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“What did you end up deciding?” she asked. “Are you hiring someone?”
“We are. Cooper is handling it. He’s called an agency in Chicago. We’re hoping to meet them in a few days to talk about first steps. I’ve also sent Finn a message to let him know, but I haven’t heard back yet. I’m sure the investigator will want to talk to the police and I didn’t want him to be blindsided, especially when he’s in the middle of Sarah’s case.”
“Speaking of Sarah,” Lucy said as their dinners were placed in front of them. “Mr. Hayes came into the bookstore today. You remember him from English class?”
“I do. I think I might have sent him into early retirement. I never could understand Shakespeare for the life of me. I’m still confused, although it hasn’t hampered me in any way out in the real world.”
“I doubt you were the first,” Lucy replied, taking a bite of her chicken. Amazing. “He and I talked about Sarah for a few minutes. He said that he’d heard she went to a campus bar where you could go in underage and drink. I told him some friends and I had tried that and were turned away immediately. Did you know anything about a place like that?”
“I heard those stories, too,” Zack said with a groan. “The bar was owned by a friend of my dad’s, so of course, I never went to test the theory that I might get in. But I did hear several people saying that they did go and drink. I don’t know if it was true or not. It could have been the truth, or it could have been boasting in the locker room. The guys that said they did it seemed persuasive, though. A few guys tried to get me to do it, but I didn’t want any more issues with my father than I already had. Besides, we could just go out in the country to drink. We didn’t need to do it in a bar.”
“You didn’t want to meet cute college girls?”
“I did, but I seriously doubt they would have looked twice at me.”
Lucy had a feeling that Zack underestimated just how good-looking he was.
“I didn’t know anyone personally that got in, but there were always rumors about it,” she said.
“This lasagna is delicious, by the way. We can come here anytime you want.”
Would he be around in the future? He’d made it sound like there would be more dinners, and that made her happy. Too happy, to be honest. She shouldn’t be counting on him. Not yet, anyway. They hadn’t talked about what happened tomorrow, in a few days, or even a few weeks. His life was up in the air and she didn’t want to push, but at some point, they’d need to address it.
“I’m glad you like it. This is one of my favorite places. I probably come here too much. I should lay off the carbs.”
His gaze was hot as it swept from her toes to the top of her head.
“I think the carbs are treating you right.”
She could feel the heat in her cheeks, and suddenly wished that they’d ordered their dinner for takeout. Then she could drag him into the bedroom and do all sorts of debauched things to him. As it was, she’d have to wait until they were done eating.
“How was your reunion with your friends this afternoon?” Lucy asked as their plates were being cleared. “Did you have fun? Was it like old times?”
“It was fun, but it did not feel like old times at all. It felt a bit strange and awkward. I sat there wondering what we all had in common now, and what we had in common back then.”
“We were all kids in a small town. That’s what we had in common.”
“I guess you’re right,” Zack laughed. “It was just a strange hour and a half out of my life. At one point, I brought up Sarah, and you’d have thought that I spit in the food. It was like everything came to a halt, and no one wanted to be there. They changed the subject immediately, and I got the vibe that they didn’t want to talk about it. A fact that my friend Jay confirmed later when everyone was leaving. He told me that I should just drop it, and that Sarah wasn’t as innocent as she seemed.”
“That’s a strange thing to say,” Lucy observed. “What did he mean by that?”
“He said that they’d all processed it and moved on, and I should, too. He said that Sarah didn’t show her true self to people, and that they weren’t all that surprised when she disappeared.”
“That’s even more bizarre. Was he implying that she was into drugs or something? But that does sort of go along with what Mr. Hayes said. He heard from another teacher that Sarah had some stuff going on in her life, and she wasn’t going to buckle down and study so he shouldn’t bother trying to get her to.”
“Did you ever hear anything about Sarah?” he asked.
In a town full of gossip, it would have been harder not to hear anything. Not just Sarah but anyone.
“No. Well, kind of. I’d heard that she and her stepdad were at odds, and that they argued all the time. That her home life wasn’t all that great. I also heard that she and Ethan fought all the time, and that they were cheating on each other. I just thought it was the typical drama back then. But I was also a year younger than you, so I wasn’t privy to as much. What did you hear?”
“Pretty much what you did although I know for a fact that Ethan cheated on Sarah. He said she was cheating on him, and at the time I didn’t have any reason not to believe him.”
“I wouldn’t hold up most high school relationships as healthy. There was a hell of a lot of dysfunction.”
“True,” he conceded. “I wouldn’t call my teenage relationships good examples of communication, that’s for sure.”
“Did you and Angel argue a lot?”
