Chapter 36 Susan
Chapter 36
Susan
“Dragging me into a murder investigation?” said Elizabeth. “Really, Susan, I wish you’d thought this through before talking to that policewoman. Making her think I know something about those bones.”
“You can’t blame this on Susan,” said Ethan. “She only shared what I told her. If you’re going to blame anyone, you should blame me, Mom. I’m the one writing the novel. I’m the one who asked Hannah for the details.”
Elizabeth turned to her son with a look that could sear flesh, but Ethan didn’t flinch. He faced her with a resoluteness that Susan had not seen before. Certainly not in the face of his mother’s fury. Everyone else in the room seemed cowed by Elizabeth, no one daring to challenge the family matriarch. Brooke and Kit sat side by side on the sofa, mother and son shrinking against each other, as though to disappear from view. Colin stood off in a corner, his attention fixed on his cell phone. Even the usually jovial Arthur Fox was silent, his expression unreadable as he stood backlit against the window. Outside, the afternoon sky had turned gray and threatening, matching the mood inside the house.
“What, exactly, is this novel about?” Elizabeth asked.
“It’s just fiction, Mother.”
“You were writing about Vivian Stillwater? That’s not fiction.”
“No, my story’s only inspired by her disappearance. I didn’t even know the woman existed until Susan brought home that old newspaper article. Then Hannah told me she remembered Vivian, because the woman worked for Dr. Greene, and the police interviewed him after the woman went missing. I thought it would make a good story. A vanished woman. A group of summer people.”
“And you put our family in this novel,” said Elizabeth.
“No. I mean, there are similarities, but—”
“What similarities?”
“It’s about a family, living on a pond in Maine.”
“And who is this family?”
“I call them the Corcorans. A couple with two sons.”
“Like us.”
“Well, yes, but—”
“And you gave them the name Corcoran? How much closer could you get?”
“The names are just temporary placeholders! I haven’t even decided what happens to them all.”
Colin said, “Is my name in there?”
“These are fictional characters, for God’s sake.” Ethan looked around at his family. “Jesus, I’m a writer . I make things up!”
“Well,” said Elizabeth, “this may be fiction, but your novel sounds uncomfortably close to reality. Right down to the missing woman.”
“Then your book isn’t about Zoe?” said Kit.
They all looked at him. As usual the boy had been silent through the whole conversation, as inert as a stone gargoyle. No one had expected him to suddenly speak.
“No, Kit, it’s not about Zoe,” said Ethan. “It’s about something that happened before I was even born. There was a young woman named Vivian Stillwater who worked as Dr. Greene’s secretary. And one day, she just vanished. That’s what my book’s about. What might have happened to her.” Ethan looked at Elizabeth. “You must remember Vivian, Mom. The summer she disappeared, you and Dad would’ve been living here. Arthur too.”
Elizabeth groaned and turned away. “God, this is a mess. Hannah never should have told you about it. And you shouldn’t be writing about it.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ve invaded our privacy!”
“What does this have to do with us ?”
“Do you know how hard I’ve worked to keep us all together? How many times have I told you that family always comes first?”
“Constantly,” Ethan muttered.
Elizabeth turned to Susan. “And you shouldn’t have brought the police into it.”
“But they needed to know,” said Susan. “This could have something to do with Zoe’s abduction.”
“You should have spoken to me first. Asked me before getting the police involved. In our family, loyalty always comes before everything else. But I wouldn’t expect you to understand that.”
“No,” Susan said quietly. “I don’t understand that. But then, I’m not really part of this family, am I?” She stood up and went to the door.
“Susan,” said Ethan. “Where are you going?”
“I need some air.”
“Please, let’s talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to say. The rules have been spelled out to me.”
“Let me go with you.”
“I just want to take a walk, okay? I want to be alone .” She pulled her jacket off the coat hook, grabbed her purse, and stepped out of the house.
The afternoon had turned damp and windblown. A summer storm was brewing, and the weather matched her mood, angry and turbulent. She thought about jumping in the car and driving back to the hospital, but Ethan had the car keys, and the last thing she wanted to do was go back in that house. She couldn’t face the family, not now, so she just kept walking at a furious pace along Shoreline Road. She longed to pack her bags and return to Boston, but how could she, when her daughter was here in the hospital? How could she escape these Conovers, with their secrets and their closed faces and their loyalty oaths?
