Smoke

Delicate white flames on a red gas tank and wheel fenders, polished chrome works and suicide grips.

“Nice hog,” said Lydia as they pulled the Kompressor around the circular drive. It was a gorgeous beach house with weathered gray clapboard, a steep, charcoal-colored shingle roof and white trim. A wraparound porch and a widow’s walk added an air of romance. Lydia could smell the salt from the Atlantic, hear the cry of gulls and the lapping of the ocean on the shore. It almost made the two-hour drive on the Long Island Expressway worth it.

A man she recognized as Tim Samuels from the photographs on Lily’s walls appeared at a picture window. He was even bigger than he’d appeared in the photo, with an aura of warmth and geniality. She imagined he might even seem joyful at other points in his life. But not today. Today he wore his sadness like a cloak. The sun passed behind the clouds as if out of respect for his grief, as he emerged from the front door.

“You must be Lydia and Jeff,” he said, reaching for Lydia’s hand as he approached them.

They could hear the halyard of a sailboat mast clinking in the wind that seemed to pick up.

“That’s right,” said Lydia, shaking his hand. Jeffrey did the same.

“We’ve heard a lot about you from Lily. She’s a big fan of yours,” he said with a smile. He seemed to be searching Lydia with his eyes for a hint of what his daughter had seen in her to so impress her.

“Well, I’m a big fan of Lily’s,” said Lydia. “That’s why I want to see what I can do for her.”

“We appreciate it. Let’s head inside.”

They sat on a plush, champagne-colored couch that was angled to look out onto the expansive view of the Atlantic Ocean. A series of French doors without window treatments looked out onto another wraparound veranda. The outdoor furniture had been stripped of its cushions, looked barren and lonely as if dreaming of summer. The moody sea churned dark with bright whitecaps. A fireplace burned to their right.

The room, decorated in shades of gold, cream, and pale blue, was a gallery dedicated to Mickey and Lily; there was no available space that didn’t contain a framed picture of one or both of their faces. The walls contained floor-to-ceiling shelves of books. A coffee table fashioned of varnished beach wood beneath a piece of beveled glass sat on a plush white area rug between them. Tim Samuels offered them some coffee, which they declined. Then he sat in one of the plush, floral-printed chairs across from them. Lydia could picture the family gathered there, beautiful and happy, playing Scrabble, opening Christmas gifts, swapping stories-doing whatever it was beautiful, happy families did in front of the fire.

“My wife,” he said when he sat, “won’t join us.” He looked into his teacup. “I mean, she can’t really. She’s upstairs, sleeping. It’s the drugs, you know. Seems like she’s either catatonic or hysterical. These are the choices lately.”

“I won’t pretend to know what either of you are going through,” said Lydia gently. “All I can say is that we want to help however we can.”

He closed his eyes and nodded gratefully.

“I can’t tell you how happy I was to get your call. The police warned us about that reward, the freaks and weirdos it would draw from the woodwork. I thought they were exaggerating. The phone literally rang day and night… liars, pranksters, psychics, but not one real lead. At first we had the police and volunteers here twenty-four seven. Then people started going back to their lives. I tried to answer it myself for a while, then I just started letting it go to voicemail and I was checking it every hour or so. Then it stopped ringing altogether. And that was worse. The silence. There’s been nothing but silence for days now. Until your call.

“It’s weird,” he said, putting his cup down on the table. “Everybody just kind of moves on. Except for us. We’re stuck in this place, this black hole of loss. We can’t crawl out.”

He had the haunted look of a man who’d used up all his tears and had no way left to express his sadness. Lydia let a moment pass and then asked him to share with them the days just before Lily disappeared and they listened as he talked about the call regarding Mickey’s suicide, the parade of friends and relatives, the service. He talked about Lily’s grief, and her denial over the way he died.

“So it didn’t strike you as impossible that Mickey could have killed himself?” Lily asked.

He shook his head slowly. “The evidence was conclusive. The police had no doubt whatsoever that Mickey ended his own life. The doors to his car were all locked, there were no other fingerprints in the vehicle, on the gun, or on the bottle between his legs. He had gunshot residue on his right hand. He had a blood alcohol level nearly three times the legal limit.”

“Without the physical evidence, though, would you have considered Mickey capable of ending his own life?”

He looked over her head, as if the answer was above her somewhere. “Mickey wrestled with depression all his life. This is what we couldn’t make Lily understand.”

“She didn’t know?” asked Lydia, with a frown.

“She didn’t know the extent of his depression. No,” he said with a shake of his head. “She knew he was moody, had a tendency to go through depressive phases. But she didn’t know that he was on and off anti-depressants since he was an adolescent. And that his depression seemed to be getting harder to deal with as he got older. It was part of the reason he quit his job on Wall Street. He thought maybe the stress was making his depression worse. He thought if he could do something he really loved, it might help.”

“But they were very close,” said Jeffrey. “It seems strange that she didn’t know.”

“Yes, they were close. But Mickey was adamant that she never be told. She adored him. Like, hero- worshipped him. I think part of him was afraid he might lose that if she knew. So we respected his wishes and kept his condition private.” He released a sigh. “Maybe we were wrong to do that. But it’s too late now.”

“So you weren’t unable to accept it in the same way Lily was when you learned how Mickey died,” said Lydia.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that. We were shocked, of course. It’s not as if Mickey had made attempts on his life before. And honestly, in the months before he died, he was happier than we’d ever seen him. But I guess it had always been a fear in the back of our minds, because of his depression and because of his father’s suicide. So in the way that it was our worst fear realized, I guess it was easier for us to believe.”

Lydia knew what it was like to have your worst nightmare become reality. The horror and the disbelief were almost too much to bear; she saw that it was crushing him. His stepson was dead. Lily was missing. His wife had retreated to a drug-induced catatonia.

“You said he was happier than you’d ever seen him in the months before he died. Why was that?” she asked.

Samuels smiled a little, remembering. “He loved the coffee shop. He’d made some new friends. He had a nice place, plenty of money. He just seemed-I don’t know,” he said, searching for the right words, “at peace, I guess. For the first time in his life.”

His brow wrinkled then, his face dissolving into a grimace of sadness and confusion. He put his head in his hands. Lydia and Jeffrey were quiet while the gulls cried outside and the wind began to howl. After a moment, Samuels looked back up, seemed more composed.

“They say, I guess, that once someone has decided to kill themselves they experience a time of peace and euphoria, like they see a light at the end of the tunnel they’ve been trudging through so long,” said Samuels with a sigh. “I don’t want to think that was the reason for Mickey’s new happiness. But maybe it was.” He shook his head.

“Maybe it was,” he said again.

His eyes glazed over in the thousand-yard stare Lydia had seen often. It made her uncomfortable; she looked away. She let a few moments pass before speaking again.

“Did Mickey ever say anything to you about something called The New Day?”

It happened quickly and maybe someone less observant wouldn’t have noticed, but Samuels flinched. He shook his head slowly then.

“The New Day?” he asked, cocking his head. “What’s that?”

“Neither Mickey or Lily ever mentioned it to you, Mr. Samuels?” asked Lydia. “They never mentioned being involved or knowing anyone who was involved?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head again. “What is it?”

“As far as we can tell, it’s some kind of New Age church,” said Jeffrey. “Kind of a pan-spirituality thing.”

Samuels gave a skeptical frown. “And you think my kids were involved with them?”

“We don’t know. We have reason to believe that there might be a connection through the woman Mickey was dating. Did you or your wife ever meet Mariah?”