The Night She Disappeared

by Kevin O'Brien

  Once again, she wondered if Courtney was aboard one of those vessels, watching their every move.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Friday, July 10—11:28 P.M.

  On TV, Courtney was addressing an audience in a bookstore. It was the final sound bite from Anna’s news segment. Courtney signed as she spoke in her slightly faltering, childlike voice. When she finished her speech, the crowd gave her a standing ovation.

  “Courtney told me,” Anna said in voice-over, “that she might not hear the applause, but she can see it and feel it. This is Anna Malone reporting for KIXI News at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle.”

  “Okay, that was a bit much,” Anna muttered to herself. She rarely watched her own segments once they aired because she was so self-critical. And even though she could have easily pulled it up on her phone or computer, Anna watched her segment on Courtney again as it ran on the eleven o’clock news. She needed to make sure the segment wasn’t just a sappy puff piece.

  For the most part, it wasn’t—though she could have done without that last line.

  Curled up on the sofa in her living room, Anna reached for the remote and switched off the TV.

  Russ had left nearly four hours ago, shortly after securing the dinghy. Once alone, Anna had ordered dinner over the phone and walked to the Thai place to pick it up. Returning home, she’d gone upstairs to change into her “grubby clothes”—a T-shirt and her well-worn, comfy jeans. But she couldn’t find her jeans. They usually hung on a hook just inside her closet door. The jeans weren’t in her hamper, either, nor were they in the wash. She realized her knockabout canvas sneakers were also missing.

  She wondered if, maybe last night when she’d been so drunk and out of it, she’d changed out of her dress after Russ had taken her home. Putting on her grubby clothes was always one of the first things she automatically did whenever she returned home from work or an event. Russ had said she’d gotten sick. Had she thrown up all over her clothes or something? Maybe Russ had tossed them out.

  Anna decided to ask him later. Her Thai dinner was getting cold.

  She changed into some shorts and a pullover, and then ate in front of an old Barbara Stanwyck movie on Prime. It was a warm night, and she had the sliding glass door open. The screen door was shut to keep the mosquitoes out. The floodlight for the deck was on. She could see moths and other insects swirling around the bulb over the screen door.

  Every once in a while during the movie and the newscast, Anna would hear a splash, and she’d go to the screen door to investigate. This mysterious business with the dinghy had her on edge. And of course, it was no help that Russ’s wife had been missing for nearly twenty hours.

  Now, with the television off, Anna was aware of every little sound. She could hear water lapping against the pilings. She went to look out at the dinghy again. It teetered slightly in the dark water. The slick blue tarp cover caught the moonlight. She hadn’t noticed anything wrong with the dinghy yesterday.

  Anna wondered if some homeless person had taken a catnap in there today. It was a perfect place to stow away. For all she knew, someone could be hiding under that tarp right now.

  But it wasn’t very likely. The Gettles, who lived at the other end of the dock, always locked the gate after nine o’clock. Anyone attempting to climb into the boat would have had to swim to it, and Anna would have heard them.

  Still, she pulled the sliding glass door shut, locked it, and then secured the sawed-off broom handle in place. Back on the sofa, Anna grabbed the remote again and switched on the TV. She was tired, but too wound up to sleep and too distracted to read. She settled for a Golden Girls rerun, riddled with commercials, on cable.

  Though it had been the right and sensible thing to do, she wished she hadn’t sent Russ on his way earlier tonight. She would have liked him to be there with her now. Maybe then she could have relaxed. She wanted to phone him, but for all she knew, Courtney had returned home tonight. Or perhaps he was asleep already. He hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, either. If he really needed to talk to her, he’d call. She’d wait for him.

  That was the whole story of their relationship.

  Anna handed all the control over to him. He was a married man. So, she settled for being a small part of Russ’s life. It was strange, the compromises she made because she was in love. Anna told herself she wouldn’t make any demands or threats, and she wouldn’t complain. If she didn’t like the arrangement, if she didn’t like the sneaking around, she should just walk. She didn’t want to be responsible for ruining a marriage, not even a bad one. So she left everything up to him.

