Goodnight Beautiful Page 8

  The rain has started and the wind is picking up when I exit the store and rush toward my car. I take the roads carefully, heading along the railroad tracks and turning right onto Cherry Lane. The Pigeon’s house is lit up, and I slow down as I pass, imagining her inside, counting her bottles of wine, making sure she’s got enough to get her through the expected school closings.

  I go over the bridge and pull into my driveway. Skinny Jeans’s shiny white Audi is parked next to Sam’s car, and I dash up the driveway, the wind blowing leaves across the path. Leaving my boots outside and my jacket in the foyer, I hurry to the kitchen, contemplating the idea of going to the vent for a quick update on how young Mr. Jeans has been feeling creatively. I decide against it, however, choosing instead to open the fridge and pour myself a Gilda, from the pitcher I mixed this morning—liquid courage, as my mom used to call the two glasses of red wine she drank each evening before my dad got home. I take a long sip and head upstairs to get ready.

  It’s important I’m at my best.

  Chapter 15

  The door slams behind Christopher as Sam watches the sky darken and the storm roll in. Gilda, they’re calling it: heavy rains and winds as high as eighty miles per hour, a travel warning in effect. He checks the time: 5:03 p.m. The wind whips the windows as, from the bottom drawer of his desk, he takes the bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue that Annie gave him the day he officially opened for business. There’s a little left, and he empties what remains into a glass and takes his phone from his pocket.

  He opens a new message. Hi Charlie. I’ve been thinking about your invitation, he types.

  Typing bubbles appear immediately. And?

  And I’ll be there, he replies.

  What about this storm? It looks bad out there.

  I’ll be fine. He throws back the whisky. What’s the address?

  He takes his raincoat from the closet as she types, leaving the umbrella on its hook, not wanting to draw any extra attention to himself as he sneaks out. He steps into the foyer and closes the outside door slowly behind him, praying he can get out unseen. He lifts his collar and hurries along the path, toward the driveway. As soon as he gets to the porch steps, he hears the front door of the house open, the tinkle of ice against glass, the greeting that’s starting to grate on him.

  “Hey there, heartbreaker.”

  Damn it, he thinks. I’m trapped.

  Chapter 16

  Something is wrong.

  My mouth is sour and my head is pounding, like it’s been cracked open with a hammer. I squint at the clock—9:03 a.m.—and reach for what’s left in the water glass on the bedside table. Near the door, I notice mud prints on the wood floors, and then the empty pitcher on its side, near the closet door. I bolt upright and pull back the covers as it comes back to me suddenly. Last night. The storm. Happy hour.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, remembering it. I was waiting for Sam on the porch with the drinks and a bowl of Chex Mix (in all my excitement about the cocktail, I’d completely overlooked the snacks). The rain was coming down in sheets by then, the wind whipping the branches. I’d brought two blankets to drape over the rocking chairs, thinking it would be nice to watch the storm and hash it out.

  And he ignored me. Like I wasn’t even there, standing in the cold, two cocktail glasses in my hands. I was dumbstruck as I watched him sprint toward that ridiculous car, as if he were afraid of being seen. He got in, drenched, and pulled quickly out of the driveway, his taillights fading in the fog before he reached the bridge.

  My head throbs as I ease myself out of the bed, nauseous, a vague memory of downing both of the Gildas rather quickly. And then I must have gone to the kitchen for the pitcher and brought it up here, drinking the whole thing and passing out. I take Agatha Lawrence’s robe from the hook behind the door and keep a hand on the wall for balance as I hunt for Advil in the bathroom medicine cabinet and swallow four with a palmful of water. I stare at myself in the mirror—noticing the new strands of gray—wishing I could call Linda and tell her what happened last night, how badly Sam hurt my feelings. But of course I can’t. We haven’t spoken since I left the city, and I can’t pick up the phone and start complaining about a man she’s never met. She’ll tell me what I already know to be true: it was an asinine decision to uproot my life and move here, believing I could start over and actually be happy. I hardly need her to tell me what a fool I’ve been.

