Phillip’s Zippo gave his face a sharpness as he lit the cigarette. He stuffed the lighter back in his pocket and drew on the cigarette.
“It was the summer of fifty-one, at a beach party, one of those things with a bonfire and kids passing around a bottle,” Phillip said. “I had a job at this country club over in Saugatuck to make enough to go back to Western. I had never seen her around town before that night on the beach. She was just there, sitting by herself, this little thing wrapped up in this big blue sweater. She had blond hair that smelled like lilacs. She was seventeen. Maybe that should have scared me off, but it didn’t.”
He paused to pick a bit of tobacco off his lip. “When she had to leave that night, I walked her home. Her family had one of those big stone fortress houses on Lake Michigan. We only had a week together. I went back to Western and she went home.”
“That’s the last time you saw her?” Louis asked.
“Oh no, no.” Phillip let out a low, sad laugh. “Turned out we were neighbors of sorts. The DeFoes lived in Grosse Pointe Farms. My folks lived in the less desirable part of the Pointes, a place everybody called the Cabbage Patch. We grew up less than ten miles from each other and a galaxy apart.”
Phillip had gone quiet again. Louis could see the glowing tip of his cigarette as he took another drag. It was a moment before Phillip spoke again.
“We saw each other on weekends,” he said. “She’d sneak out and her brother Rodney would drive her to the park by the lake and I’d pick her up on my motorcycle.”
“What happened?” Louis asked.
Phillip let out a long breath. “Her mother found out and threatened to send Claudia away to school.” He paused. “We decided to elope. It was nuts, crazy . . . she was so young. But I didn’t care. I wanted her.”
Louis was surprised, but he remained quiet.
“We made plans to leave late at night, after her mother was asleep. Rodney was going to bring her.” Phillip took a hard breath. “I waited at the park, but she never showed up.”
Louis waited, shivering in the cold. Phillip didn’t seem to notice.
“The next day I went to her house,” Phillip went on. “I stood out there, banging on that door, and finally this maid lets me in and tells me to wait.” He paused. “I’ll never forget standing in that goddamn library thinking Claudia was in that house somewhere that very minute and I couldn’t get to her. So I starting yelling out her name. I was standing in that big foyer at the bottom of that staircase yelling her name and hearing it come back to me in that big empty house.” He took a breath. “The butler or whatever the hell he was came back, then some security guy showed up and threw me out. He followed me down the road until I was past the guardhouse.”
Phillip paused. Louis waited. The words were coming, but like slivers of glass painfully pulled through the prism of Phillip’s memories.
“I kept calling,” Phillip said. “But no one would talk to me. Then, a few months later, Rodney showed up at my door. He told me he was there for my own good, to help me get over her.”
Another pause. It went on so long Louis feared Phillip had shut down. The ash from his cigarette fell to the patio.
“Then Rodney told me Claudia tried to kill herself,” Phillip said. “That’s why I couldn’t see her. She had slit her wrists.”
Phillip looked down at the cigarette butt in his fingers as if suddenly aware of it. He reached down and put it in the sand pail. When he straightened, he went on, his voice steady.
“He said Claudia was sick, that she had always been mentally fragile. He told me—he begged me—to just let her go.”
A light went on inside the house. From the corner of his eye, Louis could see Frances in the dining room, setting the table for dinner.
“What did you do?” Louis asked.
Phillip was silent.
“Phillip? What did you do?”
“I tried to forget her. And I did. I met Frances. And for a long time, I didn’t think about Claudia. Then, a week before Frances and I were going to be married, I drove to Hidden Lake. I wasn’t even sure she was still there. But she was. A nurse took pity on me and let me in to see her.”
Louis glanced toward the dining room. Frances had disappeared. He hoped she wouldn’t come out before Phillip finished.
“It was cold but sunny,” Phillip said. “She was sitting on a sunporch. She was just sitting there, holding this blanket around herself, and she looked up at me. She looked up at me and she didn’t see me.”
Phillip turned and Louis could see his face clearly in the light spilling out from inside. Phillip’s eyes glistened.
“I was scared,” he whispered. “I was never so scared in my life.”
“Phil—”
Phillip ran a hand over his face.
“I gave up,” he said.
“What?”
“I gave up, Louis. I couldn’t face it, any of it. Why she was there, what was happening to her, and that look on her face, like she had been erased. I couldn’t face any of it.” Phillip shook his head slowly and looked away. “I ran away. It wasn’t my finest moment.”
“But you went back,” Louis said.
“Oh yeah, I went back in 1972,” Phillip said. “It was my fortieth birthday. I went back to the hospital and they told me she had died there a year before.”
“That’s when you started tending her grave,” Louis said.
“Not until the summer after,” Phillip said.
“Phil, you were a very young man when all that happened.”
“I ran,” Phillip said. “Don’t you see? I just left her in that goddamn place and ran.” He turned quickly, taking a step away.
Louis looked at Phillip’s back. He let out a long, slow breath. “Phil, you need to tell Frances.”
“I know,” Phillip said without turning.
Louis looked toward the patio doors. He could see Frances standing there, looking out at them. “We need to go in,” he said.
Phillip was looking out over the yard. “What’s next?” he asked.
“What?”
“The next step to finding her remains. What’s next?”
Louis thought for a moment. “I can’t go back to the hospital until Monday. Maybe I could try her family.”
“We’ll go tomorrow,” Phillip said.
“No, I’ll go alone. It’s better that way. You’re going to have to trust me on this.”
Phillip gave him a nod and went inside. Louis sank into a lawn chair. The metal was cold on the back of his legs, and he felt a shiver move through his shoulders. But he didn’t want to go inside.
It wasn’t my finest moment.
He could see her face now. Her dark skin streaked with rain. Her eyes frightened.
I’m pregnant, Louis.
Louis stared out into the dark yard. He could barely make out the shape of an old rusted swing set.
I ran away. From Claudia, Frances, everything. It wasn’t my finest moment.
Louis pushed up from the chair and went back inside.
CHAPTER 6
Nine