“Sorry you missed Julie,” he said. “She really wanted to meet you.”
“We connected as I was coming in,” I said. “She new on the scene?”
Greg shrugged. “Five, six weeks, I guess. She’s great, heart of gold. She’s working on making me a better person.” He grinned. “Who knew I needed improving?”
“So what the hell are you doing here?” I asked.
“I’m the hyena feeding on the carcass,” he said with no small measure of pride. “They’re going to rip this whole place down soon, and I worked a deal with the company that’s going to do it to have a few days in here to get some very usable shit. There’s hundreds of dying malls across the country. Victims of online shopping, the loss of anchor stores that’ve gone tits up, and then you throw in a fucking pandemic on top of that. Malls can’t cut it.”
I shook my head, marveling that these were this huge structure’s final days. I went over to grasp the railing that overlooked the lower level, taking in the view.
“I wouldn’t lean against that, if I was you,” Greg said. “I’ve already started taking out some of the bolts securing it to the floor. I can repurpose those a hundred ways. On a balcony, around a deck.”
I stepped back. “I saw your truck. Looks like you’ve got a pretty full load already. Mannequins?”
He laughed. “All kinds of places will buy those. Last trip, scored some store signs. Like, a McDonald’s, a Baskin-Robbins. People snap those up, hang them in their rec rooms. You know the huge shed I’ve got behind my place? Gonna cram as much into that as possible.” He was digging into his pocket for papers and a small pouch of tobacco to make himself another cigarette. “How’s things going with Jayne?”
They had met a couple of times since Jayne had moved in with me.
“Good. And we’ve got her brother living with us now. Tyler. Sixteen. His dad passed, and he’s kind of messed up. Adrift, you know? Reminds me of myself at that age, when I was being shunted from home to home.”
I became aware of someone approaching. Thinking Julie had returned, I turned to say hello, but it was a young guy, mid-twenties, shuffling toward us. His clothes were worn and filthy, and he didn’t appear to have shaved in at least a week.
“Hey, Neil,” Greg said. He pointed his thumb into the store he’d stepped out of. “Box of donuts in there. Help yourself, but leave some for the others.”
Neil smiled. “Thanks, man. Sorry to interrupt.” He shuffled on into the store as I gave Greg a questioning look.
In a low voice, he said, “A few homeless living in here till they tear it all down. Me and Julie bring in a few treats for them. Best to have them on your side if you’re gonna be sharing space with them. Give some of them odd jobs, twenty bucks to haul stuff to my truck. So, what’s up?”
I got out my phone and brought up the picture I’d sent myself off Brian’s tablet. I handed it to Greg without comment. He studied the picture, then enlarged it with his thumb and index finger.
“What am I looking at here?” he asked.
“That was taken a couple of hours ago, off a security cam. Where my house used to stand. That’s the driveway.”
“Okay. And?”
I told him what Max had told me. And what the woman in the picture allegedly said. Asking what had happened to her house.
Greg kept staring at the picture. “What are you getting at here? What are you suggesting?”
“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m showing you that and waiting for your reaction.”
He gave the picture another five seconds and then handed the phone back to me. He finished making his cigarette, stuck it between his lips, and lit it with a lighter that he’d tucked into his shirt pocket.
“I don’t know, man. What are you thinking?”
“It’s not a very good picture.”
“Seriously, you know what it is? It’s just some woman took a wrong turn. Got her directions mixed up. Maybe it’s one of those grocery delivery services. Lot more of those since COVID. She made a mistake. Last week I got an Uber Eats at the door that I never ordered. Was for someone else. People are careless.”
“Maybe. Doesn’t explain why she got so spooked she dropped everything and took off.”
Greg took a drag off his cigarette, held the smoke in his lungs for a moment, and then exhaled. I’d snuck plenty of smokes when I was in foster homes, but it hadn’t turned into a lifelong habit. So I was no expert on tobacco, but this brand Greg favored had its own distinctive aroma.
He looked me in the eye.
“Whatever this is, Andy, and honestly, I have no idea what’s going on here, but you can’t let it get your hopes up. That can’t be Brie. I mean, okay, at a glance, whoever that is could pass for her from a distance, but it doesn’t make any sense. What are we supposed to take from this? That she suddenly reappeared as if five years—”
“Six.”
“What?”
“Six. It’s been six years.”
“Jesus, has it really been that long?”
“Yeah.”
“Anyway, are we supposed to think Brie’s actually okay and that she went through some Star Trek — like space-time continuum and thought it was six years ago and expected to find the house she used to live in?”
“I don’t know what we’re supposed to think.”
At this point, Neil came back out of the shop, chewing on a donut in one hand and carrying a second in his other. He raised it and said to Greg, “This one’s for Karen, okay?”
“No problem,” he said, then turned back to me and whispered, “He’s here with his girlfriend. Can you imagine, living here with someone?”
I shook my head.
“Anyway,” Greg said, “there was one of those stories on the news the other day, about some sick pervert who kept a couple of women prisoner in his house for years, and one of them escaped. Well, I’ll tell you this, she didn’t escape and get herself all dressed up nice and head to the supermarket with her station wagon. I mean, if Brie were back, or had, you know, escaped or something, she’d go to the police.”
“Sure,” I said.
“I mean, come on,” he said. “Look, I know it’s hard to move on, that it’s hard to put this behind you. I was thinking, back when I found you in the tub, passed out, that was kind of a turning point. You pulled yourself together after that, despite the odds. You’ve got this new lady in your life. And you’ve got a new name, which is like starting over, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re bringing in some money? Paying the bills?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Like you. A job here, a job there. About to start on finishing off someone’s basement. Did a couple of decks last month. Moderately steady.”
“Good, good, that’s all good. Don’t let whatever’s going on in that picture fuck with your head. You’ve got a good life now.”
“You’re saying I should ignore this. Pretend I never saw it.”
Greg sighed. “If that was Brie, if it really fuckin’ was her somehow, appearing out of thin air, you think the first thing she’d do is go pick up some eggs and some Tater Tots? No. She’d call you. If we’re supposed to believe that’s her in that picture, then what the hell has she been doing for six years? She go to the store and get lost? She been wandering a Walmart since the last time you saw her?”
Greg put a hand on my shoulder. “Sorry, man. That was... insensitive. I know how hard this has been on you. All this time, the not knowing, the wondering. But there’s no rational answer to this. It can’t be her. Can’t be.”