Goodnight Beautiful Read online

  The gin is warming her, and she’s aware, of course, that it’s far more likely that this was all “the chase,” the entire thing, from day one. Sam was the deeply kind and curious man determined to change her idea about love, and she was the schmuck who fell for it. She’s got to give him credit: He really committed to the role, sweeping her off her feet at a goddamn Brooks Brothers. She thought he might be fun for a night, but he surprised her. He was witty and smart, introspective in a way she’d rarely experienced in a man.

  It took him only six months to suggest marriage, sitting on the porch of the farmhouse for sale in his sleepy hometown. He had spent his weekend at his mother’s house, packing her for the move to Rushing Waters,⁠ when he called Annie and told her about the house he’d found for sale. “There’s a train leaving in forty-seven minutes,” he said. “Get on it and come see it with me.”

  “I didn’t know you were shopping for a house in upstate New York,” she said.

  “Not me,” he said. “We. Trust me on this.”

  He was waiting for her at the train station three hours later in his mom’s spotless 1999 Toyota Corolla, with two iced coffees and a very long kiss. They were ten minutes out of town, up in the hills, when he turned at the mailbox for 119 Albemarle Road, down a long driveway to a white four-bedroom farmhouse. It was incredible. Post-and-beam. Six acres.

  “I figured it out,” Sam said, sitting next to her on the porch after the realtor showed them around. “You can teach at the university, write one of those books you got in your head. I’ll open a private practice, make sure my mom’s okay. With my dad’s money on the way, we can take it easy for a few years. Make a home here. And who knows?” he said, bumping her shoulder. “Maybe someone will finally tell us how children are made.”

  “Are you crazy?” she said. “I’ve known you for six months.”

  “Six months and one day,” he corrected her. “You did it, Annie. You tolerated me longer than you thought you could tolerate a man.” He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. “I knew you could.” He let go of her then and pulled a thin silver ring from his front pocket. “Want to keep going?”

  Her phone rings in front of her on the bar, next to her martini. It’s her aunt Therese, Maddie’s mother, calling from France.

  “Annie,” Therese says, and as soon as Annie hears her voice, she starts to cry. Her aunt’s voice is identical to her mother’s, so much so that Annie can close her eyes and pretend it’s her mom on the other end of the phone. “How are you, honey?”

  “Terrible,” Annie’s voice breaks. “I don’t understand what’s happening. I thought I knew him.”

  “I know you did, sweetheart. We all did.”

  Annie stifles a sob. Therese and Maddie were shocked when Annie and Sam FaceTimed to share the news of their engagement—and then so excited that, with Sam’s help, they showed up in New York the next weekend to surprise Annie, celebrating the engagement over a seven-course dinner at a small Italian restaurant in the East Village.

  “Annie. I want you to come home.” Therese’s voice is firm. “Maddie is going to turn the restaurant over to the manager for a few days and come to the house. We’ll all be together.” The house, shorthand for the five-bedroom house on the olive farm where Annie’s mother and Therese grew up, and which they inherited together after their parents’ death. It was here that Therese, Maddie, and her uncle Nicolas gathered after Annie’s parents’ funeral, and where Annie spent three months hiding in Maddie’s room, before returning to start at Cornell and sell her childhood home.

  “I can’t come home,” Annie says, pressing a bar napkin to her eyes. “I have a job.”

  “You can take a break,” Therese says. “They’ll understand.”

  “I know, but . . .”

  “But what?” Therese says.

  “But what if he comes home, and I’m not there?” Annie whispers, knowing how ridiculous she sounds. “What if they find—”

  “Oh, Annie.” Annie hears the pity in her aunt’s voice. Silly girl, he’s not coming home. The police are barely even looking for him. “If that happens, they’ll call you immediately, and you’ll get on the next plane.”

  Annie notices a woman at the end of the bar, watching her. She turns away. “I’ll think about it,” she says. “Thank you, Therese.” She drops her phone into her purse and throws back the rest of her drink.

