“Why?” Immediately, I wished I could take the question back. I wanted to leave that sunny, dusty room. I wanted to forget Caroline’s quilt and the daisies and the apple tree outside.
But I didn’t move. I sat still, listening to a breeze blow the wind chime into song again.
“He called the day before we left for Charleston,” Matt said. “I was barbecuing in the backyard, and I came inside to get the garlic salt. Caroline likes that on everything.” He paused for a second, his eyes elsewhere, before he looked at me again. “Anyway, it was just like that other phone call. I found Caroline sitting at the kitchen table on the phone. She was hunched over. She was talking like a little girl. She was saying, yes, no, I understand, stuff like that. When she saw me, she hung up fast, and I asked her who it was.”
Matt stopped and stared past me to the kitchen, the room where it had all happened.
“And,” I said, prompting him.
Matt returned his gaze to me. “And,” he said, the emotion gone from his voice, “she said it was Will. Two days later she was gone.”
Matt remained still, looking at me, as if daring me to challenge his assumption. Something trembled inside me, and yet I ignored it. I did what I’d been trained to do, to analyze the situation. It wasn’t necessarily a logical assumption, I decided, to think that the phone call was somehow a precursor to Caroline’s disappearance days later. Yet nothing about the last few weeks was logical. I had received the letter and started investigating my mom’s death. Around the same time, my father called my sister, and then my sister disappeared.
“Maybe you’re looking for someone to blame?” I said weakly.
“Are you kidding me?” He nearly shouted the question, and I flinched involuntarily. He pulled his glasses off again, and I thought he might cry. “I’m not looking to blame someone. I just want her back, and I’ve done everything I can think of. I’ve talked to the police here and in Charleston. I’ve been sitting around here every minute like the police told me, in case she calls.”
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “Is there anything I can do? I’d like to help.”
Matt replaced his glasses and stood up. “I’ve got to get out of here. Even if it’s just for half an hour. Do you want to get a bite? I haven’t eaten all day.”
I glanced at my watch: 5:00 p.m. There was no sense in checking into a hotel and trying to sleep before my flight. “Sure,” I said, and then as an afterthought, “Are you sure you want to leave? What if she calls?”
Matt opened his mouth then closed it again, his eyes roaming his house as if he was searching for something. “I’ve been holed up here since I got back from Charleston. I haven’t gone to work, nothing. I’m about to get fired. But once in a while, I have to get out. There’s an old schoolhouse a few blocks away that’s been converted into a hotel and restaurant. It’s quick.”
I picked up my purse and followed him out the door.
We walked without speaking down Matt’s street, around a park, and along another street. I was acutely aware of Matt at my side, aware that he was family to me. Matt walked with his hands in his pockets, his head hung low as if it was an effort to keep it on his shoulders. I could almost feel how exhausted he was.
The rain had stopped but the air felt heavy with moisture. And I sensed something else, too, a feeling I’d had before, one that was growing familiar. I looked around and saw a black car as it turned a corner. A midsize sedan, an Alamo rental sticker on the bumper; a gray strap flapped from the trunk as if it had been closed too fast and had caught the handle of a bag. There were probably a million black rental cars cruising around Portland right now, yet I remembered that one in particular because of the Alamo sticker and the gray strap. The car had been in front of me for a few blocks on the way to Matt’s house, before it turned off. And I remembered seeing a black car behind me a minute or two later, but then I had begun to look for Matt’s address, and I forgot about it.
I shook my head. I was being paranoid.
I was about to make conversation with Matt, but as I began searching for a neutral topic, we reached the restaurant. It was a large, yellow stucco building, with arched windows and doorways. There were stone reliefs of carved cherubs in the corners. We walked up the steps, and Matt swung open the heavy wood door and held it for me. I was about to step inside, when I saw it again. The black car. It was parked a half block away. Glare on the windshield prevented me from seeing inside, so I stayed where I was, waiting for the car to move. But the car sat there, so that the sedan and I seemed in some type of standoff.
