I'd Know You Anywhere: A Novel by Laura Lippman Page A

the many things that baffled him when it came to women.
    â€œWell, at camp, there’s a schedule. No one can invite you to go anywhere—to a movie, or the mall, or even a McDonald’s. So you sit on the bus together, or swim together, and you hold hands”—she blushed at this. Maybe he was wrong, maybe she had done more than he realized. “It’s not a date, and it ends when camp ends. He called me, once, but we didn’t really have anything to talk about. I wrote him letters, and he never wrote back.”
    â€œYeah, I see your point.” He didn’t, not really, but he didn’t have anything to contribute, so he wanted to move on. “Look, what would you do, if I just got up right now, paid the check, went out to my truck, and started driving?”
    Again, she did not answer right away.
    â€œElizabeth?”
    â€œI guess I’d ask the people if I could use their phone, make a collect call, and I’d call my parents, tell them where I was.”
    â€œDo you know where you are?”
    â€œSort of. Not exactly. But the people here, they would tell me, right?”
    He looked around. “Lower your voice,” he said. “I’m serious.”
    She flinched. It was amazing how easily he could control her. He liked it.
    â€œI’d call my parents collect,” she whispered, “and then I’d wait for them to come get me.”
    â€œWhat’s my truck look like?”
    â€œRed.”
    â€œMake? Model?”
    She needed a second to understand that question, then shook her head. “I haven’t noticed.”
    â€œLicense plate?”
    â€œI haven’t paid attention.”
    She was a shitty liar. “Elizabeth.”
    She hung her head, whispered the plate numbers.
    â€œLook,” he said, “I have to keep you with me.”
    â€œI wouldn’t tell,” she said. “If that’s what you need me to do, I’ll do it.”
    â€œNo, you would tell. Because you think it’s the right thing, and I can see that you’re the kind of person who tries to do the right thing. Like me. The thing is—I didn’t really do anything. It’s just that, no one’s going to believe that. This girl, she tried to get out of my truck while it was moving, she fell and hit her head.”
    It sounded plausible to him, now that he had said it. It absolutely could have happened just as he said, and who would believe him? It was so unfair.
    â€œBut no one’s going to believe that, right?” He saw that Elizabeth didn’t believe it. Her face was interesting that way. Some people would call her an open book, but Walter didn’t think that expression was quite apt. An open book, glimpsed, was only words on a page, and you couldn’t make out the whole story. Her face was like…fish in an aquarium, all her thoughts and feelings on display, but moving kind of lazily, not in a rush to get anywhere.
    â€œI didn’t mean any harm,” he tried, and this had the virtue of truth, or was at least more in the neighborhood of truth, but he could see she was still dubious. “I’ve made some mistakes, but everyone makes mistakes. People just don’t listen, you know? Girls. They don’t listen. They’re in too much of a hurry, all the time.”
    â€œWe read this book, Of Mice and Men, in seventh-grade G-and-T English,” she began.
    â€œG and T?”
    â€œOh, um, gifted and talented. But it’s my only G-and-T class.” She was embarrassed to be caught bragging. She hadn’t realized she was bragging at first, but now she was owning up to it. That was important. “Anyway, there’s a man in it, he doesn’t mean any harm, but he’s really strong, and when his hand gets tangled inthis girl’s hair, he’s just trying to calm her down, but he breaks her neck.”
    â€œAnd what happened to this guy?”
    A long pause. “Well, he was