Ink and Bone (19 page)

Eloise sipped her tea. “Or you might have gotten yourself hurt, or into a situation from which you couldn’t extract yourself. And then you’d be no good to anyone.”

Ugh
, so
frustrating
. Everyone was so methodical, so cautious. Sometimes you just had to go out there and do what needed to be done. There was value to a seat-of-your-pants methodology, wasn’t there?

“So what?” said Finley, that sizzle of frustration making her angry. “You just sit and do nothing while time runs out. What about following your instincts? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?”

Eloise wrapped her arms around her body as if warding off a chill, but she held Finley’s eyes.

“There’s a difference between following your instincts and being reckless, my dear. Only age teaches you that.”

“Then what’s the point of this?” said Finley. She leaned forward. “What’s the point of
knowing
when you can’t
do
anything
?
”

“Just because it’s ill advised to go off unprepared,” said her grandmother, “doesn’t mean you
do nothing
. What’s the next best thing?”

Finley leaned back in her chair, then got up and paced the room, from the door to the range and then back again.

“Maps,” she said. “I’ll find maps of the area, and research the mines.”

Eloise gave her an approving smile. “That’s my girl.”

Finley gave Eloise a big kiss on the cheek, then bounded up the stairs to her laptop. Sitting on her bed, she entered “Maps iron mines Hollows New York” into the search bar and waited for the information to load. They were all there: Faith, the boy with the trains, the
squeak-clink.
But Finley barely noticed them.

EIGHTEEN

W
olf sent Kristi a text, turned off the phone he used exclusively for some of his less above-board activities. Then, on the corner, he tossed it into the trash. He didn’t feel
that
bad about breaking up with Kristi via text. People of her generation were all about texting, which was just one example of their soullessness.

I’m sorry, Kristi. I can’t see you tonight. In fact, we should take a break from seeing each other at all. My family needs me and I can’t let them down. Please forgive me. I do love you. It’s just not time for us right now.

It was final without being hopeless. Romantic without leading her on, implying that in another time and place, they might be together. And anyway maybe it was even true.

Wolf ducked into The Parlor on West Eighty-Sixth Street, a kind of divey, not too crowded sports bar that he and Blake had been drinking at since college. He spotted his friend over by the bar, as usual with his face buried in the newspaper, glasses drifting down his nose. His blond hair was graying, his sleeves rolled up, and his jacket and briefcase rested on the stool beside him. Blake had been a middle-aged man since he was sixteen. Still, two girls at a high-top were looking over at him, whispering with curious smiles. But Blakey, as ever, was oblivious. He only had eyes for his wife, Claire.

*  *  *

Claire, who was
not hot
to begin with, had put on twenty since the kids and never bothered to take it off. Claire, who was a stay-at-home mom in spite of having a law degree, a searing, rip-you-to-shreds intelligence, and a knowledge of world events that shamed even Wolf, now seemed to care only about the kids—bedtime routines and the dangers of overscheduling and too much soy, or whatever was the hot parenting topic of the moment. Claire didn’t even always take care of her roots. And still Blake looked at her like she was a Suicide Girls pinup. Wolf didn’t get it.

“Hey, man,” said Wolf, sliding in beside him.

College football roared on the television above them. Wolf was so out of it that he didn’t even know who was playing. People cheering on the screen, happy faces, girls in hats and scarves. Who were those people with no fucking problems? Wolf hated them all in some nebulous, disinterested way.

“Hey, buddy,” said Blake with a worried frown, his default expression for Wolf these days. “How’s everything?”

“You know,” said Wolf. He didn’t even bother trying to put on an act for his old friend. He put on one for everyone else, not just because it made him feel better but because it made everyone else feel better, too. People didn’t want to look into the face of grief; it was too terrifying.

“Yeah,” Blake said, patting Wolf hard on the shoulder. “I know.”

Blake folded up his paper and took off his glasses, put them in the pocket of his handmade Italian shirt. “How’s Merri holding up?”

Wolf told him about the psychic Merri had hired, how she’d gone up to The Hollows for a while. The bartender brought Wolf a Corona with lime, gave him a nod.

“Is she—?”

“Losing it again?” said Wolf. He shook his head. “She seems okay.”

When Merri went off the deep end a few months after Abbey disappeared, the psychotic break had hit like the strike of a baseball
bat. One minute she was okay, on the phone with the detective who had been working Abbey’s case. Wolf wasn’t sure what the man had said, but whatever it was, it was too much for Merri. She just snapped. She put the phone down.

“What?” he asked her. They were back in the apartment, picking up some things to take back to The Hollows. Jackson, thankfully, was recovering at Wolf’s parents’ place in the West Village.