“Hailey?” I heard Matt say. “Ready?”
I felt foolish suddenly. “Sure, sure.” With one last look at the still car, I walked through the door.
Inside the old schoolhouse, all the rooms were still intact, so that what had once been the classrooms and offices were now bars, dining rooms and hotel rooms.
I remarked about how great the restaurant was, but Matt barely managed a smile in return. He led me down the old wood hallway to a courtyard that held a large fireplace pit in the center.
Once we were seated, Matt pushed the menu away. “The Caesar is excellent if you like salads, and the burgers are my favorite.”
“Sounds good,” I said. I ordered a chicken Caesar, while Matt asked for a turkey sandwich. “No burger for you?”
“I normally would, but…” He scratched his jaw. “I guess I don’t want to enjoy myself.”
I nodded. “I was wondering, if it isn’t too painful, if could you tell me what Caroline was like. I mean, is like.” I wanted to shoot myself for using the past tense.
Matt made a short exhale, almost like a laugh. “How do I describe Caroline? It’s so hard to come up with the words. What was she like when you were a kid?”
“Beautiful, quiet, sad, or at least I always thought she was sad.”
Matt nodded. “Caroline does carry around a certain amount of melancholy. One of the reasons she moved here was for the rain. Most people just put up with it, but she said it’s comforting to her, and that it’s the sunny skies that depress her. My friends were surprised when we started dating because she wasn’t the outgoing party type I usually brought around, but they came to love her, too.”
“How did you meet?”
“We met in Astoria. It’s a small town on the Oregon coast. My hometown, actually. Caroline was taking a weekend trip there.”
“By herself?”
“Yeah.”
I knew he was going to say that. I was struck by the first similarity, other than physical, between my sister and me—loneliness had been a companion to us both.
“I met her in a diner there,” Matt said. “We started talking, and we were there for four hours. I knew by the end of that day that I was in love with her.”
Our food was delivered, and Matt looked relieved.
I began to eat my salad. “So I have to ask you. What did the police say?”
“I called the Charleston police the night of the wedding, but they told me I needed to wait twenty-four hours. Then I got back to the hotel and found the note from her.” He put his sandwich down. “I was up all night, just waiting. And I waited all the next day. I wandered around looking for her. Finally, when night came I contacted the local police again, but when I showed them the note, they weren’t interested. Gave me some line about how women do that sometimes.” He laughed scornfully.
“And that’s it? They wouldn’t help you?”
“Nope. I called the Portland police, too. They were a little nicer, and they looked into her disappearance for a few days, but they kept coming back to the note, and eventually they dropped their investigation. It was the same song and dance about letting her have a little space. I’ve been trying to find your father, but the number’s not listed. How about giving me that?”
His question startled me. My father was a private man, and I wasn’t sure what to do. “Do you still have the note?” I said, ignoring his question for the time being.
Matt s
ighed. He stared at me. Finally, as if he’d made a decision, he nodded, then leaned back and reached into the pocket of his jeans. He pulled out a small, worn piece of white notepaper and handed it to me. Across the top, in green italic printing, it read, Planters Inn. Under that, in blue ballpoint ink and tiny cursive handwriting, Caroline had written:
Matty, I love you so much, and I’m sorry to just take off like this, but I need a break. Please, please, please don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I’ll be in touch. Love, Caro.
I read it once more and felt a tug in my heart at the nicknames.
I handed the paper back to Matt. “Has she done this before?”
“Never.” He ran a finger over the note before he folded it and put it back into his pocket.
“And you haven’t heard anything from her?”
“No.”
“Have you called her friends?”
Matt smiled. “You’re looking at him.”
I felt that tug again. “She doesn’t have any girlfriends?”
“Not really.” He must have caught the surprise on my face. “Don’t look so sad. She became pretty good friends with my buddies, and I’m her best friend. We’ve been happy, until your father screwed it up for us.”
