I found nothing, so operations were moved to our bedroom. Same approach there—over, under, around, through. I even checked my own belongings to make sure they hadn’t been used as new hiding places. Lily kept a diary, which I read, but I found nothing other than small gripes and triumphs, philosophical musings. Events and ideas that meant something to the day but would be quickly forgotten if not recorded. A touching note, but one that did not deter me, was how many times she wrote about us and how much better life had become since we met. There was progressively more nothing as I worked through our home from room to room, object to object. What was I looking for? Often I held something in my hand and stared at it as if I were the first archaeologist to discover hieroglyphics. You know they are of the greatest significance, there are stories and information, whole worlds here, but all of it is a million miles away from your understanding although only twelve inches away from your eyes.
Working for hours, I cut my hands and tore a fingernail reaching and pulling, twisting things apart. I stopped to make a sandwich and ate it looking at the small pile I’d assembled on the floor that might mean something. None of it meant anything. I knew it. I knew Lily was hiding something. The more I worked and thought about it, the more I was convinced her outburst was only the tip of one big iceberg of a lie. The proof was here, but I could not find it.
In the end, at three o’clock in the morning, when I had filled the pad with notes, checked and double-checked that everything was back exactly as I’d found it, finished cursing, finished double– and triple-checking… I had come up with exactly two things: There was absolutely no trace whatsoever of Rick Aaron. No letters, no diary entry, no old shirts shoved in a back drawer with his name tag sewn in, no photographs, nothing. How could that be? How could you love someone so much and, despite a bitter end, not keep something of theirs to remind you of a time in your life when you thought of nothing but them? I knew couples who’d thrown each other’s clothes out the window when they broke up, or gave the other’s belongings to the Salvation Army, but all of these people kept something. Not Lily. To judge by what I had “excavated,” the only proof of Rick Aaron or Lily’s relationship with Lincoln’s father was the stories she had told.
The second thing I found was a couple named Meier. Gregory and Anwen Meier. At the bottom of her underwear drawer was a small clipping from a dog magazine announcing Somerset Kennels, home of champion French bulldogs. Proprietors Anwen & Gregory Meier. An address and telephone number were given at the bottom. Lily loved dogs, so at first I thought she’d saved the paper because she was planning on buying one of these bulldogs when old Cobb passed away.
The next mention of these people came in a newspaper article I found slipped into one of her books. The article was old and yellowing, whereas the book was new—the copyright date only a year old. Mrs. Anwen Meier miraculously walked away from a collision on I-95 that totaled her automobile. Mrs. Meier was admittedly driving over the speed limit when she lost control of the vehicle. It left the road and crashed into the pillar of an overpass. Although suffering from mild shock, she was treated and later released from the hospital. In the margin of this article, Lily had written: “Anwen = Very beautiful’ in Welsh.” So they were friends, old school pals? I thought the connection must be with Gregory. Why else would she look up the name of the other woman?
The third “piece” of the Meiers was another newspaper clipping, also yellowed. It appeared to be from the same paper, simply announced the couple were leaving Fowler and moving back to New Jersey, their home state. Gregory Meier is quoted as saying they had had a great four years here but felt it was time to go back home “to fulfill a lifelong dream for both of us, which is to raise pedigree dogs.”
Lily had some other clippings and photographs but not many: a group shot of the gang at her restaurant, one of an older couple I assumed were her parents, a few of strangers (none fitting her description of Rick), but the Meiers won the contest with three items. Interesting.
I was embarrassed going to Mary again with my suspicions, so I asked around and found another good detective agency. As if sneaking into a porno movie, I hurried through their door and explained what I wanted to a sympathetic middle-aged man with fishing trophies on his walclass="underline" Anwen and Gregory Meier. Here’s the address in New Jersey. Please find out everything you can about these people. It was a brief, comfortable conversation. But when it was over and I was driving to my next appointment, two things struck me. First, the detective, a Mr. Goff, hadn’t once asked why I wanted to know about the Meiers. Who was I and where did I get off sniffing into their lives? What if I were someone bad, or dangerous, and compiling this information to use against them? Goff wasn’t interested. Just the facts, bud. You want to know about their foibles and affairs, blemishes, hidden scars, what they eat for breakfast when they’re alone together and feeling very in love? You pay and I’ll find it.
I did not feel wrong doing this so much as stained. Sometimes it is right to look all around another’s life; yet the act, however correct, lessens us. This notion led to the second thing that chilled me about the meeting with this detective: no matter what I discovered about Lily Aaron via the Meiers, I was breaking the trust between us by taking this course of action. Even if it turned out she was hiding something surprising, or dubious, I was the one to blame. Granted, I had already looked through our house for telltale signs, but that was only between us. We both lived there. Now I’d crossed the line—gone “out” to search, and that changed our world.
In the meantime Lincoln was home, energetic and apparently fit as a fiddle, despite a big ugly bump on his head. Lily allowed them to keep him in the hospital the necessary twenty-four hours, but was slipping the kid into his sneakers and jacket the moment he was cleared. We were told to keep close watch on his alertness, reflexes, and orientation. If anything was amiss, we were to get him the hell back fast. We kept him home from school three days, but by then he was so itchy to get back to his life, we let him, after telling his teachers to watch him too.
For the most part Lily returned to her old good self once she felt the crisis was past, although there were exceptions. For one, she didn’t apologize, much less mention, her behavior at the hospital. Instead she acted as if nothing had happened. Even Lincoln’s accident was like a years-old ink smudge on a white handkerchief: yes, if you looked hard you could see the faint shadow of a mark, but why look when its presence was all but invisible?
One Sunday the three of us drove down to Venice beach to people-watch and have dinner. The skateboarders, bag ladies, beach bunnies, Rastafarians on roller skates playing guitars, flat-out insanes, and other beings from the great beyond that congregate there were out in force and we walked among them as if they were the surreal topiary and great loony statues at Bomarzo or Disneyland.
In the past we’d spoken several times about having our palms or tarot cards read one day. Feeling this was as good a time as any, I suggested going to one of the many fortune tellers who’d set up card tables along Ocean Front Walk. Lily wasn’t interested. I didn’t push it, but Lincoln got excited and started in. She said no three times before permitting him, but insisted she choose the one, who turned out to be a hippie so stoned out and vacuous-looking that I was surprised he was even able to cut and lay down his cards without dropping them. A strange choice of soothsayers.
“Phew, kid, this is adamant stuff. The Ace of Wands is your card. I mean, there are multiple wands here.” That comment and a few other forgettable earwigs cost five dollars.