Part 26 (2/2)
”You don't think the reporter's disappearance had anything to do with...” I trailed off, thinking about the possibilities.
I typed the reporter's name and hometown into the search engine, but no other articles about her came up.
Jack pressed his lips together in a grim sort of way. ”I wouldn't put anything past Cole, or anyone like him.”
We also started digging deeper into the Orpheus myth, but further research turned up only slightly varying accounts of the same story Mrs. Stone had told me months ago. If there was something there, I wasn't seeing it. Maybe we'd have to find Mary. Press her for more information.
A few days pa.s.sed, and Jules showed up at my locker. We hadn't spoken since that day handing out flyers.
”Hey,” I said.
She smiled, but it didn't look like a smile. ”You wanna go to the Ray and grab a coffee? Or are you still working with Mrs. Stone after school?”
”No. I'm caught up enough now. I could go.”
She let out a breath of air. ”Great. I'll drive.”
The Ray was about halfway up Main Street. Jules didn't say much on the way. When we got there, several booths were filled with other students from school and the air was thick with the smell of coffee, and French toast and eggs cooking. The Ray was famous for its French toast, which was as thick as a brick and made out of coffee cake.
I followed Jules to a couple of stools at the bar and we ordered lattes. As the waitress walked away, Jules turned to me and said, ”I'm sorry things are so different now. That day with the flyers... That was painful.”
I didn't know what to say.
”I miss my friend,” she said. ”I miss being able to talk about anything with you, and knowing you'd take it to the grave. I don't have that anymore. I can't talk to my mom-you remember her, she never understands anything. And talking to a boy just isn't the same as talking to my girl.”
I smiled at that.
”I miss it too,” I said.
The waitress returned with our steaming lattes, and we spent the rest of the time talking. Not about Jack, and not about where I'd been, but about regular high school stuff, and eventually we fell into our old conversation patterns.
I loved it. To be with my old friend, slurping coffee and forgetting about life.
For a little while.
Jules dropped me off at my car in the school parking lot, and I waved to her as she blew me a kiss. Nothing had really been resolved over our lattes, but fixing problems hadn't been the point, I don't think.
My dad was in the kitchen reading the paper when I got home. His hair looked like he'd been running his fingers through it.
”Everything okay, Dad?” I went to the fridge to get us both juice.
He grunted. ”Apparently I'm not hip enough for a resort town.” He shook his head and folded the paper back and kept reading.
”The paper says that?”
”It's an op-ed piece. I'm-quote-'old-fas.h.i.+oned and holding the town back.'”
”Back from what?”
He shrugged and put the paper down. ”World domination? I don't know. Should I plug earphones in my ears and walk around looking at my iPod like all the kids do? Would that make a difference?”
”Ignore it, Dad.” I poured him a cup of orange juice and set it in front of him. ”You're perfect for this town.”
He rubbed his face in his hands. ”Thanks, Nik.” And then he looked at me as if noticing me for the first time in a long time. ”Thanks.”
I wanted to stay that way for a few moments longer. Me and my dad. Looking at each other. Seeing each other. Grafting this moment.
Look at me, Dad.
Too soon, he turned back to his paper and the moment was gone.
Sat.u.r.day morning was crisp and blue. The rest of the state was suffering from the effects of an inversion in the weather, which made the air thick with gunk, but Park City was above all that. Closer to heaven, we used to say. I showed up at the soup kitchen an hour early, and just as I swung my car into an empty spot, Jack's car pulled alongside. He gave me a knowing grin. Neither of us could wait to talk to Mary.
I unlocked my doors, and he got out of his car and slid into the pa.s.senger seat of mine. ”Looks like we both had the same idea.”
We waited with the heat on, watching for Mary. People started to gather near the soup kitchen door, waiting for it to open, but we still didn't see her.
”Maybe we should just go inside,” I said. ”She'll be here.”
Jack and I went in, and Christopher put us to work at our stations. Neither of us spoke. I dripped and sloshed the soup a couple of times because I couldn't keep my eyes off the entrance.
We served up hundreds of trays. She never showed.
Christopher hadn't seen her all week.
After the last straggler made his way down the counter, Jack started to clear the dining room while I went to the closet and gathered the mopping supplies. He stacked one chair on top of another with more force than was necessary, the clanging metal providing the sound track for his frustration.
”There has to be someone else who knows about this stuff,” Jack said.
I grimaced. ”I'm sure there is. But how would we find them? The internet search didn't turn up-”
”Wait,” Jack interrupted, pausing with a chair two feet off the ground. He set it back down.
”What?”
”Meredith said the Daughters of Persephone are raised to have no attachments to the Surface.”
”Yeah?”
He tilted his head at me as if I should've seen it. ”So who raised her to believe that?”
”I don't know. Her ... mom,” I said as it finally hit me what Jack was getting at.
<script>