  Why wouldn’t she go? She’s useless here, showing up zombie-like to classes, finding it impossible to focus. In France her uncle Nicolas will cook her favorite meals and make sure there’s a good bottle of red wine open on the table at all times; she and Maddie will talk until they fall asleep in the king-size bed upstairs, in the room that was once her parents’.

  As she waves at the bartender for the check, someone slides onto the stool next to hers. It’s the woman from across the bar. She’s younger than Annie thought—early twenties, probably. “Harriet Eager, from the Daily Freeman,” the woman says, offering her hand. “I’m sorry for what you’re going through.”

  Ignoring her hand, Annie takes a twenty from her wallet. “Well, perhaps you can make yourself feel better by writing another article about my husband’s financial troubles.” She drops the money on the bar. “For what it’s worth,” she adds, “I thought the police would use that information to help my husband, not to make him look bad.”

  “It wasn’t the police who told me about the debt,” Harriet says as Annie starts toward the door.

  Annie turns around. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it wasn’t the police.”

  “Well, then, who was it?”

  Harriet shrugs. “A tip. Some reader, emailing to say there was a rumor circulating that your husband was in serious debt. I usually ignore these things, but I decided to call Chief Sheehy. It checked out.”

  “A rumor? There was no rumor. Why would someone do that?”

  “CSI,” Harriet says right away. “It happens all the time. Amateur detectives, raring to pitch a theory. One guy was particularly persistent in the beginning, saying he had it on good authority that your husband had run off with a patient.” She shakes her head. “There are some serious weirdos out there.”

  Annie’s head is pounding. “I have to go.” She weaves through a crowd of people waiting near the door to be seated, smack into a man entering the restaurant.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, taking her elbow to steady her. “How clumsy of me. Are you okay?”

  He has graying hair and bright blue eyeglasses, and she doesn’t like the feel of his hand on her arm. “Yes,” she says, pulling away. “I’m fine.”

  As she unlocks her car, she hears her phone ringing in her bag.

  It’s Franklin Sheehy. “Good evening, Ms. Potter.” There’s a somber edge to his voice. “We need to talk. Any chance you can come down to the station?”

  Chapter 43

  I watch Annie talking on the phone inside her car. Poor girl, alone on her anniversary. She and Sam celebrate every week. I know because I have Sam’s appointment book filed away in my library—“Annie, anniversary drinks” jotted down each Tuesday—and I’ve been imagining how cute they looked, clinking glasses of overpriced alcohol.

  “You want a table?” A young woman is eyeing me from behind the podium. She’s got tattoos up and down her arms, getting back at her parents, most likely, by defiling her own body.

  “No, thank you,” I say, watching Annie pull away from the curb. “I just remembered. I have somewhere to be.”

  My own car is parked illegally in the bank parking lot. I start the engine but don’t move.

  I feel terrible for her.

  I know that I can’t, but I wish I could tell her what a mess Sam was at happy hour yesterday. He barely seemed to be listening when I told him about my one experience playing football. It was not easy to talk about. I was seven years old and begged my mother to talk my father out of forcing me to play, but she refused. I stood in a line on the field, someone handed me the football, an
d the next thing I knew, a boy from my school three times my size threw me to the ground. I couldn’t breathe, and was so sure I was dying that when I did finally catch my breath, I burst into tears, right there on Sanders Field, in front of my father and half of the men of Wayne, Indiana. And what did Sam say when I finished telling him? Nothing. He just stared at the wall, looking dazed, and then, out of nowhere, he started to talk about Annie, telling me how much he loves her, and how worried he is that she’s not okay.

  But she looks okay to me. A little too skinny, maybe, and those bags under her eyes suggest she might not be sleeping as well as she should—but she’s well enough to get dolled up and take herself out for a drink. That’s good news.

  I pat the bag holding three cans of condensed onion soup on the passenger seat beside me and put the car into drive. Salisbury steak will cheer Sam up.

  The rain winks on and off in my headlights as I follow a truck with a plumbing logo down Main Street and along the train tracks, the guy going so slow I assume he gets paid by the hour. I crack my window an inch, taking in the heady scent of wood smoke and Democrats, and turn on to Cherry Lane. Nearly every light is on at the Pigeon’s house; I’m assuming she’s lost her interest in climate change, burning all those fossil fuels. I’m approaching the bridge when I spot something in the road and slam on my brakes.

