Chapter Eight
Midge discovers there’s something jarring about the Greene house after all. Just not in a hoarder-drugs-roaches-or-worse way.
She takes in the sprigged wallpaper, intricately patterned rugs, doily-topped tables, fringed lampshades, lace curtains, all of it in pink and white. It’s not what she’d expect to find in a boxy, earth-toned raised ranch.
Seeing Sarah Greene’s expectant expression, she says, “Nice room.”
“Thank you. I love pretty, feminine things, don’t you?”
Midge most certainly does not, but she nods, noting that this woman is a pretty, feminine thing—almost like a character in an old movie. Pollyanna? The Stepford Wives?
The air smells of bleach, and of flowers—though not fresh-cut ones. Looking for the source, Midge spies a clump of pink potpourri in a cut-glass bowl, something she hasn’t seen since the obligatory 1990s visits to her father’s aunt in a gingerbread-trimmed house built a century before that.
She hasn’t thought about Great-Aunt Mairéad’s parlor in years—the perfumy smell, the bric-a-brac on every surface.
She and her siblings were frequently reprimanded for roughhousing, though they were merely jostling to reach the butterscotch disks Mairéad kept in a biscuit jar her maiden aunt had brought from County Waterford.
Yes, the hard candies were gummy with age, with sticky yellow-orange cellophane wrappers, but a treat is a treat on a boring Sunday afternoon when you’d rather be outside playing sports.
Sarah Greene doesn’t remind her of Mairéad, though. She isn’t a prim old biddy with a fierce independent streak. Midge’s father always said his aunt had never married because she didn’t want to take care of a man—or worse, have people thinking she needed a man to take care of her.
This woman is giving the opposite impression.
For Midge, she’s reminiscent of Caroline Winterfield’s mother, who had the same demure demeanor, the same breathy, high-pitched inflection in her voice. That last year of high school, even Caroline herself had taken on that strange, delicate way of speaking.
Midge hadn’t really noticed until Kelly brought it up to her and Talia one day.
“It’s like she’s going backward,” she said. “Like she’s trying to sound like an itty-bitty girl instead of a grown-ass woman.”
“What do you mean?” Talia asked.
“Come on, you can’t miss it. Lately, pretty much everything she says is all soft and syrupy. You’ve heard it, haven’t you, Midge?”
“Maybe when Gordy’s around, but . . .”
“Gordy’s always around.”
That was another frequent complaint of Kelly’s, although even dreamy, romantic Talia agreed that Caroline was seeing way too much of Gordy, and not nearly enough of her friends.
Back in June, when Midge met Gordy’s family at the house after his death, she noted the striking resemblance between his teenage boys and their father at that age.
She also noted the dynamic between the older son, Michael Klatte, and his girlfriend Sarah Greene—the way she hovered by his side and seemed to defer to him.
It was a brief encounter and under difficult circumstances, yet the young couple reminded Midge of Gordy and Caroline.
In retrospect, the comparison brings an uneasy twinge.
If Caroline hadn’t vanished—if she’d settled in Mulberry Bay and married Gordy—is this what she’d be like now? Would she be living in a claustrophobic pink house, referring to herself as we, as if her identity is tied to the marital unit?
“I really appreciate your coming right over, Sergeant Kennedy,” the woman says. “Or should I call you Chief Kennedy?”
“Pretty much everyone in town calls me Midge, so feel free.”
“Midge—that’s a nice nickname for Imogene.”
“Yes, I got it back in elementary school, from . . . a friend.”
From Caroline, who’d bestowed K. K. on Kelly and Tally on Talia.
“You can call me Sadie, if you like.”
“Is that your childhood nickname?”
“No, my husband chose it for me when I was pregnant with Sarah. We knew she’d be a girl, and it made things easier, since there are two of us.”
“I can see why. It would be confusing, having two Sarahs in the house. Even with the nicknames.”
She shrugs. “We’re used to it. My husband and son are both Andrew, but we call our son Drew. Naming firstborns after the parents is tradition in a lot of families.”
Including Midge’s own. Imogene was her maternal grandmother’s name, handed down to Midge’s mother, who goes by Gena, and then to Midge. And her oldest brother is Robert, after their dad, but they all call him Robbie—much to his middle-aged consternation.
“Please, sit down.”
Midge eyes a velvet sofa and bentwood rocker, feeling like a gangly klutz about to shatter some heirloom.
