The Neighbor

by Lisa Gardner

  “Hey, kid, you’re still working at the neighborhood chop shop, right? Hope for your sake the missing woman didn’t get her car serviced there.”

  In that instant, I can picture Sandra Jones perfectly, standing in front of the industrial gray counter, long blonde hair tucked behind her ears, smiling as she hands over her keys to Vito: “Sure, we can pick it up at five….”

  I realize for the second time in my life that I will not be going home again.

  | CHAPTER EIGHT |

  What makes a family?

  It is a question I have pondered most of my life. I grew up in the typical Southern clan. I had a stay-at-home mom, famous for her meticulously groomed appearance and award-winning rose garden. I had the highly respected father who’d founded his own law firm and worked hard to provide for his two “lovely ladies.” I had two dozen cousins, a passel of aunts and uncles. Enough relatives that the annual family reunions, hosted at my parents’ sprawling home with its acres of green lawn and its wraparound front porch, were less a summer barbecue, and more a three-ring circus.

  I spent the first fifteen years of my life smiling obediently as fat aunts pinched my cheeks and told me how much I resembled my mother. I turned in my homework on time so teachers could pat my head and tell me how I made my father proud. I went to church, I babysat my neighbors’ children, I worked after school at the local store, and I smiled and smiled and smiled until my cheeks hurt.

  Then I went home, collected the empty gin bottles off the hardwood floors, and pretended I didn’t hear my mama’s drunken taunt from down the hall, “I know something you don’t know. I know something you don’t know….”

  When I was two years old, my mama made me eat a lightbulb so she could take me to the doctor and tell him what a naughty girl I was. When I was four, she made me put my thumb in a doorjamb and hold it there while she slammed the door shut, so she could show the doctor how reckless I was. When I was six, she fed me bleach so the doctors could understand just how terrible it was to be my mother

  My mama hurt me, time and time again, and no one ever stopped her Did that make us family?

  My father suspected, but never asked, even as his drunken wife chased him around the house with knives. Did that make us family?

  I knew my mama was actively hurting me and hoping to hurt my father, but I never told. Did that make us family?

  My father loved her. Even at a young age, I got that. No matter what Mama did, Papa stood beside her That was marriage, he told me. And she wasn’t always like this, he would add. As if once my mama had been sane, and having been sane once, maybe she could be sane again.

  So we would go about our routine, starting each evening with my mother laying out a properly prepared dinner, and ending each meal with her hurling fried chicken, or heaven help us, a leaded crystal glass, at one or both of our heads. Eventually, my father would lead her back to the bedroom, tucking her in with another gin-laced sweet tea.

  “You know how she is,” he’d tell me quietly, half excuse, half apology. We would spend the rest of the night reading together in the front parlor, both of us pretending not to hear Mama’s drunken warble floating down the hall: “I know something you don’t know. I know something you don’t know….”

  When my mother died, I stopped asking so many questions. I thought the war was finally over My father and I were free. Now came the happily ever after.

  One week after the funeral, I tore up my mother’s prized rosebushes. I ran them through the wood chipper, and my father cried harder over those damn flowers than he’d ever cried over me.

  I started to understand a few things then, about the true nature of families.

  Looking back now, I think it was inevitable that I wound up pregnant, married to a stranger, and living in a state where everyone dropped their R’s. I had never been alone one single day in my life. So of course, the instant I was on my own, I immediately re-created the one thing I knew: a family.

  Going into labor scared the bejesus out of me. Nine months later, I still wasn’t ready. The ink was barely dry on my marriage certificate. We were still settling into our new home, a teeny tiny little bungalow that would’ve fit inside my parents’ front parlor I couldn’t be a mom yet I hadn’t set up the crib. I hadn’t even finished reading the parenting book.

  I didn’t know what I was doing. I was not qualified for this.

  I remember thinking, struggling my way to the car, that I could smell my mother’s prized roses. I threw up in the grass. Jason patted me on the back, and in his calm, controlled voice, told me I was doing just fine.

  He loaded up my hospital bag, then helped me into the passenger’s seat.

  “Breathe,” he said over and over again. “Breathe, Sandy. Just breathe.”

  At the hospital, my courteous new husband held the bucket while I vomited. He supported my weight as I moaned and panted in the birthing shower He lent me his arm, which I bloodied with my fingernails as I fought to push the world’s biggest bowling ball out of my uterus.

  The nurses watched him with open admiration and I remember thinking vividly that my mama was right—the world was filled with bitches and I would kill them all. If only I could stand up. If only I could get the pain to stop.

  And then … success.

  My daughter, Clarissa Jane Jones, slid into the world, announcing her arrival with a throaty cry of protest. I remember the hot, sticky feel of her wrinkled little body being plopped down upon my chest. I remember the sensation of her little button mouth, rooting, rooting, rooting, until at last she latched onto my breast. I remember the indescribable feeling of my body feeding hers, while the tears streamed down my face.

  I caught Jason watching us. He stood apart, his hands in his pockets, his face as impossible to read as ever And it hit me then:

  I had married my husband to escape from my father. Did that make us family?