  It was how she lived with herself in this role as “the other woman.” If she remained passive and selfless for the duration, she could think of herself as a nice person in a desperate situation—just like some of those “nice people” who sometimes used her parking spot for a little while.

  Who was she trying to kid?

  No matter how one rationalized it, a jerk was still a jerk, and a homewrecker was still a homewrecker.

  But for a while, Anna had truly been blameless. She’d had no idea Russ was married when she’d first met him. That had been a year and a half ago.

  At the time, Anna didn’t think she’d ever be in a relationship. She’d never had much luck in love. She didn’t need an analyst to help her figure out why, either. She was pretty sure it had something to do with her dad and her older brother, Stuart.

  She adored her brother. Everyone did, but no one more than Anna. Stu called her Anna Banana and made her feel like the most important person in the world. He was the first one Anna ran to whenever she needed consoling. Somehow, he always managed to cheer her up and make her laugh. Stu was three years older than her. By the time he was in high school, he’d gained a reputation as a bit of a wild man. He was also handsome with wavy brown hair—a real charmer, too. Even the teachers he drove crazy with his clowning around in class begrudgingly liked him because he was sweet. He always rushed to the defense of kids who were being picked on. There wasn’t a mean bone in his body. He was just crazy and impulsive. The Bainbridge Island Police who hauled him in for his various offenses—speeding, skinny-dipping, being drunk and disorderly—seemed amused by his antics and almost always cut him some slack.

  Anna could imagine him at the police station, trying to talk his way out of whatever trouble he’d gotten into. Stu had a charming little nervous tic. When he got anxious, he’d squint and scratch the top of his head. As he winced like that, his dimples showed. It was hard not to forgive Stu for whatever he did.

  But Martin Malone didn’t find his son’s behavior the least bit funny. Stu’s nervous tic didn’t melt their father’s heart. Martin Malone was a hugely successful corporate lawyer. His VIP status on the island meant that the cops were willing to drop the charges whenever Stu’s escapades got him into trouble. Their dad often reminded Stu of that fact: “You’d be in some kind of reform school by now if it weren’t for me and the fact that people in this town are willing to bend the law out of respect to me. It’s only because of me that they look the other way.”

  Anna used to duck into her bedroom whenever the two of them came to blows. She’d hear them downstairs in her father’s study yelling at each other. The study was where all the serious talks occurred—a paneled room with a fireplace, a big mahogany desk, and their dad’s framed diplomas and awards on the wall mixed in with his framed coin collections.

  Whenever the two of them started going at it, Anna’s mom would stand outside the study door, wringing her hands and crying. The sun rose and set on Stu as far as she was concerned. Anna’s mom rarely stood up to their dad and she was always so ladylike. But Anna remembered one argument that resulted in Stu storming out of the house. “You know, it’s true, Martin,” she heard her mom tell their father. “A lot of people in this town kiss your ass. But that’s not the only reason they give Stuart a break when he’s in a jam. They give him a break, because they like him, goddamn it. Maybe if you tried to like him, to
o, he wouldn’t act out all the time.”

  Stu ran away that weekend. He forged their dad’s name on a check, made out to himself for $897.96. No one in the bank questioned it. He also stole over two thousand dollars’ worth of rare coins from their father’s collection.

  It killed Anna that he’d run away without saying good-bye to her or leaving a note. It killed her mother, too.

  Anna’s parents hired a private detective, who was able to trace Stuart as far as Spokane before he lost track of him.

  Stu’s absence left such a void. There was no more laughter in that big, stately brick house. Anna would cry and then sneak into Stu’s bedroom—only he wouldn’t be there to console her or say something to make her giggle. So she’d just curl up on his bed and keep crying. She knew her mother often did the same thing. She could hear her in there some nights.

  The following year, on a beautiful Friday evening in April, when Anna was a sophomore, she came home late from school. She’d had a video club meeting. It was close to dinnertime and already dark out. But from the end of her block, she could see the red lights swirling from the roofs of police cars parked in front of the house.

