Thought I Knew You (15 page)

Owen was the same height as Will, with dark hair and dark eyes. Both men were dressed in jeans and black shirts, stylish in a way that Greg never was and Drew never tried to be. I thought of Greg’s khaki pants—
pleated for God’s sake—
and Drew’s raggedy jeans. They sat at our table and motioned for the bartender to bring another round. Very slick.

I felt stifled with nerves. Which was fine with Sarah, she was off and running. Within a half-hour, I knew both were single, where they worked, where they lived—they were locals—why they were at the bar—they just liked to hang out there. I gave very little about myself, but the darker one with the blue eyes—
Will, was it?
—inched his seat closer until his knee was resting on my thigh.

Is this what people do?
The alcohol made me paranoid and jumpy, not the effect I’d hoped for. I studied Sarah, trying to pick up cues on how to be normal. She laughed, asked all the right questions, responded to the hard questions with coy answers, and flattered without being obvious. I watched her, amazed. Like a Russian ballet, every move was calculated, graceful, and perfectly executed. She had both men eating out of the palm of her hand. I hadn’t seen Sarah in her element in years. She’d had some practice. As the hours passed, and we all got drunk, she became more affectionate, mostly with Owen.

Will attempted conversation with me, and I could articulate most of the time, but nothing like Sarah. I didn’t have the training to compete with her. Every move I made somehow felt wrong, and I became incredibly self-conscious.

Not deterred, Will trailed his hand down my back and leaned over to whisper, “Do you want to get out of here?”

I didn’t know people really said that.
I smiled nervously. “Look, Will, I do.” I put my hand on his arm, which felt warm and alive beneath my fingertips. I tingled with anticipation, such a newly fantastic feeling, but it all felt wrong at that moment. “Believe me, I do. And I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m going through something right now, and I… I can’t.” I heard Drew’s voice in my mind:
We can’t.
“Listen, are you guys going to be around tomorrow night?”

“We live only a few blocks away.”

“We should get together then.”

“Have you been to Float yet? It’s upstairs. That’s actually where we usually go after a few drinks here,” Will explained. “It’s on the roof of the hotel.”

We exchanged numbers, storing them in our phones.

“Call me tomorrow night, and we’ll meet up, okay?” He gave me a chaste kiss on the cheek and a brilliant smile.

I got up to leave the table, tapping Sarah on the arm.
I’m going up,
I motioned with my hand.
Are you going to be okay?
I mouthed.

She waved me away, obviously annoyed at my mothering. Sarah went clubbing weekly in L.A. I waved at Will, who looked somewhat confused about which way to go. Sarah leaned close to Owen, and I had no idea if she was whispering to him or kissing him. I knew Will would be a definite third wheel. I felt like the worst wingman ever. But I needed my bed. When I got up to the room, I crashed facedown, still in my dress, and didn’t wake up until nine the next morning.

Sarah managed to wake up and shower before I rolled out of bed.

“What time did you get in?” I asked incredulously.

“Three-ish. Do you want to do the whale watch today?” She perched on the edge of the bed to watch the weather channel on mute.

“Um. I don’t know. Sure. Can I wake up first?” Yawning, I swung my legs over the side of the bed. Sun streamed in through the windows. The crisp white sheets with lime-green coverlets and modern furniture, all lines and angles, gave the room a fresh, contemporary appeal.

“Oh, how was Owen?” I asked sleepily, trudging to the bathroom.

She gave me a Cheshire cat grin. “Exactly what I needed. He has a fabulous apartment.”

I stopped in my tracks. “You went to his apartment?”

She made a disgusted noise. “Stop being a mother. For once.”

I shrugged and padded into the bathroom. I took another long, hot shower without any interruptions. No one needed anything from me. No one was waiting for me when I exited to tell me that Leah had spilled her milk, or stole her doll, or ripped a page in her book. I took my time getting ready, wanting to look good for the second day in a row. The vacation was performing its rejuvenation magic. I felt lighter, freer.

We barely made it to the dock in time and boarded the already crowded boat. We took a spot along the railing and prepared for our three-hour boat ride. Not a boat person, I was expecting to feel seasick.