The lettuce in my mouth felt dry and sticky. I had to force myself to chew and swallow it. I was angry at my father for keeping me away from Caroline, but I still hated to hear someone malign him. Will Sutter was an organized, cerebral man who always had a reason for his actions. He did nothing by accident. I wanted to believe that he had a good motive for keeping in touch with Caroline and not telling his youngest daughter about it.
“I’m sorry,” Matt said. “I know you lived with your dad, and you probably believe he’s perfect, but if you’d seen Caroline that day…” His words died away for a moment, as if the memory was too painful. “I should have made her talk then. I should have forced her to tell me what was making her act like that and look so scared. But Caroline got jumpy when she was pushed, and I thought there was time. I thought…” He trailed off again, and shoved his plate away. He’d eaten only half his sandwich.
“Shouldn’t you try to eat more?” I asked. “You need to keep your strength up.”
Matt smiled, the first genuine smile I had seen since I met him. “That’s what Caro always used to say. ‘You need to keep your strength up.’”
I returned the smile. It was something I said frequently, too, clichéd words of wisdom I gave to my father when he was on trial or to Maddy when she was drinking too much wine. A glimmer of a memory then. My mom in a pair of shorts and a peach T-shirt, bringing a basket of rolls to the table.
“Della made them special,” she’d said, placing the basket on the table. “Eat, kids. You need to keep your strength up.”
Suppers during the week were laid-back affairs, with all of us in casual clothes—shorts in the spring and summer, jeans and sweaters during the colder months. The food was brought in whenever it was ready, Della sticking her head in the dining room to say goodbye before she hurried home to her own family. But on Fridays, when my dad came home, dinner was transformed.
It was as if our father was a celebrity, the one we were all waiting to see. My mother dressed up, put on makeup, and made elaborate dinners without Della’s help. She even set the dining-room table with linens. In my earliest memories, those dinners were the highlight of everyone’s week, a festive feel lingering at the table.
By the time I was five or six, Dan had become sullen and sat in hostile silence. Caroline, who had always been quiet, was more withdrawn, too. In retrospect, I could see that there was something different about my family during those last years. Or was I filtering my memory because of the news that they’d been separated? No, I didn’t think so. When I’d been much younger, maybe four or five, my parents would kiss in the front hall when Dad came home, and they would hold hands over the table. But later, during the few years before my mother’s death, they made polite small talk while I chatted on and on about school, hating the odd silence in the room.
And I remembered something else. In the months before my mom died, the Friday dinners didn’t happen anymore. I was allowed to have a grilled-cheese sandwich in front of the television, while Caroline escaped to her room or the porch swing, and Dan fled with his friends in an old Jeep.
I heard a small cough, and I realized that Matt was watching me, waiting.
“Want to let me in?” he said.
“It’s nothing really. I was just remembering how my mom used to say the same thing about keeping your strength up, and that made me think about the times when she was still around, when I was little.”
“And that’s it?” Matt looked doubtful.
“Actually, I was thinking about family dinners and how we didn’t have them anymore before she died. I found out recently that my parents were separated in the months before her death.”
“Well, that’s interesting, isn’t it?” he said. “All these women running from Will Sutter.”
“One has nothing to do with the other,” I said in a haughty tone.
Matt shot me a disbelieving look, and I dropped my eyes. I wasn’t so sure, either.
“Did Caroline keep in touch with our brother, Dan?” I asked Matt.
“Not often that I know of. She told me her brother had sent money a few times when she first moved to Portland, but I can’t remember them having any contact since we’ve been married. We made our wedding plans at the last minute, and I asked her if she wanted to wait so that she could invite some family. She said no.”
“Did she say why?”
The corners of Matt’s mouth raised a little. “She said that I was her family now.” He looked around the restaurant. He seemed to remember again that his wife wasn’t here, that his family was gone, and the happy expression evaporated.
