Dennis’s death had made those years of their early marriage so much fresher in her mind. Was it just the slideshow her daughter had made for the funeral? There had been a photo of the four of them at a party at the clubhouse, where they all got quite drunk on Joy’s homemade Hawaiian punch. It had been so strange sitting in the chilly church, seventy-four years old in stockings, seeing herself up on the screen in her orange miniskirt. She could literally taste the sickly sweet punch and feel the fabric of that miniskirt against her thighs. It felt like it was all still there, that time of their lives, somewhere metaphysical, accessible through some magical means other than memory.
Joy had been smiling sideways at Dennis over her glass of punch in that photo, while Dennis, with a huge handlebar moustache, looked back at her suggestively, and Debbie and Stan smiled unsuspectingly at the camera. Debbie had forgotten what a bombshell Joy used to be. (Wasn’t that the word Dennis once used for Joy? The Delaney Bombshell?)
Debbie’s daughter hadn’t noticed that she’d chosen a photo for her father’s memorial slideshow of him flirting with another woman. (She’d been more intrigued by the 1970s refreshments: cheese and pickled onions on toothpicks stuck in oranges so they looked like hedgehogs. “Oh my God, Mum, what are those things?”)
Had Debbie been the only one at that funeral to see that photo flash by and wonder if anything had ever gone on between Dennis and Joy?
It was very possible.
Dennis was no angel. Debbie had been a bit wild herself. They’d both had “flings” in the early years of their marriage, before the children were born. Nothing important. She wouldn’t have used the word affairs. Just a bit of fun. No feelings were hurt, or not that badly hurt. They’d even been to a key party once. “How did we find the energy?” they marveled once they reached their fifties. They’d never told their children. Young people today were strangely puritanical about sex even as they pouted their lips and flaunted their bottoms online.
“Whatever happened to topless sunbaking?” Dennis had said gloomily at one of their last trips to the beach. Debbie, trying to be helpful, had pointed to a group of girls in G-string bikinis. “Nah, they just look silly,” Dennis had said. He was a boob man. Joy had been wearing a low-cut top in that photo. Dennis hadn’t been admiring Joy’s pretty eyes, that’s for sure.
Debbie wouldn’t be cross with Joy if she had slept with Dennis. She wouldn’t send her a thank-you card. But she wouldn’t hold it against her.
It was all such a long time ago. It surely had nothing to do with Joy’s disappearance.
Unless it indicated that Joy was a serial cheater?
Had she run off with a paramour?
Who could be bothered at their age? Perhaps Joy could be bothered. She’d always been so energetic.
Sulin parked, and Debbie’s back twanged as she got out of the car, just to remind her that she wasn’t actually thirty, no matter the freshness of her memories.
“Steel yourself,” said Sulin as she locked the car. “Mark Higbee approaches.”
Mark Higbee played the Monday-night social comp with immense gravitas, bouncing the ball about four hundred times each time he served and stopping to mop his brow with a towel in between games as if it were the Australian Open. He also had that horrible habit of tweaking his poor wife’s nose, which made Debbie want to punch his.
“Ah, this man is a stupid egg,” said Sulin under her breath, and Debbie shot her a surprised look because Sulin never normally had a bad word to say about anyone.
He walked toward them, tall, thin, and gray-bearded, a giant racquet bag slung over his shoulder. “Salutations, ladies!” he said with an amused smile. He saw women as dear little inferior beings. “You heard the latest about Joy?” His face was bloated with the pleasure of delicious, shocking gossip.
“No,” said Sulin in a chilly tone.
“You do know she’s missing?” said Mark.
“For goodness’ sake, of course we do,” snapped Sulin. “We both helped with the search yesterday.”
“It’s obvious that Stan is their quote unquote chief suspect,” said Mark, oblivious to her snappiness. He caressed his bearded chin with his thumb and index finger, as if he were parodying a professor deep in thought. “But without a body … they’re royally screwed.”
“Without a body?” said Debbie. “You don’t mean Joy’s body?”
