connected with another missing girl.”
“That was already explored years ago, by Detective Buckholz.”
“I’d like to look at it again. Even though it’s been nineteen years, I won’t let your daughter be forgotten. Charlotte deserves better than that.”
She saw him blink away tears, and she knew that for him the loss was still raw, the pain still alive. Parents never forget.
With a weary nod, he said: “Come inside. I’ve brought her things down from the attic, as you requested. Please take as long as you need to look through them.”
She followed him into the foyer and was once again impressed by gleaming hardwood floors, by oil portraits that appeared to be at least two centuries old. She could not help comparing this house with Kevin Donohue’s residence, with its pedestrian furniture and shopping mall art. Old money versus new money. Patrick led her into the formal dining room, where Palladian windows looked out over a lily pond. On the rosewood dining table, large enough to seat a dozen guests, was a collection of cardboard boxes.
“This is what I saved,” he said sadly. “Most of her clothes, I finally gave away to charity. Charlotte would have approved, I think. She cared about that sort of thing, feeding the poor, housing the needy.” He looked around at the room and gave an ironic laugh. “You probably think it sounds hypocritical, don’t you? Saying that while I live in this house, on this property. But my daughter really
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Dion. About bringing all this pain back to you. Would it be easier for you if I looked through these boxes on my own?”
“No, I’ll need to explain things. You won’t know what some of it means.” He reached into a different box and pulled out a photo album. Clutched it for a moment, as if reluctant to release it. When he held it out to Jane it was with both hands, a precious offering that she took with equal reverence. “This is what you probably want to see.”
She opened the cover. On the first page was a photo of a young blond woman holding a red-faced newborn, the baby swaddled like a tiny mummy in a white blanket. OUR CHARLOTTE, EIGHT HOURS OLD was written beneath it with the extravagant loops and flourishes of a woman’s hand. So this was Dina when she was still Patrick’s fresh- faced bride. Before Arthur Mallory stepped into their lives and fractured their marriage.
“Charlotte was your only child?” Jane asked.
“Dina insisted that we have only one. At the time, I was fine with it. But now…”
Now he regrets it, she thought. Regrets pouring all his love and hopes into a child he would one day lose. She turned the pages and studied other photos of Charlotte as a blue-eyed, golden-haired toddler. Occasionally Dina appeared, but Patrick was in none of the photos, except as an elusive shadow cast at the edge of the frame while he held the camera. Jane turned to the final page in the album, the year Charlotte turned four years old.
Patrick handed her the next volume.
The years seemed to accelerate in this second album, the girl growing, changing every few pages. After the flurry of attention devoted to a child’s first years, after the novelty of new parenthood wears off, taking photos becomes an afterthought, the camera brought out only when the special occasion calls for it. A fifth-birthday party. A first ballet recital. A visit to New York City. Suddenly that cherubic toddler transformed into a glum-faced adolescent, posing in her school uniform at the front gate of the Bolton Academy.
“She was twelve years old in this photo,” said Patrick. “I remember she hated that uniform. Said that plaid makes a girl look fat, and that was why the school made them wear it. To make the girls look so ugly, they wouldn’t get into trouble with any of the boys.”
“Did she not want to go to Bolton?”
“Oh, she certainly did want to go. But I admit, I wasn’t happy about seeing her leave. I had such a hard time losing my little girl to boarding school. Dina insisted because it was the school that she graduated from, a place where a girl could
“That must have been hard for you when Dina left.”
Patrick gave a resigned shrug. “I accepted it. What else could I do? And oddly enough, I rather liked Arthur Mallory. Liked the whole Mallory family, in fact-Barbara, their son. Mark. All of them were decent people. But hormones are an irresistible force. I think I lost my wife to Arthur the very first time they laid eyes on each other. All I could do was stand by and watch my marriage fall apart.”
Jane turned to the last page and studied the final image in the album. It was a wedding photo, and standing at the center were the new bride and groom, Dina and Arthur Mallory, both dressed in formal attire. Flanking them were their respective children, Mark standing at his father’s side, Charlotte at her mother’s. While bride and groom were beaming, Charlotte looked dazed, as if she did not know how she’d come to be standing with these people.
“How old is Charlotte in this photo?” Jane asked.
“She would have been thirteen there.”
“She looks a little lost.”
“It happened so fast, I think we were all stunned. We’d met the Mallorys only a year before, when Charlotte and Mark both performed at the Bolton Academy Christmas pageant. A year later, all of us once again attended the Bolton Christmas pageant, but by then Dina had left me for Arthur. And I was just another single father, raising a daughter on my own.”
“Charlotte stayed with you after the divorce?”
“Dina and I discussed it, and we both felt it was best if I had custody so that Charlotte could stay in the house where she’d grown up. Every few months, Charlotte was supposed to spend a weekend with Dina and Arthur, but they traveled so much they were seldom home.”
“And there was no legal battle, no tug-of-war over your daughter?”
“Just because two people get divorced doesn’t mean they don’t care about each other. We did care. And we were now all part of an extended family. Arthur’s ex-wife, Barbara, had some difficulty accepting the divorce, I’m afraid, and she remained bitter to the end. But I saw no point in hanging on to resentments. It’s called being civilized.”
That was what Ingersoll had written in his report, that Patrick Dion and his ex-wife had stayed cordial even after the divorce. Now, hearing it from Patrick himself, she could believe it.
“They even spent their last Christmas here, with me,” he said. “Arthur and Dina and Mark. We had dinner together, in this room. Opened gifts.” He looked around the table, as if seeing their ghosts still seated there. “I remember Charlotte was there, at that end of the table, asking Mark about Harvard and whether he liked it there. Dina gave her a pearl necklace. We had pumpkin pie for dessert. And afterward, I took Mark downstairs to my woodshop, because he loves working with his hands. The Harvard kid who’d rather be building fine furniture.” Patrick blinked and looked at her, as if suddenly remembering she was there. “Now they’re gone. And there’s only Mark and me left.”
“You two seem close.”
“Oh, he’s a fine young man.” Patrick paused and suddenly smiled. “Mark’s already thirty-nine, but at my age, anyone under forty still seems like a young man.”
Jane pulled another book out of the box-not a family album this time, but a Bolton Academy yearbook with the school’s seal embossed in gold on the maroon leather.
“She was a sophomore that year,” said Patrick, looking at the cover. “That was the year before she…” He paused, his face darkening. “I thought about suing the school for negligence. They took my daughter on a field trip without adequate supervision. There they were, in a public place. Faneuil Hall! They should have known some of the kids might wander off, or some stranger might approach them. But the teachers, they didn’t pay attention, and suddenly my girl was gone. I was an ocean away, where I couldn’t do a damn thing to save her.”
“I understand you were in London.”
