He gives me what I call his “charming” smile. Liam’s six feet tall, and at forty-two, he still looks like he’s in the merchant marines—his skin halfway between tanned and burned, with deep lines ingrained in his forehead. His dark-brown hair is peppered with gray, and his eyes are a hazel color that’s the opposite of mine, closer to brown than green. “Does it bother you?”
“Sometimes. Plus, three people called me ma’am today, so I think I’m past the ‘kid’ stage.”
He gives me a quick once-over. “It might’ve been the outfit.”
“Shut it.”
The bartender delivers our beers and Liam slips him a twenty. He’s the king of overtipping, which gets him goodwill and access, both of which are useful in his profession.
“You rang?” Liam asks.
“What took you so long to get here?”
“I was on a case.”
Liam works mostly as a private detective, with a side hustle as a fixer for certain prominent New York families and their lawyers. It’s a lucrative business, though Liam doesn’t care that much about money. He’s the one who rescued me from the Land of Todd. And then he spent a year helping me reintegrate into society. One way or another, he’s taught me most of the things I know.
“Something I can help with?” I ask him.
He laughs. “I’ve got it. Besides, you were never my best student.”
“Can you blame me?”
He puts his hand over mine briefly. “You know I don’t believe in blame.”
A Liamism. There is no blame. Check, don’t trust. You are your own choices. I had a notebook full of them, back when I used to write down everything he said like it was something to replace the Toddisms I’d been brought up on.
“I know.”
“How was your trip?” Liam asks.
“Quiet.”
“Good.”
“Thanks for meeting me.”
“No problem. What’s up?”
“Can’t I just be hankering for the pleasure of your company?”
He pulls a face as he lifts his beer to his mouth. “I haven’t seen you in, what?”
“Six months.” I knew to the day, but that might freak him out.
“Six months. That’s too long.”
“I’ve been . . . busy.”
“So I read. How come you didn’t answer my texts or meet me when I asked?”
That had been hard, ignoring Liam. I’ve been in love with him since I was eighteen, and I’m used to following his commands. “I needed to figure some stuff out on my own. Plus . . . well, I was ashamed, to be honest.”
The bartender delivers the plate of fish tacos with a side of fries that I ordered right before Liam appeared. He reaches for one of the tacos. “Do you mind?”
“Everything I have is yours,” I say.
Liam winces at the Toddism. “Okay, now I know something’s wrong. Spill.”
I grew up in the Land of Todd. That sounds so innocent, doesn’t it? Like the Land of Nod, what Crate & Barrel used to call their kids’ furniture line. And for my parents, it started that way. When they joined, it all seemed benign. I want to believe this, because thinking otherwise puts too much between my parents and me, and we’ve got enough baggage.
They were brought up in strict Mormon families and married young. They became members of the Land of Todd in their early twenties and were joined there soon after by my father’s brother, Tom, and his wife, Tanya. My parents must’ve given the place glowing reviews for the fresh air and the clean life they were living. And Todd. I’m sure they sang Todd’s praises as well. His energy. His purity.
His vision.
The Land of Todd—or the LOT, as we called it—rested on a large plot of land in the Adirondack Mountains. It was made up of small cabins that each family unit built for themselves, the communal dining hall called the Gathering Place, and Todd’s house, a log cabin overlooking the lake. There wasn’t any fencing when they joined. I’ve seen the photographs from the early days, and in every one of them everyone is laughing.
But they should’ve been paying more attention. Done some research. The Land of Nod is where God exiled Cain after he killed Abel. It’s a place of wanderers, where some said even God himself could not see. Does that sound like the right idea to build a future on?
By the time the children came along—me; my cousin, Kiki; the others—things had started to shift. Todd didn’t like the loss of attention, the loyalty to someone other than him, so he assigned two of the single women to be caregivers/guards and separated us from our parents. From the time I was five, I lived and worked at the Upper Camp, a part of the property that wasn’t easily accessible and had none of the amenities (running water, electricity, plumbing) the houses I’d known till then did.
We were drilled in odd skills up there: how to dig a ditch, how to meditate for hours. We were being trained for something—we even had little outfits that I learned later were Girl and Boy Scout uniforms picked up on the cheap—but what? A new kind of society? A revolution? Todd was talking about that near the end of my time there, but it was incoherent. We’d be placed in strategic positions, and we’d know what to do when the time came. We’d understand the signals. It was all garbage, but we absorbed it silently, as we’d been taught.
Then, on a rare day when we’d been taken into town to get groceries at the farmers’ market, Liam approached me while I was picking out tomatoes. “You don’t know me,” he said under his breath after telling me to look straight ahead and not react. “My name is Liam.” But I knew exactly who he was. A few years before, an entire family had left in the middle of the night. After that, there was a name that was whispered late at night when our minders were asleep. Liam. Whenever someone left, it was because of him. Maybe that was true, or maybe they slipped away without help. It was hard to know what to believe.
But there was Liam in the flesh, looking like one of the heroes on the covers of the cheesy romance novels the girls hid in the walls and passed around like the contraband they were.
Telling me to keep looking ahead, to just listen. Offering a lifeline. A way out.
I took it.
When I’m done filling Liam in, I’ve eaten one of the fish tacos, and he’s eaten two. The bar has filled up around us, and the music’s been turned up a notch. Imagine Dragons is singing about being a believer. What do they know?
We’ve finished our beers and ordered another round. Not that it’s a long story to tell, but Liam is big on getting all the details, especially about Jessica Two.
“She’s done this before,” I say.
“I was thinking the same,” Liam says. He’s got his own notebook out, the twin of mine. So many of my preferences are Liam based, I have trouble deciding if I do something because I like it or because he taught me to. “You thinking of trying to find her yourself?”
“That’s why I called you. What do you think?”
“I think you should.”
“You do?”
I was expecting a lecture. I’d broken one of his cardinal rules: never leave all your money in one place, especially not a place that’s easily accessible through electronic means.