Chapter 7 Lindy
Lindy
After the kids called to say they’d reached Cranston to find the house empty, David’s cell phone forgotten in the kitchen
drawer, and no helpful messages on the house phone’s answering machine, Kate said they’d better try to get a little sleep.
Lindy started to argue, but it was true there was really nothing else they could do at this hour. She’d told the kids to be
sure they got some sleep, too, before even thinking of turning around and driving back to Maine.
Most of the people in the yellow cottage—Josh’s wife and three boys, Kate’s five kids—had gone to bed hours ago. Even Kate’s
husband, Matt, had gone upstairs with apologies around 1:30, saying somebody was going to have to be up to make the blueberry
pancakes for the kids in the morning. Lindy supposed that was true, though it was hard, just now, to imagine the arrival of
morning at all, let alone the continuation of old summer traditions.
“Maybe he just stopped at a hotel,” she found herself saying to Kate and Josh, as Kate took another sip from what had to be her third glass of wine—extremely unusual for clean-living Kate.
Lindy, who hadn’t been drinking at all, wondered if Kate could possibly feel as woozy and strange as she did.
“Maybe he just really didn’t want the party? ”
Kate patted her hand and nodded, as if trying to believe that, too.
“Although I still don’t know why he wouldn’t call,” Lindy said, voice faltering, because when she thought of the lack of a
phone call, all she could imagine was David, having stopped off for a quick hike, lying in the woods somewhere, hurt, helpless,
cold. What would it be—a broken ankle, his knee blown out again? Or had he hit his head?
“Lindy,” Josh said, “I’ll walk you back to Innisfree.”
Kate startled, went pale. “I’m going, too! I don’t want you alone, Josh, walking back here.” They all looked at each other,
taken aback, acknowledging it: They were in a new reality now. One where it didn’t feel safe to let anybody venture out alone,
not even just over to Innisfree. They could get lost. Vanish. Someone could hurt them . . .
Lindy shook her head to clear it of the thought. She’d go crazy if she started to think that.
They walked in silence in the moonlight, Kate and Josh flanking Lindy like bodyguards around a dignitary as they made their
way up and over the crest of the slight hill, listening for the crack of twigs in the woods lining the narrow road and to
the breeze rustling the oak and birch leaves. The damp air smelled lush with summer blooms, fallen pine needles, the salt
of the sea.
Lindy had walked this small cut-through section of Summerland Cove Point Road between the yellow cottage and Innisfree thousands
of times over the years. As a child, heading to and from the beach. As a teenager, sneaking over to the yellow cottage to
see David. As an adult, carrying casseroles and salads for family dinners at the yellow cottage and community potlucks at
the SCPA clubhouse. She had chased her children through here, all of them laughing and running. She had watched them grow
taller and taller among these trees.
“Lindy, I hate to ask,” Josh said, and the sound of his voice was startling in the enveloping darkness. “But have you, uh, noticed David having any trouble lately?”
She knew instantly what Josh meant, and the knowing fell like a rock into the pit of her stomach. The truth was, she hadn’t
noticed anything. Not a thing. Had she missed something? She hated to think so, but, with her focus on the parties and Hailey’s
wedding, God knew she could’ve. “No,” she managed, swallowing back a lump of guilt.
“How’s his work going?” Josh asked.
“I have always thought that job was too stressful for him!” Kate interjected.
“I—I don’t know,” Lindy said, trying to remember the last time David had told her anything about a case he was working on.
He was a lawyer for the Northeastern Innocence Project. Every case he worked on was a matter of life or death, of an apparent
wrong needing crucially to be made right, within a labyrinthine system that made fixing mistakes very difficult. It was stressful. She’d never liked that it was what he’d chosen to do. Not that it wasn’t noble. It was. But he was her husband,
the father of her children. If he wanted to put his law degree to work on behalf of humanity, why not child protective services?
Environmental protection? But no. He made visits to the maximum-security prison instead, trying to get the stories of the
murderers who lived there, who all said they were innocent, and he believed nearly every one of them, and, often, took up
their fights as his own.
But had she really stopped asking? Settled for “fine” as an answer to the old “how was your day” question?
Probably, she realized. He was naturally circumspect.