  No. Please, my god, no.

  I kill my engine, reach for the shopping bag on the passenger seat, and step out of the car into the cold, sharp rain. It’s Sam. In the middle of the street, his face streaked with mud, the sleeves of the sweatshirt I lent him—Smith College, one of my favorites—filthy and torn. “No, Albert,” he says, and I see that he’s crying. “Please. I’m so close.”

  “Sam?” I tighten my grip on the bag as I walk toward him. “Where are you off to, Sam?”

  “Home, Albert,” he says, his sobs lost to the drumming of the rain. “Please, I just want to go home.”

  “Home?” I lift the bag over my head, my head spinning and my vision clouding. “But you are home, Sam.” The crack of three cans of condensed onion soup making contact with that strong, perfectly chiseled jaw is louder than I expected. “Come on,” I say as he collapses at my feet. “Let’s go have some steak.”

  Chapter 44

  Franklin Sheehy is waiting for Annie in his cruiser when she arrives at the police station. “Jump in,” he says. “Let’s take a ride.”

  She hesitates and then gets in. They stay quiet as Sheehy heads out of town on the desolate road along the railroad tracks. Three silent minutes later, they pull into the parking lot of Stor-Mor Storage. “With all the extra space, you’d think they’d have room for two extra e’s,” Annie said to Sam on her first visit to town, when they sat in this parking lot in the front seat of his mother’s Corolla, making out like schoolkids. Over lunch, she had begged him for a tour of all the places her once-virile young husband convinced the naive teen girls of Chestnut Hill to let him into their pants.

  He happily complied, taking her to the abandoned drive-in theater; the strip mall, behind Payless ShoeSource; and then here, to Stor-Mor Storage, where he and Annie fooled around in the front seat and where, earlier this afternoon, the police discovered Sam’s nice new Lexus parked inside one of the units, in perfect condition.

  “He dropped it off about six p.m. the night he disappeared,” Sheehy informs her as they stand in front of unit 12, watching a technician in the front seat dust for prints.

  “Why would he do that?” she asks, numb.

  “To keep the cops busy looking for something they’re not going to find.”

  “So how did you find it?”

  “The place was vandalized recently, and the manager was going through security footage. Saw the car driving in, the night of the storm, and recognized it from the news.”

  Annie snaps her head at Sheehy. “Is there footage of him?”

  Sheehy holds her gaze for a moment. “Come with me.”

  She follows him toward a building that resembles a wooden shed. Inside is a metal desk with three television monitors and empty Styrofoam coffee cups scattered on top. A cop is sitting in a tattered rolling desk chair in the corner, checking his phone. Seeing Sheehy, he quickly clicks off the screen and drops the phone into his chest pocket. “Chief.”

  “This is Dr. Statler’s wife,” Sheehy says. “I want you to show her the footage.”

  The cop slides to the desk, turns a monitor so it’s facing Annie. She sees a frozen image of a blurry car, which starts to move when the cop hits the keyboard. It’s Sam’s Lexus driving into unit 12. A figure appears on the screen a few moments later. A man. He has his back to the camera as he slides the door shut and then takes an umbrella from under his arm and opens it. His face is obstructed by the umbrella when he turns to the camera, and the cop freezes the video. “This is the best we got,” the cop says.

  “Can you make it any bigger?” Annie asks. The cop zooms in and then stands up to offer Annie the chair. She sits and leans close to the screen, her heart aching as she recognizes the jacket. A Brooks Brothers’ Madison Fit Wool Reserve Blazer in classic navy. The one she picked out for him, the one he kept at his office.

  “Can you confirm that’s your husband?” Sheehy says. She nods, unable to speak.

  Sheehy heaves a heavy sigh. “Sorry, Annie. I know this isn’t easy.”

  The room feels claustrophobic. “Can you take me home?”

  “Of course. Let me tell my sergeant.”

