I went to my office in the English department-more out of obligation than anything else-but I couldn’t concentrate on anything. When I sat down at my desk, it felt as though I were sitting behind an unrecognizable wooden block, a piece of furniture whose purpose I no longer remembered or understood. The whole room felt that way. It smelled funny-different-and the proportions and angles of the walls seemed off, as though it had been years and not weeks since I’d been there. I made a halfhearted attempt to sort through the mail. I placed it into two piles: things I knew I would throw away and things I would probably throw away.
I turned on my computer and listened to it whir and grind as it booted. Occasionally a group of students passed in the hallway, their voices sounding like the chirps and calls of exotic birds. It was a mistake to come, I decided. There was no work I could do.
I checked my e-mail. More than eighty messages waited, most of them departmental and university announcements. I scanned the subject lines: Health Fair. Estate Planning. Sandy’s Baby Shower. Spring Teaching Schedules. I didn’t bother to go through them. They’d still be there later, and if anyone needed anything important from me, they could call. I might not answer, but they could call.
I looked at my overcrowded bookshelves. At eye level sat a pile of research materials for the Hawthorne book. I rolled my chair over and picked them up. The top page was dusty, so I wiped it off with the back of my hand. ThenI flippedthrough.A couple of photocopied articles and some notes I’d made on a legal pad. I knew it was my handwriting, but the thoughts on the page didn’t mean anything to me. I couldn’t remember what I was trying to say. “Wakefield,” it read, and the word was underlined three times. “Opacity.” It was underlined three times as well.
Someone knocked on the door, quick, tentative taps. I decided to just ignore it. But they knocked again, louder and more insistent.
“Shit,” I muttered.
I put the Hawthorne notes away and opened the door.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Stuart?”
“Yes?”
Something about her face seemed vaguely familiar, and at first I assumed she was a student from a previous semester, one of the anonymous multitudes who flew under the radar in an American Lit survey, knocking out the requirement with the same joy and gusto usually reserved for doing laundry. But then I noticed the limpness of her hair, the tiredness of her eyes. It registered.
“Tracy,” I said. “I’m sorry. Out of context, I-”
“You don’t expect to see a girl like me here on campus.”
I stepped back. “Come in. Sit down.” She looked uncertain. Her eyes roamed the room as though she were across a boundary and into another world. She settled into my extra chair, the one where students usually sat. I took my seat behind the desk. “Are you a student here?”
Her laugh possessed a bitter edge. “Yeah, I’d have to rob a bank and not just take off my clothes to pay for this. I didn’t even finish high school.”
“Thank you for talking to the police and working with them on the sketch.”
She didn’t respond. Her hand was raised to her head, and her index finger twirled a strand of brittle-looking hair. Her eyes were focused on the desktop.
“It’s going to help a lot, I think. The sketch.” When she didn’t answer again, I said, “Is there a reason why you’re here? Is something wrong?”
“I guess that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, all that stuff in the papers and on TV about your daughter.”
“It’s there because of you.”
“Yeah. .” She stopped twirling her hair and looked at me. “I’m sorry about that.”
“What are you sorry for?”
“You believe my story, don’t you?” she asked.
“Is there a reason why I shouldn’t?” I asked.
She shook her head slowly, and while she did I remembered Ryan’s comments about Tracy. Well detailed. Convincingly so.
“I saw what I saw,” she said. “I did.”
“Then there shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Have you thought about what you’d do if she came back?” she asked.
“You mean Caitlin, right? Have I thought about her coming back home?” I asked. “Of course. Many times.”
In great detail. Convincingly so. Caitlin running into my arms. Caitlin saying my name. Caitlin happy and smiling, a beautiful young woman ready to resume her life.
“I hope you get to see that come true,” she said.
She smiled a little, but it didn’t possess much warmth.
“Is something wrong, Tracy? Is there something you need to tell me that you’re having a hard time getting out?”
“You’re a religious man, right?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“Why would you ask me that?”
“I just thought since you saw that. . vision in the park yesterday.”
I squirmed a little in my chair. “I wouldn’t call it a vision.”
“But you saw something. Something you believe in. Like me at the club.”
For the moment, I followed the train of her thought. We were alike, she and I. We were both witnesses to things central to Caitlin’s case, and while others may have had their doubts, we were both certain. We believed ourselves and each other at the very least.
She started twirling her hair again. “I haven’t had an easy time of things, you know.”
“Since we met-”
“In life.”
She looked at me again, without smiling. Her eyes were hard, impermeable. Like colored glass.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
I didn’t know where our conversation was going. I thought she was looking for reassurances from me, for an understanding that I felt happy about her coming forward and telling her story to the police. But something hovered beneath the surface of her words, something slippery and elusive I couldn’t get a handle on.