Merri had put her head in her arms, and when she lifted her face to him, she looked as glazed and blissful as a Hari Krishna.

“Merri?” For a second, his own heart had lifted. Had they found her? Was this nightmare over?

“Do you see them?” she’d asked. Her smile wide and beautiful; she looked so much like she had when they’d first met.

“Who?” he asked.

“The angels,” she said. “They’re all around us.”

“Merri,” he said, his heart dropping, growing cold.

“They’re everywhere,” she said, looking above him, starting to cry. “They’re taking care of Abbey.”

He’d called Merri’s therapist and rushed her to the office, Merri dazed and pliant. She was committed at NYU Hospital within a few hours, and she’d stayed there for more than a week before snapping out of it as quickly as she’d succumbed.

“Her psyche, overwhelmed by the events of the last few months, did what it needed to do to survive,” her doctor explained. “It gave her a little vacation.”

As frightening as the episode had been, Wolf envied her.

“Shouldn’t you be up there with her?” Blake asked now.

“She doesn’t
want
me, man,” he said. Wolf put his forehead in his palm. “Who can blame her?”

“Maybe she doesn’t
know
she wants you,” said Blake. “Maybe you need to be there for her so that she can remember what it’s like
not
to be alone. Look, bad shit has happened, the worst things possible. But I think you two can find your way back to each other.”

Blake was a hopeless romantic, a depraved optimist. There was no problem, in his view, that could not be solved by love.

“What about Jackson?” Wolf asked. “The kid’s a wreck. I can’t leave him. And I can’t take him back up there.”

“We’ll take him,” said Blake. “The girls love him. We’ll make it fun for him, like a sleepover.”

Wolf nodded, as if considering. Even Blake, who was so close to them, so well meaning, just didn’t get it. There were no “fun sleepovers” in Jackson’s immediate future. He’d been shot by a man who’d abducted his sister, almost bled to death while he thought he was watching his father bleed to death. He was shattered, glued back together, and barely holding on to the pieces of himself. It was true of all of them. Other people, even close friends and family, their lives were moving forward, as they should. But Wolf, Merri, and Jackson were still back in those woods while Abbey was being dragged away. That sick feeling of helpless rage was an echo in his psyche. How could he ever forget those moments, watching her while nothing in his mind or spirit could make his body do what it needed to do? He still regularly dreamed about it, woke up in a sweat, searching for their faces. But he’d never seen them, the men who took Abbey. Without his glasses or contacts, they were just dark, nebulous forms. He looked down at his hand. The beer bottle was empty. He lifted it to the bartender for another.

“I’ll think about it,” said Wolf. “Thanks.”

“You know we’ll do anything,” said Blake. Wolf knew that his old friend was one of the few people in the world who said it and meant it. But there was literally nothing anyone could do for them. Except . . .

“I wanted to ask you something,” said Wolf. He took the article he’d printed from the web and unfolded it, smoothed it out on the bar in front of them. “Hear anything about this?”

Blake put his glasses back on. “Yeah,” he said. “I heard about this guy on the news and then there was some chatter about it at the office.”

Blake was a criminal defense attorney, had lots of connections with other lawyers, cops, and detectives. He had been a huge help in dealing with the police, especially when they were tearing Wolf and Merri apart.

“What kind of chatter?” Wolf asked.

“Well, foul play is definitely suspected. The guy was like Mr. Nice, happily married, very successful, into his job, no debt, no affairs, not even a parking ticket. Not the kind of guy who typically takes off on his family. There’s no signal from his phone, which means it was probably destroyed. No credit card activity.”

Blake looked down at the article again. “The Hollows,” he said. “Where Abbey—I’m sorry, man. I didn’t make the connection.”

Wolf nodded quickly. “Jackson’s
obsessed
.”

“The news thing?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But it’s more intense than it’s been. He thinks the story has something to do with Abbey.”

“Why does he think that?” asked Blake.

“I don’t know,” said Wolf. He took a sip of his next beer, which was ice cold and tasted good. Usually, he tried not to drink when he wanted it as bad as he did right now. Because when he felt this bad, it all went down too easy; he drank too much, did stupid things, was useless the next day. It was the only thing that smoothed out the jagged edges of his inner life. But he couldn’t afford that kind of carelessness anymore. “I don’t think
he
even knows.”

Blake tapped a finger on the bar, thinking.

“I heard today that the guy had some kind of new technology in his car. If it’s tampered with, reported stolen, or damaged, it apparently sends off some kind of beacon to the leasing company. They can control the car remotely, render it inoperable, find out exactly where it is in the event that it needs to be repossessed.”