  Anna immediately thought of Stu.

  She started running. At the end of the long driveway, a husky, young cop with a buzz cut stopped her. “Wait a minute,” he said, all authoritative. “Where do you think you’re going? Who are you?”

  “I’m Anna Malone,” she answered, out of breath. “I live here. Did something happen to my brother? Did something happen to Stuart?”

  Past the policeman’s shoulder, she saw two unmarked cars parked in the driveway, and someone walking through the front door of the house. He had FBI written on the back of his jacket.

  Wide-eyed, she turned to the young cop. “Did something happen to my brother?” she asked again, the panic rising in her voice.

  “No, it’s your father,” the cop said. “Do you know what insider trading is? The feds are arresting him for it.”

  Anna remembered how the smug son of a bitch had seemed to get a perverse kick out of telling her. She figured he must not have been a fan of her father’s. Or maybe he was just an asshole.

  Her father pled guilty. The authorities confiscated everything—including the house. Her mom was able to save a few heirlooms and antiques from her side of the family. The houseboat on Lake Union in Seattle had been a gift from Anna’s grandparents a few years before, and it was in her mom’s name. The monthly mooring fee had been paid through 2015. Her parents had used it as a pied-à-terre for trips to Seattle. Anna had spent the night on the floating home only a handful of times.

  Suddenly, it was her new home.

  Two weeks after they’d moved in, the police came to their door with the news that Anna’s father had hanged himself in his prison cell. He’d used a jump rope he smuggled from the exercise room. There was some loose talk that he’d managed to persuade the prison guards to look the other way.

  “Your father always did have a certain clout with the authorities,” Anna’s mom pointed out—on the way home from the meager funeral.

  Along with her mom, Anna had hoped that Stu would somehow hear about his father’s death and then return to them. But it never happened.

  She started at a new high school in Seattle. Her mother started a new job at Macy’s, and she also started drinking.

  Though they’d been dead for years, Anna’s grandparents came through again when it came time for her to go to college. They’d put aside an annuity for her tuition and her room and board—with the stipulation that she attend a Catholic university. Anna picked Gonzaga because Spokane was only a five-hour bus ride away from her mother. She also remembered it was the last place anyone had seen her brother. Somehow, she thought she might find Stu there.

  What she found instead was a passion for broadcasting, reporting, and making short films. She had friends at school, but no steady boyfriend. A love life just wasn’t a priority for her. Anna told herself there just wasn’t time. She took a bus or got a ride to Seattle every other weekend—to check on her mom. She had the occasional date, but always came up with a reason why the guy wasn’t right for her: this one wore sandals and had ugly, dirty toes; that one was too much of a sports fanatic; and another chewed gum in an annoying way.

  “Now, let me get this straight,” her mother said. “You met him for a walk by the river and it was ninety degrees. And even though he was very nice and seemed to like you, you didn’t want to go out with him again because he wore a sleeveless T-shirt.”

  “I don’t like sleeveless T-shirts on men,” Anna said, shrugging, “unless they’re in a gym, and even then, that’s pushing it.” She was sitting in the passenger seat of her mother’s Camry.

  It was late September of Anna’s junior year, during a weekend home from school. They were on their way to a rare fancy dinner out at Luc in Madison Valley. Her mom was at the wheel. Wind from the half-open window blew through her auburn-colored hair. Though she was still pretty, the last couple of years had made her careworn. Anna figured after a few cocktails, her mom would be too drunk to drive home. She made a mental note not to get all disapproving and snotty later, taking over as designated driver on the way back.

  “Honey, that’s a terrible reason to write off another potentially nice guy,” her mother said, watching the road ahead. “Don’t you want to have a regular, steady fella?”

  “Most of the guys I’m attracted to are unattainable—or they’re just good-looking jerks,” Anna admitted. “I had a crush on this teacher’s assistant. He was so handsome and charming. Nearly all the girls in class were crazy for him. And—big surprise—he ended up screwing most of them, but not me. Anyway, maybe I’m just not meant to be in a relationship.”

