The Missing Ones

by Edwin Hill

  “It’s like when you blow your nose,” Morgan said, and he could see Kate reasoning her way through it.

  “What’s Oxy?” Kate asked a moment later.

  “A pill.”

  “Ethan’s mommy blows pills out of her nose?”

  Kate laughed at the image, and Morgan wrestled with what to say, whether to take the easy route and let her believe the image or to correct her and suffer the consequences. No matter what he said, Kate would go to daycare tomorrow for the first time in weeks and tell the other kids all she knew about snorting. He was saved from the predicament, though, when Angela White pulled up along the curb in her tan-colored minivan “Get in,” she said. “Car seat’s in the back.”

  Once they’d pulled away, Morgan admitted he hadn’t gotten very far with the search.

  “Who cares,” Angela said. “Spill what you know. And I mean all of it.”

  There was something about Angela—maybe it was because she was a cop, or maybe it was because she was kind and stuck with Morgan during the darkest of times, when she’d barely known him—but she made him want to bare his soul. He told her how angry he’d been yesterday as he’d driven up the coast and night fell. He told her that he’d truly believed that he’d see his sister again when he arrived on the island, that she’d scowl at him and he’d ask her where she’d been, and she’d tell him to mind his own goddamn business, and it would be like when they were kids, when they fought over anything and everything, but still defended each other at home, at school, against the world.

  “How are you doing?” Angela asked. “We know our girl Hester is all types of screwed up, but how are you?”

  No one had asked Morgan that question, not since Daphne had left, not since Hester’s kidnapping over the winter. “Nothing’s quite working out right now,” he said.

  “That’s an understatement,” Angela said. “I would say more that everything’s wrong. It’s all Prachi and I talk about, and we’re not really even friends, but we both love Hester and worry about her and see how much she’s hurting.”

  “Hester would do anything for my sister,” Morgan said.

  “Even lie?”

  “Especially lie. It’s what they do best.”

  “Is she lying now?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  They rode in silence for a few moments, till Angela glanced in the rearview mirror at Kate and whispered. “What will you do if you-know-who comes to Somerville?”

  “We’ll go back to the way things were,” Morgan said. “What other choice is there?”

  “There are always choices,” Angela said as she eased her car onto the bridge to South Portland, a beachy enclave to the city. “Even if they aren’t always easy. Like the intervention the other night. That wasn’t an easy choice, but it was the right one, even if it was a disaster. Now we can all talk about what’s happening. It’s in the open, and it’s our shared truth.”

  Morgan knew that Angela was right. In his heart he did, at least.

  “Let me tell you what I found out,” Angela said. “We’re about to talk to Sophie Roberts, nee Johnson. The Johnsons are a prominent family here in town. Her mother was mayor for two terms, and her father runs a major fishing conglomerate. Until last year, Sophie was married to Vaughn Roberts, a lobsterman living on the island. According to Hester, Vaughn’s been having an affair with Lydia Pelletier. We’re not sure whether the end of Vaughn and Sophie’s marriage had anything to do with the Pelletiers, but we’ll find out.”

  Angela pulled up a stately driveway lined with hydrangeas that had begun to lose their blue color and drop their leaves with the season. At the end of the driveway, an enormous white house perched on the edge of a cliff. Angela parked and told Morgan to sit tight for a moment. He watched from the van as she took out her badge and flashed it to the woman who answered the front door. They exchanged what seemed like pleasantries till Angela waved Morgan toward her. The woman moved her knee, and two golden retrievers dashed out the front door and wrestled across the seashell driveway. Morgan opened the rear door, and Waffles leapt into the fray, the three dogs running in tandem across the perfectly manicured lawn. He lifted Kate from the car seat and approached the elegant front door.

  Sophie Johnson looked to be in her early thirties. While she wore expensive yoga pants and had clearly spent money on her hair, she also had the look of a woman who could haul in a tuna. Her skin was freckled from plenty of sun, and a tiny tattoo poked from beneath her t-shirt sleeve.

