Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
Ascending the staircase from her room, Marlowe squinted against the early-afternoon light spilling through the kitchen windows. Her head throbbed—a dull, manageable ache—but she steadied her breath. No room for nerves now.
Henry was making lunch for the kids when he noticed her.
“Mom and Dad went to town?” She could see their car was missing from the drive.
“Yes, they just left.” Henry flipped a grilled cheese in one smooth motion, the bread sizzling in the butter. “Don’t go in the study—Steph and Constance are wrapping gifts. It’s top secret.”
He turned and winked at Kat and Dolly.
“Where’s Enzo?” Marlowe asked.
“He’s resting upstairs,” Henry said. “Would you ask him if he wants lunch? He can come down, or I can bring it up to him.”
Henry fit so easily into the role of caregiver. He had been carrying half of Enzo’s meals up to him on a tray. He never seemed uncomfortable or ashamed when Enzo took forever to chew one bite of food, or when Enzo spewed out sentences that didn’t make sense.
Marlowe turned toward the stairs and made her way slowly to the spare room.
She knocked gently and pushed the door open to find Enzo propped up in the twin bed, a book on his lap.
“Marlowe.” Enzo’s eyes crinkled as he smiled.
The room was painted in a shade of light blue. A large window faced the North Field, framing a massive oak, bare branches swaying in the wind. In the summertime, the leaves would crowd the glass, making the room feel like it floated among them.
“Henry wants to know if you would like to come down for lunch.” Marlowe stood in the doorway, examining the shriveled man. “But you look comfortable here.”
Enzo chuckled, his thin frame sinking deeper into the pillows. “Henry once told me he’d like to die in this room. What a thing to say.”
She tried to return a smile but couldn’t quite manage it. “Enzo, I want to ask you about my friend—Nora. I know you remember her.”
He frowned, lines deepening around his eyes. “I was so sure that bear would kill her. Kill you all. That’s why I had you gather the stones for the wall. Turned out well, didn’t it?”
“Enzo,” she said again in a bracing voice. “Do you know where Nora is?”
Enzo made a strange humming sound, fingers tracing the worn pattern on the quilt. For a moment, she thought he hadn’t heard, but then he looked up, his eyes bright as if he’d been struck with a memory.
“Can you find the Bend in the Bean? You children should run along and hide at the Bend.”
He smiled at the old joke, and Marlowe tried to suppress her frustration. Enzo didn’t know what year it was. He didn’t know who was still a child and who wasn’t. Or maybe he did, and this was his way of dodging.
“Lunch?” Marlowe snapped. “Do you want to come down for it?”
Enzo blinked and opened his mouth, as if wildly confused by Marlowe’s question. More confused than when she had asked about Nora, she realized.
He turned his head from side to side, scanning the room, suddenly alarmed.
Marlowe felt a spasm of guilt and pity for the old man.
“I’ll send up Henry,” she muttered.
“Henry,” Enzo whispered, seizing on the one name that brought him comfort above all else. “Henry is a good boy. Such a good boy.”
Marlowe left him to his babbling and headed back downstairs.
In the kitchen, she accepted a plate from Henry and sat down at the table with the kids. She watched Henry’s shoulders rise as he briskly walked up to Enzo’s room.
Marlowe was still replaying her conversation with Mike from the previous day when Kat sat ramrod straight in her chair, palms flat against the table. It was as if Marlowe could see her young ears pricking forward, attuned to something in the living room.
And then Marlowe heard it too: the crunch of car wheels over gravel.
It must have been a visitor. Nate was in Hartford, Stephanie and Constance were wrapping presents in the other room, and Frank and Glory had gone into town not long ago.
Everyone was still, and then Kat was tumbling over her chair, running toward the side door, Marlowe at her heels.
“It’s the detectives,” Kat said, gasping.
Henry pounded down the stairs, his eyes wide. Marlowe saw the tightness in his jaw.
As Marlowe swung open the door, she saw Ben Vance striding up the drive, tall and straight-backed. But it was Ariel behind him that sent a flurry of anticipation up and down her spine.
She had a small, arrogant smile on her face. Not an expression Marlowe had seen on Ariel before. She always had a difficult time reading Ariel, but this one was unmistakable—not merely smug, but confident.
“Good afternoon,” Ben said.
“Hello.” Marlowe held the door, Henry a shadow behind her. “My parents aren’t here.”
“That’s all right.” Ariel’s eyes were fixed on Henry. “We came to talk to you. Both of you.”
It was too cold for a walk, so they stepped into the kitchen.