“Of course I do,” said Mark, as if he’d never heard anything so stupid. “Who else’s body would I mean, Debbie?”
Debbie thought of Joy’s lovely tanned legs. The woman never stood still. She’d brought around a lasagna when Dennis died, in a baking tray, and then instantly confessed that she hadn’t baked it, she’d bought it from the Italian deli and tried to transfer it to the dish to make it look homemade. She’d looked so guilty it had made Debbie laugh.
“You’ve got to face facts,” said Mark paternally. “It’s unlikely she’s alive. Stan had scratch marks on his face. What does that tell you?”
“There are many ways that could happen,” said Sulin, but her voice faltered with the horror of it.
“The police might be calling it a missing persons investigation,” said Mark, “but anyone with a brain knows they’re treating it as a murder investigation.”
“She texted all her children that she was going away,” said Debbie.
“It’s not exactly hard to send a text from someone else’s phone,” said Mark. “The phone was still at the house. Barb McMahon found it hidden under their bed.”
“Stan doesn’t know how to text,” said Debbie. “If that’s what you’re implying.”
“So he says,” said Mark.
Debbie said, “Stan is our friend. You shouldn’t say things like this.”
“I heard there was an affair,” said Mark. His eyes sparkled. Debbie had never seen the man so cheerful. “They had an attractive twenty-something girl staying at their house last year, a quote unquote family friend, and I’m guessing that when Joy was in hospital the temptation was too much for Stan. You know, when the cat’s away, the mice do tend to play!”
“Stop it,” said Debbie. “Just stop talking. I do not believe a word of it.”
But it was hard now not to put that together with Sulin’s story of Stan, sitting in the gutter last year, crying.
Mark raised his palms. “Don’t shoot the messenger, Debbie! Keep this to yourselves, but I have a theory about where he’s buried the body.”
Sulin said, “We’re not interested in your theory, Mark.”
“Under their court,” said Mark. “They had it resurfaced. Perfect place to hide a body. I told the police: Guys, you need to dig up that tennis court. I think they probably will. You heard it here first.”
“But, wait, they resurfaced it back in January—” began Debbie.
Mark barreled on. “Not only that. I saw Stan, covered in dust, bloodshot eyes, buying chocolate milk at the mini-mart down on Hastings Street two days after Joy went missing. I said, Stan, what happened to you? He ignored me. Literally ignored me as if I didn’t exist. Told the police about that too.”
“You think he buried her body and then went and bought himself a chocolate milk?” asked Sulin.
“That’s exactly what I think,” said Mark. “Burying a body is thirsty work!”
“That’s not funny,” said Debbie.
“It’s not funny, Debbie, it’s an absolute tragedy,” said Mark cheerfully. “I also told the police they should look into that son of theirs, the one driving about in the poser cars who supposedly makes all his money doing ‘online trading.’ He used to deal drugs. Know that for a fact because he sold them to my son.”
“Troy?” said Debbie. Troy had dated her daughter. She knew Troy had dated a lot of people’s daughters, but she still had a soft spot for him. “That was when he was a teenager, Mark, I think we’ve all moved on.”
“I told the police they needed to look at possible money laundering, maybe an international white-collar crime syndicate, who knows h
ow he makes all his money.”
“So, wait, now you’re saying you think Troy had something to do with his mother’s disappearance?” said Sulin.
“Anything is possible, ladies!” Mark shifted the racquet bag on his shoulder and sauntered off. “See you on the court!”
“Oh, fuck you, Mark Higbee,” said Sulin, and Debbie was fairly confident this was the first time that particular word had ever crossed her friend’s lips.
Chapter 32
“Do you reckon the husband had an affair?” asked Ethan.
He and Christina were walking from the car down the endless gravel driveway of a stately home to take a statement for their schoolboy arsonist case, but they were discussing, as they usually were these days, the Joy Delaney investigation.
“With this Savannah girl? It’s a possibility,” said Christina. “There’s a whole lot that family isn’t telling us.”
“Protecting their father?”
