The Vanishing Year(76)

“Have you heard from Yates?” I ask. “Did they find him? Can we go home?”

He shakes his head and I flop back against the pillows, exhausted. I’m asleep in no time, a thick, wool sleep, heavy and dense. The kind where when you wake up, you don’t know if it’s morning or night and the numbers on the clock swim around, bumping into each other.

I don’t have any dreams.

? ? ?

I wake sometime later, could have been hours, could have been days. I’m feverish and chattering. Henry, bedside, tucks thick, patterned quilts around me, murmuring about germs and summer colds. Fluffing pillows, clucking and puttering around the room, like a nursemaid. Picking random objects up and moving them for no other reason than to have something to do.

I push myself up on my elbows, watching him. “Have they found him?”

Henry shakes his head. “Just worry about getting better.” He kisses my forehead, his hand cupping the back of my neck. He brings me more tea, toast, and Penny’s buttery, flaky scones. I wonder when she made them and feel a sharp beat of unexplained hatred. I leave them all on the tray untouched. On the nightstand, he sets down a tall tumbler of orange juice. “You have to stay hydrated or you’ll only get more sick.”

I chug it down and fall back to sleep, the kind of thick sleep you fall in and out of quickly, dreamless. He wakes me every few hours to drink, until I shove the glass away. I can’t remember Henry ever taking care of me sick. Prior to today, I wouldn’t have imagined it.

“I can’t drink any more orange juice. Henry, I think we need to go back to the city.”

“We will. We will. As soon as I know it’s safe.” He pushes my hair off my forehead, which is slick with sweat.

“Yates should have called by now. Did she call?” I try to get out of bed, but my vision swims. I have a fever and I thunk back onto the bed.

“It’s the flu. Your fever was up to 104.” Henry speaks in hushed tones, like we’re in hospice. “I’ve called the doctor and had something delivered. It’s an antiviral. It will help but it might make you vomit.” He’s asking my permission in the way Henry asks permission, which is to not ask at all. He’s telling me permission. He brings me two small pale pink tablets and a large glass of water. I chug them down.

I pull the blankets in against my face. I imagine the sheet getting sucked into my mouth, cutting off my oxygen. I hear Henry’s footsteps on the floor, the quiet creak of the door, and only when I’m sure I’m alone, do I drift off to sleep.

When I wake up, the bedside table holds a full glass of juice and a note. Be back soon, Henry. On the chaise longue he’d laid out my clothes, a gentle nudge to get up. Get dressed. A purple T-shirt and a pair of white shorts, like maybe today we would just go hiking. Hiking.

I dump the juice in the toilet and get dressed under self-protest. I have to fight every movement to not crawl back under the blankets. I’m so cold. But underneath some layer of hopelessness flames primal anger, a spark off a flint. Everyone seems content to just let Jared come to me. Yates seemed blasé about it, Henry was no help. If no one is going to help me, I’m going to have to help myself.

If I could reach Cash, he’d surely do some investigating. I need help. Joanie’s death, Caroline’s threat, Jared, the vanishing Mick, it’s all related somehow, I just can’t find the link. Every single thing is connected, my whole body vibrates, that’s how confident I am. I’m right, that Jared and Mick and Joanie’s death are connected, that it’s somehow my fault. That I killed my sister. I have a sudden thought: If I find the missing Mick, I can unravel this whole thing.

I make my way downstairs to the kitchen, looking for my phone. My blood is pumping now, thumping through my veins in a steady rhythm. Find Mick. Find Mick. A drumbeat of redemption with a touch of revenge. I still feel foggy and weak from the fever and my stomach turns with nausea from the antivirals, but the anger perches right under my skin and could easily fan to full flame.

I search the kitchen, the sitting room, and the sunroom, pulling out drawers and cabinets along the way. No phone. I head back upstairs and sift through the drawers in our dressers, suitcases, pants pockets. No phone.

It was right on the bedside table when I fell asleep, I was sure of it. It has to be somewhere. I have an idea: Henry’s office.

In Henry’s office I yank open desk drawers and flip through files. In the closet, I find file boxes and dig through them, finding nothing notable, save for a small padlock key that I slip in my pocket.

On the bookshelf my eyes settle on the picture of me in the woods, that day on a picnic. I realize I’m wearing the same shirt I have on. I pick up the picture and study it, and my hand goes to my collar, feeling along the ribbed edge of the crew neck. I touch the shirt in the picture, a smooth hem in a deep V. A hint of cleavage, a shadowy swell of breast.

It’s not the same shirt.

I only have one, purchased as a gift from my darling husband, in a color I’ve never liked. I study the picture closer. The same uneven eyebrows, the slight widow’s peak at my hairline, my dark hair newly grown, shiny and soft to my shoulders. The mole at my left ear. My left ear. My hand flies to my face, gently tapping the mole near my right ear.

The woman in the picture is not me.





CHAPTER 25



I fish the key out of my pocket and slide it into the padlock. The locked room. The room filled with files and personal effects that Henry wanted protected when he rented the place out. The room I’ve never seen.