Stay Close Read online

  "Pick it up, please."

  "What's the point? I'd just have to hand it to you."

  Jordan, who at the tender age of eleven always wanted to keep the peace, grabbed it. "Hello?"

  He listened for a moment and then said, "You have the wrong number." And then Jordan added something that chilled Megan: "There's no one here named Cassie."

  Making up some excuse about the delivery people always getting her name wrong--and knowing that her children were so wonderfully self-involved that they wouldn't question it anyway--Megan took the phone from her son and vanished into the other room.

  She put the receiver to her ear, and a voice she hadn't heard in seventeen years said, "I'm sorry to call you like this, but I think we need to meet."

  MEGAN DROPPED OFF KAYLIE AT SOCCER PRACTICE.

  She was, considering the bombshell call, fairly calm and serene. She put the car in park and turned to her daughter, dewy-eyed.

  Kaylie said, "What?"

  "Nothing. What time does practice end?"

  "I don't know. I might go out with Gabi and Chuckie afterward."

  Might meaning will. "Where?"

  Shrug. "Town."

  The nice vague teenage answer. "Where in town?"

  "I don't know, Mom," she said, allowing a little annoyance in. Kaylie wanted to move this along, but she didn't want to piss off her mother and not be allowed to go. "We're just going to hang out, okay?"

  "Did you do all your homework?"

  Megan hated herself the moment she asked the question. Such a Mom moment. She put her hand up and said to her daughter, "Forget that. Just go. Have fun."

  Kaylie looked at her mother as though a small arm had suddenly sprouted out of her forehead. Then she shrugged, got out of the car, and ran off. Megan watched. Always. It didn't matter that she was old enough to enter a field by herself. Megan had to watch until she was sure that her daughter was safe.

  Ten minutes later, Megan found a parking spot behind the Starbucks. She checked her watch. Fifteen minutes until the meet.

  She grabbed a latte and found a table in the back. At the table to her left, a potpourri of new moms--sleep deprived, stained clothes, deliriously happy, all with baby in tow--were yapping away. They talked about the best new strollers and which Pack 'n Play folded up easiest and how long to breast-feed. They debated cedar playgrounds with tire mulch and what age to stop with the pacifier and the safest car seats and the back baby sling versus the front baby sling versus the side baby sling. One bragged about how her son, Toddy, was "so sensitive to the needs of other children, even though he's only eighteen months old."

  Megan smiled, wishing that she could be them again. She had loved the new-mommy stage, but like so many other stages of life, you look back at it now and wonder when they fixed your lobotomy. She knew what will come next with these mothers--picking the right preschool as though it were a life 'n' death decision, waiting in the pickup line, positioning their kids for the elite playdates, Little Gym classes, karate lessons, lacrosse practice, French immersion courses, constant carpools. The happy turns to harried, and the harried becomes routine. The once-understanding husband slowly gets grumpier because you still don't want as much sex as before the baby. You as a couple, the you who used to sneak off to do the dirty in every available spot, barely glance at each other when naked anymore. You think it doesn't matter--that it's natural and inevitable--but you drift. You love each other, in some ways more than ever, but you drift and you either don't fight it or don't really see it. You become caretakers of the children, your world shrinking down to the size and boundaries of your offspring, and it all becomes so polite and close-knit and warm--and maddening and smothering and numbing.

  "Well, well, well."

  The familiar voice made Megan automatically smile. The voice still had the sexy rasp of whiskey, cigarettes, and late nights, where every utterance had a hint of a laugh and a dollop of a double entendre.

  "Hi, Lorraine."

  Lorraine gave her a crooked smile. Her hair was a bad blond dye job and too big. Lorraine was big and fleshy and curvy and made sure that you saw it. Her clothes looked two sizes too small, and yet that worked for her. After all these years, Lorraine still made an impression. Even the mommies stopped to stare with just the proper amount of distaste. Lorraine shot them a look that told them she knew what they thought and where they could stick that thought. The mommies turned away.

  "You look good, kid," Lorraine said.

  She sat, making a production of it. It had been, yes, seventeen years. Lorraine had been a hostess/manager/cocktail waitress/bartender. Lorraine had lived the life, and she lived it hard and without any apologies.

  "I've missed you," Megan said.

  "Yeah, I could tell from all the postcards."

  "I'm sorry about that."

  Lorraine waved her off, as if annoyed by the sentiment. She fumbled into her purse and pulled out a cigarette. The nearby mommies gasped as though she'd pulled out a firearm. "Man, I should light this thing just to watch them flee."

  Megan leaned forward. "If you don't mind my asking, how did you find me?"

  The crooked smile returned. "Come on, honey. I've always known. I got eyes everywhere, you know that."

  Megan wanted to ask more, but something in Lorraine's tone told her to let it be.

  "Look at you," Lorraine said. "Married, kids, big house. Lots of white Cadillac Escalades in the lot. One of them yours?"

