Harlan Coben - Don’t Let Go

Diana and I had plans,” Ellie begins.

There are only two other tables of patrons left, and they are way on the other side of the counter. I am trying hard to not get ahead of myself, to listen before jumping to conclusions, to absorb first and process later.

“We probably seemed like silly clichés, looking back on it. I was president of the student council. Diana was vice president. We were cocaptains of the soccer team. Our parents were close friends. They’d go out to dinner as a foursome.” She looks up at me. “Does Augie date much?”

“Not really.”

“You said he went down south with a girlfriend recently.”

“Yvonne. Hilton Head.”

“Is that in Georgia?”

“It’s an island off South Carolina.”

“How did it go?” Ellie asks.

How did Augie put it? “I don’t think it’s going to work out.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

I say nothing.

“He should be with someone. Diana wouldn’t want her father alone like that.”

I catch Bunny’s eyes, but she looks away, giving us privacy. Someone has hit one of the old jukeboxes. Tears for Fears remind us in song that “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”

“You said you saw Maura before Leo and Diana died,” I say, trying to get us back on course.

“I’m getting to that.”

I wait.

“So Diana and I are in the school library. You probably don’t remember this — no reason you would — but we had our big fall dance coming up the week after. Diana was head of the planning committee. I was her second.”

She’s right. I don’t remember. The annual fall dance. Maura wouldn’t have wanted to go. I wouldn’t have cared.

“I’m not telling this right,” Ellie says.

“It’s okay.”

“Anyway, the dance was a big deal to Diana. She’d been working on it for over a month. She couldn’t decide between two themes. One was Vintage Boardwalk, the other was called Once Upon a Storybook, and so Diana suggested that we do both.” Ellie looks off now, a small smile toying with her lips. “I was adamantly against this idea. I told Diana we have to, have to, pick only one, because otherwise it would be anarchy, and because I was a stupid, pathetic little perfectionist, this — what theme to choose — is what my best friend and I argued about the last time we ever spoke.”

Ellie stops. I give her the time to put herself back together.

“So we’re arguing about this and it’s getting kinda heated — and then Maura walks in and starts talking to Diana. I was in a snit about the idea of two themes, and so I didn’t listen to the first part too closely. But Maura wanted Diana to come with her somewhere that night. Diana said no, that she had kinda had it.”

“Had it with what?” I ask.

“She didn’t say. But then Diana told us both something...”

Ellie stops again and looks at me.

“What?” I say.

“She said that she’d had it with the whole group of them.”

“And by ‘group,’ she meant...?”

“Look, I didn’t really care. I was focused on how someone could possibly think you could have two themes for one dance and how would you possibly mesh Vintage Boardwalk, which I liked, with carnival games and peanuts and popcorn, with Once Upon a Storybook, which I didn’t even get. I mean, what the hell does that even mean? But now? After what we saw in the yearbook? I guess maybe Diana was talking about the Conspiracy Club. I don’t know. That’s not the part you won’t like.”

“What is the part I won’t like?”

“What Diana said next.”

“Which was?”

“Diana wanted to wait another couple of weeks — until after the fall dance because, well, she was the planning chair. But Diana said she was tired of your brother and his friends. She swore us both to secrecy, but she said she was going to break up with Leo.”

I just react: “That’s crap.”

Now it’s Ellie’s turn to stay quiet.

“Diana and Leo were solid,” I say. “I mean, yeah, it was high school, but...”

“He changed, Nap.”

I shake my head.

“Leo was moodier. That’s what Diana said. He would snap at her. Look, a lot of kids were experimenting senior year, partying or whatever—”

“That’s all he was doing too. Leo was fine.”

“No, Nap, he wasn’t fine.”

“We lived in the same room. I knew everything about him.”

“And yet you didn’t know what was going on with the Conspiracy Club. You didn’t know he and Diana were having a rough time of it. That’s not your fault. You had Maura and your hockey. You were just a kid...”

Her voice trails off when she sees my face.

“Whatever happened that night—” Ellie begins.

I interrupt her. “What do you mean, ‘whatever happened’? That military base was guarding a secret. Leo and Maura and, I don’t know, the rest of them found out what it is. I don’t care if Leo was stoned or that maybe, maybe Diana considered breaking up with him a week later. They all saw something. I have the proof now.”

“I know,” Ellie says gently. “I’m on your side.”

“You don’t sound like it.”

“Nap?”

I look at her.

“Maybe you should let this go,” she finally says.

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”

“Maybe Maura doesn’t want to be found.”

“I’m not doing this for Maura,” I say. “I’m doing this for Leo.”

But once we are out in the parking lot, once I kiss Ellie’s cheek and make sure she’s in her car, a thought rises from the ashes and won’t so easily be put down: Maybe Ellie is right. Maybe I should let this go.

I watch Ellie pull out. She doesn’t turn around and wave good-bye. She’s always waved good-bye in the past. Dumb thing to notice, but there you go. I wonder about this. It may have been a promise, but she has been keeping a secret from me for fifteen years. You would think unburdening herself might lead us to a higher level of trust.

That doesn’t seem to be the case.

I glance around the parking lot for the smoking girls, but they are long gone. Still I feel eyes on me. I don’t know whose. I don’t really care. Ellie’s words rip through my head like talons.

“Maybe you should let this go. Maybe Maura doesn’t want to be found.”

What exactly am I trying to do here?

Proclaiming that I’ll do anything in my quest for justice sounds honorable and brave. But that doesn’t make it right. How many more have to die before I step back? By flushing out Maura, am I putting her and others in danger?

I’m stubborn. I’m determined. But I’m not reckless or suicidal.

Should I let this go?

I still feel like I’m being watched, so I turn. Someone is standing behind a tree at the Jersey Mike’s Subs shop down the street. Doesn’t seem like a big deal, but I’m full of paranoia right now. I put my hand to the gun in my hip holster. I don’t pull it. I just want to know it’s there.

As I step toward the tree, my phone buzzes. The number is blocked. I step toward my car. “Hello?”

“Detective Dumas?”

“Yep.”

“This is Carl Legg with the Ann Arbor Police Department. You asked me to look into finding a cardiologist named Dr. Fletcher.”

“Any luck?”

“No,” Legg says. “But there are a few things you should know. Hello, you there?”

I slide into my car. “I’m listening.”

“Sorry, sounded like you cut out for a second. So I visited Dr. Fletcher’s office and spoke to the office manager.”

“Cassie.”

“Yep,” Legg says. “You know her?”

“She wasn’t cooperative on the phone.”

“She wasn’t Miss Congeniality in person either, but we pushed a bit.”