Harlan Coben - Six Years

See? We had our differences.

I parked down the road and started journeying up the same path I had stumbled down six years earlier. The wooded trail ran for about a hundred yards. In the clearing I spotted the familiar white chapel on the edge of the property I had just been booted off. Some service or meeting was letting out. I watched the congregants blink their way back into the lowering sun. The chapel was, as far as I knew, nondenominational. It seemed more utilitarian, if you will, than Unitarian, a gathering place more than any sort of house of deeply religious worship.

I waited, smiling like I belonged, nodding like Mr. Friendly as about a dozen people walked past me and down the path. I checked the faces, but there was no one that I recognized from six years ago. No surprise really.

A tall woman with a severe hair bun waited by the chapel steps. I made my way over, maintaining the Mr. Friendly smile.

“May I help you?” she asked.

Good question. What did I hope to find here? It wasn’t as though I had a plan.

“Are you looking for Reverend Kelly?” she asked. “Because he’s not around right now.”

“Do you work here?” I asked.

“Sort of. I’m Lucy Cutting, the registrar. It’s a volunteer position.”

I stood there.

“Is there something I can help you with?”

“I don’t know how to put this . . . ,” I began. And then: “Six years ago I attended a wedding here. I knew the bride, but not the groom.”

Her eyes narrowed a bit, more curious than wary. I pushed ahead.

“Anyway, I recently saw an obituary for a man named Todd. That was the groom’s name. Todd.”

“Todd is a fairly common name,” she said.

“Yes, of course, but there was also a photograph of the deceased. It looked like, I know how this sounds, but it looked like the same man I saw marry my friend. The problem is, I never learned Todd’s last name so I don’t know if it is him or not. And if it is, well, I’d like to pay my respects.”

Lucy Cutting scratched her cheek. “Can’t you just call?”

“I wish I could, but no.” I was going with honesty here. It felt good. “For one thing I don’t know where Natalie—that’s the bride’s name—I don’t know where she lives now. She changed her last name to his, I think. So I can’t find them. And also, to be completely up-front, I had a past with this woman.”

“I see.”

“So if the man I saw in the obituary wasn’t her husband—”

“Your communication might be unwanted,” she finished for me.

“Exactly.”

She thought about that. “And if it was her husband?”

I shrugged. She scratched her cheek some more. I tried to look nonthreatening, even demure, which really doesn’t play on a guy my size. I almost batted my eyelashes.

“I wasn’t here six years ago,” she said.

“Oh.”

“But we can check the schedule books. They’ve always kept immaculate records—every wedding, baptism, communion, bris, whatever.”

Bris? “That would be great.”

She led me down the steps. “Do you remember the date of the wedding?”

I did, of course. I gave her the exact date.

We reached a small office. Lucy Cutting opened a file cabinet, thumbed through it, and pulled out one of those accounting books. As she flipped through it, I could see that she was right. The records were immaculate. There was a column for the date, type of event, participants, start and end times—all written in handwriting that could double as calligraphy.

“Let’s see what we can find here . . .”

She made a production of putting on her reading glasses. She licked her index finger schoolmarm-like, flipped a few more pages, and found the one she wanted. The same finger started tracing down the page. When she frowned, I thought to myself, Uh-oh . . .

“Are you sure about the date?” she asked me.

“Positive.”

“I don’t see any wedding that day. There was one two days earlier. Larry Rosen married Heidi Fleisher.”

“That’s not it,” I said.

“Can I help you?”

The voice startled us both.

Lucy Cutting said, “Oh, hello, Reverend. I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

I turned, saw the man, and nearly hugged him with joy. Pay dirt. It was the same minister with the shaved head who’d presided over Natalie’s wedding. He reached out his hand to shake mine, a practiced smile at the ready, but when he saw my face, I saw the smile flicker.

“Hello,” he said to me. “I’m Reverend Kelly.”

“Jake Fisher. We’ve met before.”

He made a skeptical face and turned back to Lucy Cutting. “What’s going on, Lucy?”

“I was looking up a record for this gentleman,” she began to explain. He listened patiently. I studied his face, but I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, just that he was trying to control his emotions somehow. When she was done, he turned to me and raised both palms to the sky. “If it isn’t in the records . . .”

“You were there,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“You presided over the wedding. That’s where we met.”

“I don’t recall that. So many events. You understand.”

“After the wedding, you were in front of the chapel with the bride’s sister. A woman named Julie Pottham. When I walked by, you said it was a lovely day for a wedding.”

He arched an eyebrow. “How could I have possibly forgotten that?”

Sarcasm does not normally wear well on men of the cloth, but it fit Reverend Kelly as though hand tailored. I pressed on. “The bride was named Natalie Avery. She was a painter at the Creative Recharge retreat.”

“The what?”

“Creative Recharge. They own this land, right?”

“What are you talking about? The town owns this land.”

I didn’t want to argue deeds and boundaries right now. I tried another avenue. “The wedding. It was last-minute. Maybe that’s why it isn’t in the records.”

“I’m sorry. Mr. . . . ?”

“Fisher. Jake Fisher.”

“Mr. Fisher, first off, even if it was a last-minute wedding, it would certainly be recorded. Second, well, I’m confused what exactly you’re looking for.”

Lucy Cutting answered for me. “The groom’s last name.”

He gave her a quick glare. “We aren’t in the information business, Miss Cutting.”

She looked down, properly chastised.

“You have to remember the wedding,” I said.

“I’m sorry I don’t.”

I stepped closer, looking down on him. “You do. I know you do.”

I heard the desperation in my own voice, and didn’t like it. Reverend Kelly tried to meet my eye, but he couldn’t quite do it. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“You remember,” I said. “Why won’t you help me?”

“I don’t remember,” he said. “But why are you so anxious to find the wife of another man or, if your story is true, a recent widow?”

“To pay my respects,” I said.

My hollow words hung in the air like thick humidity. No one moved. No one spoke. Finally Reverend Kelly broke the silence.

“Whatever your motive for finding this woman, we have no interest in being party to it.” He stepped away and showed me the door. “I think it’d be best if you left immediately.”

* * *

Once again, dazed by betrayal and heartbreak, I stumbled back down the path toward the village center. I could almost get the reverend’s behavior. If he did remember the wedding—and I suspect he did—he wouldn’t want to give Natalie’s dumped boyfriend any information said boyfriend didn’t already have. It seemed an extreme hypothesis on my part, but at least it kind of made sense. What I couldn’t make sense of, what I couldn’t figure out in any way, shape, or form, was why Lucy Cutting had found nothing in the neat-to-the-point-of-anal records on Natalie and Todd’s nuptials. And why the hell had no one heard of the Creative Recharge retreat?