The Dead Place (2 page)

“I just keep hoping to open the paper and read that she’s been found alive and well in another state. Like that runaway bride.”

Jerry Virgoli smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He said to Kate, “Wickfield must seem very provincial to you.”

“We were hoping so.” Kate gulped at her wine and it burned in her throat. She looked out the window again, anxious. Grace was gone. Kate’s eyes flicked over the clusters of partygoers, but she couldn’t find her.

Jerry Virgoli talked on, but the words flowed over her like water, a rush of sound she couldn’t process because her entire focus was on her daughter.

“I think mothers worry wherever they are,” Clara Beetleman murmured. She’d followed Kate’s gaze and was searching the lawn, too.

“Even with these missing girls, the crime rate is still lower than Manhattan’s,” Jerry Virgoli said.

“Excuse me.” Kate moved past them and out the French doors. Anxiety propelled her through the people milling about on the deck. A group on the lawn shifted, and suddenly she spotted Grace leaning against the wall of what looked like a cottage tucked in a back corner of the yard.

Kate felt relieved just to have her in sight, though she could see the boredom clearly visible on her pretty face. As she watched, Grace dug into the small knit bag hanging from one shoulder and brought out her cell phone.

Kate’s body responded before her brain, tension tightening the muscles in her back, knotting at the top of her spine. She knew what number was being tapped into Grace’s phone.

“If I find out you’ve called him again, I’m taking away your cell phone.” Ian’s declaration had been backed up by Kate, even though she knew that by drawing that line Ian was practically daring Grace to cross it.

Kate’s heels sunk in the soft grass as she stepped off the deck. Grace didn’t hear her approach across the soft curve of lawn. She had her back to her mother, phone held against her ear like a talisman. Her voice, high-pitched and sulky, said, “It’s just some stupid party they made me attend.”

Then Kate’s hand was over hers, pulling the phone away from her daughter’s ear.

“Hey!” Grace cried. “What are you doing?” She tried to hold on, but Kate pried the phone from her, held it to her own ear.

“Who is this?” she demanded, knowing she sounded shrill and not caring.

“Hi, Mrs. Corbin.” A high-pitched voice, amused. “It’s Madison.”

A female school friend, not that boy. Not Damien. Stunned, Kate let the phone slip from her ear.

“Jesus, Mom.” Grace easily plucked it out of Kate’s hand and pressed it back to her own ear before turning away. “Sorry, Mad, my mom’s just having some freak-out.”

She was gone before Kate could apologize, striding away from her mother back across the lawn, heading in the direction of the house. She disappeared inside.

Four hours had to be endured before Ian was ready to leave and Kate could stop smiling. Every hour counted, each minute taking an eternity to pass.

There was silence in the car as Ian drove the secondhand Volvo through Wickfield’s quiet streets. The new house was only a few blocks from the center of town, an older residential street with sidewalks in front of frame homes, most with front porches, built in the early years of the twentieth century. Sycamore trees lined both sides of the street, branches stretched to form a canopy high above the road. Street lamps spaced at equally measured intervals cast soft yellow puddles onto the asphalt.

It was too quiet here. There were no sirens, no trucks, no sound of rushing cabs or the subterranean rumble of trains to help lull her to sleep. She found the silence unnerving.

Their house was two-story with a wide front porch. Four bedrooms, two full baths, an updated kitchen, but original hardwood floors and beautiful molding. The selling point, though, was in the back of the house, at the end of a pavered driveway. A previous owner, a furniture maker who liked light, had turned the detached garage into a workroom complete with lots of large windows. It was a perfect studio.

Yet Kate’s canvases and easels were still wrapped, sitting in the center of the room with the crates of supplies she’d cleared out of her studio in Brooklyn. Every time she went to unpack them, something else needed to be done in the house. It wasn’t that she was avoiding it, or at least that’s what she tried to tell herself.

Ian parked on the driveway and they made their way, still in silence, up the path to the front door. Once they were all inside, Kate turned back to check that it was locked.

Ian’s soft chuckle surprised her.

“What?”

“You don’t have to check here. I’m sure that even if we left the door unlocked nothing would happen.”

“There’s still crime even in small towns.”

“Sure, but c’mon. This isn’t like the city.”

Grace spoke from the stairs. “Yeah, it isn’t nearly as cool.”

Ian sighed. “It’s late. You need to get to bed, Grace.”

“Whatever.” The tone was pure teenage disdain. She ran up the stairs before either parent could respond.

Ian scowled and started after her, but Kate stopped him with a touch on his arm. “Let her go.”