Wolf felt an unreasonable flutter of hope, in spite of himself. This was a symptom of Jackson’s PTSD, and it was contagious in a way because the shattered, hopeless mind reaches for any kind of hope, no matter how dim. Ostensibly, Wolf was only asking because it helped calm Jackson down. Once he realized that there was no connection between whatever news story and the fractured lives of the Gleason family, Jackson moved on. Of course, Wolf didn’t actually believe that this story had anything to do with Abbey. But still, wasn’t there just the faintest glimmer of
maybe
? “So—”

“There are channels that need navigating, some initial resistance to the warrant that was needed because there’s no real evidence of foul play,” he said. “It’s taking some time. They were talking about it today, privacy and legality issues.”

Wolf thought about the man’s family. How infuriating it must be to have a technology that could help you find your missing loved one and then not be able to use it. The delays for reasons of legality seemed inhumane to the point of being Kafkaesque when you were frantic with fear and everyone else was following rules. How many hours did the police spend grilling Wolf and Merri while Abbey’s abductor was getting farther and farther away?

Wolf ordered another beer, and a shot of tequila. Blake looked at him but didn’t say anything. Blake and Claire were real friends, and even if they didn’t, couldn’t, understand, they’d been there every step of the way. Blake had been in The Hollows hours after Abbey disappeared, advising them, supporting them.

“Will you keep your ears open about it, let me know if you hear anything so I can tell Jackson?”

Jackson’s doctor had advised them not to dismiss the kid’s fears, but to help him work through things. Help him to see that there were no patterns, no way to predict the future to prevent bad things from happening. Wolf wasn’t sure what good it did for him to know that, that no one had any control over anything, that life could spiral out of your control in a moment.

“Sure,” said Blake. “Want me to make some calls?”

“That would be great,” he said.

“I’m interested anyway,” said Blake.

The place was filling up, and the voices around them getting a little louder. They both zoned out on the game. During a commercial break, Wolf watched a preview of the weather. The first winter storm was on its way, and it wasn’t even Halloween. Snowfall in the city was going to be light, but it looked like they were going to get dumped on farther up north. The sight of that gray graphic over the upstate region gripped him with sorrow. Another winter coming without Abbey, and Merri getting farther away every second.

“You should go up there, man,” said Blake again, reading his thoughts. “At least bring her back before that storm hits.”

“Maybe you’re right,” said Wolf.

A girl sat at one of the high-tops, surrounded by a crowd of coworkers, her blazer off, her sheer blouse revealing a cream-colored camisole. Her blonde hair was silky and a little wild around her face like a mane. She was smiling at Wolf, sweet and shy. She laughed at something, turned back to the young man beside her.

In another life, Wolf would have lingered after Blake went home. He’d have found a way to strike up a conversation with the pretty girl. If she’d been a certain type, he’d have wound up back at her place. But he liked to think that he was a different man now, someone who’d learned from his mistakes, made better choices.

So when Blake picked up the tab and gathered up his things to go home, Wolf left with him.

*  *  *

Back at the apartment, Wolf’s parents had gone to sleep in the master bedroom, and his mother had made up the bed for him on the couch. He looked in on Jackson, who was sweaty and fitful in sleep, his leg kicked out from beneath the covers, still wearing his glasses, his night light on. The scar on his thigh was a large but tidy keloid mark that looked like a star. A book on quantum physics lay spine up on the floor. Wolf touched his son’s head, took off his glasses, and turned out the light.

On the couch, he dialed Merri and was surprised when she answered.

“There’s a storm coming,” he said. “I think you should come home.”

“I can’t,” she said. He could tell she’d been crying.

“Then we’re going to come up,” he said.

“Don’t,” she said. “It’s not healthy for him.”

“Then I’ll leave him with my parents,” he said. “Just for a couple of days.”

She didn’t say anything, her breath filling the space between them.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Merri, I’m truly sorry. I’ve been a shit husband and a worse father.” How many times had he said it? Were there ever more pointless, impotent words in the English language than “I’m sorry.” The words uttered when all was lost, when nothing could alter outcomes.

“Let me try to do better,” he said. “Please.”

There was only silence on the other end. He thought that maybe she had hung up, as she sometimes did, without a word. Even when she wasn’t angry, she would every once in a while just absently end a call, her mind on to the next thing.

They were so different, always had been. He was a writer. She was an editor. He created; she corrected.
There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things, Wolf. Most grown
-ups know that.
Was it Ray Bradbury who said, Stay drunk on writing so that reality doesn’t destroy you? On the page, you could write the world. Off the page, the world would crush you, if you let it, with its harsh consequences and brutal outcomes, with all its banalities and dull day-to-day slog.