The Never List

notice, or maybe she had only asked the question in the first place to be polite.
    “Not me. I can’t read that kind of stuff. Life is hard enough without filling your head with all those awful things.” She paused. “Those poor girls. I hope they are making it okay. My friend Trisha, she had an abusive maniac for a father. He ruined her life. She started drinking in high school, ran away, eventually started doing meth. She’s cleaned her life up now, but she’s not over it. Probably never will be.”
    “I suppose you never get over something like that,” I said flatly.
    “No,” she continued. “You never do. Trisha’s doing better though now, from what I hear. She moved to New Orleans last year. She thought the change would do her good. Had a cousin out there. When she was here—she worked here at the diner—I’d catch her looking off into space, staring at the window, and I always thought, she’s going off someplace dark in there. Real dark.”
    At the words New Orleans , I bolted upright. Something was ringing a bell. Tracy had been from New Orleans originally, and she’d also had a rough childhood, so maybe that was all it was. I took out my notebook and jotted down a reminder to think about it when I got back to the hotel.
    As I slipped the notebook back into my bag, a car pulled up, and the waitress waved to the man in the driver’s seat. She turned to me, as he approached us, and said, “I’m Val, by the way. Val Stewart.” She extended her hand to shake mine, saying, “Honey, I don’t know your name.”
    I saw her hand coming toward me and froze. I had to respond normally. This would not be the only time someone would want to shake my hand, now that I was corresponding with live people and not just the ghosts in my head. I braced myself, but as she was about to make contact, I lost my nerve. I dropped my notebook andbag, in what I was sure seemed an obvious ploy to avoid her touch. As I bent down to pick up my things, I nodded up at her and told her, in as friendly a tone as I could muster, that my name was Caroline Morrow. She smiled back warmly and pulled out another cigarette. Disaster avoided.
    Val’s husband, Ray, was a small man, a few inches shorter than she was. He was very trim, in his sixties, with salt-and-pepper hair and a twinkle in his blue eyes. You could see right away what Val meant when she said he could talk your ear off. When he heard from Val that I was writing a book about the Derber story and specifically about Sylvia Dunham, he invited me home for dinner without hesitation. I begged off, even though I wavered. I wanted to go but couldn’t bear the thought of driving back to the hotel after dark. Instead, Ray insisted we go into the diner for a quick coffee.
    Val rolled her eyes, “See, I told you, sweetie. Listen, I’ve seen enough of that place today. You two get coffee, and I’m going to run over to Mike’s and pick up a few things.”
    Back inside, we sat at a booth, and as soon as we’d settled in, Ray started talking.
    “Sylvia moved here about seven years ago. You probably know she’s from the South. Nice girl, but quiet, you know. It was a shame she took up with that Church of the Holy Spirit. It’s nothing but a cult, if you ask me.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    He hesitated, his eyes sweeping the room before he went on.
    “Well, Noah Philben wasn’t always religious, I can tell you that.”
    “You know him?”
    He put his elbows on the table and bent his head toward mine, a conspiratorial look on his face now. “I went to high school with his cousin, so I knew the family. A sorry one, that Noah. He drank a lot, did some drugs. Left town after graduation and was gone forseveral years. No one knows what went on then. Nearly drove his family crazy, but they didn’t like to talk about it. When Noah came back, he seemed a little off. Went back to work at the quarry for a few months but couldn’t keep that up. Then he started his ‘church,’ if you want to call it that.” At that moment, he pointed out the window of the diner.
    “There they go.” I looked over and saw a white van with tinted windows pull around the square. “Church van.”
    “The lady at the church on the square seemed pretty dismissive of it, to say the least.”
    “Oh, that woulda been Helen Watson. You met her? Ha. Friendly one, eh? Well, she wouldn’t be too happy about anything having to do with Noah, that’s for sure. He was her high school boyfriend. She ran