Chapter 8: The Kitchen Table

"Kirsten," I said.

"Kirsten Fairbairn. Same pen as yours, near as I can tell. Same day."

I looked at the stack of planners on the carpet.

My hand was already on the one from Michigan.

Senior year. Maroon cover. A coffee ring on the front from a diner in Ann Arbor.

"What day did you say?"

"April 28."

I flipped to the back half.

April was full of my own small square handwriting.

Shifts at the campus hotel. A dentist appointment. My roommate's birthday.

April 28 had one line, written in red and underlined twice.

HOSP 410 FINAL. 9 A.M. PROCTORED. BRING ID.

"Clem?"

"I was in Ann Arbor," I said. "Taking a final exam. In a room with sixty people and a proctor who checked our driver's licenses at the door."

He didn't say anything for a second.

"That's four hours from Chicago."

"Four and a half if you obey the speed limit. I always do."

"A planner isn't proof. Anybody can write in a planner."

"There was a sign-in sheet," I said. "We signed it with the time when we walked in. My professor kept every one. She was famous for it."

I heard him breathe out.

"Can you get it?"

"I can ask."

"Ask today."

"It's Sunday."

"Ask anyway," he said. "And Clem."

"What?"

"Don't tell your father you know."

"Wyeth. I'm not an idiot."

"No," he said. "I'm the one who took three years to look at a date."

He hung up before I could answer.

I sat on the floor with the planner open on my knees.

Then I wrote the email to my old professor, and read it four times, and sent it.

At three in the morning on Monday, I called a staff meeting in the hotel kitchen.

The night cook pushed two steel prep tables together and put out a tray of grilled cheese cut in triangles.

The doorman came in from the front, still in his green coat.

The head of housekeeping came down from the linen floor in her cardigan and sat at the end with her reading glasses on a chain.

Two bellmen, the night engineer, the banquet captain and the kid who ran the sound system in the Lantern Room squeezed in along the walls.

Dolly sat on the counter by the dishwasher with her legs crossed, eating a pickle.

"This better be good," she said. "I left a man alone with my well vodka."

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