When He Vanished

by T. J. Brearton

  “I’m sure it’s not your children,” Ridley says, “but we’re going to be thorough. In the meantime, can you think of anyone?”

  I look back at the TV crew, still filming and aiming the mike at me over the distance, as if they can capture some of this.

  “Maybe John was never even in the Subaru?” I say to Ridley. “Could someone else have just driven it and left it there? If he was abducted it could be the kidnapper’s blood on the wheel.”

  “Mrs. Gable, is there really no one you can think of?”

  “I don’t understand. No—”

  “Marcus Gainsborough is the biological father of your daughter, Melody, is that correct?”

  My hand is on the door but I’m stuck, unable to move. “What?”

  “Mom,” Russ says, looking up at me. “Did you know a bullet can still move around when it’s inside a person’s body?”

  Ridley finally answers. “Marcus Gainsborough. And from the information I have, Mr. Gainsborough is currently listed as missing.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO / PANIC

  I can barely hear Ridley’s voice beneath the roar of my maternal instinct. From the moment she said my ex’s name my heart cranked and my palms started to sweat. After dragging Russ back to the car and putting him in, I throw open the driver’s side door and sink into the seat.

  I can’t believe I never considered this. I ask Ridley what kind of car Marcus drives.

  “There’s a Chevy Tahoe registered to him.”

  An SUV. Does anyone not drive an SUV these days? Although, I did say to Sergeant Ferron I thought it might be a Tahoe . . .

  The news reporter and her cameraman are daring to get closer, filming me while I sit behind the wheel on the phone to Ridley. For a split second I see how it all looks from a bird’s-eye view: the harried celebrity and the relentless paparazzi.

  Melody!

  “Ridley, I have to call you right back.”

  “We need to talk about this, Jane. What’s the—”

  “I’ll call you right back.” I cancel the call and flip through my contacts, hands shaking. Russ is saying something with growing concern — he’s picking up on my anxiety. The camera looms in my window, the mike aims at my head on the other side of the glass.

  I’ve got Colette’s contact up and make the call.

  The line rings and rings. It makes sense that she doesn’t pick up if she’s in the midst of a piano lesson, but that doesn’t melt the ice shards in my veins. I drop the phone, my call to Colette unanswered, and hit the gas, reversing out of the driveway so fast the reporter and cameraman have to jump out of my way.

  * * *

  I hear the piano playing before I’m all the way to the red door. But I want to see my daughter; I need to be convinced she’s okay. After a couple of whacks with the side of my fist, the music stops.

  The door opens and Colette stands there with a mildly concerned, mildly perturbed look on her face. “Jane?”

  I yell past her. “Mel? Honey? You in there?” It’s irrational but I don’t care.

  “Jane, what—”

  Melody shuffles into the hall in bewilderment. “Mom? What’s the matter?”

  I reach for her but stay put. “Come on, honey. I need you to come with me.”

  “Jane, you’re scaring me. Do you need help?” Colette’s voice lowers at the same time she pales. “Do you need me to call the police?”

  Melody hasn’t moved yet and we lock eyes. “Mel, I need you to get in the car.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it, please.” One more second and I’m barging in and grabbing her.

  “You never tell me anything. Is it Dad?”

  “Honey. Now. We’ll talk in a minute.”

  She stalks down the hall toward me with extra stiffness and speed for effect. I touch her as she pushes past me — I just need to have my hands on my daughter, confirm that she’s solid and unharmed — but she shrugs me off and pounds down the steps to the driveway.

  “I got a call from the detective on John’s case,” I tell Colette.

  “What happened?”

  Melody encloses herself in the Toyota with a slap of the door. “It’s about Marcus,” I say.

  “Jane . . . here, you need to sit down.”

  She’s right. I’m shaking again — shuddering, really — like I’ve suddenly got low blood sugar or my screws are coming loose.

  On the porch is a white wicker loveseat and two chairs with red cushions the same lipstick shade as the door. A wicker table stands between them, some type of Easter flower arrangement in a vase. Colette sits while I remain standing.

  “Jane . . .”

  “He’s missing.”

  Her face turns up to mine and the softness she carries, the sweet piano-teacher-lady façade, falls away. In its place, that imperial Gainsborough demeanor shines through, the kind that inhabits her nephew, Marcus, my ex. Melody’s father.

  “Well, that’s not official,” she says. “We don’t know anything yet. We just know that . . . that woman — she likes to create a controversy.”

  She’s talking about Marcus’s girlfriend. “Have you heard from him?”

  “No. I’m just his aunt, Jane. The last I saw Marcus was at a wedding eighteen months ago. I don’t even get a Christmas card.”

  I take a step closer. “Here’s what we know . . . we know that the police are thinking about him because there’s unknown blood in my husband’s car.”

  She’s calm. Her mouth is a thin line, eyes hunting for any sign that I’m a threat to her or her family name. “Marcus wouldn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “It’s not my blood and it’s not John’s,” I tell her. The shakes are subsiding. I’m feeling more confident. “They’re thinking about Marcus because he apparently hasn’t been seen or heard from in three days. And because he’s Melody’s father. And, well . . .”