  My husband had married me because he wanted my child. Did that make us family?

  Clarissa became our daughter because she was born into this mess. Did that make us family?

  Maybe you simply have to start somewhere.

  I held out my hand. Jason crossed to me. And slowly, very slowly, he reached out a finger and brushed Clarissa’s cheek.

  “I will keep you safe,” he murmured. “I promise nothing bad will ever happen to you. I promise, I promise, I promise.”

  Then he was clutching my hand and I could feel the true force of his emotions, the dark tide of all the things he would never tell me, but that I understood, one survivor to another, lurked beneath the surface.

  He kissed me. He kissed me with Clarissa nestled between us, a hard kiss, a powerful kiss.

  “I will always keep you safe,” he whispered again, his cheek against my cheek, his tears mingling with my tears. “I promise you, Sandy. I will never hurt you.”

  And I believed him.

  At 5:59, as Aidan Brewster was checking in for his weekly support group meeting, Jason Jones was putting in a movie for his daughter, and beginning to panic.

  He’d called in sick to work. Didn’t know what else to do. Night was falling. Still no word from Sandy. Still no sign of the police. Ree had woken from her nap in the same quiet mood as before. They had played Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders and Go Fish.

  Then they had sat at her teeny art table, him with his chin on his knees, and colored oversized pictures of Cinderella from Ree’s favorite coloring book. Mr. Smith did not magically appear on the front stoop and Ree stopped asking about either her cat or her mom. Instead, she regarded Jason with serious brown eyes that were beginning to haunt him.

  After dinner—meatballs, angel hair pasta, and sliced cucumbers-he put in a movie. Ree had perked up in anticipation of the rare treat, and was now seated on the green love seat, holding Lil’ Bunny. Jason claimed he needed to do laundry and beat a hasty retreat to the basement.

  There, he started pacing, and once he started, he couldn’t stop.

  When he had first come hom
e and realized Sandra was not in the house, he had been confused, perhaps even anxious. He’d gone through the normal steps: checked the basement, checked the attic, checked the old shed out back. Then he’d called her cell, only to hear it ring in her purse. That had led him to rifling the contents halfheartedly, looking through her little spiral notebook to see if she’d magically recorded a middle-of-the-night meeting. When at two-thirty A.M. he confirmed his wife hadn’t planned to go missing, he’d walked around the neighborhood, calling her name in a low whisper, much like how one might call a cat.

  She wasn’t in her car. She wasn’t in his car. And she still wasn’t at home.

  He’d sat down on the love seat to consider the matter.

  The house had been locked when he’d come home, including the doorknob and two dead bolts. That had implied Sandy had done her usual bedtime routine. He’d checked the kitchen counter and discovered the graded papers, meaning Sandy had done her usual post-Ree routine.

  So where had the evening gone wrong?

  His wife was not perfect. Jason knew that as well as anyone. Sandy was young, she’d led a wild and reckless youth. Now, at the relatively tender age of nearly twenty-three, she was trying to raise a toddler while adjusting to a new job and living in an unfamiliar state. She’d been more distant since the school year began, first overly quiet, then since December, almost overly friendly, in a forced sort of way. He’d started thinking about going away for February vacation precisely because her mood had grown so tangled, so … different.

  He was sure she got homesick, especially in the winter, though she never said. He was sure there were times she wished she could go out, feel at least a little bit young, though she never said.

  He himself had wondered about how long she would remain married to him, though again, she never said.

  He missed her now. That thought pained him. He had grown accustomed to coming home and finding her curled up in their bed, her sleeping position an uncanny mimic of their daughter’s. He liked her Southern drawl, and her addiction to Dr Pepper, and the way she smiled with one dimple appearing in her left cheek.

  When she was quiet, there was a softness to her that soothed him. When she was giggling with Ree, there was a spark to her that electrified him.

  He liked watching her read to their daughter. He liked listening to her hum as she puttered in the kitchen. He liked the way her hair fell around her face in a curly gold curtain, and how when she caught him watching her, it made her blush.

  He didn’t know if she loved him. He had never figured that out. But for a while she had needed him, and for him, that had been enough.

  She’s left me; that had been his first thought at three in the morning as he sat in the empty shadows of the family room. He had tried to make amends in February, and it had been a disaster. So Sandy had finally left him.

  But then, half a beat later, he dismissed that conclusion: While Sandy may have been ambivalent about marriage, she was not ambivalent about Ree. Meaning if Sandy had left the house willingly, she would’ve taken Ree, and at the very least, grabbed her own purse. The absence of such steps led to a different conclusion: Sandy had not left willingly. Something bad had happened, here, inside Jason’s own home, while his daughter had slept upstairs. And he had no idea what.

  Jason was a reserved man. He acknowledged that. He preferred logic to emotion, fact to supposition. It was one of the reasons he made a good reporter. He was excellent at sifting through vast pools of data and coming up with the perfect nugget of information that brought everything together. He did not get bogged down with outrage or shock or grief. He did not suffer any preconceived notions about Boston’s citizens or humanity in general.

