He pauses, sips his Coke. From the inner pocket of his jacket he produces a plastic-wrapped oatmeal raisin cookie, softened in the heat, which he slowly removes from its packaging, dips into his coffee, and begins to eat.
“Maximum sentence for possession of a controlled substance is five years,” he says, chewing.
Louise blanches. In five years, her brother Jesse will be sixteen. Practically grown. In five years, it will be too late.
“But if you have information on the whereabouts of Barbara Van Laar—anything that will help us—we’ll be in a better position to help you too.”
Louise is looking at the table. If she looks up, she’s afraid the tears she’s been fighting off will be loosed. She’d rather be dead or jailed than let this man see her cry.
“Anyway, I can put a call in now,” says Lowry. “See about setting a bail hearing. But.”
He checks his wristwatch theatrically.
“It’s late in the day now. Magistrate might not be available till tomorrow.”
He walks out of the room.
• • •
Louise is alone.
For a time, she’s quiet, letting this disaster descend onto her shoulders. Her first emotion is horror: that John Paul could have done something as evil as this. Her second is fear. That they’ll believe him over her.
One thing that’s true: he’s always had a mean, vindictive streak. She has seen this side of him, mainly with others, mainly with other boys at parties, when all of them were drunk and high.
Only once has he ever turned that side on her.
Louise
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975
It was her second winter at Garnet Hill Lodge. It was a Monday, a slow day anyway, and terrifically cold, which frightened off so many reservations that Louise’s boss let her off early. So Louise, bored and lonely, took the opportunity to borrow a staff car and drive down to Union College.
John Paul lived that year in a group house with several other boys—one of whom opened the door at the sound of Louise’s knock.
“John Paul’s out,” he said, after taking a few beats to register her face.
“Oh,” said Louise. From behind the boy, she heard the noise of what sounded like a party. A low droning note was sounding over and over—a record skipping. A girl laughed merrily. The record was fixed. A boy roared.
She recognized the roar.
“Steven,” she said. “I think he’s home.”
• • •
Inside, a dozen people stood or sat in small groups while Zeppelin played in the background.
Most of them were girls she didn’t know. Young: freshmen, probably. They were dressed up, wearing going-out clothes, their hair washed and blow-dried. Where are they going on such a cold night? thought Louise—and then realized that this house was their destination, its residents their motive for taking such care with their appearance. Louise, in her parka and hat, felt like a friendly snowman.
Across the room, John Paul swayed slightly, a sort of drunk that made Louise’s chest tighten. He had a beer in one hand and wore no shirt, despite the cold. The skin of his shoulders and chest was flushed pink. He had a beautiful thin build and a nice head of hair and very white teeth, and normally Louise thought him handsome. But the quickest way to make an attractive man ugly was to give him too much to drink. Drunk men frightened her. She had learned young how to coddle them, how to laugh just enough at their bad jokes to prevent them from feeling insulted, but not so much that her laughter egged them on. Coiled just below a surface of good humor lay their strength and their meanness, two guns waiting to go off.
“Louiiiiiiise,” said John Paul, when he spotted her. He lurched across the room, put his arms around her shoulders, leaned so heavily on her that the two of them almost toppled.
“Who are these people?” she whispered.
“New friends,” he said. Slurring. “You’ll like ’em. C’mon.”
But still there was no introduction, and so for a long time Louise sat on a sofa with no drink in her hand, wearing a polo shirt with a Garnet Hill Lodge insignia, her goddamn work-issued uniform, and watched as the people around her grew drunker, as the music got louder, as the atmosphere of potential sex got thicker and more obvious.
The girls reminded her of something, or someone, many someones, and with a jolt she realized finally that it was her campers at Camp Emerson. Not just in their richness and carriage, but also in their youth; the youngest looked sixteen or seventeen years old. Two of them began dancing with one another in a wobbly slither, and she watched John Paul watching them, and it was at that point that she took herself up to his bedroom, without saying goodnight.
She rarely smoked cigarettes, but she saw John Paul’s on the bedside table and a silver lighter beside the pack, JPM monographed on its side, and she lit one and smoked it. She liked the warmth of it in her lungs.
She put the lighter into her pocket. She wanted to take something of his.
She put out the cigarette and lay there for a long time. There was a window next to the bed, and she looked out and saw that the moon was almost full. From below she heard the music quiet, change to something calm. She didn’t know what time it was.
• • •
Louise woke up to the sound of the door slamming open. She sat straight up, clutching her heart. There was John Paul, a shadow in the doorway.
Downstairs, people were still talking.
“Where’d you go,” he said. His voice was low. She couldn’t tell if he was more sober or more drunk than he’d been when she left.
“To bed,” she said.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m dumb,” he said—one of his go-to phrases in any fight. He wasn’t dumb. He needed everyone to know this. “Why didn’t you say you were going?”
