Not That I Could Tell: A Novel

by Jessica Strawser

  Clara wondered if he was turning a blind eye or if he, too, had read the comments threads on the early articles about Hallie’s project.

  “Shudder. Glad he’s not my doctor.”

  “Ugh. He happens to be mine, but not as of tomorrow.”

  “This speculation is unfair to Dr. Kirkland. His wife cleans him out, and you’re all pointing fingers at *him*? He delivered all three of my children and is the kindest, most caring medical professional I’ve ever known. I’d recommend him to anyone.”

  “I had a complication with this pregnancy and would have lost my mind with worry if not for the outstanding care of Dr. Kirkland. Appalling that our police would waste taxpayer money with this kind of witch hunt.”

  She didn’t know whether to feel grateful that the damage done might be minimal, or horrified that arguable warning signs were so easily dismissed.

  Clara averted her eyes and sipped her drink. The cool, familiar foam on her dry tongue emboldened her. “I want you to know I had nothing to do with that article,” she said. “I was just as surprised as you were to find it in my mailbox.” That sounded wrong. Like she was comparing her reaction to his. “I mean, maybe not as surprised—certainly not as horrified, I’m sure, though I was—really horrified. What I mean is—”

  “Bryant told me,” he cut in. His dropping of the detective’s title seemed to convey a certain disdain. “Tough break for both of us, I guess.” He was looking straight at her now, and she looked away, taking in the once-homey kitchen where she’d had many a cup of coffee with Kristin while the kids made a mess of playdough on the floor, or kicked balls across the yard, or zoomed cars around the living room. The house felt different now. Unsettled. Off balance. Abandoned, even with Paul in it.

  Benny spun his beer bottle slowly on the tabletop. “I know we don’t know each other all that well, but we feel for you. The idea that anything we might have been associated with could add to your stress at a time like this—” Benny shook his head. Clara wished he would stop saying we. She wasn’t sure she deserved his support just now. Then again, without it she wasn’t sure she’d have the stomach to deliver these necessary assurances on her own. “It’s the last thing we’d want,” Benny continued. “We didn’t have any role in what happened here, but still, we’re deeply sorry.”

  Paul was still eying Clara. “The girl played you a recording of that conversation? Between me and Bryant and Detective What’s-Her-Face?”

  Surely Detective Bryant had already told Paul the whole story? If she said no, would he lie about what had been said, say Hallie had distorted things? What she’d printed in the paper had been out of line, and it had painted him in a suspicious light, but it had been accurate. Behind Paul the too-clean window reflected back to Clara the memory of Detective Bryant chasing after the repair van, trailing behind him the dismal feeling that any potential evidence inside was already tainted. Inadmissible—a technical term for useless.

  Clara nodded.

  “You were with Kristin that night.” Upon closer examination, Paul’s eyes looked a bit glassy, and Clara wondered how many drinks he’d had and how much they might have lowered his inhibitions. “Do you have any idea what reason she might’ve had for Googling those things?”

  Clara looked to Benny, feeling like a child who hopes her mother might answer a stranger’s question, but he remained frozen squarely at the midpoint of stoic and neighborly.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” she said, turning her head to meet Paul dead on.

  “There wasn’t anything anyone said, or—?”

  She cocked her head and pursed her lips, and Benny kicked her under the table. Careful.

  It was an odd place to be, caught between feeling angry enough to call him out and afraid enough to keep quiet. She knew she was lucky to have come to this place as an outsider—she could simply walk to the door and turn the knob. Anytime she wanted. Any minute now. Too many women couldn’t, and she wasn’t about to gamble on whether Kristin had been one of them. Her eyes bore into Paul’s, and he shrugged, letting the question drop.

  “Well, I don’t know what was up with her search terms either, but I can tell you, they’re barking up the wrong tree. She’s out there with my kids—my kids—and every minute they spend looking at me is a minute they’re not spending looking for them.” He took an angry swig of his liquor and grimaced in the way of someone who didn’t typically forgo the mixers.