“And let her get away with talking to us like that?”

“Pick your battles—she’s tired and angry about the move.”

“She’s spoiled is what she is.” He ushered Kate ahead of him up the stairs and switched off the hall lights before following. “When I was her age, I held down two jobs to help support my family.”

Kate stifled a yawn. Not this story again. She knew it so well that sometimes she felt as if she had been Ian’s sibling and had lived through the death of his father and watched Ian deliver newspapers every morning and bag groceries every evening to help his widowed mother make ends meet.

She’d seen Grace roll her eyes when Ian told this story, and knew that she thought it was at best an exaggeration. Not because she doubted the truth of what her father said, but because she couldn’t relate at all to the story. Grace’s life was too far removed from that kind of suffering to be able to relate. Kate’s life had been like that, too. Raised by two doting parents with enough time and money to lavish on her, she’d been protected from grief.

“I can remember being so tired and depressed at night that I literally fell into bed,” Ian said behind her as she walked into their new master bedroom. She nodded, understanding. She wasn’t protected anymore. She knew what it was like to be so worn down that sleep seemed like her only refuge.

Except it wasn’t. Deep sleep evaded her here just as it had in the city. Ever since that awful day in her studio, she hadn’t been able to sleep continuously for more than a few hours at a time. Knowing that she’d dream about the assault undoubtedly caused anxiety, but all the relaxation tips she’d tried did little to help.

Ian fell asleep quickly just like always. She watched the slow rise and fall of his chest, envying it, before reaching up to switch off her bedside light. She waited for the darkness to settle, for the various shades of black to emerge. Everything was new here, even their bed. Ian had been excited that the space was finally big enough to get the king-size bed he’d always wanted, but now the emotional gulf separating them had become a physical gulf as well. She could reach him only if she stretched her arm to its farthest point. She didn’t.

Rolling onto her side, she stared at the faint stripe of moonlight coming through the filmy curtains, a perfect line of ivory across charcoal. Chiaroscuro. Light and shadow. It wasn’t only art that could be explained with this concept. And if her life before had been tipped further toward light, then she’d just been lucky.

She thought again of the student they’d been discussing at the party, Lily Slocum. She tried to imagine someone simply walking down a street and vanishing. Light and shadow. Shadow and light.

She drifted into half sleep with the image of Lily Slocum in her head, picturing her as a line of moving light receding into darkness.

Ian Corbin stood in front of the mirror adjusting his tie and ran the new job title through his mind. Dean Corbin. Ian Corbin, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He’d been Professor Corbin or Dr. Corbin for so long, it was going to take time to make the switch.

Red silk tie in place, he dropped his arms and looked at himself. Pressed white shirt, new charcoal suit, and a tie Kate had picked for him. It was going to be hot today. He’d probably ditch the jacket as soon as he got to the office.

He had a sudden memory of that late summer day, all those years ago, when he’d taught his first class. Only two years into his doctoral program, he’d been completely green and barely older than the undergrads he was being asked to teach. It had been a hot, sultry morning just like this one and the sense of excitement just the same.

He smiled at his reflection. Except for a slight blurring of his jawline and the silvering of his temples, he looked essentially the same. It was only if he looked closer, stared deep into his eyes and counted the fine lines creasing the skin around them, that he saw the profound change.

He’d been single back then, a small-town boy made good, his own savings and a handful of scholarships making it possible to get his undergraduate degree. It was still some years before he became a husband and a father, a time in his life when he worried he didn’t fit in with the other students, the ones who traveled from wealthy suburban towns followed by an endless supply of money from parents who were alumni. He’d rented what was virtually a cold-water flat near the train station, the hot water a trickle when it deigned to appear. The walls of the building were so thin that he could hear every word of recrimination between the couple next door and sometimes startled awake fearing that a whistling engine was about to run over him.

He’d been so strapped for cash that he donated plasma for a couple of bucks each week and pulled discarded newspapers out of waste bins to look for coupons. Cans of crushed tomatoes made barely edible soup. Cheap white bread and ramen noodles. A box of eggs made to last a month and the cheapest cuts of stew meat. A diet of bad food and not enough of it.

He was constantly hungry, his dreams filled with visions of tables groaning under the weight of holiday meals, the gnawing of his empty belly ever present, along with the guilt that he’d left behind his mother.

The sound of the piano broke his reverie. Ian shook his head to clear it, moving toward his dresser and scooping up the gold wristwatch that had been his father’s, the last vestige of that time. He slipped his calfskin wallet into his back pocket.