And now it was raining.
She reached the boat ramp, deserted except for one parked car. There she stood, her head bowed as raindrops splattered the hood of her jacket. Wind whipped across the lake, pelting her face with rain. Her shoes and socks were soaked, but the thought of returning to the house, to that family, seemed a far more miserable prospect.
Through the clatter of falling rain, she heard the growl of an engine, and she turned to see Arthur’s blue Mercedes approaching. It rolled closer and closer, then braked to a stop right beside her.
“We need to talk,” he said. “Why don’t you get in the car?”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“For heaven’s sake, Susan. You’re getting drenched, and you can’t stand out here forever or you’ll catch a cold. There’s something I need to tell you. Just get in the car. I’ll drive you wherever you want to go.”
She hesitated, rain streaming off her jacket and seeping into her jeans. Already her feet were numb from the chill, and she was shivering. There was no one else in sight, no nearby shelter from the rain. Her only alternative was to return to Moonview and face the family again.
“The hospital,” she said. “I want to be with my daughter.”
“Of course. Climb in.”
She opened the passenger door and slid in beside him. Her jeans were wet, and as they drove away from the pond, she shifted uncomfortably, worried that she’d leave stains on these buttery leather seats. Just a glance at the Mercedes’s immaculate interior told her Arthur Fox was a man who did not tolerate disorder, even if it was only water stains on his upholstery.
“I’ve known Elizabeth a very long time,” he said. “I met her and George when they first came to Purity, more than half a century ago. That was the same year the Greenes came here too. We were all just renting then, giving Maine a try, seeing if we liked it enough to stay. Oh, we were a jolly bunch! Cocktails every evening. Cruises on my sailboat when the weather was good. Except for Mrs. Greene, who got seasick just standing on the dock. But Dr. Greene, he’d grown up on the water, and he was an excellent sailor. So was George.”
She didn’t know where he was going with this, and she didn’t much care. She just wanted to get to the hospital. To dry out her wet socks and get warm again.
“The thing is, Susan, there are things you don’t know about the Conover family. Things Elizabeth wouldn’t want you to know. But I think it’s time someone told you, so you understand why Elizabeth reacted the way she did.”
Does it really matter now? she thought. It was over between her and the Conovers, because she’d broken their rule: loyalty to family, above everything else.
“Even the boys don’t know about this,” he added.
She looked at him. “The boys?”
He gave a wry chuckle. “Sorry, I can’t stop thinking of Colin and Ethan as ‘the boys,’ because I watched them grow up. I’ve known them since they were babies. Watched Elizabeth set them loose on the lawn to crawl around naked. Back then, we didn’t worry about ticks or sunscreen or skin cancer. But then, we didn’t imagine we’d ever get old either.”
She looked at him, really looked at him. Arthur had the rough, weathered skin of a yachtsman who’d enjoyed too many summers under the sun, and even though he still had his sharp-eyed intellect, his eighty-two years were clearly etched in his face. He would have been handsome when he was young, tall and strapping and confident. That young man was still there, but gazing out of an older face.
“I just want you to understand,” he said, “that there’s a reason why any mention of Vivian Stillwater is so upsetting to Elizabeth.”
“What reason would that be?”
“It’s a sensitive subject.”
“It doesn’t justify what she said to me. Or to Ethan.”
“No, it doesn’t. But if you put yourself in her place, you’ll see why she overreacted. You just have to promise me you won’t tell Ethan or Colin what I’m about to say.”
“This is something they don’t know?”
“Elizabeth and I are the only people still alive who do know. Maybe Hannah had an inkling, but she was just a kid, and her parents were discreet enough not to talk about it around her. If this ever gets back to the boys, it will change the way they think about their parents. About their father. You’re new to the family, so there’s a great deal you don’t know about the Conovers. But the thing they value above all is discretion. I hope you’ll keep that in mind.”