  “You know, sweetie,” her mother said, sighing, “not every man in your life is going to end up abandoning you.”

  She wanted to ask: How can you say that when the two most important men in your life abandoned you?

  Instead, Anna just smiled wistfully. “Do you think we’ll ever see Stu again?”

  “Oh, I—I—think—I think—he . . .” Her mother fell silent.

  Anna glanced over and saw her mother trying to talk. Blinking, she repeatedly opened and closed her mouth.

  “Mom? Mom, are you okay?” Anna felt the car lunge forward and speed up. A panic swept through her as they started to careen downhill, out of control.

  A woman in running shorts and a tank top darted out in front of them. She had her blond hair in a ponytail and wore headphones.

  Anna’s mother slumped in the driver’s seat and her head rolled back.

  Horrified, Anna went to grab the wheel, but she was too late.

  The car smashed into the jogger with an awful thud. The woman’s thin body tumbled over the front hood and hit the windshield. Blood splattered over the splintering glass. The jogger’s broken body spun off the passenger side of the hood.

  Anna helplessly watched the car veer to the left and scrape against a row of parked cars on the side of the steep road. Car alarms blared, but Anna could barely hear them past the din of shattering glass and twisting metal. It seemed like a thousand pebbles of glass were bursting inside the vehicle.

  The last thing Anna remembered was trying to pull her mother’s body toward her as the runaway car crumpled in on both of them. There was a deafening crash and then, just blackness.

  The jogger, Sarah Adamson, was twenty-nine and engaged to be married in October. She died on the way to the hospital.

  The emergency responders had to cut Anna and her mother out of the wreckage. Her mom was dead before they could get to her. Later, they determined that she’d had a massive stroke at the wheel.

  Anna was in the hospital for five days. She had whiplash, a broken arm, a shattered wrist, and several sprains and fractures. Her face was battered. Her whole body was covered with bruises, cuts, and lacerations. She’d lost so much blood, the doctors needed to give her a transfusion. She had a total of forty-two stitches
.

  While recovering, she hoped against hope that Stu might have heard about the accident and would come visit her at the hospital. But that didn’t happen.

  Most of her visitors were lawyers, eager to represent her. The airbags in the car had never deployed, and she had a cut-and-dried lawsuit that could be settled out of court. Anna had to pay the hospital and funeral bills. She picked an attorney who had been an associate of her dad’s. He handled the whole thing. He also handled Sarah Adamson’s family, who tried to sue Anna’s mother’s meager estate. Though the coroner had found no trace of alcohol in her mother’s blood, Anna still had to sign a statement that her mom wasn’t inebriated at the time of the accident. No help to the Adamsons’ case was the fact that their daughter had been in the street, jogging with headphones on when she was hit. They didn’t get any money.

  Last year, when Anna had had her stalker and endured all those little acts of sabotage, she’d wondered for a while if perhaps the culprit was someone who had been close to Sarah Adamson.

  Anna returned to school as soon as she’d recovered. She rented out the houseboat. There had been no reason to keep coming back to Seattle for weekends and vacations. At Gonzaga, she dated and slept with a few men. None of them ever noticed her scars, and none of them ever really got to know her.

  She recalled one of the nicer guys asking her what he’d done wrong, why they’d broken up. Anna hadn’t been able to explain it to him.

  She’d become so cautious about relationships. She couldn’t allow herself to depend on anyone. For her college graduation ceremony, she’d had nobody there in the audience for her. She’d convinced herself that it didn’t matter, she didn’t mind.

  Looking back now, Anna realized how she’d set herself up. No wonder the big love of her life would turn out to be someone who could never be all hers.

  She heard a muted thump outside.

  Anna sat up. Then she grabbed the remote and muted The Golden Girls. She froze at the sound of another thump. It seemed to come from the deck outside. She reached over and turned off the light on the end table. In the darkened living room, she had a clear view outside— and she figured whoever was out there could no longer see her.