Chance Harbor (7 page)

“Please, Mommy, can you stay with Willow for the weekend?” she’d begged. Catherine had never called her “Mommy.” Only Zoe did that.

When she’d picked the tomatoes, Eve started weeding, uncovering a few squash, eggplants, and even runner beans that were still firm and edible.

Of course, she had no right to be critical of Catherine’s garden. Her own had gone wild after Andrew died. Eve knew she should be doing a fall cleanup, but still couldn’t face the jobs around the house that had always been Andrew’s.

Whenever she went out to the garden, she imagined her husband there in one of his floppy-brimmed hats. This should have made her feel closer to him. Instead, Eve’s eyes would sting like someone had thrown sand in them and she’d have to dash back inside to the safety of her kitchen.

Too much time on her hands. That was the problem. All her life Eve had prided herself on being useful. A necessary person. She had always enjoyed being busy, even during those precious years when the girls were young and she was exhausted from juggling motherhood with her job as a public relations director at the hospital.

Then, in a blink of an eye, she was alone, with more empty hours than she cared to count. Directionless. Lost.

She had clung to her job after the girls moved out, missing them so much that she’d had to keep their bedroom doors closed for weeks after each of them left for college. Work had gotten her through that, and then, later, through Zoe’s disappearance. She’d been only the assistant director back then, so she could afford to take time off during those first terrifying months they were searching for Zoe.

For a while she’d coped after Zoe disappeared. Convinced her daughter was alive, Eve had thrown herself into looking for her. She’d embraced the early casseroles and candlelight vigils by neighbors, made posters, and put up ads long after Andrew agreed with the cops that Zoe was most likely dead. At the same time, Eve had nightmares for years: Zoe falling off the top of a building. Drowning. Trapped in a fire.

Nothing to do with reality. Odds were better that Zoe had followed another druggie boyfriend to live in yet another tenement building where the windows were always open, sheets tacked across the windows and flapping in the breeze.

Eve had been to many of those apartments through the years. She’d brought Zoe and Willow food and clothes, even money, though Andrew knew nothing about that. The last place she’d visited had red velvet wallpaper, raised and soft to the touch. The floor was carpeted red, too, and stained in places; there was a fish-shaped design by the sink, a bird shape in the bedroom. The door to the apartment was painted black with a silver metal knob as bright as a tooth filling. Pots and pans coated with food were stacked in the sink and on the counter. Yet, when Eve had opened the cabinet doors, she’d found nothing to eat but a few tins of tuna.

For years after Zoe disappeared, she had searched: driving through small towns and showing her daughter’s picture to anyone who would look, canvassing bus stations and homeless encampments, calling hospitals and shelters. Occasionally she would read about a body found and worry that it was Zoe’s. That maybe one day her daughter had taken too much of something and stumbled in front of a car. No ID, a Jane Doe in a different state.

Or another, more likely scenario: Zoe murdered, maybe by accident, as an afterthought, by warring drug dealers or another addict. Her daughter’s broken body tossed into a Dumpster or an empty building, or into the woods like those deer and raccoon carcasses, the roadkill they saw in New Brunswick on the way up to their house on Prince Edward Island every summer.

Yet Eve had kept looking for Zoe through the years. She had even gone on national television to plead for Zoe’s return and had made Andrew go with her on air. She’d done local television before, was comfortable in front of cameras, but the studio in New York was still a surprise. So small, crowded with people and equipment.

Eve had let them do her makeup and hair at the studio, sitting in a row with other guests waiting for their three minutes of fame as the crew applied eye concealer, combed and sprayed her hair, brushed lint off her jacket. Meanwhile, she’d been thinking,
Why? What does it matter how I look, when my daughter’s missing?

Then she and Andrew were seated in orange swivel chairs with the cameras on. The news anchor, a woman in a red dress so bright it hurt, wound her spray-tanned legs together as if they were made of rubber and asked Eve questions about Zoe. At the end of the interview, she’d asked, “Is there something you’d like to say to your daughter if she’s listening?”

“Don’t lose hope, Zoe,” Eve had said, staring directly into the camera. “Wherever you are, know that we’re using every resource to find you. And we
will
find you, honey. Help is on its way.”

