"I've missed you," she whispered. "More than I should."
"Me too," I said, choking back a wave of emotion, wary of saying more.
She stood back, her arms still on my shoulders. She had a quizzical look on her face, and a smile played on her lips.
"You don't have any gray," she said. "Your hair's still dark."
"Good genes."
We parted, and she said, "I ordered you coffee."
We sat, and the waiter arrived with my drink.
"I need help, Matt," she said, without preamble. "My stepdaughter Peggy is missing."
Laura had left me with good reason. I had been too caught up in being a lawyer and an occasional drunk to give her the family she wanted. She'd met a good man, a widower with two children, and she had married him and moved to Atlanta.
I'd spent the first part of my life doing what I thought I was supposed to do. The military, college, law school, the practice, politics, the climb up the ladder of success. It didn't work out. I was unhappy and drinking too much. I couldn't quite figure out where I was supposed to be in the world. Laura was unhappier than I knew, and after she left, my life spiraled downhill faster than a falling meteor.
I'd been a good lawyer, a trial lawyer, a believer in the system and the nobility of my profession. I worked hard and cared about my clients. I told them the truth, and never took on a case just for the fee. If a client's cause was unwinnable, I told him so at the beginning; told him he didn't need to throw away money on a lawyer who couldn't help him. And I refused the case.
The profession changed. Money became the Holy Grail. The law became a business, and I hated it. I stayed in it because I didn't know anything else. Then Laura left and a fog of despair settled over me like a dark night. There were days when I couldn't find my way through the void.
Laura took nothing from our marriage but my heart. I kept working for a couple of years, trying to salvage a career I no longer cared about, and then said the hell with it. I sold everything I had and moved to Longboat Key. I had enough money to live a modest life without working.
I was enjoying myself. I'd made a lot of friends, and occasionally I used my legal skills to help out someone who needed a good lawyer. I never charged any fees. I didn't need the money as much as the people I helped did.
"Tell me about it," I said.
"She came to Sarasota on spring break, and we haven't heard a word from her since."
"How long?"
"Three weeks."
"Maybe she's just not communicating."
"No. She's had a bad time lately, but she always checks in with her father. She wouldn't just fail to call."
"Her cell phone?"
"It goes straight to voice mail, and now we're getting a recording telling us that her box is full. She's not returning anyone's calls."
"Have you talked to the police?"
"They won't do anything. She's eighteen and is considered an adult. Unless I have some proof that she's been kidnapped or something, the law isn't interested."
"What can I do?"
"I don't know. You're a lawyer. You know this area, know people. Maybe you can help find her."
"I don't practice anymore."
"I know. I keep up with you. Jock and I talk."
I was surprised. Jock Algren was my oldest friend, and I didn't know he'd maintained contact with Laura after the divorce. I felt a little betrayed.
"I didn't know that," I said.
"Don't be angry. I call him sometimes when I'm missing you a lot. That's all."
"You miss me?"
"I've always loved you. I've always wondered if we could have made it work if I'd been a little tougher."
"No, you did the right thing. I'd still be in Orlando drinking myself to death if you hadn't left. It took losing you to get my life back on track. Are you happy?"
"Yes. I love Jeff. He's been a great husband. We have a good life, but that doesn't mean I have to stop loving you."
"I take it you're talking platonic love here."
She laughed. "Not really, but that's the way it'll be. I'm a one-man woman."
"I know. Damn."
She laughed again, and reached out and touched my hand. "We'll always have Paris," she said.
I laughed now. We must have seen Casablanca a hundred times, and she still couldn't get the accent right.
We ate breakfast, chatting and enjoying the soft breeze off the Gulf. She told me about Peggy, a troubled teen who had dropped out of the University of Georgia after her first semester. She moved into a house near the campus in Athens with several other disaffected former students. Her father had pleaded with Peggy to come home to Atlanta until she was ready for college, but the girl was staying put. Laura and Jeffsuspected that Peggy had gotten mired in the drug culture that often grows up around college campuses, but they were powerless to do anything about it.
Peggy was not completely lost to that underworld culture, and she called home every Sunday to chat with her family. She had never missed a week, until she'd come to Sarasota for spring break.
Laura sighed. "We didn't think too much about it the first Sunday she missed calling," she said, "but after the second week we tried to track her down."
"Did you check out the house in Athens?"
"That's the first place we went. There were some kids living there, but they told us Peggy had moved out. They didn't know where she'd gone."
"Do you know where she was staying in Sarasota?"
"No. She told us she would be at the beach, but that's all."
"So, you don't even know if it was a hotel or a rented condo."
"No. Sorry."
"How long are you going to be here?"
"I'm leaving today. I came in yesterday and talked to the Sarasota police, but they're no help. I came out here last night, and finally worked up the nerve to call you."
"I'm glad you did. You can't stay for a few days?"
"Afraid not. My other stepdaughter Gwen is so upset about her sister that I don't want to leave her alone for too long. Jeff tries, but she needs her mother. Me."
Laura had moved on into another life that didn't include me. I understood that, but I felt left out. She was still part of me, and yet she wasn't. I was used to that, and my life had moved on as well. What might have been will never be. Somebody ought to write that on a tombstone somewhere. Maybe someone had.
"It's moving too fast," she said.
"What is?" I asked, puzzled.
"Time."
"What're you talking about?"
"We're on a collision course with death you know"
"From the moment we're born."
"Yes, but it's coming closer now. Closer than I want to think about."
"We've got a lot of years left, Laura."
"Do you remember when we were young, the day we got married?"
I remembered every moment of it. Sometimes, at night, when I couldn't sleep, I'd retrieve those memories from back where they live, hidden away like precious gems in the vault of my mind. I'd wade into them, take myself back to that warm spring day in Orlando, smell the flowers in the church and the slight vanilla aroma of her skin as I leaned in to kiss her at the altar. I'd hear the swell of the organ as we strode up the aisle into the rest of our lives. And because I'd be overwhelmed by regret for what might have been, I'd quietly store them away again, to be brought out and caressed when my soul demanded a visit with Laura.
"Yes," I said. "I remember."
The waiter appeared and poured us more coffee. The sun was higher now, its rays more concentrated, heating up the patio. A gull cried in the distance, a chair scraped away from a nearby table. Then there was quiet.
I said, "I'll see what I can find out about Peggy."
Laura gave me a picture of her stepdaughter taken in a garden on the day she graduated from high school. "This was taken in June, in our yard at home."
There was no point of reference that would give me her height, but she was a lovely girl. Five feet seven, Laura said. Peggy was wearing her graduation gown and holding her diploma. She was smiling. She had blonde hair reaching to her shoulders, a nose that might have been a little too perky for my taste, and good legs below the hem of the robe.