left the car in the driveway in front of the garage and went into the house through the back door. Nancy was in the kitchen, standing in front of the open oven door and poking gently at a roast whose aroma made Gerry’s mouth water. “I think another half-hour, and it’ll be done,” she said, glancing at the clock. “Dinner at seven okay?”
“Perfect. You want me to tell Kelly when I go upstairs?”
Nancy’s brow furrowed. “She’s not here. I assumed she stopped at the paper and hitched a ride with you.”
Gerry shook his head. “I thought she must have decided to come right home after whatever it is she does every afternoon.”
Nancy’s frown deepened and she looked at the clock again. It was still six-fifteen, just as it had been a few seconds ago. “Maybe she went over to someone’s house,” she suggested, though she didn’t believe it. Ever since she was a little girl, Kelly had been utterly reliable. If she was going to be late coming home, she always called.
Even if she was only going to be ten minutes late, she always called.
Always.
She could see that Gerry’s thoughts were the same as hers, and when she spoke again, she didn’t know if she was trying to reassure her husband or herself. “I’m sure everything’s fine. She probably just stopped off somewhere for a minute and just lost track of time.”
“Kelly doesn’t lose track of time,” Gerry said. “You know that. She’s never lost track of time in her whole life.” His jaw had tightened, his complexion gone pale. “I’m going to call Dan Pullman.”
“I’m going to call some of her friends first,” Nancy insisted. “Let’s not start worrying until we know there’s something to worry about.” As if to preclude Gerry from calling the police chief, she picked up the portable phone and began dialing.
As Nancy began talking, Gerry poured himself a scotch, eyed the glass critically, then poured again. Adding some water, he gulped half the drink down in a single swallow, and waited for the heat of the alcohol to thaw the cold knot of anxiety that had formed in his belly.
It didn’t work.
As he sipped the second drink, he listened with half an ear as Nancy made call after call. By the fifth one her face was as pale as his, and the worry he’d heard in her voice when she insisted that nothing was wrong had congealed into fear.
“What is it?” he asked when she hung up the phone and looked up at him. “What’s going on?”
“Sarah Balfour said Kelly was ‘weird’ at song-leading practice this afternoon.” Nancy told him, her voice low. “That was her word — ‘weird.’ She said it didn’t seem like Kelly was thinking about what she was doing. Couldn’t do the steps or follow the routines. And when Sarah asked her if she wanted to get a Coke afterward, Kelly didn’t say anything.”
“Maybe Kelly didn’t hear her,” Gerry suggested, but his wife shook her head.
“Sarah said she heard her, but just turned around and walked away.” Nancy paused, taking a deep breath, then went on. “It seems the kids have been making things pretty rough for Matt Moore at school.”
“Which doesn’t have a damned thing to do with Kelly,” Gerry said.
Nancy’s eyes flashed impatiently. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Gerry. Until last weekend he was her boyfriend. I know you didn’t like it, but your not liking it doesn’t mean it wasn’t so. And even before they started dating, they were friends.” She shrugged helplessly. “You know how loyal Kelly is, and apparently today the kids were all acting as if Matt didn’t exist.”
“Why wouldn’t they, after what he did?” Gerry’s voice grated angrily, which Nancy chose to ignore.
“Sarah thinks Kelly might have gone to see Matt — ”
“I’m calling Dan Pullman,” Gerry snapped, snatching up the phone. But as he started dialing, Nancy’s fingers closed over his and she took the phone away from him.
“Not yet. We don’t even know if that’s where Kelly went. And even if she did, we don’t know if anything’s wrong.” She could see that her words were having no effect on her husband, so she changed her tack. “Gerry, I know what you think, but I also know that Joan has been a good friend for ten years. And Matt’s been a good friend to Kelly. So I’m not going to call Dan Pullman, and neither are you. First I’m going to call Joan and Matt and see what I can find out.”
Gerry’s eyes narrowed. “You won’t find out anything,” he predicted. “But if that kid’s done something to my daughter…”
His words faded away, the sentence hanging in the air, his hands clenched into fists.
* * *
EVEN THOUGH THE electronic buzz of the telephone had none of the harshness of the jangling bell Joan remembered from her childhood, its sound startled her, and she almost dropped the plates she was about to put on the table. The sound had made Matt jump too. When the phone buzzed a second time, Joan realized that it had come as a surprise because no one had called recently. Until a few days ago, the phone had rung constantly. It had sometimes seemed that everyone in town called someone in the house at least once a day, what with Bill’s steady stream of clients calling about one deal or another, her own friends calling just to check in, and Matt’s myriad friends calling to talk about whatever it was that kids talked about these days. But since the day after the funeral, it had fallen nearly silent. Today, in fact, it had been completely silent.
Joan knew why: if no one knew what to say to you, they didn’t call. Now, instead of talking to the Hapgoods, everyone was talking about them. In the space of a few short days, the cradling comfort of living in a town where you know everyone and everyone knows you had devolved into the misery of knowing that wherever you went, people were watching you.
Watching you, and whispering about you.
Worse, whispering about your son.
As the phone buzzed a fourth time, a voice spoke inside Joan’s head. A voice so clear that for a moment it paralyzed her.
It was her sister’s voice.
Cynthia’s voice.
When the phone buzzed a fifth time, Joan was determined to ignore it, to let it ring until the answering machine on Bill’s desk picked it up. But in her head Cynthia’s voice was still speaking to her, whispering to her.
Setting the plates down, Joan finally picked up the phone, and when she spoke, she could hear the nervousness in her own voice. Then, hearing Nancy Conroe, she felt a flash of hope — Nancy, at least, hadn’t abandoned her. But then, listening to Nancy, the flicker of hope she’d felt quickly died, and her gaze moved to her son.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Nancy Conroe was saying, her tense voice belying her words. “But Kelly hasn’t come home, and she hasn’t called, and I was just wondering if maybe she’d stopped over there.”
An image of the blood on Matt’s clothes — the clothes that were in the washer now — leaped up in Joan’s mind.
There was a second or two of silence, then: “What about Matt? Is he there? Could I talk to him, Joan?”
Joan hesitated, but even that felt like a betrayal. What was she thinking? Matt hadn’t done anything! He couldn’t have done anything! “Of course,” she finally said. Covering the receiver with her palm, she handed the phone to Matt. “It’s Nancy Conroe. She wants to talk to you.”
Matt listened in silence as Kelly’s mother repeated what she’d just said to his mother, and when he replied, his voice was tight. “She isn’t here.” He hesitated and then, recalling that Kelly had barely spoken to him the last two days — hardly even looked at him — his voice broke. “I haven’t seen her,” he said. “And why would she have come over here anyway?” He struggled not to let his voice reveal the pain his words were causing him. “She’s not even speaking to me anymore.”
