Page 5

Chapter 5

Susan

Susan woke up to the melody of a house finch singing its heart out. She was usually the first in the family to get up in the morning, so she was surprised to look at Ethan’s side of the bed and find it was empty. In Boston, it wasn’t birdsong that normally roused her awake but the early-morning roar of buses and trash trucks outside their apartment building. How luxurious it was to be lazing in bed at nine thirty, with nothing on her schedule except perhaps a swim in the pond, or a drive into the village of Purity. This was how every holiday should be, waking up late every morning to the tantalizing smell of coffee. Made, for once, by someone else in the household.

She pulled on jeans and a button-down shirt and followed the delicious scent downstairs to the kitchen. There she found Ethan sitting at the breakfast table, papers spread out in front of him, his pen scribbling furiously. He didn’t even glance up as she walked barefoot into the room. Oh, she recognized that look of fierce concentration on his face. She didn’t want to interrupt him, so she went to the coffeepot and quietly poured herself a cup. Only when she took out the cream and closed the refrigerator door did Ethan snap straight, suddenly aware that she was in the room.

“Hey,” he said, pulling off his glasses.

“Hey, back. What’s all this?” She nodded at the pages, which were covered with his hastily scribbled words.

“It’s coming.” He laughed and shook his head in disbelief. “It’s finally coming!”

“That story you’ve been working on?”

“No, this is something entirely new. I don’t know what happened. I woke up this morning, and it all just clicked . Like a switch suddenly got turned on, and the words started flowing. Maybe it’s being back on the pond again after all these years. Remembering all the things that happened here, all the stories I heard as a kid. Or maybe I just needed to get the hell out of Boston.”

Where a cloud of failure had hung over him like a depressing miasma, choking off his words. For the first time in months, she saw the Ethan she’d married, the happy Ethan, sitting before her.

“Now I wish I’d brought my laptop,” he said.

“You seem to be turning out pages just fine without it.” She picked up his empty coffee cup and refilled it for him. “Where is everyone?”

“Mom and Arthur went to meet the minister who’ll be leading the service. Colin and Brooke are off shopping, I think. Kit’s still in bed.” He shrugged. “Teenagers.”

“And Zoe?”

“Where else?”

She went to the kitchen window and looked out at the pond. Yes, that’s exactly where their daughter was, laughing and chattering with another girl as they treaded water together, their wet heads gleaming in the morning light.

“Who’s that girl with her?” she asked.

“Someone she just met. Local, I think.”

“That’s wonderful. I’m glad she’s found a new friend here. I was worried she’d have no one to talk to.”

“There’s always Kit.”

She turned to look at him. “Seriously? That boy hardly said ‘boo’ to her last night. He spent the whole evening glued to Brooke.”

“You know how shy he is. Only child.”

“He’s almost seventeen. He should have grown out of it by now.” She paused. “Is there something else going on with him?”

Ethan reached for a fresh sheet of paper. “He was really sick as a baby, in and out of the hospital. It’s no surprise Brooke went a little overboard, protecting him. If there’s a problem, I think it might be her .” He looked up. “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. Hannah’s driving to Bar Harbor to do some shopping. She wondered if you’d like to go with her.”

“What are you going to do all day?”

He gestured to the pages on the table. “It’s going so well, I don’t want to stop now.”

“No, of course not. You stay here and write.” She turned to the window and looked at her daughter, so happily splashing in the pond with the other girl. Zoe had a new friend, and Ethan was writing again. Could she ask for a better start to the day?

“I’d like to see Bar Harbor,” she said. “I’ll give Hannah a call.”

Hannah Greene liked to talk. She talked all the way to Bar Harbor, talked over their lunch of crab cakes and salad, talked as they browsed through the souvenir shops on Main Street. Not that Susan minded all the chatter. Hannah, who had never married and lived alone, seemed delighted to share her wealth of anecdotes about the Conover boys.

“Oh, they were a pair, those two!” Hannah said as they drove back to Purity. “Colin, he’s the one who caused most of the trouble. Always getting into scrapes with the local boys, and then refusing to apologize. Colin never apologizes for anything, because it’s never his fault. George had to pay more than a few visits to the other parents, just to smooth things over. But your Ethan, he was never in trouble. Always the quiet one. The daydreamer.”

Susan smiled. “He’s still the daydreamer. I think that’s why he ended up being a writer.”

“The thing is, I didn’t really want to babysit those boys, but Elizabeth talked me into it. Money was involved, of course.” Hannah winked. “Rather a lot, too, because I double-dipped. Elizabeth paid me, and so did my dad, just to get me out of the house. Grown-ups those days, they couldn’t be bothered with their kids. They’d just set us loose and go about their own lives. I was only eight years old, and the six of them would go off for cocktails every evening. Can you imagine?”

“Leaving you at home alone?”

“Well, I was right next door, but still. They always were a hard-drinking bunch. I suppose that’s where I got it from. And Colin. Wine at noon, highballs at five.” She looked at Susan. “Ethan never did, though. You married the sober one.”

“Was Arthur married then?”

“Arthur?” Hannah snorted. “No, he’s a confirmed bachelor. What woman would put up with him?”

