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She then pulls her T-shirt over her head and says, “I have the cure.”
The next moments remain a haze.
A whoosh of the car door ripping open.
A scream.
A crushing blow to the head.
Then it’s morning.
Ryan is outside on the wet grass.
The car is gone.
And so is Ali.
PART 1
1
MONTEPULCIANO, ITALY
It’s been five years and she’s the first woman—first person—to make Ryan smile.
“Why do you want to be a lawyer?” Nora Watanabe asks.
They sit at a tall table at the bar—the only place walking distance from their bed-and-breakfast. It’s barely ten o’clock, but the place is clearing out. Everything in Montepulciano closes early, even the bars and nightclubs.
“What, are we on a job interview?” Ryan replies, smiling at her tenacity. It’s the third time she’s asked. Across the room he sees their classmate Eddie striking out with Italian women who are pretending not to speak English.
Nora narrows her eyes, offers a faint smile of her own.
If Ryan answers her question neither of them will be smiling. The idea to attend law school started five years ago with the criminal defense lawyer Ryan’s dad hired when the questions from the police became more pointed: Had you and Alison been fighting? Were you breaking up? Why didn’t you call the police immediately? How could you not see anything?
They were fair inquiries. There were no clues, no leads, no trace of Ali or her father’s BMW.
Over time, the investigators grew impatient, outwardly suspicious. You’re a big guy, why didn’t you put up a fight? How could someone just take her?
But it was their last question—What did you do to her, Ryan?—that alarmed Ryan’s dad enough that they hired Marty Salinger. Marty came into the interrogation room, told the police Ryan was done talking, and to arrest him or let him go.
They let him go.
But he wasn’t free. Not from the suspicions. Not from his own guilt over failing to protect her. Not from his inability to deliver the authorities one viable clue.
Ryan even went to a hypnotist. In the session, he’d recovered a nanosecond of a memory. A face. A plain face, one that the sketch artist threw up his hands over. And there was the vision of two hands—each one missing the pinky finger—dragging Ryan out of the car. The therapist termed it more of a nightmare, a guilt-fueled image of a monster, than a memory.
Ryan is spared Nora’s further interrogation when Eddie plops down on the stool next to them. Ryan agreed to come out tonight only because the others in their group are tiring of Eddie. They’re the elite few in their 1L class who made it on to The Georgetown Law Journal, a student-run publication for the best and brightest that no one reads. An alumnus donor funds the summer trip every year as a bonding experience for the new editorial staff members with the highest grades. Ryan initially declined the invitation, he found it all a bit too privileged, but was pressured to come by his roommate. Eddie begged him. Said the others wouldn’t hang out with him unless Ryan came along.
“I hate Italy,” Eddie says, glancing at the women who had shot him down. He’s been grousing this way the entire trip, an example of why people find Eddie annoying, if not problematic.
Nora appraises Ryan and Eddie like she’s unclear why the two are friends. Ryan isn’t quite sure himself. Other than the fact his roommate needs a friend. Ryan’s been there.
They make the perilous walk back to the B and B along the roadside path. The area has no streetlamps, and cars and scooters drive unreasonably fast on the narrow motorway carved into the rolling hills.
“Is one Mexican restaurant in all of Tuscany too much to ask?” Eddie says as they walk, their shoes crunching in the gravel. “I just want a taco, is that so wrong?”
Nora gives Ryan a sidelong glance but doesn’t say anything.