Harlan Coben: Don’t Let Go

So you didn’t come home at ten, Leo, or eleven or midnight. And when a car finally did pull into the driveway at nearly 2:00 A.M., I ran to the door.

Only it wasn’t you, of course. It was Augie in a squad car.

I wake up the next morning and take a long, hot shower. I try to keep my mind clear for now. No new facts had come in overnight on Rex, and I don’t want to waste more time on speculation. I get in the car and head to the Armstrong Diner. If you want to know the best diners in town, always ask a cop. The Armstrong is a hybrid of sorts. The physical is pure New Jersey diner retro — a chrome-and-neon exterior, big red letters spelling out DINER on the roof, a soda-fountain bar with handwritten specials on a board, faux leather booths. The cuisine, however, is hip and socially conscious. The coffee is referred to as “fair trade.” The food is “farm to table,” though when you order eggs, I’m not sure what other route they’d go.

Ellie is waiting for me at the corner table. No matter what time I tell her, she is always there first. I slide in across from her.

“Good morning!” Ellie says with her customary over-the-top cheer.

I wince. She loves that.

Ellie slides one foot under her butt to sit up a little higher. She is coiled energy. Ellie looks like she’s moving even when she’s sitting still. I’ve never taken her pulse, but I bet her resting heart rate is over a hundred.

“Who should we start with?” Ellie asks. “Rex or Trey?”

“Who?”

Ellie frowns at me. “Trey.”

My face is blank.

“Trey is Brenda’s abusive boyfriend.”

“Oh, right. What about him?”

“Someone attacked him with a baseball bat. He won’t be able to walk for a long time.”

“Ah, that’s a shame,” I say.

“Yeah, I can see you’re crushed.”

I almost say, Crushed like Trey’s leg, but I hold back.

“On the positive side,” Ellie continues, “Brenda was able to go back to his place. She got her stuff and the kids’ stuff and she was finally able to sleep. So we are all grateful for that.”

Ellie looks at me a second too long.

I nod. Then I say, “Rex.”

“What?”

“You asked if I wanted to start with Rex or Trey.”

“We covered Trey,” she says.

Now I look at her. “So we’re done talking about him?”

“We are.”

“Good,” I say.

Bunny, the old-school server with a pencil in her overbleached hair, comes over and pours the fair-trade coffee.

“Usuals, hons?” Bunny asks.

I nod. So does Ellie. We come here a lot. Most of the time, we get the broken-yolk sandwiches. Ellie prefers the “simple” — two runny eggs on sourdough with white cheddar and avocado. I go for the same but also with bacon.

“So tell me about Rex,” Ellie says.

“They found fingerprints at the murder scene,” I say. “They belong to Maura.”

Ellie’s eyes blink to wide. I have had my share of bad breaks in life, I guess. I have no family, no girlfriend, no good prospects, not a lot of friends. But this magnificent person, this woman whose pure goodness is so blindingly obvious in the darkest of nights, is my best friend. Think about that. Ellie chose me for that role — best friend — and that means, no matter how much of a mess I may be, I do some things right.

I tell her everything.

When I get to the part about Maura with the guys in the bar, Ellie’s face crumples. “Ah, Nap.”

“I’m fine with it.”

She gives me the look of skepticism I normally deserve.

“I don’t think she was hooking or picking up men,” I say.

“What, then?”

“Might be worse in some ways.”

“How?”

I shake it off. It makes no sense to speculate until Reynolds gets back to me with the information.

“When we spoke yesterday,” Ellie says, “you knew about Maura’s fingerprints, didn’t you?”

I nod.

“I could hear it in your voice. I mean, one of our old high school friends dying, sure, that’s big, but you sounded... anyway, I took a little initiative.” Ellie reaches down into a pocketbook the size of an army duffel and pulls out a large book. “I found something.”

“What is that?”

“Your high school yearbook.”

She drops it on the Formica table.

“You ordered one in the beginning of our senior year, but you never picked it up, for obvious reasons. So I held on to it for you.”

“For fifteen years?” I ask.

Now it’s Ellie’s turn to shrug. “I was head of the yearbook committee.”

“Of course you were.”

High School Ellie was prim and proper and wore sweaters and pearls. She was our class valedictorian, that girl who always whined she was going to fail a test and then she would be first to finish, with a straight A, and spend the rest of class doing her homework. She carried several perfectly sharpened number two pencils at all times, just in case, and her notebook always looked like yours did on the first day of school.

“Why are you giving it to me now?” I ask.

“I need to show you something.”

I notice now that certain pages are marked off with pink Post-it notes.

Ellie licks her finger and flips to a page toward the back. “Did you ever wonder how we handled Leo and Diana?”

“Handled them how?”

“In the yearbook. The committee was divided. Do we just leave their photos in their normal place, in alphabetical order with the class, just like every other graduating senior — or do we pull them out and give them some kind of ‘in memoriam’ in the back?”

I take a sip of water. “You guys really discussed this?”

“You probably don’t remember — we didn’t know each other all that well — but I asked you what you thought.”

“I remember,” I say.

I had snapped at her that I didn’t care, though my language may have been more colorful. Leo was dead. Who gave two shits about how the yearbook handled that?

“In the end, the committee decided to pull them out and create an in memoriam section. The class secretary... Do you remember Cindy Monroe?”

“Yes.”

“She could be kind of anal.”

“You mean an asshole.”

Ellie leans forward. “Isn’t that what anal means? Anyway, Cindy Monroe reminded us that technically speaking, the main listing pages were for graduating seniors.”

“And Leo and Diana died before graduating.”

“Right.”

“Ellie?”

“Yes.”

“Can we get to the point now?”

“Two broken-yolk sandwiches,” Bunny says. She drops the plates in front of us. “Enjoy.”

The smell wafts up, travels through my nostrils, and grabs hold of my stomach. I reach for the sandwich, carefully grab it with both hands, and take a bite. The yolk breaks and starts to seep into the bread.

Ambrosia. Manna. Nectar of the gods. You choose the terminology.

“I don’t want to ruin your breakfast,” she says.

“Ellie.”

“Fine.” She opens the yearbook to a page toward the back.

And there you are, Leo.

You’re wearing my hand-me-down blazer because though we were twins, I was always bigger. I think I bought that jacket in eighth grade. The tie is Dad’s. You were terrible at making a knot. Dad always did it for you, and with a flourish. Someone has tried to slick down your unruly hair, but it just isn’t happening. You’re smiling, Leo, and I can’t help but smile back.

I’m not the first person to lose a sibling prematurely. I’m not the first to lose a twin. Your death was catastrophic, no question, but it wasn’t the end of my life. I recuperated. I was back in school two weeks after “that night.” I even played in a hockey game the following Saturday against Morris Knolls — the distraction was good for me, though maybe I played with too much fury. Got a ten-minute major for nearly putting a kid through the glass. You’d have loved it. Sure, I was a bit morose in school. For a few weeks everyone showered me with attention, but they got over that. When my history grade slipped, I remember Mrs. Freedman kindly but firmly telling me that your death was no excuse. She was right. Life goes on, as it should, though it’s also an outrage. When you have grief, at least you have something. But when grief ebbs away, what’s left? You go on, and I didn’t want to go on.