Chapter 11 Lindy
Lindy
“Tiffany?” Lindy said into the phone at Innisfree, pacing, arm crossed over her stomach to try to keep from shaking. She’d
called Hailey, asked her to look in the address book in the Cranston telephone table for David’s assistant’s cell number.
When she’d dialed it, Tiffany’s voicemail had picked up. “It’s Lindy Kauffman. I’m so sorry to bother you on a Sunday morning,
but I really need to know if you’ve heard from David at all since yesterday morning. And if you’ve noticed anything about
his . . . state of mind, lately?” She explained vaguely that he hadn’t shown up, gave the number at Innisfree and her cell
number, and asked Tiffany to call as soon as possible and to try the Innisfree number first.
Lindy hung up the phone and said, “Damn it,” just as her mother walked past, heading for the kitchen with a worried look.
Her father was passing in the opposite direction. “Dad?” Lindy said, but he didn’t turn or answer. Was he getting that hard
of hearing? She wished she could lean on him for help, but it was clear he was so much older than he’d been last summer, so
much older than he’d been even at Christmas, when she’d seen him last.
Emma came running down the stairs trailed by Reese, who was glammed up for the day in smoky eye makeup, a black romper, and tall gladiator sandals.
When they reached the bottom and faced Lindy, Emma looked frightened, and Reese was wearing an appropriate look of concern.
Why did Lindy get the weird feeling she was maybe an actress, though?
Lindy hadn’t had time to ask, but the girl just seemed to lack sincerity.
“We’re ready to go,” Emma said, and Lindy told them to head out to the car, that she’d be out as soon as she gave Hailey another quick call.
Earlier, Lindy had phoned the police again, only to be told again that she needed to prove David was really in danger before
he could be listed as a missing person. She had called all the hospitals again, too, plus the customer service line of her
and David’s joint credit card, the one they used for everything. No new charges. A call to their bank’s automated line revealed just one new transaction on their debit card: a three-hundred-dollar
cash withdrawal, which he’d made on Friday after work from the ATM near their house in Cranston.
This seemed like exactly what he’d do to prepare to go out of town, and it meant he could’ve paid cash for gas or anything
else he bought after leaving home. He would’ve paid cash for tolls along the highway, too, because he was anti-E-ZPass, saying
that the way it tracked your whereabouts was an invasion of privacy.
If only he felt differently about that! Having a record to check could’ve given them an idea of how far he’d gotten, plus
told them if he had actually been headed for The Cove.
But Lindy simply couldn’t believe that he would’ve called and told her he was on his way if he’d had some other plan. The
more she thought it through, the more she convinced herself the only feasible explanation was that—as Cody and Eli had theorized
yesterday—he’d stopped off for a hike. Fallen in the woods. Without his phone, he’d have to just wait for someone to come
along.
So, Hailey and the boys were setting out from Cranston this morning, planning to check all David’s favorite stops to ask if he’d been seen, to try to track his movements and figure out how far he’d gotten.
He was almost religiously opposed to stopping before he’d crossed the Massachusetts state line into New Hampshire, so they would start there and visit the places he tended to frequent.
The two gas stations he preferred. The New Hampshire state liquor store.
The popover bakery in downtown Portsmouth.
The Nike outlet in Kittery. The Starbucks at the service plaza in Kennebunkport.
Then they would check the Audubon sanctuary in Biddeford.
And whatever other trailheads they could find.
Just searching from the New Hampshire state line up to Portland would take them all day.
So, Lindy had decided that she, Emma, and Reese would tackle the rest of the route, see if they could turn up any trace of
him. They would go to town first to check their phones, then visit every trailhead between there and Portland, every place
where he might’ve even thought of stopping off.
Meanwhile, when Lindy had called over to the yellow cottage this morning, Kate had said she was heading to town to use the
library computer to make MISSING posters, which Lindy thought and hoped was premature. But Kate was going to have two hundred printed, if she could find a
print shop that was open on a Sunday, then she and Josh would start posting them. Kate said she’d sent her husband and kids
back to the farm. There were animals to take care of, the older kids had summer jobs on top of that, and Matt had taken the
younger kids so Kate could focus on the search for David.
Now, overhearing Greta in the kitchen offering Emma and Reese coffee and food as they passed through, and the girls politely
refusing and going out, Lindy dialed Hailey’s cell. The whir-click-whir of the rotary dialing seemed to go on forever. Finally, Hailey answered on the first ring, and Lindy filled her in on everything
that was new since they’d talked an hour ago. “Okay,” Hailey said. “We’re just leaving now. We’ll stay in touch over your
cell phone.”
“Good. Listen, honey, I’m so sorry. I know we had things we needed to do today—this week—for your wedding. I don’t want to
say that—”
“Stop, Mom,” Hailey interrupted. “Let’s not even think about the wedding right now.”
Lindy hated to hear the strain in her daughter’s voice, but what could she do? She and Hailey had been operating off their
giant, seemingly all-important wedding checklist for almost a year, and Lindy off an additional huge one for the other parties
and every day in between. Now those lists had become trifling, irrelevant, replaced by a new, terrible list in Lindy’s mind:
Call Tiffany. Call police. Call hospitals. Check trailheads. Cancel birthday dinner. “Okay,” she said. She made Hailey promise to be in touch frequently, and they hung up.
“Mom?” she called and went to the kitchen to find Greta. Greta was making a fresh cup of coffee and looked guilty, like she’d
been caught at something. Lindy couldn’t imagine what could be on her mind to make her look that way; didn’t even have the
bandwidth to try.
“Coffee, honey?” Greta said. “For the road?”
“No, thanks, Mom.” Lindy couldn’t stop trembling, as it was. “Can you call down to Shaw’s and see if we can cancel the lobsters
for tonight?” They’d ordered two dozen for David’s birthday dinner. On Lindy’s old to-do list for Sunday morning, July 25:
Pick up lobsters.
“Oh, honey,” Greta said sadly. “Do you really think he won’t be here by tonight? Let’s just wait awhile longer.”
This was so far outside the possibilities Lindy had been considering that it took her a moment to make sense of it. “Do you
really . . . think there’s a chance he’ll just . . . show up?”
“I do!”
Lindy hoped Greta was right, but she couldn’t believe it. Still, she said, “Okay.” It would be terrible if David showed up expecting a
birthday dinner and she’d canceled the lobsters.
Absently, she went out to the back hall to look for her purse and keys. She still didn’t want to believe that David would’ve
put his family through the last twenty-four hours intentionally. Couldn’t believe it, knowing what she knew about him after thirty-plus years.
Unless, somehow, he’d just . . . broken? Again? After all this time?