The swell of Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor grew stronger as he headed out of the bedroom and down the stairs. Grace was sitting at the Baldwin upright that had survived the move from Manhattan. It had been a lot easier getting it into this house than into the loft eleven years ago. Intent on the music, the sound loud enough that she couldn’t hear his footsteps, Grace kept playing as her father entered the room.

One tiny strap of her black tank top had slipped down her tanned shoulder, and with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, and wearing khaki shorts and sandals, she looked younger. For one brief moment he thought she was ten again, happy to see him, eager to have him listen to a new piece she’d learned, her smile radiant as she’d barrel across the loft to hug him as he came in the door.

Grace saw him and the music stopped abruptly, the face turned toward his scowling. “Stop staring at me!”

“I wasn’t staring, I was watching.” Ian dared to rest a hand lightly on her dark head, but she jerked it off.

“I’m trying to play.”

“So pretend I’m your audience.” He tried to coax a smile out of her by making a goofy face. “Look, I’m dressed for it. Just pretend.”

They’d done this when she was little, calling it Carnegie Hall, and sometimes she’d made her own tickets and issued them to her parents and their friends.

Now the scowl remained firmly in place. “It isn’t ready.”

Yet she was already a better pianist than he’d ever be. Ian had made peace with his own middling talent years ago, choosing to go into teaching because he’d never be able to support himself as a performer, but there were moments when he felt almost envy for his daughter’s talent and annoyance at her lack of awareness of it.

He resisted the urge to force some point of connection with her, and said instead, “Where’s your mother?”

Grace shrugged, her attention already back on the sheet music. “The studio, I think.”

The music began again, haunting and lilting, as he walked from the living room down the hall to the kitchen where he grabbed a cup of coffee before heading out the back door.

He saw Kate before she saw him. She was bending over a box, her brow furrowed in concentration. It was a relief to see her out here. A relief to think that she was moving forward. Maybe everything would be okay.

He tapped lightly on the door and her head flew up, eyes wide with fear.

“It’s okay, it’s just me.” He hurried to reassure her, chest tightening with sympathy. Her eyes narrowed, the deep blue turning black.

“Don’t sneak up on me!”

“I didn’t think I was. It’s okay, Kate.”

He meant to calm her down, but it seemed as if everything he said just inflamed her. Between the frown and the thick titian hair made thicker by humidity and fanned about her head like a fiery halo, she looked like some mythical demon.

“I am calm! Or I was before you snuck up on me.”

“Fine.” He held up his free hand in surrender. “Whatever.” The word slipped from his lips effortlessly, and he only realized what he’d said after the fact. He saw it register in Kate’s raised eyebrows, followed by a half beat of silence while they stared at each other, and then they both burst out laughing.

“Channeling our daughter?” Kate said lightly.

“I guess so. Her Holiness has informed me that I’m not to sneak up on her or listen to her playing the piano.”

Kate laughed again, but with sympathy. “Oh, poor Ian! And I just jumped all over you again.” She gave him a quick hug, her small arm reaching out to encircle his waist and give it a gentle squeeze, her touch startling and electric. He brought his own arm around hers to try and hold it there, but she slipped away, out of reach.

“Too much estrogen in this place,” she said, her voice dropping deeper. An old joke between them, something an elderly professor had once said to him in her hearing. She didn’t sound like the cantankerous old man, she didn’t sound like a man at all, but he smiled anyway.

“I’ve got to take off, unless you need me?”

Kate’s own smile faded, but she shook her head. “I’m fine.”

“I was going to take the car.”

“Okay.”

“You sure you won’t need it?”

He was pressing, he knew that even before the crease appeared on her forehead, but he didn’t like the idea of her being without transportation.

“I don’t know if you can find a cab here,” he said out loud, wincing inwardly at the ridiculous cheeriness in his own voice.

“Where would I be going, Ian?”

They both knew she didn’t leave the house, that she could barely be coaxed anywhere these days. It had taken a tremendous effort to get her to go to that party the other night, and he’d had the feeling that he’d be paying for the gift of her presence for months to come.

“Okay, I’ll take the car then. I’ll call you later.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know. I want to.”

She accepted the kiss he offered, their lips pressing briefly together like paper, before Kate stepped back. Ian backed out of her space, noticing that her attention turned immediately back to the canvases at her feet. He heard the door close and the key turn in the lock as he walked away.

