He raised an eyebrow. “Then why have playdates at all?”
She had wondered the same thing many times, usually when bundling up kids cranky from an afternoon of overstimulation, her own stomach growling because she’d barely managed a bite of the potluck lunch. “I guess to make ourselves feel like we’re socializing with adults, even though really we’re just wrangling even more kids than we started with?”
He glanced sidelong at Detective Marks, who hid a smile and shrugged. Clara recognized the look of a fellow mother and relaxed a little. Funny how that was all it took to relate to another person, once you’d had children. A biological similarity. It was ridiculous, if you thought about it, but that didn’t make it less true.
“Great,” he said dryly. “Okay. Try to think about the words you did get in. She ever talk about the rest of her family?”
Clara had given it some thought after Izzy asked about it last night. “Saturday she did say something about not being on the greatest terms with her sister. I remember because it was the first I’d heard that she had a sister.”
“What did she say exactly?”
“Izzy was talking about an issue she was having with her own sister. And Kristin said”—she could still hear it—“‘My sister is shit.’”
He looked at her expectantly. “That’s it?”
She shrugged. “That’s it. I think someone changed the subject.”
He changed tack. “Your kids went with Kristin’s to the Circle of Learning preschool. Was Kristin well liked among the moms?”
The twins were so recognizable that everyone in the school seemed to know Kristin. Never once had Clara seen her just rush in and out to drop off or pick up Abby and Aaron. She was always cooing at a baby in the lobby, or talking up a pregnant teacher, or stopping by the director’s office to offer help with whatever new activity they were planning. She wasn’t one of those moms who seemed skittish about coming too close to anyone else’s kid, as if at any moment someone was going to jump out and accuse her of overstepping. She regularly had a crowd of four-and five-year-olds lined up behind her own kids for high fives out the door.
“Very.”
“Do you ever read the school’s collaborative parent blog?”
“Occasionally.”
“She made some guest posts there, and I have to say, some of those comments threads devolved into flame wars over seemingly trivial things. On one, she was getting attacked just for admitting to serving her kids chicken nuggets.”
She shook her head. “That has nothing to do with Kristin. Every parenting blog is like that.”
Again he looked at Detective Marks, and again she shrugged with a small smile. “What happened to ‘it takes a village’?” he muttered.
“The village has gotten pretty judgmental,” Clara said. Detective Marks laughed out loud.
He sighed. “What about her dad? Any feelings about not knowing him, or maybe wanting to find him?”
Clara shook her head slowly, taking it in. If Kristin had grown up without a father, then being faced with raising her own children without theirs must have felt like the worst of ways for a life to come full circle.
“She ever talk about her mom being in an Alzheimer’s facility?”
She cringed. Detective Bryant was right. None of them had known Kristin. It had nagged at the back of her mind since his visit yesterday, and it was filling her with all-out shame now. How could these questions be about her most outwardly together friend, who took everything in stride and transformed it into something they could laugh about? She shook her head.
“Did it ever strike you as strange that she never mentioned her parents?”
It was Clara’s turn to shrug. “Not really.”
“Any reason why not?”
“Well, my mother is a water aerobics instructor in Florida who only occasionally remembers she has grandchildren and calls to check in. So I don’t mention her much either.”
He put his pen down on the table and sat back in his chair.
“I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it. Somehow this conversation had taken a cheeky turn. Staying home all day with kids made her occasionally impatient with adults, but she knew now wasn’t the time for that. “I know I’m not being very helpful.”
“You were a little.” He gave her a brief smile.
Clara hesitated. “I have to ask,” she said. “Do you have any reason to think she isn’t okay? Gone of her own volition?”
“We’re exploring every option.”
She couldn’t resist pressing. “Izzy said Paul told her he broke a window to get in. Do you have any way of knowing that he didn’t break it earlier? Like, whenever she went missing?”
His face revealed nothing. “Not really. It’s under an overhang, so the rain wouldn’t have come in on Sunday. I take it you saw Dr. Kirkland on camera this morning?”
“I did.”
“And what did you think of it?”
She hesitated. “I guess something about it didn’t sit well with me.”
“That’s obvious from your demeanor.”
Clara sat up straighter.
“We understand you have prior experience as a witness to a domestic violence incident.”
Clara was surprised, though she supposed she shouldn’t have been. It was probably routine for them to check records, and her subpoena would be on file. “Years ago.”
“Would you say that might be coloring your perceptions of things here?”
She looked pointedly at Detective Bryant, and then Detective Marks, whose role in this partnership remained unclear. She’d neither spoken nor taken notes. “No. But I’d say it might be coloring your perceptions of my demeanor.”
The detectives exchanged a glance.
“Why do you care what I think?” Clara asked, genuinely curious. “What does it matter?”
Detective Bryant sighed. “We don’t, necessarily. It’s just that you were right next door. And you were among the last people to see her.”
“Can I ask you an honest question? Have you ever been the last person to see someone? Someone who never came back?”
He hesitated, then shook his head.
“Well, I’m glad for you. Because as I guess you know, I have, and it’s not something I’d wish on my worst enemy. I’m certainly not gunning for that to be the case here.”
She glanced at the clock, hoping Maddie wasn’t wearing out her welcome with Randi and Rhoda. “I guess what I don’t get is this picture that’s being painted—about the money. If Kristin was sitting on a million dollars, and then had the good fortune to marry a doctor, why would she take a job at Antioch? It’s not like admin is the kind of rewarding career you can’t pass up.”
No one offered a rhetorical answer, so she continued. “Seems to me she wanted to contribute financially and not rely on Paul. So to see a mom work hard to try to do it all—especially now that I know what she’s been through, being widowed, for crying out loud—and now it’s being suggested that she left just to deny Paul what he thought was his due? While he’s up there alluding to all the money he’s spent raising her kids? I don’t necessarily blame Paul for grasping at straws, but it doesn’t ring true to me.”
Clara took a deep breath, realizing she’d been ranting. It was all a roundabout way of getting to say what she was really thinking, “And that leaves the question: If that’s not why she left, then why?”
“We do appreciate your help, Mrs. Tiffin. And we encourage you to continue to let us know if you think of anything else that could be relevant. But understand, we can’t discuss the details of the investigation with you. It’s ongoing.”
“One last question.” It was the first from Detective Marks, but something in her tone made Clara think it would not be the last after all. “When you were all sitting around the fire, did Kristin happen to throw anything in? A scrap of paper, even?”
Clara frowned. “Not that I saw, no.”