“See, I want to help you,” she said. “That’s why I called Liann, even though I’d been in trouble before and I don’t really like the police.”
“I understand.”
“I’d like to help you more.” She still twirled the hair. And with her other hand, she tapped a fingernail-the polish chipped and dark-against the armrest of the chair.
“Let me show you something.” She bent down out of my sight and rustled around in her bag. She popped back up holding a business card. She brushed a loose strand of hair out of her face, then passed the business card across the desk to me. “Here. I brought this for you.”
I reached out. It was a business card for someone named Susan Goff of “Volunteer Victim Services.” A local phone number was listed under her name.
I knew my face betrayed my skepticism. “What is this?” I asked.
“She’s a lady who helps people.”
“A therapist?”
“She’s not a therapist,” Tracy said. “I don’t even know if she went to school.”
I tried to hand the card back. “I’m not really interested in that.”
“I met her through a friend,” Tracy said. “But she works with the cops too.”
The name sounded familiar to me. Volunteer Victim Services. Ryan had mentioned them to us more than once, but we never called or followed up. “The police are already working on this,” I said.
“She’s not a cop,” Tracy said. “She’s. . just someone to talk to, someone who’s willing to support you no matter what. She’s not working any angles.”
“Everybody has an angle, don’t they?” I asked.
“Susan’s nice. She’s not a lawyer or anything like that. She understands people and things.” Tracy rolled her eyes a little. “I mean, I know Liann’s trying to help me and everything, but she’s only willing to do so much, you know? She wants to help me, but she wants to help me on her terms. If I ask her for something, something outside her agenda, she shuts me down.”
“Have you been in therapy?” I asked.
“That’s all bullshit,” she said. “Therapists, social workers-you just tell them what they want to hear. They check off their little boxes on their little forms, and they pass you on to somebody else.” Tracy bent down again and brought out her cell phone. She studied the display and frowned. “I have to go in a minute. But keep that card and use it if you want. Maybe you could talk to Susan. I’ve talked to her before, and she’s really helpful, you know, with life and relationships and stuff. She listens to me. Really listens to me. You know what it’s like when someone really listens to you?”
“I know what you mean,” I said.
“Susan’s not a bullshitter. Not at all. She tells you the truth if you want to hear it. And if you don’t have a minister or a shrink or anything, you need someone to talk to. Right?”
“I don’t know. .”
“Think about it. Okay? She just. . she knows things. A lot of things. Sometimes I think she knows me better than I know myself. And she’s comfortable talking about stuff that’s tough to talk about.”
“Is this what you came to tell me?” I asked, holding the card in the air between us. “Is this all?”
She squirmed a little in the chair, shifting her weight from one side to the other as though fighting off an unpleasant itch.
“Tracy? Is there something else?”
“Remember how I said I had a daughter?”
“Yes.”
Her voice was lower. “You know how kids are expensive to raise.”
“I don’t follow.”
She squirmed some more. Side to side, rocking like a metronome.
“Are you asking me for money?”
“You see. .” She paused, let out a long breath. “I’ve been thinking about what I saw that night. Thinking and thinking. .”
“And?”
She slumped a little, her body going slack in the chair.
“Tracy?”
“I want to remember more,” she said. “I want to help more.”
She stopped short. Somewhere outside, a lawn mower engine kicked to life, making a low rumble across the campus.
“What do you know?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
“If you think you can come in here and mess with me, toy with my emotions-”
She moved quickly and was up out of the chair, reaching for her bag and brushing her hair back out of her face. She didn’t even look at me, but turned for the door.
“Tracy, wait.”
My hand went to my back pocket. I never carried much cash. I dug around and found forty-two dollars. I held it out to her.
She turned and looked at me, looked at my hand and the money, but didn’t make a move to take it. I tossed it onto the desk.
“Take it,” I said. “I don’t care.”
She still didn’t move. Her top teeth rested on her lower lip.
“Buy diapers or something. But if you know anything else. .”
She took two steps forward and picked up the money. She looked at it for a moment, then folded the bills in half and slipped them into the front pocket of her shorts.
“That man is very bad,” she said.
“Do you know him from somewhere? Have you seen him before?”
She backed away, her eyes averted from mine.
I started around the desk. “Tracy, if you know something and you don’t tell-”
She held her hand up between us, telling me to stop. I did.
“Tell Liann,” I said.
“I told the truth already,” she said. “I told my story.”
“Is there more?”
She nodded toward my desk. It took a moment for me to understand what she meant. Then I saw it-the card. Volunteer Victim Services.
“Think about calling Susan,” she said.
Then she slipped through the door and closed it behind her almost soundlessly.