His shoes tapped lightly on the old bricks laid out in a herringbone pattern to form a driveway. A few of them looked loose, and he had no idea how they were anchored. Mortar? Years of apartment living hadn’t prepared him well for home ownership, but he would learn. When he reached the Volvo, he looked back at the studio and saw Kate standing at the windows looking out, but when he gave a little wave, she didn’t see him.

The old car’s engine coughed and spluttered, but finally roared to life, resuscitated once again, but soon they’d have to replace it. Or maybe, since they were going to buy a second car, the Volvo could hobble along for another year. It reminded him that he had to find a new mechanic; there was no way he was driving any car back into the city to get it serviced.

As he backed out of the driveway, he caught sight of their next-door neighbor coming out the front door of his weathered-looking frame house, the slap of the screen door catching Ian’s ear before the man’s striped shirt caught his eye.

He was an average-looking white man, middle-aged and balding, wearing a short-sleeved shirt that strained slightly over the fullness of a belly hanging over the belt of his pants.

Instantly forgettable except that when he saw Ian, the man actually stopped short before reversing and scuttling back up his front steps to hide in his shadowed front porch.

Ian let his hand drop, the friendly wave forgotten, and concentrated on backing onto the street without hitting the dusty white van parked in front of the neighbor’s door. Guy was obviously shy. A good thing really. The last thing he wanted was some garrulous country neighbor rushing over at every opportunity to share his expertise with the city folk.

Ian drove down Wickfield’s pretty streets feeling a deep sense of satisfaction. This was a good move, a good place to be. Sure, it would take time to get used to the slower pace, but there were lots of advantages to being out of the city, not least getting Grace away from bad influences.

He’d wanted to leave the city earlier, and had received overtures from Wickfield over a year before Kate would seriously discuss it. When he’d first been approached by Laurence Beetleman and others from Wickfield to see if he’d consider becoming dean, he’d mentioned it to Kate, but she’d argued against it. He had tenure in the music department at NYU, she was teaching part-time there, too, and more importantly, there was her whole network of artists and galleries. She’d always talked about her studio when they discussed it, mourning in advance the thought of leaving a space that she’d had for so long, which was entirely hers. It predated their relationship by a year, a loft space in an old industrial building on the edge of Williamsburg that she’d found right before that neighborhood skyrocketed.

She’d extol the light if he suggested that she could find another studio, but he knew that most of her attachment had to do with having been in the space for so long and having so many memories attached to it. She’d taken him there when they were dating, running ahead of him up the dangerously narrow flight of stairs, sliding back the battered metal door with a great flourish, looking for his reaction.

While he’d noticed the concrete floor flecked with paint and the long, battered worktable crowded with pots and brushes, and the three easels holding canvases in various states of completion, his eyes had been drawn relentlessly back to her. Beautiful in her strange hodgepodge of skirts and peasant blouse, an auburn-haired gypsy with clacking metal bracelets that she tossed on the table so they wouldn’t get in the way of her work.

She’d insisted on painting him, making him perch on a chair near the window and hold his face just so, tilted toward the light. Asking him questions and scolding him when he automatically moved his head to look at her as he answered.

“Stop looking at me, I want your profile,” she’d instructed, brow furrowed with concentration. She’d been so fierce in her work, so beautiful.

“I’d rather look at you.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.” Her laughter came easily, ringing in the room and making him smile and bringing more scolding. “Stop that. No, no—look away from me! I want you in repose, not staring with a fool’s grin like some Sears Portrait.”

“I can’t help it, you’re making me laugh.”

Once, after they’d been dating for several months, they’d made love in her studio, moving against each other on an old blanket laid across the stained concrete. He could still recall the sunlight dappling her breasts and the feel of the sable brush they’d taken turns tracing over each other’s body.

A sudden honk startled Ian, and he realized he’d fallen thoroughly into memory and was sitting at a green light. He stomped on the accelerator and the old car lurched forward. When the lane changed to two, the SUV behind him roared around his left side, the irate driver communicating his displeasure by leaving the Volvo in a cloud of exhaust.

Annoyed at being lured into unproductive reflection, Ian focused on driving, pulling onto campus in record time. There was a spot assigned for him in the newer parking lot. Just one of the perks of the job and as he parked the car, Ian’s feeling of satisfaction returned, heightened when he made the brisk walk across campus to the beautiful Beaux Arts building that housed the offices for the College of Arts and Sciences.

His office was on the fifth and top floor in a suite at the end of a long hallway tiled in squares of ocher and black. The brass nameplate on the solid wood door was new, and Ian felt a peculiar mixture of pride and embarrassment, flashing back to his first day as an undergrad, so glad to be there and yet so self-conscious about being the new guy on campus.