“I assume so,” said Christina. “Or protecting themselves.”
She did a mental lineup of the four Delaney children as potential suspects.
Amy Delaney: Skittish as a small-time criminal.
Logan Delaney: Calm as an experienced one.
Troy Delaney: Smooth as a slippery salesman. (Except Christina didn’t know what he was selling and she felt like maybe he didn’t know either.)
Brooke Delaney: Circumspect as a spy.
Could one or more of them be responsible for their mother’s disappearance? Or was it more likely that one of them aided and abetted their father?
“If my father had an affair with a young girl and then my mother went missing,” mused Ethan as they stepped onto an arched and columned portico fit for a prince or a poor, misunderstood little arsonist, and rang the doorbell, “I’d throw him straight under the bus.”
“Me too,” said Christina. She bit on the ragged thumbnail she was meant to be leaving alone for her wedding day.
So why, then, were the Delaneys being so cagey?
She said, “Did their mother let them down in some way?”
“Mothers can do that,” said Ethan, and she was wondering if he meant that in a general or specific sense when the arsonist’s mother opened the door, her son’s guilt written all over her exquisitely renovated face.
Chapter 33
LAST OCTOBER
Troy couldn’t make himself care or focus. The market was quiet, but not that quiet. His heart wasn’t in it. He’d made only one trade in the last two hours. That was a signal he should stop for the day, according to his own rules, and rule number one was Follow Your Own Rules.
He looked away from his monitors at the floor-to-ceiling windows where a solitary seagull wheeled across a cloudless pale blue sky. The rippling harbor loomed ahead of him like a landing strip. He’d landed a 747 at Salzburg Airport once. It was a flight-simulator experience. A gift for his thirtieth birthday from his ex-wife. The instructor said he had excellent instincts. Troy was now confident he could land a plane if the pilot got in trouble and the (beautiful, panicked) flight attendant came running from the cockpit begging any passenger with flying experience to come forward.
Could have been an airline pilot. Could have won Wimbledon. Could have been a married soccer dad in the suburbs, who made his mother a grandmother, like she deserved to be, instead of donating his kid to another man, making the other man the soccer dad, standing there on the sidelines, cheering on Troy’s kid, who would be fucking good at soccer, because the Delaneys were good at all sports, not just tennis.
Troy would let his kid play any sport he wanted to play. But not this particular kid, because it wouldn’t be his kid.
It was stupid to get sentimental. If he really wanted a kid he could have one. No problem. Claire had been the one with the problem. Troy had a high sperm count and excellent motility. “That is just so typical,” Claire had said when she read his sperm analysis, back when she still loved him. He’d been relieved. He hadn’t slept the night before they got his results, terrified that the test would reveal a secret hidden failing. His father got his mother pregnant just by looking at her. Of course he did.
Handing over the embryos was the generous, kind, altruistic thing to do, except he couldn’t pretend to be an altruist because if Claire had cheated on him, he would have been vengeful as hell. He would have said, Let those little suckers thaw, give them to science, chuck them in the bin.
He was paying an overinflated price for a not especially satisfying sexual episode with a girl whose name he couldn’t remember, although he remembered her job and her perfume: Pharmaceutical Sales Executive and White Linen. He’d never liked that scent, but now he detested it. He remembered going home afterward in a cab, looking out on rain-sodden city streets, opening the cab window in a fruitless attempt to make the stench of her perfume and his regret go away.
No regrets. That was another of his trading rules. Never waste time thinking about what could have been.
He hadn’t given Claire his answer yet. He’d been holding out hope for a last-minute reprieve: a reason to refuse her. Right now it was dinnertime in Texas. He imagined her sitting down to dinner with her husband. “Any word yet, honey?”
They must hate having their future dreams dependent on him.
The Texan cardiologist would never break Claire’s heart. The guy was a heart specialist after all. He probably treated Claire’s heart with all the specialist loving tenderness she deserved. Troy hoped he did treat her heart tenderly, even as he wished he didn’t.