  “Vaughn’s not a horrible person,” she said to Angela, clearly mid-conversation. “But I really don’t want to hear from him either.”

  “Are you two in touch?” Angela asked.

  “Not really,” Sophie said. “Only when something happens with the boat. I rent it to him for a dollar a year, which gets my dad going. But what else can I do?”

  “I’ve been there,” Angela said. “Divorce sucks.”

  “I try to be Zen about it, but don’t always succeed.” Sophie brushed her hair behind her ears and called to her dogs, who trotted over with Waffles at their heels.

  “What happened?” Angela asked.

  “Nothing anyone hasn’t heard a thousand times before,” Sophie said. “There was a third party in our marriage, a flame of Vaughn’s. Vaughn would say my dad was a fourth, but I won’t go there now. It was okay at first, though I always felt her there. When Vaughn reconnected with her last year, our marriage never recovered.”

  “So you knew about Lydia Pelletier?” Angela asked. “I thought they’d kept that to themselves.”

  “Vaughn . . . he never understood what it meant to be married—I mean, married to me. You don’t know this because you’re not from around here, but in Portland I’m a big deal. Whether I like it or not, people talk about what I do. And they talk about what my husband does. Gossip gets around, and it gets around quickly. Plus, people at the club . . . they can be cruel . . . some people thought I’d stooped low when I married him.”

  “What did you think?” Angela asked.

  “I didn’t think that. Not at all,” Sophie said. “If Vaughn asked, I’d probably take him back today.” She rolled her eyes. “Pathetic, right?”

  “Do you know Trey Pelletier?”

  “A bit. The four of us went to college together,” Sophie said. “That’s where I met Vaughn, and I knew Lydia, too, because the two of them hung out. All. The. Time. Once she started dating Trey, she and Vaughn seemed to drift apart, or at least I thought they had. Vaughn and I even broke up once because of her! I should have listened to my instincts there. Anyway, Trey comes to town when he’s working a case, so I see him every now and then. Mostly I stay away from him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t like him in college, and I don’t like him now. But if I have to, I’ll say hello.”

  “Well, you won’t have to anymore,” Angela said. “He’s dead.”

  Sophie looked stunned. “Jesus. You buried the lede there,” she said. “Now I feel like a jerk. I didn’t like the guy, but he doesn’t deserve to be dead.”

  Angela flashed the photo of Daphne. “Have you seen this woman?”

  Sophie took the phone and examined the picture. “She may have worked at the club for a while, but I wouldn’t swear to it.”

  “Would she have known Vaughn?” Morgan asked.

  “He only went to the club when I made him go,” Sophie said. “I’ll give him that. And I didn’t make him go much toward the end. What’s the connection anyway?”

  “She lives on the island, or at least she did till yesterday. She went out on Vaughn’s boat to help pull traps right before the storm.”

  “Is he still pulling traps?” Sophie asked.

  “What else would he be doing?” Angela asked.

  Sophie crouched down and said hello to Kate.

  “Please, Ms. Johnson,” Angela said. “Anything you can tell us would help. We have two missing kids, a missing woman, a rogue shipment of fentanyl, and a dead body. T
his is pretty serious.”

  “I don’t want to get Vaughn in trouble,” Sophie said.

  “And I don’t want anyone else to get killed.”

  “Please,” Morgan said. He never should have left Hester on that island.

  “Start with the fentanyl,” Sophie said. “Ask Vaughn about it.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Hester’s phone beeped. She fumbled with it, turned it to silent, and shoved it deep into her pocket as she followed Vaughn up a hillside and along a path lined with small cottages. Ahead, one of the rare trucks on the island rolled out of the trees with a state trooper at the wheel, and Vaughn stepped to the side of the road to let it pass, forcing Hester to dive behind a clump of beach roses. When she peered out, dust still settling, he’d disappeared onto a narrow path that led into heavy forest, and she scrambled after him. Here, the leaves had already turned brilliant shades of yellow, orange, and red. The path hugged cliffs that dropped off to the left, and houses were sparser, most labeled with simple signs pointing into the trees. At one, a woman stood at an easel painting the rocky cliffs, and Hester wondered how many times she’d stood in that same spot, painting that same scene.