14
The next morning, back in Manhattan, I treated myself to a cab to work, figuring that if I went into the bowels of the subway, the darkness would send me straight to sleep. The red-eye had left on time the night before, but I couldn’t rest on the plane. My mind churned with too much information, too many things to do and the lingering memory of my brother-in-law’s haunted face.
Matt and I had talked for a few more hours. We filled in the details of our lives, got to know each other better. At times, the conversation veered to Caroline, to where she might be, to what we could do to find her. Matt kept asking me for my father’s number. I told him I would have better luck speaking with my father than he would, and I promised to do that. I dreaded it.
Framed in the cab’s window, the city flew past. The morning sun hid some of the dirt; the high-rises climbed upward. I organized the day’s to-do list in my head. First, I would put out fires on any cases other than McKnight. Next, I would call an emergency meeting about McKnight, and I’d ask two attorneys to be permanently assigned to the case, including Magoo Barragan and at least one other lawyer who could devote a crazy number of hours over the next month. But there were other things I had to do today, things that didn’t involve my quickly spinning legal world. I had to talk to my father and I would try to find my brother, Dan. Learning that Caroline was missing had come too soon on the heels of getting that letter—Look closely—and now my family wouldn’t or couldn’t leave my brain.
“Morning, Hailey,” the receptionist said as I walked out of the elevator and onto the thirty-third floor. Behind the woman’s high, mahogany desk, the words Gardner, State & Lord were spelled in burnished gold on the glass wall that overlooked a large conference room. Soothing classical music played from hidden speakers. This was the image our firm wanted outsiders to see.
“Hey, Tina,” I said.
I slipped my key card in the slot by the side door and stepped into the true Gardner offices, where secretaries clacked away on computers, swore at printers and answered constantly ringing phones. The attorneys’ doors were all open and the sound of their phone conversations blended with the other voices. Meanwhile, mail
and copy people hurried through the hallways, making deliveries and picking up stacks of documents.
I called hello to a number of employees as I made my way down the hall. Everyone looked pale to me today, as if they hadn’t seen the outside of this building in years. It was nearly true.
I was lucky enough to have what was considered a large associate office with a window, which, unfortunately, looked upon nothing but the building next to it. But at least I had some fugitive sunlight sneaking in, unlike some of the other associates who were strapped with internal offices and nothing but a fluorescent glare for their twelve-hour workdays. I even had room for a small love seat, although now it was stacked with large red McKnight file jackets.
Amy, a small woman with a cap of dark hair, bustled in after me. As usual, she wore a too-short skirt with a trim, matching jacket. “You look tired,” she said, frowning.
“Thanks,” I said in a sarcastic tone. But both Amy and I knew that I needed occasional mothering, that I liked it.
“Eat breakfast yet?”
“It’s almost eleven.” I unpacked my laptop and files. “I’ll wait for lunch.”
“Nope. I’ll get you a bagel.”
I didn’t argue. I told Amy to bring in the Your New Home files and any other cases that had to be dealt with immediately, and then to schedule a lunch meeting with all the cyber-law attorneys for one o’clock.
I worked for the next couple hours, absently picked at a cinnamon-and-raison bagel between interruptions. My phone rang incessantly, as if clients and other attorneys had sensed I was back in town.
I had just picked up my Dictaphone to dictate a Motion to Dismiss on a new file, when I heard Amy speaking to someone outside my office. “Hailey’s busy,” she said.
“Oh, I’ll just pop in,” said a sugary voice.
I groaned.
Paige Amboy, my least favorite attorney at the firm, stuck her head in my office. Her lustrous blond hair swung with the movement. “Welcome back, Hailey.”
“Hi, Paige.” I refrained from sighing, and sat up in my chair, aware that I’d worn my oldest, most unflattering gray pantsuit. Paige, meanwhile, looked stunning in a lemon-yellow dress just tight enough to be sexy but still conservative enough for Gardner, State & Lord. I was rarely able to pull off that effect.
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