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They had met a couple of times since Jayne had moved in with me.
“Good. And we’ve got her brother living with us now. Tyler. Sixteen. His dad passed, and he’s kind of messed up. Adrift, you know? Reminds me of myself at that age, when I was being shunted from home to home.”
I became aware of someone approaching. Thinking Julie had returned, I turned to say hello, but it was a young guy, mid-twenties, shuffling toward us. His clothes were worn and filthy, and he didn’t appear to have shaved in at least a week.
“Hey, Neil,” Greg said. He pointed his thumb into the store he’d stepped out of. “Box of donuts in there. Help yourself, but leave some for the others.”
Neil smiled. “Thanks, man. Sorry to interrupt.” He shuffled on into the store as I gave Greg a questioning look.
In a low voice, he said, “A few homeless living in here till they tear it all down. Me and Julie bring in a few treats for them. Best to have them on your side if you’re gonna be sharing space with them. Give some of them odd jobs, twenty bucks to haul stuff to my truck. So, what’s up?”
I got out my phone and brought up the picture I’d sent myself off Brian’s tablet. I handed it to Greg without comment. He studied the picture, then enlarged it with his thumb and index finger.
“What am I looking at here?” he asked.
“That was taken a couple of hours ago, off a security cam. Where my house used to stand. That’s the driveway.”
“Okay. And?”
I told him what Max had told me. And what the woman in the picture allegedly said. Asking what had happened to her house.
Greg kept staring at the picture. “What are you getting at here? What are you suggesting?”
“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m showing you that and waiting for your reaction.”
He gave the picture another five seconds and then handed the phone back to me. He finished making his cigarette, stuck it between his lips, and lit it with a lighter that he’d tucked into his shirt pocket.
“I don’t know, man. What are you thinking?”
“It’s not a very good picture.”
“Seriously, you know what it is? It’s just some woman took a wrong turn. Got her directions mixed up. Maybe it’s one of those grocery delivery services. Lot more of those since COVID. She made a mistake. Last week I got an Uber Eats at the door that I never ordered. Was for someone else. People are careless.”
“Maybe. Doesn’t explain why she got so spooked she dropped everything and took off.”
Greg took a drag off his cigarette, held the smoke in his lungs for a moment, and then exhaled. I’d snuck plenty of smokes when I was in foster homes, but it hadn’t turned into a lifelong habit. So I was no expert on tobacco, but this brand Greg favored had its own distinctive aroma.
He looked me in the eye.
“Whatever this is, Andy, and honestly, I have no idea what’s going on here, but you can’t let it get your hopes up. That can’t be Brie. I mean, okay, at a glance, whoever that is could pass for her from a distance, but it doesn’t make any sense. What are we supposed to take from this? That she suddenly reappeared as if five years—”
“Six.”
“What?”
“Six. It’s been six years.”
“Jesus, has it really been that long?”
“Yeah.”
“Anyway, are we supposed to think Brie’s actually okay and that she went through some Star Trek–like space-time continuum and thought it was six years ago and expected to find the house she used to live in?”
“I don’t know what we’re supposed to think.”
At this point, Neil came back out of the shop, chewing on a donut in one hand and carrying a second in his other. He raised it and said to Greg, “This one’s for Karen, okay?”
“No problem,” he said, then turned back to me and whispered, “He’s here with his girlfriend. Can you imagine, living here with someone?”