He wished he hadn’t hurt her. He didn’t understand why he’d done it, except that all through his life he’d been at the mercy of a powerful desire: the desire to blow everything up.
What if I put the tip of my finger against that fragile ornament my mother said not to touch, and not only do I touch, I push? What if, halfway through a boring geography lesson, I stand up and walk out without saying a single word? What if I jump off that bridge with the sign that says NO JUMPING? Take that pill? Go for that impossible shot? What if I pick up a girl at a city bar while my wife is going through IVF to have a baby we both supposedly want? It was like an invisible force took hold of him: Do it, do it, do it.
The girl meant nothing. She was just a girl sitting next to him at a bar, with giant teeth and a harsh laugh. Claire was smarter, funnier, and prettier, her teeth were perfectly sized, and her laugh was beautiful.
His actions were inexplicable. It was all kinds of fucked-up.
“You must have wanted an excuse to get out,” Claire had said, her face ashen. And it was true, he must have wanted an excuse to get out of the relationship, although he wasn’t consciously aware of wanting to get out, but why else had he done it, and more to the point, why had he instantly confessed the moment he got home, before he’d even taken off his shirt? While Claire looked up from her book in their bed and smiled, and the cells of their potential children multiplied and divided in a Sydney clinic? It was called self-sabotage, according to Amy, who was the only one in his family who kind of understood, because she had a tendency toward it herself, although even she took a long time to forgive him for breaking her beloved sister-in-law’s heart.
Enough! Troy slammed both fists on his desk so hard that his three oversized monitors rattled. He did not do this. What was done was done. He walked to the windows of his home office and pressed his forehead against the glass. Every single person in the world who came to his apartment talked about the incredible views, except for his brother. Logan had walked into this room, laughed out loud, clipped Troy on the back of the head, and said, “Jesus, mate.” Maybe that was his way of saying it was incredible, but why couldn’t he just say it was incredible? Why was it funny? Just give him credit for the view, for Christ’s sake. Even their father had said, “Bloody good view.” Although Stan followed it up with, “Hope you can afford it.” Sometimes he wanted to show his dad his bank statements, like a preschooler giving him a finger painting: Look what I did, Daddy. I got rich without tennis, Da
ddy. Except not as rich as Harry fucking Haddad. Troy kept a permanent eye on the dickhead’s net worth.
He went back to his desk, opened his email, typed in Claire’s name, and wrote the message, fast. Dear Claire, I’ve thought about it, it’s fine, go ahead, make it happen, I’ll sign all the forms you need. Love, Troy.
He pressed send. He looked at his hands still resting on the keyboard. What had he just done? Those words were now on a computer screen in Texas. It felt inappropriately futuristic. A message of that significance should have been sent in a handwritten letter that took months to cross the ocean. But everything about this moral dilemma had once been impossibly, laughably futuristic. Frozen microscopic babies waiting to be brought to life.
She could be reading it right now. He tried to imagine his ex-wife’s face. What would she think of the word love?
He would never have said yes if he didn’t still love her.
The thought hit him like a punch in the nose. It wasn’t just about redemption, it was about love. Was the email he just sent his first-ever act of unconditional love? The most unselfish act of his life? To zero out the most selfish one?
His apartment buzzer rang. He walked to the security monitor in a daze.
“Hello?” he said roughly.
A face loomed in the screen. He took an instant step back, appalled.
It was Savannah. What did she want? Something must have happened to his parents. Was his mother back in the hospital? Had his father hurt his knee again?
“Oh, hi, Troy, it’s … ah, Savannah here.” She leaned in even closer to the camera. “Your … mother’s friend?” Her voice crackled through the speaker.
Your mother’s friend. That was a strange way to put it. He waited.
He pressed the speaker and said, “Are my parents okay?”
“They’re fine. Can I come in?”
He looked around his apartment. He felt an overwhelming, irrational sense of resistance to the idea of Savannah being here, her rabbitlike eyes darting back and forth, evaluating and judging. He had no idea if that judgment would be negative or positive. All he knew was that she would be far too interested in everything she saw.
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