“We’d better have our own,” Nick said. “I don’t want to live with a girl.”
“If you’re real quiet I bet you can hear the applause from relieved girls everywhere,” Hailey muttered.
Leah smiled. That was a mistake; Hailey saw the smile and shut down again, determined not to waver in her silent disapproval.
They went up the steps as Tessa barreled ahead. She hadn’t been in a house with a long run of steps before, and she struggled to find her stride, making them all laugh, even Hailey. They watched the dog with her high, swinging hips moving like a girl in her first set of heels. Leah breathed easier, hearing the laughter.
At the top of the steps was a small hallway with rooms in all directions. Bedrooms and bathrooms, nothing else. The kitchen, living room, and dining room were downstairs, and all the bedrooms were upstairs. It was a large home, but somehow the partially cracked-open doors of all the bedrooms seemed to squeeze Leah as she stood in the hall. She remembered picking out the nursery in their old house in Florida, remembered the way the baby monitor had lived on her nightstand, tracking every sound these two had made. How could they not remember her?
“Who goes where?” Nick asked.
“Hailey gets to choose first.”
“Why?” Nick demanded.
“She’s the oldest,” Leah said, because she was lost in a memory of holding her firstborn in her arms. Her daughter. Sweet, beautiful Hailey. Leah had taken a long maternity leave for Hailey. The Lowery Group had been very good about that, very understanding. A wonderful place to work, so much better than any commercial airline. It wasn’t until Leah went back to work that she began to fly exclusively for Brad Lowery. Lots of trips, lots of VIPs picked up on private airstrips. He was the chosen one. Congress, then Senate, then a run at the top. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind back then, back before he’d gotten a leaked look at the affidavit of one Nina Morgan and loaded his Smith & Wesson.
Nick said, “Okay, Hailey, you get first dibs. Which one do you like?”
“I don’t care,” Hailey said in the tone that Leah was getting to know well. It wasn’t insolence—that might have been better—but distance. A voice that promised the real Hailey was in there under lock and key, and good luck getting to her.
“You don’t want to be here,” Leah said, “and I understand that. But I want you to pick whatever room might make you happier.”
“I will only be happy back in my room in—” Hailey stopped and shook her head. Another consistent habit. Any time the expected rage about the loss of all that she’d known seemed ready to burst to the surface, Hailey would swallow it. Unlike Nick, she never raged and only rarely lamented the things she missed. She internalized, internalized, internalized.
“My room is no more,” Hailey said softly, a flat statement, not a dramatic one. “So I guess I’ll take the one with the best view. That would be the mountain view.”
It was some level of effort, at least. Not a complete refusal to choose. Leah was grateful. “Mount Megunticook,” Leah said. “That’s the highest mountain on the Eastern Seaboard that isn’t on an island, believe it or not. Doesn’t seem so tall, but…”
Hailey walked past her without speaking, went to the window, and turned the rod that shut the blinds, blocking the view of the mountains.
Leah nodded. Fair enough.
“So I get this one?” Nick said, wandering into the room across the hall. It was larger than the northern bedroom that Hailey had chosen, with new furniture that made it a proper bedroom but a sterile one. All the right furniture but none of the clutter of life. Hopefully, Nick would fill it up with that soon enough.
“Is it okay?” Leah asked.
He inspected it, pacing the space, peering out the windows. He was wearing an oversize Indianapolis Colts shirt and a cap that was too big for him and rested on his ears, pushing them out to the sides. His freckles had darkened in the sun at Moosehead. She could see Doug in him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I like it. There are a lot of trees.”
Hailey made a soft sound that might have been mistaken for exasperation about his observation of the trees but that Leah knew was really driven by his willingness to say I like it.
“I hope you’ll like it,” Leah said. “It’s a great town and a nice neighborhood. The rental agent told me there are some kids around your age. In fact, there’s a boy right next door who is just about Hailey’s…”
She turned back to look at her daughter, but Hailey had vanished into her new bedroom and closed the door behind her.
16
There was a family in the yellow house.
This was discouraging to Matt Bouchard. The yellow house was technically next door to his own but separated by a three-acre expanse that was neighborhood green space. The green space was Matt’s personal territory. Most of the neighbors viewed it as just trees and rocks, but all the stormwater funneled down through it and out to a retention pond before entering the Megunticook River, and in heavy spring rains, that stretch could look like a waterfall. The place was pretty cool—and great for practicing wilderness skills, as Matt often did—but Mrs. Wilkes up the road was always prattling on about the dangers of the pond and the liability of it all.
“She’s concerned,” Matt’s mom would say.
“She’s fearmongering,” his dad would respond.
Matt could avoid Mrs. Wilkes—frankly, it seemed like most of the neighbors tried to—but her house didn’t afford any view of the green space. The yellow house looked right out across it, which meant the people in it would have a view of all his liability-risking excursions.
He watched them move in through binoculars. He already knew what to expect. The woman’s name was Leah Trenton, and the kids weren’t her own kids but her niece and nephew. Mrs. Wilkes had told Matt’s parents this, because Mrs. Wilkes liked to share other people’s business. Gossip and bullshit is all that charges that lady’s batteries, Matt’s dad had said.