  “I’m sure they’re doing all they can,” Benny said.

  He scowled. “Every day they have a new theory. The latest nonsense is that I was trying to make her quit her job. As if that would even be in my interest now that we’re getting a divorce.” She wondered if Benny noticed, as she did, that Paul qualified the theory as ridiculous because their marriage was over. Was she just oversensitive to that sort of thing? “It’s clear they’re grasping at straws. I’m this close to hiring my own guy.”

  Clara’s mouth went dry again. “A private investigator?”

  “I know what you’re thinking. She wasn’t going to be my wife anymore anyway. I never adopted the twins. If I don’t care about the money, why not let them go?”

  “Oh, I wasn’t—”

  “I’m getting all this bullshit about stepparents not having custodial rights. ‘Visitation’ is all they call it. I need to make a case about my ‘standing’ with them. My standing! They’re children! I’m not some fly-by-night fill-in father. I’m their dad. And the fact that I never filed the paperwork to make that official…” His voice drifted off as his eyes fell on the corkboard tacked to the kitchen wall, and Clara followed his gaze to the display of the paperwork that came with four-year-olds dabbling in the business of becoming full-fledged kids. Lunch menus. Soccer schedules. A flyer about picture day. Tough though it was to look at, she couldn’t help but think what a handy collage it made—something to point at and say, I want that back.

  There would be no reason for anyone to infer that what you were really after was the board itself, the thing those messy bits were attached to.

  “I thought I had time. I never imagined Kristin and I would … come apart.”

  He looked so sad right then, it almost escaped Clara’s attention that his fists were clenched on the table, as if barely containing themselves.

  Benny cleared his throat. “I can’t tell you how many people come into my firm, distraught—about money, of course, which is ostensibly why they see an accountant, but that’s just on the surface. What they’re really distraught about is a divorce or a death or an investment gone bad or a mistake or an oversight. Every one of them thinks they’ve missed their chance to set things right. And you’d be surprised how often it turns out they haven’t missed their chance at all. Sometimes it just feels that way.”

  Her husband looked so sincere that Clara wondered what she’d ever done to deserve such a good man. And then immediately wondered why anyone deserved less of one.

  “I’m sure it felt like an eternity to you, but it didn’t take the reporters long to back away last time,” Benny continued. “They will again. Just give the police time to do their jobs.”

  Paul took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s an odd thing, searching for someone who doesn’t want to be found,” he said. “Even if you have good reason.”

  Because that someone has a better reason? Clara knew she had to muster some sort of outward sympathy. But now that she was here, she found herself thinking not so much of Paul’s reaction but of what hers should have been earlier today. She wished she’d pressed Detective Bryant harder. She’d been so caught up in defending herself that she hadn’t asked the questions that had been noodling at her since Hallie first played the recording. Namely, how much suspicion was Paul under, exactly?

  Clara knew that in volatile situations, the worst imaginable outcome was a possibility. She’d seen it once before. And one time had been too many.

  “I don’t suppose you’d like to look around?” Paul asked abruptly. He was talking to her.<
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  Reflexively, Clara looked around the kitchen. It appeared the same as ever, save for a cardboard box on the floor filled with construction paper cutouts of fall leaves intermingled with brightly colored flowers.

  “The crafts for the party,” Paul said, following her eyes. “There’s a big Farewell to Summer banner in there, too, if the school could still use it. You’re welcome to take it.”

  “I think they’re on to pumpkins and scarecrows now,” she said, then wished she hadn’t. It made it seem as if a whole season had passed since Kristin and the kids vanished.

  He nodded. “But maybe you could look around the rest of the house, see if you notice anything out of the ordinary, or … I don’t know, some clue as to where they might have gone. The police did a cursory search, but they don’t know Kristin from anyone. You stopped over often enough. Who knows, you might spot something I missed.”