  Colette places her hands on her knees and looks out into the overcast afternoon. A light rain has begun.

  “You haven’t heard from him?”

  Her sharp eyes catch me. “Of course not. I don’t know anything about this. And if I did, why wouldn’t I say so? Jane, I’ve only been kind to you.” Her hazel eyes are wrapped in wrinkles. Her crisp white hair is pulled back into her usual tidy bun. I calculate the expense of her stylishly casual clothes, like she dresses as if she saw a piano teacher in a film and decided to copy the look, complete with the sweater over her shoulders.

  “I know you’ve been kind to me, Colette. I know what you’ve done. But right now I just need to keep Melody with me, okay? Until we figure out what’s going on. I’ll pay you for today. Full lesson.”

  “I don’t care about the money. That’s not why I teach her. She’s family.”

  The words make me cringe. “I know,” I tell her. “And thank you.”

  My lingering look says the rest of what I can’t say: But the second you know something about your nephew, you need to tell me. And until I know where he is, you’re a threat.

  Her eyes talk right back: This isn’t the first family controversy I’ve been through. It won’t be the last.

  I turn down the steps and walk into the driveway. When I get back behind the wheel I glance through the windshield and see Colette now standing in front of the red door, watching.

  Melody says, “Mom, you’re freaking out.”

  “No I’m not. I’m okay.”

  “Freak out!” Russ calls from the back seat. “Le freak, c’est chic. Freak out!”

  Melody crosses her arms and turns her head away. “This is what you do.”

  I turn the car around in the wide driveway without responding to her and get going. The mansion shrinks in the rearview mirror.

  * * *

  Melody is in her room on lockdown. Russ plays video games in his own room — that kid has had too much screen time lately but I’ve never needed the artificial babysitting so much. I pace the house while talking on the phone with my old pal Ridley.

  “T
ell me about your relationship to Marcus Gainsborough,” she says.

  Plain Jane. Plain Jane is insane. Just like her mother.

  “He was abusive, controlling, and an addict. So I left him.”

  “Physically abusive?”

  “Emotionally. Verbally.”

  You’re a runaway train.

  “Uh-huh. I have here a domestic violence report. Filed by Gainsborough. He didn’t press charges against you but it names you as the aggressor. Punches to the head, neck and ribs.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “It’s a lie? It’s a pretty detailed report.”

  I sigh. I lean against the wall, touch my forehead to it, feel the smooth coolness.

  Plain Jane . . .

  “Marcus was out partying and got into a fight with some guy,” I explain to Ridley. “I told him we were through, we were done, and he threatened to go to the police and say I did that to him. Okay? I told him to go ahead. He said he was gonna press charges. I said there was no way it was going to stick and he chickened out. This is going back fifteen years. Fifteen years. We were young and stupid.”

  “And you have sole custody of Melody? Or joint?”

  “Marcus never sought custody of any kind. He knew he couldn’t be a father. Melody is my husband’s daughter, he adopted her — Marcus never showed any interest. None. Not a birthday card, nothing. He hasn’t seen her since she was eighteen months old.”

  “Yet you ran to get her, like you’re afraid of him.”

  I move from the wall to the couch. The room is spinning and I close my eyes.

  “Jane?”

  “Colette gives Melody piano lessons. She’s Marcus’s aunt on his father’s side. They don’t have much to do with each other. Not anymore. Marcus has been going downhill. I rushed to pick up Melody — it was instinct. It just brought back old fears . . .” I leave the tears to dry on my face. I don’t know how much longer I can do this. “I’ve kept tabs on Marcus a little bit. I mean, I just hear things about him — secondhand . . . mutual acquaintances. I’ve never talked to him directly. Not since he called me one night.”

  “When?”

  “It was after John and I were married. John had adopted Melody. Marcus told me congratulations. He said he was happy for me. He’d been drinking, was slurring his words.”

  “Did he know about the adoption?”

  “Yes. And recently I heard from some people that, though he’d been stable for a while, he was wrecking his life again. He has more kids with another woman and he’s just screwing it up I guess.”

  “So . . .”

  “When you told me he was missing I assumed the worst.”

  “Because you thought after all these years, with him never filing for custody, never trying to reunite with Melody, never contacting her, he was suddenly going to kidnap her . . .”

  “With everything that’s going on? I mean, do you have kids, Detective Ridley?”

  She pauses. “No.”

  “So how do you—” I stop myself. No point digging an even deeper hole. When you’ve been with a man like Marcus Gainsborough, it never really leaves you. The instability, the looming threat never goes away. You can’t let your guard down.

  Ridley is saying something but I talk over her. “How did you find out that he was missing? Did it just come to you or . . . ?”

  “Sort of. It was inputted into the state police system. I’ve been crawling through your list of acquaintances — that’s what we do in a situation like this: we start with people closest to the victim and we work our way out.”

  I rub a hand over my face and try to settle down. I used to always be the steady one. I was Plain Jane. Nothing too remarkable about that Jane. She’s steady. She’s efficient. You can trust her. Now my strengths are a liability: I’m seen as pushy and aggressive, a suspect for spousal murder.

  You can’t win.