Had to be drawn out. And of course, much of his work was confidential, so he couldn’t talk about it at all.
And yes, Lindy had been preoccupied these last few weeks (okay, who was she kidding, months), and she’d probably been doing most of the talking, because it was easier, and because she always had so much to tell him.
Also, she’d been having so much fun! She hadn’t felt such clarity of purpose in years.
Every day brought a new decision to make: venue, flowers, caterers, menus, tents, music, a cake.
Hailey’s dress alone had required seven shopping expeditions—they’d tried Portland, Boston, Providence—and, after the choice had been made, there’d been three fittings in Portland, and Lindy had driven up from Cranston for each one.
The other two parties had been easier to plan, but not nothing. Not even close to nothing.
So, yes, she’d been distracted. Not paying David much attention at all. “I really don’t know,” she said again.
“It hasn’t even occurred to me in a long time.” Kate’s voice sounded young and frightened now. “To worry, you know? I mean,
he’s seemed fine all these years! You don’t think he could’ve gotten into a bad state without you noticing, do you?”
“I don’t . . . think so?” Lindy swallowed. “Have you guys talked to him?”
“Not much, no,” Josh said, sounding choked.
“Not in a few weeks,” Kate said. “We said we’d catch up when we saw each other.” Her tone turned harder, then. “Have you not
been paying attention, Lindy?”
“Hey,” Josh scolded.
“I’m just saying,” Kate went on, and the wine she’d drunk was showing, reminding Lindy of when they were young, in their twenties,
when Lindy had often worried that Kate was drinking too much, that it was going to get her into trouble. Ever since Kate’s
first pregnancy, nineteen years ago now, Lindy had rarely seen her drink at all. “We’ve trusted her with him all these years,” Kate went on. “We’ve trusted you, Lindy, to take care of him!”
“Stop!” Lindy said, trying to rein things in. If Kate regressed to her younger self, to who she’d been back when everything
had happened, Lindy might start slipping, too. And slipping was not an option. “I have been taking care of him. I’m his wife. Just . . . don’t say anything to the kids. Okay? Promise? They don’t know anything about what happened back then, and I
don’t want them to know.”
“Fine,” Kate snapped. They were at Innisfree now. “But if you missed something, Lindy, I swear—”
“That’s enough, Kate.” Josh took hold of his sister’s elbow and steered her away. Lindy walked up Innisfree’s porch steps, pulling the screen door open with a creak, knowing that any hope of getting sleep tonight was gone.
In the shadowy living room, Emma was asleep on the couch sitting up, looking small and innocent, like a child again. Reese
was asleep on her shoulder, long legs stretched out, and the old rotary phone sat on the coffee table before them, the cord
snaking across the floor.
Lindy shook them awake gently and sent them upstairs, then sat down on the couch herself and looked out the picture windows
to the ocean beyond. The moon had swerved around the end of the point by this time of night, but she could still discern the
slight motion of the black water in its distant, refracted light. She knew her mother would be up in an hour or so, before
sunrise. She should go upstairs to bed—she did not want to have to tell her mother the news at four in the morning—but she
didn’t want to leave the phone.
Would Greta say she’d always known it would come to this? God, Lindy hoped not. But Greta might.
Lindy stretched out and pulled the throw blanket down over her, trying to think what to do once it wasn’t too damn late or
early to do anything. Just a couple hours from now. Should she call the hospitals again? Try again with the police? Go out
looking?
But where?
She tried to remember David’s voice this morning, when he’d called to say he was leaving Cranston. (Or, God: yesterday morning.)
She hadn’t noticed anything unusual about it. Maybe he’d sounded tired . . . but wasn’t everybody tired?
David’s not just anybody, she heard, as if Kate and Josh were still there talking to her.
Kate and Josh hadn’t forgotten: David was fragile. Lindy—even as she knew in her bones that that fact stood as a foundation,
or maybe a basement, to their life—had spent the last two-plus decades trying to forget it.
She didn’t think she should be faulted for that.
Because, to build a life, to build a family, you had to decide what was true. You had to decide what you would accept. You had to decide who you were.
You didn’t have to venture into the basement. Or even think about what was down there.
Not often, anyway.