  Was he challenging her? It was true that she’d stopped over often enough, but if he wanted a second set of eyes, why not ask before now? Clara’s instincts told her this was some sort of game. But which one? An innocent round of I Have Nothing to Hide or an arrogant one of Catch Me if You Can?

  “I’m not sure I—”

  “If it would make you feel better, I’m sure Clara would be happy to,” Benny cut in, and she blinked at him, surprised. Was he overcompensating for the newspaper incident, or, contrary to his insistence that they shouldn’t get involved, was he just as curious as she to see if there was anything to be found?

  Clara got unsteadily to her feet. Paul looked up at her and nodded. “I’ve done my share of obsessing over every room,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll hang here with Benny.”

  Another potential motive for this setup occurred to her then: Was Paul trying to get Benny alone, with her out of earshot? To check up on her, to plant an idea there, to try to manipulate him in some way? Clara hesitated.

  “You know where the twins’ room is, right? I remember Thomas playing up there.” She nodded. Preschoolers were huge on showing each other their bedrooms. They had so little territory they could call their own.

  He looked at her expectantly.

  “Right, then,” she said, backing her way into the dining room. The chandelier above the gleaming mahogany table was already lit, just like the rest of the house. Clara wasn’t sure if Paul was sending a message to himself, to Kristin and the kids, or to the rest of the neighborhood, but every night it was the same: Every light in the house on, until … Clara didn’t know how late. After the late news broadcasts, for sure. From a more distant vantage point, she would have found it heartbreaking.

  Dust rimmed the circular impressions Kristin’s mother’s dishes had left in the mirrored hutch of the china cabinet. It made sense that Kristin would take family heirlooms, especially since the detectives had mentioned her mother’s declined mental state and poor health. The question was, would Paul think to remove those items if he were staging his wife’s disappearance? Clara doubted it. Benny always seemed surprised by how much she cared about such things, as if it were the first time she was reminding him to be careful with the cookie jar because it had been her grandmother’s, and that no, they could not throw away the ratty crocheted dolls her aunt had made for her as a child.

  She made her way upstairs. The first door was to the master bedroom. She hesitantly poked her head inside. The bedside lamps were on, the bed was made, and the room had the inhuman presentation of a hotel suite ready for check-in; there was none of the clutter of the room she shared with Benny—not a single open drawer, or an item of clothing on the floor, or a mound of pocket change or jewelry on the dresser. She stepped in, tentatively, one foot in front of the other, and realized she was holding her breath. It was eerily quiet up here, and she strained for the low rumble of the men’s voices from the kitchen, perhaps a burst of laugher. But there was nothing, and the hair stood up on the back of her neck, as if Paul might come up behind her any minute and … and what? Catch her doing something he’d asked her to do?

  On the upholstered chaise sprawled under the window was an open duffel bag with a mess of undershirts inside, and button-downs and slacks were spread on the chair’s back. So Paul was still living here like a guest; he hadn’t unloaded his things into the drawers again. She walked to the open closet and pulled the string of the overhead light. She’d never been in here before, but the number of empty hangers indicated that Kristin had taken quite a few things. She scanned the shoes and didn’t see Kristin’s trainers, or her black flats, or those knee-high leather boots she’d been coveting herself.

  The adjoining bathroom was much the same: almost clinically clean. She pulled open a drawer and found a basket of makeup. Old stuff, probably, though it was hard to say. A couple of eye shadows and blushes were scattered among enough bottles of concealer and foundation to fill a drugstore aisle, in a range of shades. Kristin didn’t exactly embrace the natural look, but she never looked heavily made up, either—though maybe she was just more skilled in the art of application than Clara was. Clara touched her fingertip to one of the bottles. It looked almost full. Why so many? To match summer tanned skin tones and winter ones? Or did she use them somewhere other than her face—to hide bruises or scars? Clara rolled the drawer shut and pulled open the mirrored medicine cabinet. Just an ordinary assortment of over-the-counter stuff, no prescriptions. Nothing Kristin couldn’t buy wherever she was going.