  Ridley says, “Your ex-husband was on my list. I tried to call him. I emailed him. I heard nothing for twenty-four hours. Usually when the police call you, you pick up, you call back. So I sent a trooper around. His place was a mess. During the process of that wellness check, it came to our attention that he was entered into the missing person’s database three days ago. In fact I talked to the woman you mentioned, Stacy Ray, the one he has two other children with — she was the one who filed the report. She hasn’t seen him in a week.”

  It’s Stacy who Colette was sneering at and dismissed as melodramatic.

  “Maybe he took off,” I say. “He’s the type — always had the means to escape at his leisure. He’d go to New York, fly out to LA, run away to the Caribbean. Whenever. Just if he felt the need.”

  I used to think it was a great perk — travel to exotic places, our child would never lack. I didn’t have anything growing up. Neither did John. I guess in the end you wind up with people of your own kind. If you’re from the street then they’re from the street. That’s how it works.

  “You were married to Marcus for three years.”

  “It fell apart.” I don’t tell Ridley that the Cinderella dream was subsumed by Marcus’s dark moods, caused by stuff disappearing up his nose off of glass tables and pocket mirrors, or how exotic trips turned out to be neurotic episodes of Marcus trying to dry himself out.

  “And you lived in the Troy area when you were with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Marcus’s only family are his aunt and uncle who live in Hazleton. Where you live.”

  I know where she’s going. Of course I do. It looks too coincidental — I must be hiding something again.

  “Colette reached out to me after the divorce. Said if I ever needed anything . . . She sits on the board at Hazleton Hospital and she helped me get my job. That’s how we wound up here three years ago.”

  Something whips through my mind silver-quick and I barely catch it: The blood. Access to storage. But it feels like grasping at straws and I have to dismiss it as more paranoiac thinking.

  Plain Jane is insane.

  “Why would she do that?” Ridley asked.

  “People do nice things. She knows Marcus is . . . she understood what I went through. And I’d met her a few times when he and I were together. Sometimes you lose the guy, keep the family.”

  At the same time, I wasn’t going to go from one messed-up relationship to the next after I divorced Marcus. Expecting each one to be different but following the same pattern is pathological behavior. I knew I needed to change everything. I was twenty-four, a divorced single mother to a baby girl, when I started going to college. I would’ve qualified for all sorts of financial aid if I hadn’t married Marcus — because of his wealth I had to pay for everything with loans. Colette understood that, too.

  “With all of Marcus’s family money,” Ridley says, right on cue, “you never sought child support payments?”

  “I wanted to be done with him. I didn’t want to go to court, didn’t want to see him. I just wanted to move on. After I left him I stayed at our family camp that first summer.”

  “The one on Lake Ontario? Henderson Harbor?”

  “It was originally my grandfather’s. My mom took it over when he died. She was the only one of his children who showed any interest. Melody was my responsibility. It was something I did — no one forced me to have a child, so I took care of her.”

  “But the divorce — it was Marcus who filed.”

  I tell Ridley that it wasn’t such a clean break. I had one of the first cell phones I ever owned back then, and Marcus would call me up at night. The conversations always went the same until I finally stopped answering: he’d be remorseful and apologetic; he would tell me how much he loved me, how much he wished he’d never initiated our divorce, how he wanted to take it all back. I would tell him he needed to get help and then he’d get defensive, angry. What do I need you for? Eventually the calls stopped and I was able to move on.

  “The camp isn’t winterized, so I moved back in with my mother in Troy.”

  Worried that
I’d made a complete mess of my life and determined to put it back together, I vowed to never let a man bust it up again.

  “My half-brother and half-sister were still living in the apartment and they helped with the baby while I went to classes.”

  “And then you met John.”

  “Yeah. Then I met John. We dated for a long time because I was skeptical. I didn’t want to get married again, but he convinced me. He’d been sober two years. He had his head together. He wanted to adopt Melody so we could be a family. It was a fresh start for both of us.”

  Ridley grows quiet, perhaps absorbing everything I’ve told her. “I’m not questioning you, Jane. Not as a person or as a mother. I’m trying to fit the pieces together, just like you are. That’s why we need to be honest with each other.”

  “I’m being honest with you.”

  A long pause. “Okay.”

  “I don’t need to take a lie detector test.”

  She’s so silent I think the call might’ve dropped. But there’s a slight din in the background, police scanners and other cop voices, phones ringing. “Do you think Marcus could be involved in what happened to your husband?”

  It’s my turn to hesitate. Finally, “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “To make me look guilty of something so that I lose custody of Melody and he gets her back. Make it look like I . . . like my mother, I . . .”

  The words get lost because I’m suddenly envisioning it so clearly: Marcus coming over to the house, either by taxi or some other way, talking to John, somehow convincing him to take a ride in the Subaru. They get into a fight. Marcus does something to John, hurts him, dumps his body somewhere, and inadvertently leaves a bit of his own blood behind before abandoning the car at the rest area.

  With Leland, I can’t imagine such an elaborate, sinister scenario, even if he has the ostensibly greater motive. I can see Marcus for it, though. Marcus is smart, devious, and has the means.

  “Okay,” Ridley says, “we’re going to stay on top of it.”