  Up ahead, the path forked, and Hester caught a glimpse of Mindy’s wagging tail. She gave them a moment before hurrying to where the coastline opened, and a small house clung to a cliff. Vaughn stood on the front stoop of the cottage, holding the screen door open with one foot. “You should come in,” he called to her. “And stop lurking. You’ll get a reputation.”

  He released Mindy, who bounded toward Hester, nearly knocking her to the ground.

  “You’re terrible at surveillance,” he added.

  “So I’ve been told,” Hester said.

  “I’d have followed me too,” Vaughn said. “I was acting suspicious back there. But come in. We’ll have a drink. I’ll tell you what I can. Snack?” he added, this time directed at Mindy, in the uninhibited voice of a dog lover, in the same voice Morgan used when he spoke to Waffles. No one who spoke to another creature like that could be a bad person. As much as she wanted to listen to her instincts and run, very little about Vaughn felt dangerous. Hester followed him into the bungalow, a tiny one-room house with a stone fireplace that took up an entire wall. She ran her hands along shelves filled to overflowing with books, CDs, and DVDs. A stairwell led down to what must have been a basement, and a set of French doors led out to a deck that overlooked the sea. “It’s tiny,” Vaughn said.

  “Perfectly tiny,” Hester said.

  The tininess of it reminded her of her Somerville apartment, before she’d stripped it of all personality. She could have stayed in a place like this for months.

  Vaughn lifted the kettle. “Or something stronger?” he asked.

  “This house is built for long winters and brown liquors,” Hester said.

  Vaughn poured two shots of Wild Turkey. He offered her one, but she took his instead. “To be safe,” she said.

  “To safety,” Vaughn said. “And new friends.”

  Hester drank the shot down, feeling the alcohol warming her body.

  “Those troopers we passed told me there’s a manhunt going on,” Vaughn said. “For some guy named Seth who was staying at the Victorian.”

  “I met him yesterday,” Hester said. “Do they think he killed Trey?”

  “Would you be surprised?”

  “Not in the slightest,” Hester said, walking through the room. “Is this the house you grew up in?”

  “Here?” Vaughn said. “I have three brothers and sisters. Imagine us here all winter long? The house we grew up in is back in town, but my parents gave up and moved to Florida a few years back. This is a rental we hung on to. I come out here only when we don’t have renters and I want to get away.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “In a dumpy apartment by the marina. But the summer’s over. No more renters—the last ones left with the storm. Now I’ll be able to come out here whenever I like.”

  He poured himself another shot and held up the bottle as a question mark.

  “Like I told you last night,” Hester said. “I can drink anyone under the table.”

  He filled her glass. “I’ll leave it here, then,” he said. “Help yourself, but be careful. The island is too small to get lost on. What gets people are the cliffs. Don’t drink so much that you fall off one of them.”

  He opened the French doors and waved Hester outside onto the deck, where the air smelled of salt and granite spilled to the sea below. “You need a coat or something?” Vaughn asked.

  “I’m good for now.” The bourbon was doing its trick.

  Mindy joined them, her tail wagging as she nuzzled Vaughn’s legs.

  “How do you ever leave?” Hester asked.

  Vaughn turned his back to the sea and scrutinized her. “You’d be a One and Done,” he said. “Every summer, some guy from away, usually a prick, always rich, makes his whole family move out here to escape. Most of the time, he’s working on a novel or he recently took up black-and-white photography. Don’t they know that whatever they’re running from, it’s here too? But they see the post office and the one-room schoolhouse, and the lobster boats, and they forget about the crap Internet service or that building a McMansion requires board approval, which never happens, or that it’s hard to get your douchebag friends to an island where there’s no helicopter pad and nothing to do. And the bets start the moment these guys close on their houses, because what they really don’t know about is the winter. You can’t know about the winter till you live it, but come November, when the wind is high and the darkness descends and the only thing left to buy at the General Store is canned lima beans, these guys want out. Sure, this place is fun for a summer, but it’s hard for life, and you have to be special to live it. If they’re lucky, they wise up before they commit. If they aren’t . . .” Vaughn paused and drank down the rest of his shot. “At least we have AA. Alcohol’s the best of the worst.”

