glass jingling at the sudden movement.
“After Beth, I saw Sarah’s son! He looked like he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to do.”
Bingo. “What do you mean?” I asked, hungry for any information she had about this angelic man.
“Well,” she started, gathering wind to prepare for an extra-juicy piece of gossip. “His name is Luke, I don’t know if you’ve ever met him. He just moved home after finishing college. Couldn’t find a job, poor thing,” she said sweetly. “Lots of millennials are having trouble finding jobs… the market is rough out there. Especially for people like Luke.”
I was sitting on the edge of my chair, alert. I wished I’d remembered to bring a notepad out here.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked, my heart racing.
“Well… he’s always been… different.” She said, mock sympathy present in her voice again.
“Different how?” I asked, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice. I needed to know everything about this stranger.
“It’s… a little hard to describe. He came to some of Tim’s birthday parties when they were just kids, and he never really talked to or interacted with the other kids. He just stayed around his mom.”
I shifted in my seat. I knew which Sarah Mrs. Carr was referring to now. It was the Sarah — the principal of the school district, head of the PTA, and one of the biggest donors of the nearby city. There were several buildings with her last name on them.
A pang of sympathy pulsed in my gut for Luke. It couldn’t be easy to be her kid.
“Can you tell me anything else about him? Anything weird about the interaction that you remember?” I probed.
“Um… let me think…” she said, searching her mind for scraps of gossip. “Nothing about earlier today in particular. Why, is he in trouble?” She asked, the hope in her voice following a steady crescendo.
I scowled. “No, he’s not in trouble.”
Her disappointment was palpable. “Oh… well, that’s good to hear.”
Then there was a beat, and I said: “Thank you for your time Mrs. Carr.” And I was about to hang up, but then she spoke, the words rushing out of her.
“You know, Tim told me that he’s seen Luke down at the boathouse bar, serving drinks. He isn’t supposed to do that; he’s not even twenty-one!”
I raised my eyebrow, keen on this new information. Not because I planned to bust him, but because now I knew where to find him.
“Thank you for telling me that, Mrs. Carr. You’re a good, law-abiding citizen.”
Even hearing the words leave my mouth made me feel sick. But I knew that it was enough to make her feel important; to give her a pat on the head for the information she’d given me.
“Of course officer. I don’t know what we’d do without you,” she chirped.
A frown pulled across my face again. Probably better things than constantly having to arrest your son, I thought menacingly, then shook the thought away.
I thanked Mrs. Carr again and then got her off the phone before I had to listen to more petty gossip.
* * *
If what she said was true, then I could go to the boathouse bar and have a good chance of running into him.
Luke. His name was Luke.
And his mother was Sarah DuPont, one of the most powerful women in the state. Why she ever decided to move to the suburbs and become a principal of a school district I’d never know.
But, I was one to talk.
Looking out onto the lake from my huge back porch, I thought about how much I loved being a police officer. Even though the pay was shit, I didn’t mind. I had money from when my great uncle died; he left me a surprise inheritance shortly after I entered the police academy.
Now I could afford anything I wanted. The only trouble was filling my life with meaningful things.
Glancing at the empty deck chair next to me, I frowned.
It had been a few months since that chair was occupied by someone. Someone that had left me for “someone less intense.”
The pain in my gut still curdled uncomfortably, even though it was less painful than it used to be.
My solitary self-torture was interrupted by the ding of the doorbell.
I scowled and got up, setting my glass down in the kitchen on my way there.
My brother wasn’t supposed to be here for another hour. But, true to his habits, here he was, infringing on my quiet moping an hour earlier than planned.
I opened the door to find the spitting image of me standing there expectantly, his fishing gear
