She's Not There (21 page)

“You want me to phone Grandma Mary? Now I know something's going on.”

“There's nothing going on. I'm just going out with some old friends.”

“Fine. Leave your phone on.”

“Why?”

“In case I need to contact you.”

“You won't need to contact me.”

“How do you know? Something could happen…”

“I'll leave my phone on,” Caroline said, experiencing an all-too-familiar spasm of guilt in her gut. She took another look in the mirror and tried to recapture her earlier elation, the feel of Arthur's fingers gently caressing her flesh, the wetness of his tongue as it glided across her bare skin before disappearing between her legs, the expert way he'd brought her to climax even before he entered her.

“Everything all right at home?” he asked when she returned to the bedroom. He was lying naked in the king-size bed, the once crisp white sheets bunched around his torso.

Caroline turned off her phone, tossed it on top of the puddle of clothes on the floor, and slid in beside him. “Everything's fine,” she said.

“W
hat's the matter?” Peggy asked, opening the door to her sprawling bungalow in the quiet, somewhere-between-artsy-and-rundown district of Hillcrest.

“Can I come in?” Caroline asked from the doorstep.

Peggy stood back to allow her entry.

“Who is it?” Fletcher called from somewhere inside the house.

“It's Caroline,” Peggy called back. “What happened? You look terrible. Are you sick?”

“It's been quite a day.” Caroline followed Peggy into the living room, sitting down on the comfortable brown sofa across from a couple of mismatched chairs, one a grayish tweed, the other a pink and blue floral print. The walls were yellow, the carpet navy, the coffee table some sort of distressed wood. Nothing belonged together, yet curiously, everything worked. Much like the marriage of Peggy and Fletcher, the only couple from that ill-fated trip to Rosarito whose relationship was still intact.

“What's going on?”

“I saw Jerrod Bolton this morning.”

“Jerrod Bolton? As in Jerrod and Rain?”

“He called me, asked me to meet him. Did you know Rain and Hunter were having an affair?”

“What? When?”

Fletcher walked into the living room, looking surprisingly put together for a relaxing Sunday afternoon in tailored black dress pants and a blue-and-white-striped shirt. “Hi, Caroline. I didn't know you were dropping by.”

“Hunter and Rain have been having an affair,” his wife told him.

“What?”

“Fifteen years ago,” Caroline qualified. “They were sleeping together while we were in Mexico.”

“I thought Hunter didn't even like Rain,” Fletcher said.

“And Jerrod just called you out of the blue to tell you this?” Peggy asked.

“Apparently Rain confessed that she and Hunter not only had an affair, but had been sleeping together when we were all in Rosarito, right under our noses. He said he's been debating with himself for months about whether or not to tell me. Then with all the recent publicity about it being the fifteenth anniversary…You honestly had no idea?”

Peggy and Fletcher shook their heads in unison, the shocked expressions on their faces convincing Caroline that they were telling the truth.

“I'm not sure I understand the point of telling you this now,” Fletcher said. “It happened so long ago, you and Hunter have been divorced for years…”

“They were together the night Samantha disappeared.”

“What?” said Peggy.

“What?” echoed Fletcher.

“Our anniversary dinner?” Caroline asked, as if she still couldn't quite believe it. “When she went to get a sweater and he was supposedly checking on the kids?”

“They were together?” Peggy said, repeating the question in Caroline's voice.

“He didn't check the kids,” Caroline said. “Which means nobody looked in on them for more than an hour.”

There was a long pause.

“So Samantha could have been taken up to half an hour earlier than anyone considered,” Peggy said.

“Are you sure about this?” Fletcher asked. “Maybe you should talk to Hunter.”

“I just came from Hunter's. He confirmed it.”

“Shit,” said Fletcher, lowering himself into the pink and blue floral chair.

“Shit,” said Peggy, mimicking her husband as she sank into the grayish tweed.

They remained that way, three points on an invisible triangle, for several minutes. Caroline stared at her friend's kind face and, for the first time, realized that Peggy was wearing eye makeup, that her hair was freshly washed and curled, and that she was wearing the turquoise silk dress she reserved for special occasions. “Oh, my God. You were getting ready to go out.”

“We have a wedding,” Fletcher said, almost apologetically.

“I'm so sorry.” Caroline jumped to her feet, ran to the front door.

“Caroline, wait,” Peggy said, running after her. “We still have time…”

“No,” Caroline told her. “It's a wedding. You can't be late. It's bad luck.”

“You just made that up.”

“Go to your wedding,” Caroline told her. “I'll be fine.”

She ran to her car and backed out of the driveway, waiting until she was around the corner to pull over to the curb and burst into tears. She wasn't sure why she was crying, whether the tears stemmed from learning about Hunter's affair with Rain or the knowledge that this discovery had come too late to make a difference. Would knowing at the time that he and Rain were together when he was supposedly checking on the kids have changed anything? Would the Mexican police have been able to uncover the truth about Samantha's disappearance if they had been aware of the possibility that she'd been taken from her crib a full half hour before the time they'd originally considered? Or would they have been just as clueless?

Her sobs increased in strength and volume until her entire body was shaking. And she realized she wasn't crying because of Hunter's betrayal or even because the truth had come along too late to make a difference.

Fifteen years after her daughter had been stolen from her crib, Caroline was crying because there was still only one truth that mattered: Samantha was gone.