According to Mrs. Wilkes, who had heard it from someone who had heard it from the property manager who handled the house, Leah Trenton was a registered Maine guide who worked up around Moosehead Lake and the Allagash Wilderness.
How cool was that?
There were some jobs that sounded cool but really weren’t once you dug beneath the surface. Matt’s mother, for example, was a private investigator. A real-life PI! Sounded awesome, legit badass, but Matt had had too much time seeing how the sausage was made, as Mom said. She didn’t do stakeouts and she didn’t have tracking devices or cell phone bugs or any of the cool stuff. She definitely didn’t have a gun.
Leah Trenton, though, actually went into the wilderness, went on moose hunts and bear hunts and took floatplanes to isolated lakes where she’d paddle even farther into the unknown to catch trophy fish on a fly rod.
Legit badass.
She didn’t look much like a wilderness guide. She was wearing jeans and a tank top and looked physically fit, but you could look physically fit from an exercise bike, too.
The boy was maybe eight or nine years old. Possibly older than that and just small. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and an Indianapolis Colts baseball cap.
Not going to make many friends up here in that hat, Matt thought, and then the girl climbed out and he forgot about the cap.
She was the one who was Matt’s age, Mom had said. Going into seventh grade this year, like him, or maybe eighth. Mom hadn’t been sure. The girl was tall, wearing jeans and a fleece jacket—Why is she dressed like summer is over?—and had long dark hair that fell just below her shoulders. To say that she looked like her aunt was an understatement. It was uncanny. The girl even did the pause-and-look-around thing like her aunt had. When she looked up, past the house and into the mountains, she seemed to stiffen a little, like the sight of them intimidated her.
They’re from somewhere in the Midwest, Matt’s mother had said.
The Midwest was flat. Maybe she’d never seen any mountains? Still, it was a strange re
action. Everything about her response to the place was strange, actually. She stood there rigidly, looking at the trees as if they hid a sniper. The thought was almost enough to make Matt lower his binoculars.
Almost.
A soft, cool breeze rode up the river and through the green space slope. It rustled leaves, fanned through the grass, and then eddied around the Trenton family. The girl’s dark hair swept across her face, and she took one hand out of her pocket and pushed her hair back over her ear, and Matt’s throat felt tight.
She was going to be the most beautiful girl in school. Libby Nielson was in for a rude awakening after Labor Day.
Seventh grade, Matt implored the heavens silently. Please, please let her be in the seventh grade.
The woman said something in a voice too soft for Matt to hear out in the woods, across the retention pond where frogs chirped, and then the whole group walked down the driveway, up the steps, and into the house. The front door closed, and they were gone. They’d been in sight for only the brief moment, none of them touching one another or speaking, let alone expressing any of the celebration or enthusiasm you might expect from two kids showing up at their new house.
Maybe they don’t want to be in Maine at all, Matt thought.
Something was off with them. He wondered what exactly it meant that the kids weren’t living with their parents anymore. Had someone died or gotten sick or gone to jail? There were so many bad things that could happen.
He needed to ask his mother. She should call them, Matt thought. Be neighborly, show a little kindness.
And find out that girl’s name.
17
The strangers arrived in Everett Spoonhour’s office just after five, walking in mere minutes after Linda, his receptionist, had left for the day. Usually Linda was the last to leave, but on Wednesdays she hosted a Bible study and hustled out, which meant that on Wednesdays, Everett tended to host a bourbon at his desk before heading home himself. He could always use a bourbon after a day of minding the affairs of the dead.
He was minding the decanting of exactly one and a half ounces of Blanton’s into a tumbler glass when he heard the office’s front door open and close.
“Forget something?” he said without turning, maneuvering to block the bottle and glass from Linda’s view with his body. He didn’t care that she saw what he was doing, necessarily—he was the boss, after all—but he didn’t want to advertise it either.
“Mr. Spoonhour?”
The voice was masculine, with the faintest whisper of Boston in that closing r.
Everett turned in surprise and saw the white man and then, behind him, the black man, who closed the door so softly the latch’s click was nearly inaudible. The white man was wearing gray Carhartt work pants and a long-sleeved shirt open over a white T-shirt. He was about forty, several inches shorter than Everett’s six two, and muscular, with a week’s worth of beard. The black man was taller and leaner and possibly the same age but somehow harder to define, with a presence so quiet that he seemed less distinct, as if you had to squint to determine his exact silhouette, let alone any features. He was wearing a Carolina blue T-shirt, black jeans, and khaki-colored boots that were so clean, they seemed to glow.
Everett Spoonhour was the furthest thing from a racist—you could ask anyone about that. Even though his grandfather had been in the Klan, Everett was absolutely not a racist…and yet the black man scared him more than the white man.
“May I help you?” he said, walking to the open door of his office.
“I sincerely hope so,” the white man said. He’d stopped at the empty reception desk, and the black man stepped up at his side and nodded politely, and Everett began to feel foolish for that momentary fear. “Sorry to be bothering you so late in the day, but we’ve been on the road since six and we’re headed to the airport first thing tomorrow, so we had to try to catch you before heading back to Texas.”