As the children were shooed away, Marlowe knew they would eavesdrop. Ariel seemed to know it too, but judging by the sly look in her eyes, she wanted them to overhear.
Henry cleared the empty plates and straightened all the chairs as the detectives sat. Marlowe put on a kettle of tea.
Once seated at the table, Ariel and Ben across from Marlowe and Henry, Ariel pulled out a small notebook. She flipped through the pages covered in a tiny illegible scrawl.
“Your brother is still in Hartford?”
“Yes,” Marlowe said.
“We would have liked to talk to all three of you at once.” Ariel shrugged.
“He’s due back in a few days,” Marlowe said.
“We can’t wait that long.” Ariel cocked her head, like a curious bird examining a worm. “It’s a funny thing, this case. Years and years with nothing—no answers. But now, suddenly, it’s coming together.”
“You’ve had a break?” Marlowe asked.
“Not quite a break.” Ariel glanced at her partner, who nodded in agreement. “Like I said, things are just starting to come together.”
Ben leaned forward. “We know this has been rough on your family, but we really just need your help to nail down a few final details.”
Henry nodded, resigned to more questioning.
“Thanks. This won’t take long. We just want to make sure there are no discrepancies. Marlowe, that night, it was you and Nate who ran out of the house first to look for Nora, right?” Ben asked. “Everyone else stayed inside?”
Marlowe nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”
“And Henry, you followed?” Ariel asked.
“Yes, they went outside first, but I was right behind them. We thought it was just one of her jokes.” Henry linked his fingers together on the table and leaned over his forearms. “But when I heard them yelling her name with no response, I ran outside too.”
“So, to confirm, there continued to be no answer, and then what happened?” Ariel’s finger tapped a page of her notebook.
“We started to get scared,” Henry said. “Our parents woke up, and we were looking for flashlights and pulling on our shoes to go look for her.”
“And you went down to get Enzo, correct?”
There was a pause, nearly imperceptible, before Henry nodded. “Yes.”
“Did Nate send you down there, or did you go on your own?”
“I don’t—I don’t remember.” Henry stared into his hands, as if he was really trying to recall.
“Marlowe, do you?”
Marlowe shook her head. “I remember Henry going to the stairs, but I don’t know who told him to.”
“You didn’t go down alone, right, Henry?” Ariel asked.
When Henry delayed his response again, Ariel tipped her hand. “We know you went down there with your friend,” she said. “We spoke with Liam.”
“Yeah,” Henry relented. “Liam went down with me.”
“And what happened once Enzo came upstairs?”
“We called the Millers and then started looking.” Henry exhaled; his eyes glazed as he recalled the witching hours spent out in the fields.
“We took the flashlights and spread out. Nate and Marlowe and my parents crossed the street and checked the barn, Liam and the others checked the garden and around the house, and me and Enzo headed back into the orchard to see if she was out there. It was so dark, we couldn’t see anything. ”
“That’s part of the core issue, isn’t it?
” Ariel nodded in sympathy. Marlowe had a sudden urge to grab her younger brother’s arm and tell him to be careful.
Ariel wasn’t nice. She was pretending. Drizzling honey over the table and enticing him to drop his guard before she struck.
“I’m sure you’ve both thought it: She could have been out there, unconscious, in the hayfield, hidden in the tall grass or under some leaves or sticks, tucked away in the barn.
Isn’t it possible that she was there and you didn’t see her? ”
“Yes,” Henry whispered. “Or whoever took her could have driven away before we realized she was gone.”
The kettle started to whistle, startling Marlowe.
She’d been caught up in a state of déjà vu—Henry and her at the table, being asked to relive that night again, as if twenty years hadn’t passed.
In some sense, maybe they’d been stuck here all along.
Ariel leaned back, unphased by the piercing sound.
Marlowe stood and went to remove the kettle from the stove but neglected to offer anyone tea.
“Do you think you missed something that night, Henry?” Ariel asked.
An edge crept into Henry’s voice—he’d returned to the present too. “Not that night. We thought—I thought—there was just some misunderstanding. She had fallen or maybe was hiding. Or something. I truly believed we would find her.”
Ariel spoke again. “What was Enzo wearing when you went to get him in the basement?”
Marlowe froze.
“His pajamas,” Henry said. “He was sleeping.”
“So you opened the door, and he was in bed, and he got out of bed?” Ariel asked. “In pajamas and slippers? Something like that?”
“I’m not sure exactly what it was like.” Henry was a lawyer again. He knew to never agree with a detailed question. “We knocked, and I think he opened the door.”
“But he was in his pajamas?” Ariel asked.
“Yes,” Henry said. “He had just gotten out of bed. He had just woken up.”