“You said the six adults met for cocktails every evening. Who was the sixth person?”

“Oh, that was my father’s secretary.”

“He had a secretary here?”

“We were living here year round then, before Dad’s work got us transferred to Maryland. I hated leaving Maine, going to that school in Bethesda, where I didn’t know anyone. Every year, I couldn’t wait till August rolled around and we’d come back to the pond. It was like coming home again. And every year, those Conover boys would be taller and more handsome. Then Ethan went off to college, and I hardly saw him after that.” She looked at Susan. “I liked his novel, by the way. I read it right after it came out. I don’t think I ever told him.”

“You should definitely tell him. He’d be thrilled to hear it from you.”

“When is his second book coming out?” When Susan didn’t immediately answer, Hannah frowned at her. “There is a second one, isn’t there?”

“He’s been so busy, teaching at the college,” Susan finally said. “And you know how it is with second novels. There’s so much pressure, making it match up to the first.”

“Oh,” said Hannah. She must have realized she’d broached a sensitive subject, and for a moment she was silent. “Yes, it must be hard for him,” she said. “It’s hard being second in that family too. Always being compared to Colin.”

The golden boy. The son who only needed to point to his tailored suits and Upper West Side address as evidence he was the more successful brother. No wonder Ethan had avoided spending summers here with his family. Every time he looked at that maple tree in the yard, he’d remember the day he sat stranded up on the branch as his bigger, brawnier brother taunted him from below. Colin might be the family’s golden boy, she thought, but I married the kinder brother.

The better brother.

She found Ethan upstairs, sitting at the desk in their bedroom, so focused on his work that he didn’t even notice she’d walked in. He wouldn’t have heard her anyway, with the headphones clamped over his ears. She tapped him on the shoulder, and he sat up straight in surprise.

“Still at it?” she said.

He pulled off the headphones, and the Star Wars soundtrack boomed from the earpieces. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

“Well, no wonder, with that music blasting in your ears.” She glanced at the stack of handwritten pages on his desk. “Wow, you’ve been busy. Working upstairs, now?”

“Too many distractions downstairs. People walking in and out. And Brooke had the washing machine going ...” He shut off the Star Wars music. “What time is it, anyway?”

“Almost four o’clock. Is everyone else still out?”

“I haven’t been keeping track. I think my mom’s still with Arthur.”

“And Zoe?”

“She’s off with that local girl. The one she met this morning.”

Susan looked out the window but did not see the girls. In fact, she did not see anyone on the pond. “Do you know where they went?”

“Something about a cow,” he said, arranging his pages in a neat stack.

“What?”

“The girl has a cow and goats. That’s what Zoe told me. She was going over to the girl’s house to see the animals. She seemed pretty excited about it.”

A cow. Well, that was refreshingly wholesome, and not something Zoe was likely to see in Boston.

“As long as she’s back in time for dinner,” said Susan.

“You know how teenagers are,” said Arthur Fox as he dropped ice cubes into a glass, splashed in gin and tonic water, and added a slice of lime. “She’s probably having too good a time to come home yet.”

“And these summer days are so long,” added Elizabeth. “I’m sure Zoe has no idea how late it really is. She’ll probably show up at any minute.”

It was another calm summer evening on Maiden Pond, utterly windless, the water shimmering like liquid gold. Arthur and Hannah had once again joined the Conovers for cocktails and canapés, a summer ritual that last night Susan had found charming. This evening, it only irritated her. She looked around the living room at Brooke’s and Colin’s smiling faces, at Hannah pouring herself a second glass of wine. No one seemed at all concerned that it was seven o’clock and Zoe had not come home.

Susan frowned at her phone. “She’s usually good about letting me know if she’s going to be late.”

“How many bars do you have on your phone?” Brooke asked.

“One.”

“Well, that could be the problem. It’s like being in the wilderness here. She could be in a dead zone.”

Arthur snorted. “Half of Maine is a dead zone.”

“Remember that time Kit wandered off without telling anyone?” said Brooke. “I was so worried I called the police. Ten minutes later, Kit waltzed back into the house. What an embarrassment. He said he’d gone ‘exploring.’”

But he’s a boy, thought Susan. You worried more about girls because they were more vulnerable, more likely to catch a predator’s eye, and this town was unfamiliar to Zoe. In Boston, she and her friends could navigate the T from one end of the city to the other. They knew which neighborhoods were safe and which to avoid.

She glanced at her phone again, not really listening to the conversation. Not caring about the old stories now being trotted out, about capsized rowboats and the crashed floatplane and the year Arthur challenged Colin to a push-up contest, and Arthur won. She had no choice but to endure their stories, to keep nodding and smiling, as if she really cared.

There was still no text from Zoe.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” said Brooke, watching her slip the phone back into her pocket.

“And there’s plenty of daylight left,” said Arthur. “When these two were boys, they’d run around after dark like a wolf pack, raising a ruckus. It’s what kids do here in the summer.” He pointed to a photo on the wall, of Colin and Ethan clutching bows and arrows. “Look at those little savages! How old were they?”

“I was about eleven,” said Colin. “Ethan would’ve been eight.”