  I walk to the window on shaky legs. Thick branches litter the front yard and the sign—Dr. Sam Statler, Psychologist—that I installed before Sam opened his practice downstairs is on its side in the street. And then I notice something else. Sam’s car isn’t here.

  I feel a chill run through me as I hurry out of the room, down the stairs, through the kitchen. When I open the door to Agatha Lawrence’s study, I’m hit with a blast of cold air. The floor is wet, and shards of glass litter the floor. The window blew out in the storm. I rush to the corner and push aside the happy-face rug, and before I even put my ear to the vent, I can sense the emptiness downstairs.

  I stand and run for the hallway, barely making it to the toilet in time to empty last night’s pitcher of pear martinis into the bowl, sure beyond doubt that something is terribly wrong.

  * * *

  A few hours later, I’m sitting in Sam’s office chair, staring at the clock on the floor near the sofa and listening to Sam’s buzzer sound for the third time. The Mumble Twins are outside, here for their twelve o’clock appointment. They wait another ninety-six seconds before giving up, and I picture them under an umbrella, traipsing back to their car, every right to be annoyed that Sam didn’t call them to cancel.

  The wind blows hard against the floor-to-ceiling window offering a view of the back lawn, and the woods beyond. I hear the car engine disappear down the hill, picturing the first time I walked through those woods, the week I moved in to the Lawrence House. The sun was shining, and I drifted alone among the trees, using a garden machete I’d picked up at Hoyt’s Hardware to clear my way, looking back at the grandeur of the house, unable to believe something so nice could be mine.

  Another wave of nausea rises, and I close my eyes, feeling the weight of the credit card bills in my hands. Nine in all, totaling more than $120,000, hidden down here, in Sam’s desk drawer, stuck between the pages of the Stephen King novel he was reading on the porch a few weeks ago.

  He lied. When we met, he told me he was financially secure—that he’d never had trouble paying his bills or covering his rent. And now I don’t know what to believe.

  Of course, who am I to cast stones? It’s not like I can claim to have been honest with him one hundred percent of the time. In fact, the proof of my lies is upstairs, in the purple binder in my library, where I keep my lists, including my most shameful one.

  Things I’ve Lied to Sam About: In Order of Significance

  Our meeting was not a chance encounter. I knew exactly who he was, the day that fate brought us together. I’d read every paper he’d written, watched the lectures he gave on the intersections of mental health and childhood trauma. I was so taken by him that I—

  The phone rings in my lap, startling me, and I check the caller ID. It’s a number I don’t recognize—some telemarketer or survey taker, probably. Someone who’s not going to understand that I’m not in the mood to talk.

  “Yes, hello,” I say, curt.

  “Oh good, you’re there.” It’s a woman’s voice, relieved. “I’m sorry to bother you, but is Sam there?”

  “Sam?” I grip the phone and sit up straight. “Who is this?”

  “It’s Annie,” the woman says. “Sam’s wife.”

  Part II

  Chapter 17

  “Annie.” I stand up, the stack of bills and the book thudding to the floor. It’s her, his wife. “Is everything okay?”

  “No,” she says. “Sam didn’t come home last night, and I’m worried. I found your number on the lease you and he signed. Was he downstairs in his office this morning?”

  “No
. . .” I stammer. “I haven’t seen him since yesterday, when he left for the day.”

  “Did you speak to him?”

  “No.” I tried, Annie, but he walked by me, without one word, like I’m worth nothing to him. “I saw him from my window. Running to his car. He didn’t have an umbrella.”

  “I need you to do me a favor and let me in to his office,” she says. “I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “His office?” I turn and look around the room. “I’m sorry, Annie. But I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” she asks, brusque.

  “I’m not allowed downstairs,” I say. “You’ll see the restricted access clause right there in the lease he and I signed. I can only enter his office with his explicit permission.”

  “I understand,” she says. “You can give me the key, and—”

  “I don’t have a key.”