“Where the hell have you been?” Michelle demanded as soon as Caroline stepped through her front door.

Caroline dropped her purse to the floor and walked into the living room, each step an ordeal, as if she were wading through quicksand. “Please, Michelle. We can't keep doing this. I don't have the strength.”

Her daughter was right behind her. “You disappear for hours…you don't call…”

“How can I call? You took my fucking phone.”

“Nice one, Mother. Where have you been?”

Might as well get this over with, Caroline decided, understanding that her daughter wasn't about to let it go. “I went to see your father.”

“That was hours ago.”

“What do you mean? How do you know that?”

“Dad phoned. He was concerned, said when you left you seemed very upset…”

“How insightful of him. Did he tell you
why
I went to see him?”

“He said he'd leave that up to you.”

“Insightful
and
thoughtful.”

“Can we skip the sarcasm? Are you going to tell me or not?”

“About why I went to see him? No. I think I'll toss that ball back into his court.”

“About where you've been for the last three hours,” Michelle corrected.

“I went to see Peggy.”

“That was two hours ago. I called there,” Michelle explained before her mother could ask.

“You shouldn't have done that. They had a wedding…”

“She said you'd already been there and were probably on your way home. But you weren't, were you? So I'll ask again, where have you been?”

“It's no big mystery, Michelle.”

“Then why are you making it one?”

“I just drove around for a while. I ended up in Balboa Park.”

“Balboa Park? On a Sunday afternoon? With all the tourists?”

“Yes. I like it there. I used to go there a lot.”

“When?”

“Years ago. After…It doesn't matter. I'm home now.”

“About time,” her mother said, entering the living room and brushing past Caroline, sitting down on the sofa, a cup of tea in her hand. “I made tea, if anybody wants some.”

“Mother!” Caroline exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“I called her,” Michelle said.

“Why?”

“Because I was worried about you.”

“You were worried about me, so you called my
mother
?”

“She tells me you've been acting quite irrationally lately,” Mary said.

“I haven't been acting irrationally…”

“You've been conversing with some crackpot who claims to be Samantha, you've flown off to Calgary…”

Caroline spun angrily toward Michelle.

“Don't you dare be angry with Micki,” her mother said. “She confided in me because she's concerned about you, the way most daughters are concerned about their mothers.”

Caroline shook off her mother's barb with a shake of her head.

“And now you disappear for half the day without telling anyone where you are. After what happened the last time you vanished like that, I don't think you can blame any of us for being worried,” Mary said. “I certainly hope we won't be reading about today's exploits in tomorrow's papers.”

Caroline pictured herself flying across the room and knocking her mother to the ground with one well-aimed punch to the jaw. “Low blow, Mother. Even for you. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I
will
have some of that tea.” She walked out of the room and into the hall, head high, shoulders back, praying she wouldn't give Mary the satisfaction of tripping over her own feet.

“You shouldn't have said that,” she heard Michelle tell her grandmother.

“She needs to be reminded. You did the right thing, calling me,” Mary said in return. “You're a good girl, darling. Don't let anyone try to tell you otherwise.”

Divide and conquer,
Caroline thought. Her mother's favorite technique, her way of asserting dominance, maintaining control. And why not? It had always worked for her.

Caroline walked into the kitchen to find her brother sitting on the counter beside the sink, looking slightly disheveled in a pair of torn jeans and a lime green short-sleeved shirt. His hair, too long and jutting out over the top of his collar, made him look as if he'd just been roused from bed, which perhaps he had. “Already poured you some,” Steve said, holding a china cup toward her. “A bit of milk, no sugar. Correct?”

“She brought you along for reinforcement?”

“I left the straitjacket in the car. What can I say? Have some biscotti. They're delicious.” He pointed to the plate of biscotti on the kitchen table.

“I see she made herself at home.”

“That's our girl. So, is it true?”

“Is what true?”

“That you're in the middle of some sort of breakdown?”

Caroline took a long sip of her tea. “I'm not having a breakdown.”

“But you
have
been talking to some crackpot who claims she's Samantha?”

“What if she's not a crackpot?”

“Still doesn't make her Samantha.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Think about it, Caroline. What are the odds?”

“What difference does it make what the odds are?”

“I'm the gambler in the family,” he reminded her. “You don't bet against the house, the house in this case being common sense.”

“Since when have you had any of that?”

Steve slid down off the counter. “Let's not make this personal. I'm not the enemy here.”

“No,” Caroline conceded. “The enemy's in there.” She looked toward the living room.

“You don't think you're being just a little hard on her? She was there for you, you know. After Samantha disappeared. You were down in Mexico. She moved in, looked after Michelle. And after you got back and were such a basket case. She was pretty much all the mother that kid had.”

“And look how well that turned out.”

“It hasn't been easy these past fifteen years. For any of us.”

“Did you know?” Caroline asked.

“Know what?”

“That Hunter and Rain were having an affair.”

Her brother looked toward his scuffed brown shoes.

“You
did
know.”

He hesitated. “I suspected.”

“How? Why?”

“I don't know why. Just a gut feeling, I guess. I saw the way she looked at him, the way he looked at her, when they thought no one was watching. Plus the way he was always putting her down when she wasn't around. Like he was trying to hide how he really felt. It just made me wonder. And then the night Samantha disappeared…”