“Faith.” Len tries to take my trembling hand in his, but I stand up and turn away. I have no idea how to behave in this situation.
“I’ve heard that there was a series of...things. Evidence. That made the police decide not to investigate this as a missing persons case.” His face is red and downcast. I know how difficult it is for Len to be here—to be saying these things, but I wasn’t going to make it easier for him. I go into the kitchen and return with the bottle of whisky. I sit down again and pour two more glasses silently.
“Should I go?” he asks.
“No,” is all I can muster, burying my face in my drink. I associate Len with Liam, and his presence is still a comfort in some intangible way.
“Listen,” he continues reluctantly. “I was with you. Everyone was. He’d never just...walk off. I don’t know what I’m trying to say here except that if it were me...I’d want someone to tell me the truth. I’d want this email. I hate that the cops were right. If they were right. But they had reasons to not pursue it, and it left you...fucked. I know.” He sits down to contain himself and sips the topped-off drink I poured him.
“I thought maybe seeing this could help provide...some, I don’t know...closure.” He closes his eyes. I give him nothing.
“And even if it doesn’t, well, goddamn it, Faith, how could I not tell you?” he says.
Provide some closure? Is he a writer or a fucking therapist? I nod to him, suck my teeth, blink back tears. He is so sincere. He is trying to do the right thing, but I hate him right now. My skin feels hot and electric. I don’t want to break down in front of Len Turlson.
“Thank you, Len,” I say coldly. I stand. I do want him to go.
“God, Faith. I’m so sorry.”
I let my tears escape silently. “I know.” I flick them away, quickly, and try to do the Midwest thing we do—the compulsion to divert attention away from ourselves. “Hug Bonnie for me, and thanks for letting me know.” Thanks for letting me know? That’s a response you give when someone tells you you’ve made a grammar error. My body language makes Len feel unwelcome enough that he decides to let himself out after an awkward, sympathetic hug. I pour his full glass of whisky into mine and sob the minute I hear him pull away from the driveway.
Liam chose to leave. I’m holding proof. How could he do this?
FOUR
THEN
It had been just over eight years since I met Liam—at a chocolate festival, of all places. Ellie had coaxed me into going. She adored her fall traditions and forced everyone to go along, and she expected a smile and fun to be had. Genuine or forged, it didn’t matter. We were making memories, damn it. This was before kids. Apple picking, pumpkin farms—it was forced family fun that included just her and me back then. These days, though, wine tastings have morphed into hayrides full of sticky-fingered kids wielding pumpkin-shaped candy corns and seasonally wrapped Reese’s cups.
Last year, instead of getting buzzed off mulled wine, I spent the better part of an hour talking Hannah down from a candy-induced meltdown. Turns out if you try to explain to a kid that although Rudy Gutman stole your three-cent chocolate Milk Dud, you are still holding six pounds of even more valuable candy, they can’t be reasoned with. The economics of it was totally lost on a two-year-old who just released inconsolable, snotty howls until distracted by Ellie digging out an equally valueless, hairy Milk Dud from the bottom of her goody bag and saying, “Look.” That’s all it took, and I’d never once even considered that.
One of the first things that drew me to Liam was his position on kids. I had just turned thirty and was starting to get fatuous comments about “clocks ticking” just when Ellie was in a fit of baby fever. When two women at the festival stood dipping knots of bread under the chocolate fountain at one of the kiosks, I heard one of the women complain about her kids, and then say something like “but what is a home without children?” And uninvited, I answered, “quiet.” It was probably the chocolate wine speaking. They just looked at each other and shuffled themselves over to the chocolate macaroon castle.
Liam was sitting at a nearby table with a sampler of fruit and truffles, holding a pad and paper. He’d just started with the Tribune and was writing a piece on one of the chocolatiers. He made a joke about how people with toddlers refer to them in months, and stated that if they’re over a year old, you can just say “a year,” not fifteen months. They’re not aged cheese. I laughed. He offered me a strawberry wearing a chocolate tuxedo and gave me his card.
We fell in love hard and fast. We spent winter under comforters with takeout and whisky, sharing with each other our favorite music and movies, like college students—forcing one another to listen to a particular line in some angsty song that was reminiscent of the halcyon days of our youth, not so long ago.
It was barely a mile, we discovered, between my duplex in Wicker Park and his apartment in Ukrainian Village, so we’d walk to one another’s place after work and make love fiercely before going out to one of the infinite number of restaurants Liam had to show me. My freshly straightened, sandy hair hung long and neat down my back until he came over and pushed into the door when I opened it, and kissed me.
We’d stumble into the bedroom, or sometimes not even make it that far and end up on an area rug in the living room, hot and groaning, my once sleek hair now in damp curls clinging to my sweaty neck.
Then, weary from our day and exhausted from the sex, we just wanted to stay naked, interwoven in each other’s bodies and sleep, but there was a culinary world that had to be explored, so we’d always pile on layers and brave the cold night in search of a restaurant to impress us. Well, him. I was pretty impressed with every little haunt he took me to.
We’d stroll through evening snow flurries, through decidedly untrendy neighborhoods where he boasted we’d find the most authentic fare. He delighted in teaching me about food.
“This was an Irish Union working-class neighborhood,” he said to me on a frigid night as we ducked into an old pub for bangers and mash. “It may be gentrifying, but there are untouched gems where you can really see what an old family-run place should be.” We sat in old, wooden back booths sharing a bottle of wine or tiny cups of espresso, talking into the night, many nights. I had just started my postdoctoral placement in community mental health before getting my license and moving into private practice and I was working all the time, but the nights were all ours.
One night in November, we lay under the sheets with only the red flicker of the fireplace lighting our bodies. A Vito & Nick’s pizza box sat open on the floor beside the bed next to an empty bottle of d’Arenberg shiraz. He asked about my family, my childhood memories—the sort of insightful questions that made me fall in love with him. The amount of therapy one undergoes to become a therapist leaves very few past traumas unexamined, but I still found, to my surprise, that he was the first person besides my therapists to ask; talking about it in an intimate context brought up a flood of emotion I swallowed back, but was shocked to experience.