  She’s silent a moment. “Are you serious?” she says. “You’re Sam’s landlord, and you don’t have a key to his office?”

  “Your husband insisted on it,” I say, my voice steady. “He’s very conscientious about protecting his patients’ privacy.”

  She swears under her breath. “I honestly don’t know what to do.”

  “Have you tried calling him?”

  “Yeah, I thought of that,” she says, impatiently. “He’s not answering my calls or my texts. He never does that.”

  “Well, I’m sure there must be some explanation.”

  “This is my cell, but can I also give you my home number?” she asks. “In case he shows up?”

  “Yes, of course. Let me find something to write with.” I scan the room, spotting the Stephen King novel on the floor. I pick it up and find a pen in Sam’s desk drawer. “Go ahead,” I say, opening the front cover and writing down the number she recites. “I’ll be sure to call you the minute he shows up. And don’t worry, Mrs. Statler. I’m sure everything will be okay.”

  “Thank you,” she says. “And it’s Potter.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “It’s Annie Potter. We have different last names.”

  “Potter. Got it,” I say, printing the name under her number. “Good night now.”

  The phone goes dead in my hand, and I stoop down to collect Sam’s bills, slide them into the book, and head toward the door. Inside my foyer, I hide the extra key the locksmith was kind enough to make for me, remove my latex gloves, and head toward the computer in the library, buzzing with excitement. Of course. Potter, not Statler. That’s why I could never find you in a Google search, Annie.

  * * *

  Sitting at the desk in the library, I sharpen my pencil and scan my list.

  Things I’m Learning about Sam’s Wife: A List

  Annie Marie Potter is a forty-one-year-old native of Kennebunkport, Maine.

  She is, as my father would say, the ambitious type: i. A PhD with distinction in comparative literature from Cornell University.

  ii. A teaching position at Columbia University, in the Department of Gender Studies, which is apparently something they made up in the 1970s.

  iii. Since this past September, she has held a visiting fellowship at a small, private university in Chestnut Hill, New York, where, as far as I can tell, she teaches just one class: It’s All in Her Head: Women and Madness in Literature. From the mad heroines of classic Victorian literature to the rise of the unreliable female narrator, the psychological vulnerability of women has long been a captivating subject. Tuesday and Thursday. 10:00 a.m. Higgins Hall auditorium.

  She’s not as pretty as I was expecting. I know there’s probably a whole host of classes in Annie’s gender studies department devoted to why it’s wrong for me to comment on her physical appearance, but it’s true. She wisely seems to have eschewed all social media, but I found a photo of her on the university website, which I’ve been studying for the past hour. Attractive, I suppose, but not the model type I was expecting.

  I never would have spoken to either her or Sam in high school, each for different reasons. Him because he would have thought he was too good for me; her because confident girls scared me.

  I knew, in theory, that she existed. For one thing, she was mentioned (in passing) in the interview Sam did with the local paper, and then he brought her up a few times himself, like the day he responded to the flyer I’d stuck under his windshield. He came right over to look at the space, spent an hour walking back and forth, listening to my ideas to spruce the place up. You could position your office back here. Knock out this wall, replace it with glass. “My wife Annie is better at envisioning these things,” he said, excited. “But I think you’re right. This could be great.”

  Silly me. I should have pegged Sam as a man who’d choose the type of woman who keeps her maiden name. Dr. Annie Marie Potter. Not Ann or Anne or Anna but Annie. (Not exactly the name a parent would give an infant daughter for whom they had high hopes. Girls named Annie dream of growing up to be airline stewardesses or home decorators showing up to color-coordinate your sweaters, not someone who is going to one day—May 6, 2008, to be exact—publish a well-reviewed article in Feminist Theory, some journal I’ve never heard of.)

  I figured she and I would run into each other one day, bump carts in the organic meats department at Farrell’s, where couples like Sam and Annie went to nourish their grass-fed beef habit. Not that she’d care, but I’d love the chance to tell her about myself.

  I’m fifty-one and single.