  She stands up and walks outside. Two men in nylon jackets are standing near the gate, lighting their cigarettes from a shared match. “I knew this guy’s old man,” one says as she passes. “Guess it’s true what they say. Like father, like son.”

  Chapter 45

  Something buzzes in Sam’s ear, and he opens his eyes.

  It’s pitch-black and cold.

  He’s on all fours, in the middle of the street, just over the bridge. He can see Sidney Pigeon’s house, a hundred feet away. A light is on upstairs, and a figure is standing at the window. Squinting, Sam makes out bushy brown curls under a baseball hat. The window is open, and he’s waving at Sam. “You see me!” Sam yells, waving back, elated. “It’s me! Sam Statler!” He starts cackling, waiting for the kid to rush from the window and down the stairs, where he’ll spring into Sidney’s living room and find an adult to call 911. But the kid isn’t doing that. Instead, he keeps waving, and suddenly Sam realizes he’s got it wrong. The kid isn’t gesturing to him; he doesn’t even see him. He is clearing smoke from the joint in his hand and then he’s closing the window, turning off the light, and vanishing.

  Sam rolls onto his back, tasting the sour tang of blood in his mouth. Headlights are approaching the hill; a car is coming. It’s going to be Sidney, on her way back from the gym. She’s going to spring from her minivan and ask him what on earth he’s doing on the pavement in weather like this . . .

  The moths come at him again, and he opens his eyes, the bile rising in his gut, as he remembers the kick to his face and realizes he’s not outside. He’s back in the house, locked inside the room. He pulls himself up to sit and feels along the wall until he reaches the door. “Come out, come out wherever you are,” he croaks. His throat is sore and his mouth is killing him; he reaches up to his cheek and discovers a deep gash. “It’s time to change my clothes and give me a shave, Albert. You don’t want me to call Home Health Angels and report you for violating the first tenet in the employee fucking handbook—‘When you look good, you feel good!’ Do you, you deranged little shit?”

  At last his fingers find the light switch. The brightness blinds him momentarily, but then he shakes off the fog, taking in the state of his clothes, the walls around him, the stacks of boxes near his feet.

  He was wrong. He’s not in the room. He’s in the closet.

  There’s a door within arm’s reach, and he leans forward for the knob. It opens, casting light onto the bed with the patchwork quilt, his chair. Sam sits back. This is the closet in
his room. He takes a closer look at the boxes, two dozen at least, neatly stacked against the wall, “Agatha Lawrence” written in neat script across each of them.

  Agatha Lawrence. The woman who died in this room.

  Sam hoists himself up to a sitting position, sending a bolt of pain across his back. He reaches to the top of the stack and pulls down a box. It lands on top of his casts, the contents spilling on to the floor around him. He waits and listens. It’s quiet. He picks up a thick black book and turns it over. Charles Lawrence, 1905–1991. Inside, there’s a black-and-white photograph of a young couple and two boys, posing on the front porch of the Lawrence House.

  He staves off a bout of laughter. Why did he put me in the closet?

  Hmmm, let’s see. It’s Annie’s voice, fighting its way through the ache in his muddled brain. He put you in a closet with a dead woman’s boxes. Maybe because he . . . She goes quiet, waiting for him to speak. Come on, you dope. Think.

  “Because he wants me to look inside them?” Sam says.

  Annie is silent.

  Sam drops the scrapbook and riffles quickly through the rest of the papers strewn across the closet floor—original architectural drawings, newspaper clippings from the 1930s about the founding of Lawrence Chemical, letters written from a naval ship in the Pacific. Box after box, he finds financial papers, bank statements, retirement accounts. A photo falls from one: a teenage girl with bright red hair. She’s wearing a cardigan sweater and jeans, a cigarette tipped between her fingers, and Sam recognizes her right away—that flaming red hair—as the woman in the framed photographs on Albert’s library shelf. That wasn’t Albert’s mother, as Sam had guessed. That was this woman, Agatha Lawrence.

  He returns to the box from which the photograph fell and finds a smaller rectangular box, holding two neat rows of unsealed yellow envelopes. Sam selects one and removes the letter.