  This is silly, she told herself, snapping off the lights behind her, though they’d been on when she arrived. She made her way to the doorway of the twins’ room and stopped to take it in. Though the house had four bedrooms, they’d insisted they wanted to share, something Kristin had told her with pure maternal pride that her kids were smart enough to know from the start: We have each other. Let’s stick together.

  Things weren’t quite so neat here, books off the shelves, bunk beds unmade, which, as Clara stood in the stillness, was even more eerie—as if the kids might come running in at any minute to pick up where they left off. She pictured Thomas’s room without Thomas in it, Maddie’s nursery with no Maddie, and shuddered. She didn’t want to do this. How much time needed to pass to satisfy Paul that she’d been thorough?

  Aaron was attached to a stuffed elephant he called Fante, and she crossed to the top bunk and lifted the covers, checked under the pillow, patted down the length of the mattress. No Fante, which was a good sign. She ducked to the bottom bunk and discovered with relief the same void there. The favorites had gone with their owners. She turned to the bookcases, where the less loved plush animals lined the top shelf, some looking perpetually eager and others downright forlorn. Even stuffed animals could be divided into realists and hopeless optimists.

  She had to fight a motherly instinct to gather the books from the carpet and stack them back on the shelves. Paul might not want that. But then, she saw it, tossed carelessly among the discards on the floor: The lone, tattered cover of the I Can Do It! board book, its binding and the rest of its pages long gone, the cartoonish fox smiling up at her beneath the title.

  A flood of memories: Abby pulling the cover from the pocket of her coat, from the seat of her jeans, from the side of her cargo pants, from her soccer practice bag, from the little purses she liked to carry, and rubbing it like a lucky charm. Abby yelling, “I can beat you—I have I Can Do It! power!” as the kids were lining up to race down the sidewalk. Abby answering sweetly, “Don’t worry, I Can Do It! is coming with me,” when Clara asked if she was nervous about the first day of pre-K. And Kristin bemoaning how many well-meaning teachers had come upon the cover, fallen from Abby’s pocket or backpack, and thrown it away.

  “Imagine them mistaking this for trash,” she’d told Clara drolly, standing in the parking lot of the school. “If I wipe this thing down with Clorox one more time, the picture’s going to come clean off.” She’d gone on to outline the great lengths she’d gone to in hopes of locating a replacement. This version was out of print; it had since been re-illustrated;
the originals for sale online were as much as $50 each. “I can’t bring myself to pay that for a book I’m going to rip the cover off of!” she’d said, trying to force a laugh even as she looked about to cry. This wasn’t just any item Abby clung to: It was her very sense of self-confidence. Clara had felt for her. Neither of her kids had a strong attachment to a toy yet, and she’d been thankful, then, that their toys were basically losable, breakable, tearable, disposable. She knew it wouldn’t always be that way, that like everything about childhood, these days of easy-come-easy-go were limited.

  And yet here was I Can Do It! alone on the bedroom floor.

  There was no rationalizing with the tsunami of worry drowning out her thoughts. Kristin might have left in a rush. She might have left in a state of fear or panic or emotion. And parents were bound to forget things. Lord knows Clara did. She’d suffered through trips to the pediatrician with no diaper bag, trips to the grocery with no wallet, trips to the playground with no shoes on Maddie’s stroller-bound feet—and those were just the outings that didn’t require real packing.

  Kristin, though, was the superwoman version of every other mom. She did not falter, not when it came to the important stuff. The idea that she would take her daughter to go and start a new life without her I Can Do It! seemed beyond unlikely. Clara lifted it reverently, in both hands, and swallowed the bile rising in her throat.

  Down in the kitchen, she found the men watching the Reds game on the wall-mounted TV. They remained at the table, sipping their drinks and contentedly ignoring each other. Neither of them even noticed her, until she cleared her throat.

  “Anything?” Paul asked.