  Jason believed at all times that the worst could happen. That was a fact of life. And so, he armed himself with many other facts, perhaps believing, rather foolishly, that if he knew enough, this time he could be secure. His family would not suffer. His daughter would grow up safe and sound.

  Except here he was, confronted by several great big unknowns, and he could feel his control already beginning to unravel.

  The police had been gone for nearly six hours now, just the lone officer sitting in the car outside the house, switched out once, around five o’clock. Jason had thought having the police in his home all morning had been long and painful. He now realized their absence was far worse. What were the detectives doing? What was Sergeant D. D. Warren thinking? Had she taken the bait regarding his sex offender neighbor, or was he still considered the prize catch?

  Did they have a warrant yet for the computer? Could they kick him out of the house, force him down to the station? Exactly what kind of evidence did they need?

  Worse yet, if they arrested him, what would happen to Ree?

  Jason walked around the coffee table again and again, hard tight circles that made him dizzy and still he couldn’t stop. He didn’t have local family, didn’t have close friends. Would the police contact Sandy’s father, ship Ree to Georgia, or invite Max up here?

  And if Max came up here, exactly how much might Max say or do?

  Jason needed a strategy, some kind of contingency plan.

  Because the longer Sandy remained missing, the worse this was going to get. The police would keep digging, asking harder questions. And inevitably, the word would leak out, the media would descend. Jason’s own peers would turn on him like cannibals, beaming his image all over the free world. Jason Jones, husband of the missing woman and person of interest in an ongoing investigation.

  Sooner or later, someone was going to recognize that image. Someone was going to start to connect dots.

  Especially if the police got their hands on his computer.

  Jason careened around the table too fast, catching his knee on the corner of the washing machine. The pain lanced up his thigh and finally forced him to stop. For an instant, the world spun, so he clung to the top of the washer, breathless with pain.

  When he could finally focus again, the first thing he noticed was the spider, the tiny little brown garden spider hanging right in front of him by a thread.

  Jason jumped back, clipping the edge of the beat-up table with his shin and nearly yelping from the pain. But that was okay. He could take the pain. He didn’t mind the pain, just so long as he didn’t see that spider again.

  And for a moment, it was too much. For a moment, one tiny little cellar spider had him spinning back to a place where it was always dark except for the eyes that glowed from the dozens of terrariums edging the room. A place where screams started in the basement and worked their way up through the walls. A place that smelled routinely of death and decay and no amount of ammonia was ever going to make a difference.

  A place little boys and big girls went to die.

  Jason placed a fist in his mouth. He bit his own knuckle until he tasted blood and he used that pain to ground himself again.

  “I will not lose control,” he murmured. “I will not lose control, I will not lose control, I will not lose control.”

  The phone rang upstairs. He gratefully left the basement and went to answer it.

  The caller was Phil Stewart, the principal from Sandy’s school, and he sounded uncharacteristically flummoxed.

  “Is Sandra there?” Phil started.

  “She’s not available,” Jason said automatically. “May I take a message?”

  There was a long pause. “Jason?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she home? I mean, have the police located her yet?”

  So the police had interviewed people where Sandra worked. Of course they had. That was a logical next step. After checking here, they might as well check there. Of course. Jason needed something intelligent to say. A statement of fact, a party line that summed up the current state of affairs without delving into personal territory.

  He couldn’t think of a single damn word.

  “Jason?”

  Jason cleared his throat, glanced at the clock. It was 7:05 P.M., meaning Sandy had now been go
ne for what, eighteen, twenty hours? Day one nearly done, day two nearly beginning. “Umm … she’s … she’s … she’s not home, Phil.”

  “She’s still missing,” the principal stated.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any ideas? Do the police have a lead? What’s going on, Jason?”

  “I went to work last night,” Jason said simply. “When I came home, she was gone.”

  “Oh my God,” Phil expelled as a long sigh. “Do you have any idea what happened?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think she’s coming home? I mean, maybe she just needed to take a break or something.” This was delving into personal territory, and Jason could practically hear Phil’s blush over the phone lines.

  “Maybe,” Jason said quietly.

  “Well.” Phil seemed to pull himself together. “Sounds like I should arrange a sub for tomorrow.”

  “I would think so.”

  “Will the search begin in the morning? I imagine much of the staff would like to assist. Probably some parents of the students, as well. Of course you’ll need help distributing flyers, canvassing neighborhoods, that sort of thing. Who will be leading the charge?”

  Jason faltered again, feeling the edge of panic. He caught it this time, stiffened his backbone, forced himself to sound firm. “I will get that information to you.”

  “We’ll need to think of what to tell the children,” Phil stated, “preferably before they catch it on the news. Perhaps a public statement for the parents, as well. Nothing like this has happened around here before. We need to start preparing the kids.”

  “I will get that information to you,” Jason repeated.

  “How is Clarissa holding up?” Phil asked abruptly.

  “About as well as can be expected.”

  “If you need any help on that front, just let us know. I’m sure some of the teachers would be happy to assist. These things can all be managed, of course. All it takes is a plan.”

  “Absolutely,” Jason assured him. “All it takes is a plan.”