About an hour out, we saw a group of three gray whales and one baby calf, and any concern I had over seasickness vanished. They swam close to the boat, so that we were lightly sprayed by the V-shaped blow. The largest one, “an old mama,” surfaced right at our rail and stayed even with the boat.

Our tour guide announced that almost all gray whales go blind in their right eyes eventually. The whale’s blind right eye gazed unseeingly at me, mottled with white milky spots in black glass. Her gray-speckled skin was cracked and bore battle scars, thick and jaggedly torn flesh that had healed, reopened, and rehealed, the cost of protecting her babies in the harsh open ocean.
You have been through some serious stuff in your life,
I thought
, a defensive mother, traveling alone with her offspring, shielding her calf from the perils of the month-long journey.

Feeling sentimentally connected, I knelt down at the rail until I could almost run my hand along her barnacled surface. She veered left and gave a short blow
goodbye
as she rejoined her pack, the spray misting the boat. I watched the mammals fade into the horizon until I could no longer differentiate between the whales and the waves.

A megaphoned voice broke into my reverie. “Ladies and gentleman, that was somewhat remarkable. Typically, the gray whales will come up to the boat because they’re curious about the people, but they do not frequently swim with it, as they are afraid of getting hit by the propellers. That one also came significantly closer to the boat than we usually see. So I hope you enjoyed that unusual event!”

There was a din in the crowd as people took pictures, exclaimed, and pointed. The rest of our trip was uneventful; we saw dolphins playing, but nothing came close to the mottled old whale. We docked just in time, as Sarah and I were both feeling mildly nauseous from the ride.

Exiting the boat onto the pier, I caught a flash of sandy hair with a touch of gray. Bile rose in my throat. The man’s back was broad shouldered, and his walk was confident, almost a swagger.
The walk of a man who almost got away with it?
I grabbed Sarah’s arm and wordlessly pointed. The man seemed to move faster, away from the pier and toward Harbor Drive. He was dressed in a red windbreaker and jeans and was holding hands with a woman. I motioned to Sarah to wait, that I’d be right back.

I stayed about twenty feet behind the couple as they crossed Harbor Drive, walking east on West Broadway. They stopped at a crosswalk, where he checked both directions, and from twenty feet away, I caught his profile.
Is it him?
I wasn’t sure. I followed them for three blocks as they talked and laughed, but I couldn’t make out the words. Once, the man put his arm around the woman and pulled her to him in a walking hug. I felt dizzy and paralyzed with fear, but knew I had to follow the couple to a possibly disastrous conclusion.

They stopped at Starbucks, and I stayed on the opposite corner. I didn’t want him to see me before I saw him. I couldn’t remember if Greg liked Starbucks. But what did that matter? Obviously, I didn’t know the real Greg anyway. When they emerged, heads bent low as they whispered to each other, I ducked back behind the corner to avoid being seen. When they turned right, I trailed behind them to a cell phone store. They clearly lived in the city. They were comfortable. They knew where Starbucks was and needed to grab a coffee before one of them got their cell phone repaired. Together. Had we ever done anything like that? I couldn’t remember. Those were the languid afternoons of childless couples.

I snuck up to the front door of the cell phone store and hovered off to the side, so I could still peek through the door. They stood at the counter for a while. When they turned to leave, I moved in front of the left door. They exited the right, and I stepped in front of them, blocking their path.

“Did you think I wouldn’t follow you?” I asked more forcefully than I had intended. I hadn’t even looked at his face; I couldn’t.

“I’m sorry. What?” His voice was a register deeper, alarmed but kind. I looked up. Green eyes instead of brown. His large nose, slightly crooked, had probably once been broken.

Greg’s nose has never been broken.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” I stammered, stumbling backward.

Chapter 19

“I
feel like such a fool.”
I sat with my head in my hands, staring at the concrete floor of our hotel room balcony. Sarah topped off my glass from the bottle of Pinot Grigio she’d plunked on ice. I finished it off in two long gulps. “I’m apparently seeing him in crowds now. Am I crazy?”

Sarah was nonchalant about the whole event. “No, I think it’s being in this city. You want to find him.”