She opts instead for a carved wooden chair.
It creaks beneath her weight as she settles into it.
She winces, reminded of the time her brothers dared her to straddle one of Great-Aunt Mairéad’s antique dining chairs backward and it splintered and collapsed beneath her.
Sarah’s mother sits across from Midge on the sofa, smoothing her skirt and crossing her legs at the ankles. She’s wearing white pumps.
“After I talked to you, I notified other agencies and put out a BOLO,” Midge says.
She also has someone checking into the Greenes’ background—protocol—though she suspects they’re not going to find anything.
She’s growing more certain by the moment that this woman—Sadie, a name chosen for her by her husband—isn’t orchestrating an elaborate cover-up.
No, she’s simply a docile and ladylike throwback to another era, like Caroline Winterfield’s mom.
“Thank you. And I got ahold of Ginny Livingston. Her daughter Rebecca is in the Bible study group too. They didn’t go on the retreat because Ted—he’s Ginny’s husband—is recovering from knee surgery.”
Midge nods, taking notes. She knew Ginny years ago as Virginia Shade, and Ted as Teddy Livingston. They were younger than Midge, casual friends of Caroline and Gordy’s from church.
“Rebecca saw Sarah, then? At the meeting?”
“No. Ginny said when they got to the church, there was a sign on the door saying it was canceled.”
“So it was canceled!”
“Yes. Last-minute cancellation, because the air-conditioning isn’t working. Ginny said no one else was around. She’s always punctual—well, early. They were probably the first ones to arrive.”
“And Sarah was running late, you mentioned?”
“Yes, because she was dawdling on her outdoor chores. I told her she should have done them earlier, before the sun was so hot, but she can be a little . . .”
“Stubborn?” Midge suggests.
“No, not stubborn. She’s . . .”
“Difficult?”
“No.” Her tone is firm. “Sarah’s a good girl.”
“I’m sure she is. But at her age, I’m sure there are moments when you just . . .”
I swear I’m going to strangle her, she remembers Taylor’s mother saying.
Sarah’s mother shakes her head. “She’s a good girl. But now that Drew’s gone back to school, she has his chores too. It takes longer.”
“What are the chores?”
“Inside? The usual cleaning.”
“And outside?”
“Weeding and watering the garden, picking the fruits and vegetables, hosing down the patio and driveway. Oh, and the trash is picked up on Thursday mornings, so the cans need to be scrubbed and disinfected.”
Midge nods, remembering the truck in the parking lot back at headquarters, the overpowering stench of rotting garbage in the heat.
“Finally, I just told Sarah to get going to study group and finish later,” her mother goes on. “But I’m sure Ginny and Rebecca were long gone by the time she got there.”
“If she—”
Midge catches herself before she can complete the sentence.
If she got there.
“—was walking,” she says instead. “If Sarah was walking . . . maybe they passed her. Did they say they did?”
Yeah, no. She just told you two seconds ago that they didn’t see her.
Midge sees the irritation in the woman’s eyes, sees her jaw tighten. Someone else, in this situation, emotional and stressed out, might have snapped at her, with good reason.
Midge is off her game. It’s the heat, weariness, feeling out of place in the fusty room. It’s the connection, however tenuous, between the Greenes and Gordy’s death and Caroline.
“Ginny and Rebecca wouldn’t have seen Sarah walking unless she was right by the church,” Sadie tells her. “They live out on 28, so they would have come and gone from the opposite direction.”
“Right. Did you try to reach anyone else who might have been there?”
“I don’t know how many others in the group were planning to attend today. Like I said, quite a few families are away at the retreat with Reverend P.”
Midge blinks, hearing Caroline’s voice echo back over the years, making introductions to the stranger at her birthday party. “This is our new minister, the famous Reverend B.!”
She can still picture Reverend Bauer, handsome but old, the girls thought back then.
Yeah, probably about as old—young—as Midge is now.
He was married, with a bunch of kids from her own age on down.
He resides in her memory as one of those well-meaning but annoying people who tries too hard to seem cool and relate to teenagers, though she could see why Caroline spoke so highly of him.
A lot of adults in her friend’s world—particularly men, like Caroline’s father, and the former pastor, stodgy Reverend Statham—had a tendency to talk down to women. Especially young women.
Reverend B. was different—charismatic, with an engaging smile and easy conversational skills that made you feel seen, heard, relevant.
