“We are all so drunk,” he said.
Back at home, in bed, the room spinning slightly, Peter reached for her.
“Kiss me right on the mouth,” she whispered, and when he did as she asked a need in Claire seemed to make itself known. Dougie Daniels had been kidnapped and possibly even murdered. Nothing in the world made sense anymore, and Claire felt like an idiot for having lived so safely, for having believed that this was what she wanted: this man, this house, this life.
That night, when he finally moved on top of her, Claire’s hips met his thrusts. Her fingernails dug into his back. Something was happening to her. Something, finally, unexpected. It wasn’t Peter who let out that predictable groan, but Claire. More a yelp really, as waves seemed to grab hold of her and not let go.
In the morning, hungover, Claire felt embarrassed about what had happened. She could not meet her husband’s eyes. Instead, she scrambled his eggs, made his toast, squeezed oranges for juice, all the time wondering what in the world was she going to do next.
Of course all the mothers of Honeysuckle Hills watched their children more closely after Dougie Daniels went missing. They stood on street corners and front steps, making sure their own sons and daughters arrived wherever they were going and then back home, safely. They made casseroles and cakes for the Danielses, but they didn’t linger when they delivered them. To see Gladys Daniels, her hair unwashed, her eyes wild with grief, made them nervous, the way they had been before Dr. Salk calmed them down with the polio vaccine. If Dougie Daniels, an ordinary boy, a B student and average second baseman in Little League, could be kidnapped, then anyone could.
“It’s not contagious,” Claire said one afternoon to Roberta and Trudy. “We should go and sit with her.”
They were standing vigil as their own kids ran under the sprinkler in Roberta’s backyard. It had been a month since Dougie disappeared, and there was no sign of him being found.
“She just kind of scares me,” Roberta said, her eyes never leaving her Sandy and Ricky, not once.
“I think she could wash her hair,” Trudy said primly. “They said she didn’t even bother to wash it when the newspeople went over there.”
“I think we should sit with her,” Claire said again. “I’m going to make calls for Kennedy tomorrow night, but I could go in the morning.”
“And bring our kids?” Roberta said. “That would just make her sad, to see our kids safe and sound while Dougie is . . . gone.”
Dougie Daniels was an only child. Gladys had had a hysterectomy at a very young age. Or so the women thought.
“What would we possibly say to her?” Trudy asked.
“I made her a Jell-O salad,” Roberta said. “With canned pears and walnuts.”
“That’s always nice on a hot day like today,” Trudy added.
And that was the end of that.
The next night, Claire walked into an empty law office and sat beside Miles Sullivan, the man who would change everything. When Dougie Daniels’ body was found in the C & O Canal over Labor Day weekend, she wished she had gone that morning to visit with Gladys. But wasn’t it too late now? Wasn’t a dead child—a murdered child—even harder to talk about than one who had simply vanished? If kidnapping seemed possibly contagious, no one wanted to think about this even worse thing.
Claire sent flowers and a fruit basket. She signed up for the neighborhood meal rotation, leaving a casserole on the Danielses’ front steps every Thursday. The curtains were never opened, the blinds always drawn. It was as if all life had been removed from the house. One afternoon, when she dropped off a pan of chicken divan, she saw a catcher’s mitt and a bat on the front lawn. The sight of them made goosebumps climb up her arms. Had they been there all this time? Claire hesitated at the door. But then she laid the casserole, wrapped in a blue-and-white-checked dish towel, on the stairs and hurried off, avoiding the sight of Dougie’s Little League gear as she walked back to her car.