I wish I’d taken pictures. Three times I had to stop to shake pebbles from my boot, slowing down the eight other people assigned to search the woods on Route 9, an area Sam would have passed on his way home from work the night of the storm. A team of lunch ladies from Brookside High School and I spent the afternoon roaming the woods, looking unsuccessfully for any sign of his car. Everyone seemed reluctant to be outside in the rain, and we would have given up an hour earlier if it wasn’t for Eleanor Escobido, beloved head cook at Brookside High for thirty-five years. (I recognized her face as the one smiling from the back page of the yearbook every year, waving goodbye through the cafeteria door.) It was cold and dreary in the woods, and Mrs. E did her best to keep everyone’s spirits up by sharing stories about Sam, the good-looking boy everyone seemed to like, his mother devastated after that no-good husband left for an underpants model.
I wanted to interrupt and tell stories of my own, of course. How Sam rented the downstairs office in my house, and how much I enjoyed listening to his sessions. And also how lonesome I feel, knowing I can no longer walk down the hall and hear his voice dispensing expert advice in that gentle tone of his. Of course, that hasn’t stopped me from placing my ear to the cold metal vent twice in the last hour, wishing things were different.
I’m starting the review of the six-pack of Dab-A-Do! bingo daubers that arrived the other day (“Color is vibrant, exactly as pictured”) when I detect the faint sound of a car driving up the hill. I pause my typing to listen. I’d guess it’s the Pigeon returning home from a day of shopping with the #girlsquad she’s always tagging on Instagram, but I saw her hopping on the exercise bike in her bedroom ten minutes ago. I click off the monitor, put on my robe, and go downstairs. The dark gray fog outside is pierced by two beams of light as a car crests the hill and approaches the bridge. I move away. The car turns into my driveway, and the engine quiets. I hold my breath, expecting to hear footsteps thudding up the porch steps, but whoever it is jogs by the porch, down the path toward Sam’s office door. I pull back the curtains, and see the car—a green Mini Cooper with a white racing stripe—parked in my driveway.
The French Girl is here.
I move away from the window and go to the closet for my coat, resigned to be the one to have to tell her: Dr. Statler has been missing for forty-eight hours and is not available to indulge her insecurities for the next forty-five minutes. I open the front door and step onto the porch in my slippers. Perhaps I should offer my services, volunteer to be the one to tell her the hard, cold truth: her promiscuity is the result of low self-esteem. I happen to have been reading up on the topic since her last appointment, and I’ve come to understand that her licentious behavior stems from insufficient supervision as a young girl, leading her to use sex for attention, which will ultimately provide her with nothing but empty relationships and increased feelings of low self-worth.
“Hello?” I call into the darkness. “Are you there?” I walk gingerly down the slippery path toward Sam’s door. Silence. And then Sam’s waiting room light clicks on.
I duck down. She got inside. I turn and dash up the stairs into the house. My hands tremble as I lock the front door and race through the kitchen, down the hall to Agatha Lawrence’s study, where I drop to my knees in the corner of the room and pull back the smiley-face rug.
I hear the door to his office open, and then the click of the light switch. She’s walking around, and—my god—she’s opening the desk drawers. I don’t know what to do. Call the police? Scream at her to go away? I know. I’ll go down there and remind her that this is private property. But as I’m about to stand up, she begins to cry.
“Hi, it’s me. I’m at Sam’s office.” She’s quiet. “No, I came alone.” She pauses, sniffs. “I found the key in one of his coat pockets.” Something is off about her voice, and it takes a moment for me to realize what it is: her French accent is gone. “I just got here.”
It hits me then. That voice. I know that voice. It’s the same voice from that YouTube lecture—“Misery and Womanhood,” which I’ve now watched at least twenty times. My head swims. The French Girl isn’t a French girl at all.
The French Girl is his wife.
Chapter 23
“And?” Maddie asks nervously. “How does it look?”