“Of course I want to find him. But you know what the weirdest part is?” The ground several floors below us seemed to waver, and I concentrated on the horizon, steadying my vision. I vaguely remember having heard that staring at an immovable point will stop sickness. I wasn’t sure if that would help being drunk, though. Maybe the tip was for seasickness. “I was convinced it was him. About a block into the chase, I really thought it was him. All these thoughts were going through my head. What I would say? Would I be angry? Would I act angry? What would I do? Would he come home with me?” I took a deep breath. “Did I
want
him to come home with me?”

“Would you?” Sarah asked.

“No.” I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. “There will never be Greg and Claire again. I realized that today. I could never get over this. I could never love him again. Trust him again. While I was following who I thought was Greg, not once did I feel sad. Or hopeful. It wasn’t like it was in Rochester. In New York, I was convinced I would somehow rescue him. I’m so fucking delusional.”

“But what about the girls?” Sarah asked, never one to shy away from the tough questions. “Could you do it for them?”

Could I? Could I bring Greg home and pretend to be a family again?
Love him?
I pictured him in our room, in our bed, and waited for the heaviness in my gut. The sadness of missing Greg didn’t come. The alcohol may have played a contributing role, but the only emotion I could put my finger on was anger. White-hot rage simmered behind my eyes, putting pressure on my skull. I shook my head. “No. I could have handled the cheating, or maybe the lying, and even maybe him just leaving me. But this? To put me through this? To put
them
through this, the unknown? No. Any love I had for Greg has been destroyed by his lies.”

“So what are you going to do now? Are you going to keep looking for him?”

“I can’t. I have to move on. This is making me crazy. Following him around the country. Retracing his steps. Looking for clues in his study, in our bank account and credit card bills. There
are
no clues. He doesn’t
want
to be found.”

“So you believe he ran away?”

“Do you?” I countered.

She didn’t answer, but gazed over the railing at the intersection below.

I took a swig of wine. “Either that or he’s dead. But that’s so Hollywood movie because he would have had to have been killed in a way that either his body was never found or he was completely unrecognizable. Any unidentified man would be investigated and eventually come back to the missing Greg Barnes. Then, there’d be dental records comparison.”

“Watching a lot of
Law and Order
with your spare time now?”

“Oh, mostly just listening to Matt Reynolds, your friendly neighborhood homicide detective.”

“Hmm.” Sarah smiled thinly. “Is
he
single?”

I swatted at her. “I’m starving. Let’s go eat.”

We ate at Sevilla, a sleek tapas bar that doubled as a flamenco nightclub. Sarah introduced me to culture, stripped of
Sesame Street
and
Barney
. We drank Sangria martinis. Unlike the previous night, the alcohol had a loosening effect. Warmth tingled in my arms and legs, and I suppressed the desire to get on the dance floor all through dinner. Possibly the day’s events were contributing to my rowdiness.

“I’ve never seen you like this.” Sarah shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you should slow down.”

“Who’s the
mom
now?” I had no idea how to salsa. Loud Spanish music, glittering with castanets, thrummed in my ears. I tried to pull Sarah to her feet, but she resisted. I walked onto the dance floor alone. The other people ranged from professional flamenco dancers to simply talented dark-haired men and women. But there were no other Irish Catholics with two left feet. I immersed myself into the throng of hard bodies gyrating to the hypnotic music. I tried to focus on a woman near me and mimic her movements. After a few moments, I thought I looked pretty good.

“Where did you learn to salsa?” Sarah shouted from behind me.

I shrugged and pointed. “I didn’t. I’m following her!”

“Could have fooled me! You don’t look bad when you loosen up, Claire.” Sarah mimicked my moves, and before long, we were both sweating.

I felt a man’s hand slip around my waist. He pulled me to him, his lean body against my back. We moved to the music. Sensual and pulsating. He spun me around, and I caught a glimpse of his face: handsome, a tad older, dark skin, dark hair. I followed his lead, concentrating on my feet. He tightened his grip, and I lost my footing. He felt muscular in a way Greg never did—lean arms, firm chest, hard thighs. A dancer? Were there straight professional salsa dancers? I felt breathless. Most noticeably, I felt alive. The heady mixture of his cologne, sweat, and soap made my head spin. When the song ended, he kissed my hand, gave a little wave, and dissolved into the crowd. I turned to look for Sarah.