“And didn’t you try to hit someone’s cat with that bow and arrow? I remember quite a to-do with the neighbors.”

Colin laughed. “I plead the Fifth.”

“Let’s remember to take a photo this year,” said Elizabeth. “We haven’t done one in a while, and we should do it while the family’s all together again.”

If only we were all together, thought Susan. Where are you, Zoe?

She felt Ethan’s arm come around her waist. “I’ll take another look around the pond,” he said quietly. “The local kids like to hang out at the boat ramp. Maybe she’s there.”

“Yes. Please.”

The others didn’t notice Ethan slip out of the house. They were all focused on the photos, the pictorial history of the family’s summers on the pond, everyone indifferent to her fears. Or maybe she was misreading what seemed to her indifference. Maybe they were only trying to distract her and ease her anxiety by forcing her to focus on the photos, on old anecdotes from Maiden Pond. That would be the charitable spin, that they did not want to worry her, but it wasn’t working. She was worried, and what she felt now was ignored. Dismissed.

“How young we all look here,” said Arthur, pointing to the first image, with “1968” written on the bottom. It showed a youthful Elizabeth and George standing under the pine tree with Hannah Greene’s parents and Arthur. He was strappingly handsome then, and he towered over the balding and bespectacled Dr. Greene. At the far edge was little Hannah, holding the disembodied hand of someone who’d been cropped out of the photo.

“God, I hate seeing myself get older,” said Elizabeth as they regarded the photos of their summers on Maiden Pond. Colin and Ethan, growing taller every year. Hannah, ripening into middle age. “Just more wrinkles, more gray hair.”

Arthur winked. “You’re aging like a fine wine, Elizabeth.”

“Or turning into vinegar.”

“And look who finally arrives on the scene,” said Colin, pointing to a photo of a blond infant cradled in the arms of a woman with lustrous black hair. In contrast to the young woman’s dark skin, the infant looked pale, almost sickly. “There’s our Kit, with his nanny.”

Brooke wrapped her arm around Kit. “He’s still my baby.”

Susan tried to play along, tried to pretend she was interested in the photos of Kit as a baby, Kit maturing from anemic-looking toddler to anemic-looking teen. She didn’t really want to hear how sick he’d been as a child or about all the doctors who’d failed to explain his stomachaches. When your own child is missing, you can’t focus on the woes of another child, but they would not stop talking about how Brooke had made it her mission to keep her son healthy, and look at him now, as tall as his father! Maybe he is as tall as Colin, thought Susan, but it’s hard to tell when the boy never stands straight but perpetually slouches like a human question mark.

Now they were on to refills of their drinks, more rattling ice cubes, more gin and lime slices splashing into glasses. More stories trotted out, everyone looking calm and relaxed. Everyone except Kit, Brooke’s precious Kit, who had clearly checked out of the conversation and was staring out the window.

She heard Ethan walk back into the house and felt a cruel stab of hope that he’d found Zoe, but when she turned to look at him, all he did was shake his head.

She looked once again at her phone. No new messages.

Susan scarcely touched her dinner. While everyone helped themselves to roast chicken and mashed potatoes and salad, she kept glancing at her phone, willing it to ring, willing a text message to appear. She had already driven up and down Shoreline Road, had knocked on a few doors, asking if anyone had seen her daughter, but no one had.

“I know you’re worried, but this is a safe little town,” said Elizabeth. “When the boys were young, we never worried about them.”

“They were boys.”

“She’s with a friend, isn’t she? So she’s not on her own.”

“I’m sure she’s just in a dead zone,” said Colin. “There’s lots of places up here where you can’t get a signal. It’s one of the annoyances of living in the woods.”

As if this is nothing more than an annoyance, thought Susan, watching her brother-in-law calmly continue his meal, knife scraping across his plate, eyes on his food. That self-assurance no doubt served him well on Wall Street, but tonight she found it grating, even though she knew he was right. They were in the woods of Maine. There were dead spots where her phone didn’t work. Zoe must still be at the house of her new friend, the one with the cow, and was probably having such a good time that she’d forgotten to call her mother. It was damn thoughtless of her. Oh, Susan would give her a stern lecture when she came home, about inconsiderate behavior, about how not to give your mother a nervous breakdown.

Ethan reached under the table to squeeze her hand. He, at least, looked worried. “I’ll go into town and take another look at Main Street. Maybe someone’s seen her there.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No, you stay here. One of us should be here when she comes home,” he murmured, and left the table.

She glanced again at her phone. Still no message.

Nor was there any after the dinner table was cleared and Arthur and Hannah left for the night. Elizabeth parked herself in an armchair with a book. Kit disappeared upstairs, to his roost in the attic. Brooke and Colin broke out the Scrabble board.

Susan went outside to the deck and stared across the water. It was a clear night, a magical night, the pond glittering with reflected starlight. On the opposite bank, she saw the silhouette of a man standing on his deck, his shoulders framed by the window behind him. Was it the same man she’d noticed yesterday, in the kayak? She could not see his face, but she could feel him watching her, just as she was watching him.

Something is very wrong here, she thought. The family might not feel it, but she did.

She pulled out her cell phone and called 911.