  “Why’d you come back, then?” Hester asked. “You had the whole world to run to.”

  “The whole world doesn’t have Lydia.” Vaughn tossed the dregs of his shot into the sea.

  “Have you talked to her since they found Trey’s body?”

  “Another drink?”

  “I’m good.” Hester set her glass down.

  “I still have the whole world to run to if I need it,” Vaughn said. “But this is the only world I can see right now.” He forced a smile. “But enough. It makes me feel pathetic, and I don’t like being pathetic. Tell me about Annie. She must be special for you to come all the way here.”

  “I’d do anything for her,” Hester said. “She would for me too.”

  “Would she take in your kid?”

  “Word spread about that, did it?” Hester said.

  “Word spreads about everything.”

  “We’ve known each other for years.”

  “I’ve known a lot of people for a long time, but I wouldn’t take their kids for a year.”

  Hester watched as the waves rose and crashed. She remembered a day, years earlier, when Daphne had rented a red convertible and they’d sped along the narrowing roads to the Cape, all the way to Provincetown. It was their first year out of college, when they lived in that Allston apartment. Hester couldn’t remember if it was before or after she’d met Morgan. Daphne parked the car in a hot, crowded lot and grabbed a cloth bag overflowing with towels and snacks from the back seat. “Come or stay,” she said to Hester. “Your choice.”

  She disappeared into the throngs of people shuffling along in flip-flops. The very idea of following, of sitting on sand, of sweating, of the smell of sunblock, made Hester fume, but she eventually gave in when the air in the car grew too hot to breathe.

  “You don’t leave dogs in hot cars, let alone people,” she said.

  A trickle of sweat had started in the middle of her back and ran right down to the waist of her skirt. Even in the summer, Hester wore black from head to toe, covering her
self to keep from standing out.

  “Come,” Daphne said, taking Hester’s hand and leading her down the beach.

  It seemed like all of Massachusetts had descended on this tiny strip of land. People lined the beach, men and women, all shapes and sizes, but Daphne kept walking till the crowds thinned and finally disappeared, and Hester’s black Doc Martens had filled with sand. At last they followed the path to where it skirted two dunes. Here, there were plenty of people, but, Hester realized, they were all men. Only men. Fat men, thin men. Buff men playing paddleball in bulging Speedos.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  Daphne knelt and unpacked her bag. A blanket to lie on. Lunch. A pink bikini for Hester. A set of cards. She stripped off her own shirt and shorts and stretched out on the blanket.

  “We’re invisible here,” she said, undoing her polka-dotted bikini top and setting her breasts free. “See, none of them even notice!”

  “We notice,” one of the men playing paddleball shouted. “We just don’t care.”

  Hester stood on the sand surrounded by people who couldn’t be bothered to see her and tethered by her faith in Daphne. A bond she never imagined would break. And she’d let her woolen coat fall to the sand and slipped out of her clothes and into the bikini. She felt the sun on her skin and the breeze in her hair for what seemed like the first time in her life. She’d felt like Daphne had woken her from a dream. Again.

  “The thing about Daphne,” Hester said to Vaughn, “is that she sees me. She sees who I really am.”

  “But you’re hard to miss,” he said. “You are seen.”

  “She helps me remember that.”

  “Then she’s a good friend.”

  Mindy had fallen asleep in the sun, stretched out on the warm pine boards of the deck. Now she lifted her head and woofed. Then she leapt to her feet. The woof turned to a snarl.

  “Hold on, girl,” Vaughn said, putting a hand to her collar. “You’re all right.”

  Hester reached for her phone.

  “No reception out here,” Vaughn said. “Who’s there?” he shouted, edging toward the French doors.