Nothing had come of the interview. Years of investigating by the police and two different private detectives they’d hired at great expense turned up very little as well.

Eve was promoted to director of public relations at the hospital shortly after her television appearance. A pity promotion. Two years later, the hospital offered her a golden parachute—a forced retirement, no other way to look at it.

She’d worked at the hospital for twenty-five years. Her career was her identity; she felt lost without it. More important, after Zoe disappeared, her job was the lifeline that had kept Eve tethered to earth. It gave her something to do besides obsessively search for Zoe on her own after Andrew refused to pay for a third private investigator.

“I’m as sorry about this outcome as you are, honey,” Andrew had said. “But we give our kids wings so they can fly out of the nest. Zoe followed her own compass. The consequences were tragic, but at least she’s at peace now.”

“But what about
me
? I’m not at peace!” Eve had shouted at him.

That was the last time they’d dared speak about Zoe. The memory of their daughter had the power to tear them apart, just as her tumultuous existence had nearly destroyed their marriage and their faith in themselves as parents when Zoe lived with them.

Eve wiped sweat from her forehead and continued attacking the weeds in Catherine’s garden, wishing she could tear these thoughts out of her head the same way she was ripping plants from the ground. But it was impossible. Even now, five years after Zoe’s disappearance, a small, stubborn part of her refused to believe her daughter was dead. If Zoe had truly left them, Eve was certain she would have felt a shift in the cosmos, a tear in the very fabric of the universe.

Eve carried the baskets of tomatoes over to the picnic table. Why go back to that horrible time in her life? It was over. All of it, finished: the worry over Zoe, the fights with Andrew, the disappointments of work and marriage, her husband’s final betrayal.

Much of her life was over. Work. Motherhood. Nothing left for her to do but occasionally help Catherine, who had never really seemed to need her at all, even as a child.

Eve was searching the garden shed for a pair of clippers when she heard a car pull into the driveway. It must be Catherine. She wiped her hands on her shorts and walked around the side of the house to greet her.

She reached the driveway and saw that Catherine was still in the parked car. How odd. Her daughter was gazing straight ahead, her hands on the steering wheel as if she were still driving.

Where was Russell? Maybe Catherine dropped him off at school. Russell sometimes went into his office on Sundays to get a head start on the week, or to work on his boring-sounding book, a memoir of life with his father, a second-rate senator from Virginia.

Eve walked toward the car and stood directly in front of it, then waved, feeling foolish. “Hello!”

Catherine continued staring through the windshield, trancelike. The car engine was still running. Eve remained where she was for a few seconds, puzzled, waiting for Catherine to notice her.

Her daughters were both blond; there was no mistaking the fact that they were sisters. But where Zoe was endowed with curves that had drawn male attention too early and had always approached life with a swagger in her walk, Catherine was shy and pretty in a way that was too aloof for men to approach her. She was ethereal-looking and moved like a dancer. Her high cheekbones were sharply defined and her nose was small and pretty. Her skin was flawless; Zoe’s face had a light dusting of freckles, as if someone had sprinkled cinnamon on her as an afterthought.

Andrew used to call Catherine “our sweet fairy.” For Zoe, he’d come up with the name “Meteor,” claiming that their younger daughter “always leaves a flaming trail of destruction in her wake.”

Today, if Eve hadn’t known this was Catherine in the driveway, she might not have recognized her. This woman looked too pinched and tired. Her eyes were vacant. What on earth could have happened?

Eve circled around to the driver’s window and rapped on it with her knuckles. “Catherine? Are you all right?”

Catherine didn’t startle, as Eve had expected, but instead swiveled her head slowly and opened the window. “Oh. Hi, Mom.”

Eve slowly reached through the window and shut off the ignition. “Hi. Where’s Russell, honey?”

Catherine’s eyes sparked a brighter blue, but otherwise her expression remained flat. “He had things to do. He’ll be here later.”

“Oh. Well.” At a loss, Eve stepped back. “Did you two have fun?”

“It was fine.”

Obviously, things were far from fine, but Eve didn’t want to pry. She bit her lip and stood there, watching Catherine do nothing. At last she said, “Why don’t you come in and have some coffee?”