  "No. I'm the black GMC Acadia."

  Lorraine nodded as though that answer meant something. "I'm happy you found something here, though, to be honest? I always thought you'd be a lifer, you know? Like me."

  Lorraine let out a small chuckle and shook her head.

  "I know," Megan said. "I kinda surprised myself."

  "Of course, not all the girls who end up back on the straight and narrow choose it." Lorraine looked off as though the comment was a throwaway. Both women knew that it was not. "We had some laughs, didn't we?"

  "We did."

  "I still do," she said. "This"--she eye-gestured toward the mommies--"I mean, I admire it. I really do. But I don't know. It's not me." She shrugged. "Maybe I'm too selfish. It's like I got ADD or something. I need something to stimulate me."

  "Kids can stimulate, believe me."

  "Yeah?" she said, clearly not buying it. "Well, I'm glad to hear that."

  Megan wasn't sure how to continue. "So you still work at La Creme?"

  "Yep. Bartending mostly."

  "So why the sudden call?"

  Lorraine fiddled with the unlit cigarette. The moms went back to their inane chatter, though with less enthusiasm. They constantly sneaked glances at Lorraine, as though she were some virus introduced into their suburban life-form with a mission to destroy it.

  "Like I said, I've always known where you were. But I would never say anything. You know that, right?"

  "I do."

  "And I didn't want to bug you now either. You escaped, last thing I wanted to do was drag you back in."

  "But?"

  Lorraine met her eye. "Someone spotted you. Or I should I say, Cassie."

  Megan shifted in the chair.

  "You've been coming to La Creme, haven't you?"

  Megan said nothing.

  "Hey, I get it. Believe me. If I hung out with these sunshines all day"--Lorraine pointed with her thumb at the maternal gaggle--"I'd sacrifice farm animals for a night out now and again."

  Megan looked down at her coffee as though it might hold an answer. She had indeed returned to La Creme, but only once. Two weeks ago, near the anniversary of her escape, she had gone to Atlantic City for a mundane training seminar and trade show. With the kids getting older, Megan had decided to try to find a job in residential real estate. The past few years had been all about finding the next thing--there had been the private trainer and yoga classes and ceramics and finally a memoir-writing group, which in Megan's case had of course been fiction. Each of the activities was a desperate attempt to f
ind the elusive "fulfillment" that those who have everything crave. In reality, they were looking up when perhaps they should have been looking down, searching for enlightened spirituality when all along Megan knew that the answer probably lay with the more base and primitive.

  If she were asked, Megan would claim that she didn't plan it. It was spur of the moment, no big deal, but on her second night down staying at the Tropicana, a scant two blocks from La Creme, she donned her clingiest outfit and visited the club.

  "You saw me?" Megan asked.

  "No. And I guess you didn't seek me out."

  There was hurt in Lorraine's voice. Megan had seen her old friend behind the bar and kept her distance. The club was big and dark. People liked to get lost in places like that. It was easy not to be seen.

  "I didn't mean..." Megan stopped. "So who then?"

  "I don't know. But it's true?"

  "It was only one time," Megan said.

  Lorraine said nothing.

  "I don't understand. What's the problem?"

  "Why did you come back?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "Not to me," Lorraine said. "But a cop found out. Same one who's been looking for you all these years. He's never given up."

  "And now you think he'll find me?"

  "Yeah," Lorraine said. "I think there's a pretty good chance he'll find you."

  "So this visit is a warning?"

  "Something like that."

  "What else is it?"

  "I don't know what happened that night," Lorraine said. "And I don't want to know. I'm happy. I like my life. I do what I please with whom I please. I don't get into other people's stuff, you know what I'm saying?"

  "Yes."

  "And I may be wrong. I mean, you know how the club is. Bad lighting. And it's been, what, seventeen years? So I could have been mistaken. It was only for a second, but for all I know it was the same night you were there. But what with you back and now someone else gone missing..."

  "What are you talking about, Lorraine? What did you see?"

  Lorraine looked up and swallowed. "Stewart," she said, fiddling with the unlit cigarette. "I think I saw Stewart Green."

  3

  WITH A HEAVY SIGH, Detective Broome approached the doomed house and rang the bell. Sarah opened the door and with nary a glance said, "Come on in." Broome wiped his feet, feeling sheepish. He took off the old trench coat and draped it over his arm. Nothing inside the house had changed in all these years. The dated recessed lighting, the white leather couch, the old recliner in the corner--all the same. Even the photographs on the fireplace mantel hadn't been switched out. For a long time, at least five years, Sarah had left her husband's slippers by that old recliner. They were gone now, but the chair remained. Broome wondered if anybody ever sat in it.

  It was as though the house refused to move on, as though the walls and ceilings were grieving and waiting. Or maybe that was projecting. People need answers. They need closure. Hope, Broome knew, could be a wonderful thing. But hope could crush you anew every single day. Hope could be the cruelest thing in the world.