  I was, for twenty-five years, a certified home health aide with Home Health Angels, named employee of the month three times.

  I took good care of her husband since he moved in downstairs, three months ago. I gave him everything he asked for, in fact—nontoxic paint, heated floors—you’d think he would have appreciated me more.

  Who knows, maybe Annie and I will still meet. Maybe she’ll stop by tomorrow to commiserate about Sam’s disappearance, and I’ll tell her how sorry I am to hear that she lost both her parents when she was eighteen.

  Their names were Archie and Abigail Potter, and their double obituary appeared in the York County Coast Star out of Kennebunkport, Maine, June 12, 1997. Devoted husband Archie and loving wife and mother Abigail were killed in a helicopter crash over the Hudson River on the afternoon of their twentieth wedding anniversary, survived by an eighteen-year-old daughter.

  What a story. Archie had a lifelong fear of flying, which Abigail was determined to help him confront. She booked a surprise thirty-minute private helicopter ride from a launch in New York City, only for the engine to fail, killing both in a fiery crash into the river.

  The clock on the desk chimes—one p.m. already. Where has the day gone? I remove my glasses and rub my eyes, my hangover easing into a dull headache. I turn off the computer monitor and leave the library, sliding the pocket doors closed behind me. Upstairs in my bedroom, I pause at the window and take the binoculars from their hook to check in on the Pigeon. Her car’s in the driveway, and I picture her inside, drinking coffee from an oversize mug emblazoned with the phrase THIS IS REALLY WINE. I replace the binoculars and turn away as a car appears on the hill. It passes her house, crosses the bridge, and turns into my driveway. I close the curtains and go to the closet to change out of my robe.

  The police are here.

  * * *

  I open the front door as a man steps from the driver’s seat of the police cruiser.

  “Good afternoon,” he calls as he approaches the porch. “Hoping to speak to the owner of the Lawrence House.”

  “That’s me,” I say.

  “Franklin Sheehy.” He flashes his badge. “Chief of police.”

  “I know,” I say. “I saw you on television, warning everyone about the storm.”

  “Would have been nice if more of them had listened,” he says as a young man approaches from behind. He’s tall and baby-faced, no older than twenty-five. “This is officer John Gently. We’re sorry to disturb you, but—”

  “Is this about Dr. Statler?” I say.
>
  “You’ve heard?”

  “Yes, his wife called earlier today. She sounded worried.”

  A cold wind lifts the collar of Sheehy’s nylon police jacket. “Mind if we come inside?”

  “Not if you don’t mind removing your shoes,” I say. “I just mopped the floors.”

  “Sure thing.” Sheehy steps into the foyer and pauses to remove a pair of black boots, exactly the sensible footwear you’d expect a police chief to wear. “Just you here?”

  “Just me,” I say.

  He walks into the living room and looks around. “Big place for one person.”

  “Seven years in the city,” I say. “I was craving some space.”

  “New York?”

  “No, Albany. I think New York is vile.”

  “Got a nephew at SUNY Albany. Nice place.”

  “So, about Dr. Statler,” I nudge, reminding him we’re here to talk about Sam, not trade TripAdvisor reviews on major US cities. “Is there reason to worry?”

  “His wife thinks so,” Sheehy says, bringing his focus to me. “She was expecting him home last night, and he never appeared. Understandably upset.” He reaches inside his coat and pulls out a notebook and a pair of tortoiseshell reading glasses, not the style I would have chosen for him. “I’ve been told he’s been renting an office from you, downstairs.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “For how long?”

  “Three months,” I say. “Moved in July first, to be exact.”

  Three thirty in the afternoon, to be even more exact. I remember it perfectly, watching from an upstairs window as he pulled in to the driveway, parking that nice new Lexus behind my car. He hustled six boxes from the trunk to his office and knocked on my door before he left. “That’s a nice touch,” he said, gesturing to the sign I had installed at the end of the driveway. Dr. Sam Statler, Psychologist. “I appreciate it.”