“I’ve had enough coffee,” Catherine said. “Buckets of coffee.”

“Are you hungry? Have you had lunch?”

“No. And no.”

“Fine.” Frustrated, Eve opened the rear door of the car. “You look tired. I’ll help you carry your things inside and then I’ll be on my way. Maybe you can grab a nap before Willow gets back.”

Hearing Willow’s name seemed to snap Catherine awake. She eased herself out of the car and shut the door cautiously, as if it might fall off its hinges. “Where is she?”

“Meeting a friend in Harvard Square.”

“What friend?”

“I don’t know. Somebody from school, she said.”

“But Willow doesn’t have any friends from school who live in Cambridge!”

Puzzled by the sudden sharp edge in Catherine’s voice, Eve said, “Well, maybe it’s a friend from school who lives in Boston, but wanted to meet in Harvard Square. I could have misheard.”

“Did you get a name?” Catherine looked agitated now, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “You should have checked to see who it was. I’d better text Willow right now.”

“Stop.” Eve put a hand on Catherine’s arm. “Willow is a responsible girl. She’ll be fine. There’s no sense in doubting a child before she gives you any reason to.”

“Yeah, look how well that worked with Zoe.”

Eve inhaled sharply at the stinging rebuke. “No mother can watch over her children every minute. And Willow isn’t Zoe.”

“I know. I’m sorry, Mom. It isn’t really Willow I’m worried about. It’s the other kids at school. Some of them aren’t very nice. They’re awful, in fact.”

“She’ll be fine,” Eve repeated, though now she was feeling anxious, too. “Let’s go in the house where it’s cooler.”

There was no overnight bag in the car, of course. She gathered a laptop, Catherine’s purse, and a plastic bag with a hotel’s name on it off the backseat.

In the kitchen, Catherine texted Willow, and Eve considered texting Russell. He never should have let Catherine drive in this state.

Eve poured some of the strawberry smoothie she’d made for Willow this morning into a glass and handed it to Catherine. “Sit. You really do look exhausted.”

“I’m fine,” Catherine said, but she obediently dropped into one of the kitchen chairs, took a few sips of the smoothie, then folded her hands on the table after her phone buzzed and she’d looked at it. “Okay. Willow texted back to say she’s with Henry from school, whoever that is. She’ll be home for dinner. Did she seem okay this weekend?”

“A little quiet, maybe,” Eve said. “Probably worn-out from adjusting to school. We ate in Harvard Square and watched a movie Friday night. Yesterday she did some homework and I took her to that art store she loves. We made our own pizza for dinner. The only odd thing was that she still seems to need her light on when she sleeps. Catherine, what’s going on?”

A slight tremor ran through her daughter’s body. “Russell and I are getting divorced.”

“What?”
Shocked, Eve propped herself against the counter and stared at her daughter’s bowed head, trying to imagine what could have brought this on.

Catherine and Russell had a wonderful marriage! Eve didn’t think she’d ever heard them argue or exchange those bitingly sarcastic remarks so many couples did. Even the infertility treatments—years of disappointment and expense—hadn’t split them apart.

She momentarily flashed through the fights she’d had with Andrew: over money, over their respective infidelities, over Zoe most of all. They had gotten through all of that.

Or at least that’s what she’d believed until the very end. Now she would never know if their marriage would have held together after Andrew’s final lie.

Catherine wound her hands together. “I know what you’re going to say, Mom, so don’t.”

“How can you possibly know what I’m going to say?”

“Because it’s written all over your face.”

Catherine’s face was still tight, her mouth a thin line. But at least she seemed calmer. Sitting in her own kitchen probably helped. There was nothing like seeing the familiar way the morning light hit your teakettle on the counter to remind you that you were alive and functioning.

“What am I thinking, then?” Eve asked.

“That our marriage can be fixed. You always think everything can be fixed, Mom. And everyone.”

Catherine was referring to Zoe, of course, but Eve refused to be derailed. “Well, I do think you might be hasty, suddenly announcing that you’re getting divorced. The two of you seemed fine on Friday.”

“Fine? Really?” Catherine shook her head. “Just out of curiosity, what did Russell say when he called you on Friday afternoon to ask if you’d stay with Willow?”