“And I suppose you don’t want me to know where you’re leaving the Jeep.”
“Less you know, the better.”
He picks up his bike and throws it inside the back of the Wagoneer. He lives only six blocks from here, but I don’t dare give him a ride. We don’t need hits from license plate cameras anywhere close to Luke’s house. He can walk.
“I’ll…call you in the morning,” I say. “That would be normal. A follow-up call after Finley acted so odd tonight.”
He hugs me, a good long embrace, back rub and all. “What you did for Trin tonight…I don’t know what to say—”
“Let’s just finish this,” I say. “Go home.”
“Right. Gray should still be asleep on the couch. He was totally depleted. Get home to him fast.”
“I will.”
“And, Allison?” he whispers as I pull away. “It’s scary that you’re so good atthis.”
BookII
The DayS After April Fools’Day
68
Allison
I spend the early next morning with Grayson, who moves through the house like he’s walking underwater. Every motion slow, deliberate, as if he’s afraid to disturb something fragile. He hasn’t said much since he woke around four in the morning. He’s wearing the same gray T-shirt he put on after showering last night, wrinkled, collar stretched. Shadows linger under his eyes.
He pours coffee, though he doesn’t drink it, just stares as the steam rises, his fingers wrapped too tight around the mug. His face looks older. Not in the way a boy becomes a man, but in the way grief presses down and leaves an indelible mark. When he finally looks at me, there’s a hint of something raw behind his eyes—confusion, guilt, disbelief.
“You okay?” I ask, though I know how pointless the question sounds.
He shrugs, eyes fixed on the counter. “I keep seeing him,” he says softly. “When I close my eyes. He’s just…there.”
I want to tell him it will get easier, that memories blur, shock dulls. But I can’t lie to him, not about this. So I just nod and step closer, placing a hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t pull away, but he doesn’t lean in, either.
I leave before seven to retrieve my car. I can’t call an Uber because that is a recorded transaction that the police could find later, wondering why I didn’t just drive to the condo on April 2.Where was your car?So I walk to the train station, buy a new train pass with cash, and take the Green Line down to State and Lake, where I hail an old-fashioned taxi, again paying in cash. I get dropped off at the Erie/Ontario parking garage and walk to my SUV, pull out of the lot, curb the car, and screw my front license plate back on. Then I drive a block to the condo’s underground parking garage.
Inside my condo, the morning light off Lake Michigan spills across the floor. Everything is exactly where it should be—the sectional and club chairs, the coffee table and the items topping it, the meticulous fireplace—yet the place feels unrecognizable.
I walk farther in, my heels clicking softly on the walnut floor. Every sound feels intrusive. I used to love this space—the quiet, the light, the view that made everything feel expansive. Now it just feels like a stage after the actors have left.
The dreams we had when we bought this place. We might sell the big house, once empty nesters, and call this home; we might hold it for Grayson, should he live in Chicago after college. This would be our summer home during retirement, with somewhere warm for the winter.
Now I don’t think I can keep it. The walls know too much.
In the kitchen, I text with Aaron and Vivian and promise I will be in the office tomorrow. I text Finley’s phone. I call it and leave voicemails. All to make a record. I tell him he can’t keep breaking contact with us, please don’t be so dramatic, just tell us you’re okay, you’re worrying us, we want to help, I’m here at the condo, please make contact with us one way or another.
At half past noon, I stand along the LaSalle Street Bridge, overlooking the Chicago River running beneath me, a winding ribbon of green and black. The ironwork rattles and hums with traffic. Theweather is predictably nippy, even worse on the bridges, where the winds tend to swirl. But it seemed like a good place to meet.
Trinity and Luke sidle up to me a moment later. “I hope you didn’t bring your phones,” I say. They assure me they did not. I discussed it with Luke this morning when I called him. It would seem odd to the police if they later tracked us all to the same area the morning after Fin’s disappearance.
Trinity looks at me with feeling, her head tilted, eyes watering. She tucks a strand of hair off her face and behind her ear. “Allison, I…”
“I’ll bet you went through a lot yesterday,” I say. “I saw him in the afternoon. I can only imagine how bad he was by later that evening.”
“I just…I want you to know, it happened really fast. I didn’t go there meaning to do that.”
“Oh, I know that, Trinity. From the look of the fireplace, seems like he was trying to destroy all your work on the documentary.”