  "You missed the anniversary," Sarah said.

  Broome nodded, not ready to tell her why yet. "How are the kids?"

  "Good."

  Sarah's children were practically grown now. Susie was a junior at Bucknell. Brandon was a high school senior. They had been little more than babies when their father vanished, ripped from this tidy household, never to be seen by any of his loved ones again. Broome had never solved the case. He had never let it go either. You shouldn't get personally involved. He knew that. But he had. He had gone to Susie's dance recitals. He had helped teach Brandon how to throw a baseball. He had even, twelve years ago and to his great shame, had too much to drink with Sarah and, well, stayed the whole night.

  "How's the new job?" Broome asked her.

  "Good."

  "Is your sister coming in soon?"

  Sarah sighed. "Yep."

  Sarah was still an attractive woman. There were crow's-feet by the eyes, and the lines around her mouth had deepened over the years. Aging works well on some women. Sarah was one of them.

  She was also a cancer survivor, twenty-plus years now. She had told Broome this the first time they met, sitting in this very room, when he had come here to investigate the disappearance. The diagnosis had been made, Sarah explained to him, when she was pregnant with Susie. If it wasn't for her husband, Sarah insisted, she would have never survived. She wanted Broome to understand that. When the prognosis was bad, when the chemo made Sarah vomit continuously, when she lost her hair and her looks, when her body started to decay, when no one else, including Sarah, had any hope--that word again--he and he alone had stuck by her.

  Which proved yet again that there was no explaining the complexities and hypocrisies of human nature.

  He stayed up with her. He held her forehead late at night. He fetched her medicines and kissed her cheek and held her shivering body and made her feel loved.

  She had looked Broome in the eye and told him all this because she wanted him to stay with the case, to not dismiss her husband as a runaway, to get personally involved, to find her soul mate because she simply could not live without him.

  Seventeen years later, despite learning some hard truths, Broome was still here. And the whereabouts of Sarah's husband and soul mate was still very much a mystery.

  Broome looked up at her now. "That's good," he said, hearing the babble in his own voice. "I mean, about your sister's visiting. I know you like when your sister visits."

  "Yeah, it's awesome," Sarah said, a voice flat enough to slip under a door crack. "Broome?"

  "Yes?"

  "You're giving me small talk."

  Broome looked down at his hands. "I was just trying to be nice."

  "No. See, you don't do just being nice, Broome. And you never do small talk."

  "Good point."

  "So?"

  Despite all the trappings--bright yellow paint, fresh-cut flowers--all Broome could see was the decay. The years of not knowing had devastated the family. The kids had some hard years. Susie had two DUIs. Brandon had a drug bust. Broome had helped both of them get out of trouble. The house still looked as though their father had disappeared yesterday--frozen in time, waiting for his return.

  Sarah's eyes widened a little as if struck by a painful realization. "Did you find... ?"

  "No."

  "What then?"

  "It may be nothing," Broome said.

  "But?"

  Broome sat resting his forearms on his thighs, his head in his hands. He took a deep breath and looked into the pained eyes. "Another local man vanished. You may have seen it on the news. His name is Carlton Flynn."

  Sarah looked confused. "When you say vanished--"

  "Just like..." He stopped. "One moment Carlton Flynn was living his life, the next--poof--he was gone. Totally vanished."

  Sarah tried to process what he was saying. "But... like you told me from the start. People do vanish, right?"

  Broome nodded.

  "Sometimes of their own volition," Sarah continued. "Sometimes not. But it happens."

  "Yes."

  "So seventeen years after my husband vanishes, another man, this Carlton Flynn, goes missing. I don't see the connection."

  "There might be none," Broome agreed.

  She moved closer to him. "But?"

  "But it's why I missed the anniversary."

  "What does that mean?"

  Broome didn't know how much to say. He didn't know how much he even knew for sure yet. He was working on a theory, one that gnawed at his belly and kept him up at night, but right now that was all it was.

  "The day Carlton Flynn vanished," he said.

  "What about it?"

  "It's why I wasn't here. He vanished on the anniversary. February eighteenth--exactly seventeen years to the day after your husband vanished."

  Sarah seemed stunned for a moment. "Seventeen years to the day."

  "Yes." br />
  "What does that mean? Seventeen years. It might just be a coincidence. If it was five or ten or twenty years. But seventeen?"

  He said nothing, letting her work on it herself for a few moments.

  Sarah said, "So I assume, what, you checked for more missing people? To see if there was a pattern?"

  "I did."

  "And?"

  "Those were the only two we know for certain who disappeared on a February eighteenth--your husband and Carlton Flynn."

  "We know for certain?" she repeated.

  Broome let loose a deep breath. "Last year, on March fourteenth, another local man, Stephen Clarkson, was reported missing. Three years earlier, on February twenty-seventh, another was also reported missing."