She waited for him to continue, but he paused, as if reconsidering his impulse to tell her. For a moment the only sound was the rain beating down on the car and the windshield wipers slashing back and forth. Through the veil of rain sheeting the windows, she could barely see the passing landscape. It was true, she didn’t really know the Conover family. It was also true she didn’t know Arthur Fox, either, and here she was in his car, her location unknown to anyone else.
He looked at her with a gaze so penetrating she felt it sear straight to her brain.
She swallowed. “I understand. Discretion.”
“Good.” He looked at the road again, and she exhaled, relieved his gaze was no longer on her. “Now, about Vivian. The woman who disappeared.”
“Hannah said she was her father’s secretary.”
“You could call her that. More like a full-fledged associate. Brilliant mind. Green eyes, flame-red hair.” He paused. “You put a woman like her with three men, two of them married, and, well ...” He shook his head. “That was not a stable situation.”
It was becoming clear to her, now. Why Elizabeth was upset by the mention of Vivian Stillwater’s name. Why she didn’t want her sons to hear about the woman’s very existence.
“Vivian became involved with one of them,” said Susan.
Arthur sighed. “Correct.”
“George Conover?”
He looked at her. “And Elizabeth found out. A situation that obviously couldn’t continue. The wife and the mistress, both living here on Maiden Pond, both hovering around George. It fractured our tight-knit little circle. Mrs. Greene was appalled, of course, and she told her husband to fire Vivian. I agreed with her. So one morning, Vivian was just gone. She left no note, gave no warning, just packed up and left. We assumed she’d gone to stay with her sister in Boston, but she never showed up there. The sister called the police, and they spoke to Dr. Greene, asking where Vivian was. He didn’t know; none of us did.”
“The sister was the only one who reported her missing?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t think to call the police yourself? Any of you?”
“Given the circumstances, we saw no reason to be alarmed. She’d left Purity under a dark cloud. She was the other woman who’d almost destroyed George’s marriage. That’s what we told the police when they interviewed us, that Vivian was probably off somewhere licking her wounds, too ashamed to show her face. There was some talk of searching the pond, that maybe she’d drowned herself, but that didn’t make sense, with her clothes and car gone.”
“And then?”
“The inquiries just stopped. The police never came back to talk to us, so I assume they located her and closed the file.”
“You assume ? You didn’t ask?”
“We didn’t want to know. In truth, we were all relieved she was gone. Certainly, Elizabeth was. Oh, there were a few rough months between her and George, but as she said, she held that family together. And George, he was committed to repairing things. ‘The fixer,’ we called him. In any crisis, he was the one who’d take care of things, who’d mop up any mess. Then the boys were born, the family moved on, and the past was the past. But now it’s all come roaring back. Vivian Stillwater. George’s infidelity. You can understand why Elizabeth was upset to have this all dredged up again, half a century later.”
Yes, Susan could understand that. She could imagine Elizabeth’s pain, her rage. Yet the Conovers’ marriage had survived the blow and gone on to produce two sons. Elizabeth had somehow come to terms with her husband’s infidelity, and in the end, it was death that finally parted them. Now that old wound had been ripped open again, and Susan had been the one to do it.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I had no idea.”
“This is why the boys can’t know about this. It would humiliate their mother. And it would destroy the memory of their father.”
“Don’t you think they already know? Hannah must have said something to them.”
“She was only eight at the time. All she remembers is that her father’s secretary disappeared, and the police came to the house. But she wouldn’t have known about the affair. At least, I hope she doesn’t.”
He turned into the hospital driveway and pulled up in front of the building. There they sat for a moment, the rain still beating down, the wipers scraping back and forth. Only a short time ago, she’d been angry at Elizabeth; now she felt sorry for the woman, and oddly respectful as well. Elizabeth had stoically lived by her own creed and suffered for it. Loyalty to family, above everything else. In the end, the Conovers had indeed endured.
“It would be kind of you, Susan, if you said nothing about this to Ethan. For his mother’s sake.” Arthur looked at her, his gaze so direct that she could not look away, could not defy his request.
“I won’t tell him. I promise.”
“Good.” He smiled. “Some family secrets are best left buried. This is one of them.”
She stepped out of the car and walked into the hospital. But just inside the entrance, she turned and watched through the window as Arthur drove away.
Some family secrets are best left buried. This is one of them.
She wondered how many more secrets there were.