“Texas?”
The white man nodded and extended his hand. “Name is Scott Mason, sir. My colleague is Reggie Taylor.”
Everett shook their hands. Strong grips, both of them, but while the one named Scott looked around the office when he spoke, the one named Reggie never took his eyes off Everett. It wasn’t an aggressive stare; in fact, it was so calm that Everett felt himself relaxing. He was a student of human nature, and he could see that there was no hostility in Reggie Taylor.
“What brings you here from Texas?” Everett asked, thinking that he hadn’t worked a case with any overlap in the Lone Star State in many years.
“Missing children,” Scott Mason said.
“Pardon?”
“Missing children,” Mason said again. “Not your Amber Alert kind yet, although we think they should be. We think you probably agree.”
“I’m not following.”
Mason reached into his breast pocket and withdrew two items. One looked like a passport, and the other was a four-by-six photograph. He opened the passport first and handed it over.
It turned out to be a private investigator’s license. Everett gave it a long, scrutinizing look, even tilting it back and forth so the light hit it at different angles. This was all show, of course; he had not the faintest idea what a Texas PI license should look like.
“All right,” he said, passing it back. “No jurisdiction in Kentucky, though. With all due respect, PIs don’t really have any jurisdiction anywhere.”
Mason gave a thin smile. Reggie Taylor did not.
“Correct,” Mason said. “We can’t do a damn thing except ask questions, and that’s all we’re here to do. With the full understanding that you don’t have to answer them.”
“Glad we’re in agreement there.”
“But we hope you’re concerned with the safety of the children,” Reggie Taylor said.
It was the first time he’d spoken. His voice was soft but grave, like wind before a storm.
“My concern for safety is joined with my concern for confidentiality,” Everett said, striving to find the entitled evasiveness of the esquire.
Mason held the photograph up. Two children were in the picture, an older girl who was maybe thirteen or fourteen and a boy a few years younger.
“Her name is Hailey Chatfield. His name is Nicholas Chatfield. Correct?”
Everett had drawn up the standby guardianship for those children a decade earlier, though he remembered Doug Chatfield only as young, physically fit, and nervous. Nervousness wasn’t uncommon in Everett’s office. Even the most virile could grow a little green around the gills when you were signing and notarizing documents pertaining to their demise. Doug’s overriding concern had been the creation of an ironclad standby guardianship.
Everett had done his job.
He hadn’t seen the man again. He’d never seen the children. Years passed, clients came and went, and Everett’s memory of Doug Chatfield dimmed. Then Doug Chatfield’s truck had flipped, and Everett’s phone rang, and suddenly there was one Leah Trenton in his office, a tall, lean, muscled woman with intense dark eyes and a copy of the document that Everett had drafted all those years earlier. Leah, the legal standby guardian.
I believe this is the triggering event, she’d said, and Everett had somberly conceded.
“Is it true?” Mason asked him now. “Did you make custody arrangements for these children?”
Everett wasn’t confirming that to strangers, but he certainly wasn’t going to deny it. Only two types of men denied the truth: liars and fools.
“You guys understand that I can’t discuss the situation,” he said.
“You’re bound by client confidentiality, yes. But the problem, Mr. Spoonhour, is that your client is dead. His children are not.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re in harm’s way.”
“We disagree.”
“If they’re in danger,” Everett said, “then law enforcement should be involved. I may be able to talk to them, but I can’t talk to private investigators. I can’t get into this without a court orde
r compelling me to do so. Not even if I wanted to.”
“Understood and appreciated,” Mason told him. “Likewise, I hope you understand and appreciate this: those kids are in danger. My guess is, you already sense this.”
Everett found himself giving the slightest nod in response. It seemed to be enough for Mason, because he finally lowered the photograph and returned it to his pocket.
“We’ve had no leads on this,” he said. “I’m being honest to the point of embarrassment. If we had other options, we wouldn’t be here, Mr. Spoonhour. We don’t need the backstory from you or even any details. But those children…they need someone. If we had the faintest idea where to go from here, well, that might make the difference between a healthy and happy future for them or something terrible.”
Time passed. No one spoke.
“I don’t know where they went,” Everett said at last. “That has been a problem for me. You’re adding to the problem, not fixing it. I can’t fix yours either.”
“No idea where they went. Okay. What about means of contact?”
Everett shook his head.
“No address?” Mason said. “No phone number? Nothing? The man died and you stepped in to handle his affairs but you’ve got no way to contact his children? How do you intend to see that they get insurance money?”
Everett stayed silent.
“You have a contact for her,” Reggie Taylor said. It was a flat, empty statement. None of the questioning or pushing that Mason tried. Just assertion.
Everett had an e-mail address and a phone number, but he couldn’t share those. He thought about the children, thought about his professional and ethical code, and measured the distance between them.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t help you. I wish that I could.”
Mason nodded. Taylor did not. He just stared. Somewhere behind Everett, ice cracked softly as it melted in the bourbon.
“You need to send the right authorities my way,” Everett said. “Someone with child welfare who has jurisdiction. That shouldn’t be hard, because if it is as bad as you say, they will want to move aggressively.”
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