“Reverend B. is back?” she asks, pretty sure that he left Congregational a year or so after Caroline disappeared.
“No, I said Reverend P.,” Sadie says. “Reverend Parker.”
Right. Reverend Parker. She met him at Gordy’s house. He showed up shortly after Midge got to the scene and had been visibly moved at the sight of Gordy’s broken body lying at the foot of the stairs.
“Where is this retreat?” she asks.
“Way up north, somewhere in the Adirondacks. It sounds heavenly—no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no roads in or out. You have to hike there.”
“Heavenly for some,” Midge agrees, “but it’s probably hellish for others.”
Judging by the woman’s expression, she might as well have made a satanic pledge.
“The point is to get away from all distractions and focus on prayer and spiritual enlightenment! We’ve gone in the past. It’s truly a wonderful experience. Sarah especially enjoyed it. But like I said, my husband had to get Drew back to college.”
“And you wouldn’t have gone without him? You and Sarah?”
“Without Andrew? Of course not! It’s a family retreat.”
“So Sarah was disappointed about that?”
“What do you mean?”
“If she was disappointed that she couldn’t go on the retreat this year, is there any chance that she . . .” Seeing the woman’s narrowed eyes, Midge pauses.
“That she what?”
Taking a different approach, Midge says, “You and Sarah didn’t have an argument, did you? Anything that would make her want to . . .”
“Want to what?”
“Run away?”
“She’d never do anything like that! She’s a good girl!”
“No, I know, but what if she . . . Would she have gone on the retreat without you?”
“I keep telling you, it’s a family retreat.”
“Right. Maybe she went somewhere else, then, when she found out class was canceled?”
“Without telling me?”
“It’s so hot out. She could have stopped off in town on her way home to get a bottle of water, or ice cream.”
At that, something sparks in Sadie’s eyes. “She was just talking about ice cream this morning. She said Get the Scoop has a special—two-for-one cones. She thought maybe we could go over later, you know, after she finished her outdoor chores, or as an after-supper treat, but . . .”
“But?”
“But it would be wasteful. I have ice cream right here in the freezer.”
“Did that upset her?”
“She understands that we have to be careful with money, with her brother in college. My husband’s paycheck will only go so far.”
“And you don’t work, yourself?” As soon as the question is out of her mouth, Midge realizes her mistake.
“Yes, I work! I’m a wife and mother, and I have my hands full running this household!”
“I’m sure you do. Can you access Sarah’s phone log online?”
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes if you go to the carrier’s website, you can check a phone number for incoming and outgoing calls and messages.”
“I wouldn’t know how to do that.”
“If you pay your carrier bills online, you can usually just log in and see that information.”
“My husband pays all the bills. He mails checks. He says the internet isn’t private and you should never send money that way, because—”
She breaks off as her cell phone rings.
“That’s him now,” she tells Midge before answering with a harried, “Hello? Andrew?”
The call isn’t on speaker, but his voice is loud and clear. “Is she home yet?”
“Not yet. The police chief is here with me now.”
“Put him on.”
“It’s a woman. Imogene Kennedy. Remember, I met her at the Klattes’ after Gordon died. She knows Sarah, so I thought it would be best to talk to her instead of . . . someone else.”
Instead of a man.
“Fine. Put her on.”
Sadie turns to Midge. “He’d like to talk to you.”
“Sure.” She accepts the phone. “Mr. Greene?”
“Please, ma’am, can you find my daughter?
” His voice cracks, and he pauses to clear his throat.
“It’s, uh . . . it’s going to be getting dark soon, and .
. . she needs to be home before dark, okay?
Young ladies shouldn’t be out alone at night.
I always tell her that. Because nothing good happens after dark.
You must know that, too, doing what you do. I’m sure you’ve seen a lot.”
Yes.
Twenty-five years ago, she saw her friend Caroline walk into the midnight woods at Haven Cliff, carrying a pink Walkman.
This summer, she saw the same pink Walkman lying in the dirt, alongside a skeleton.
Officially, the remains have yet to be identified. The medical examiner is still awaiting forensic test results.
But Midge knows. Deep down, in her heart, she knows it’s Caroline. That something unspeakable happened to her that night.
“I’ll do everything I can,” she promises Sarah Greene’s father, fighting the impulse to add, I’m sure she’s fine.
She isn’t sure at all, and he’s right.
Nothing good happens after dark.