The Vanishing

by Wendy Webb

  My stomach was doing flips, but I managed a smile as I savored my first sip of coffee. A maid, not the same one who greeted me in my room, clattered through the door carrying a tray, set it down on the sideboard, and began serving a breakfast of eggs, sausage, oatmeal, fruit, and toast. Seeing all of that food made me realize I was famished, and I wondered when I had last eaten anything.

  As we took our first bites, Adrian chattered on about the new snow and his hopes that the gardener had turned the roses. Suddenly, the enormity of what I had done seemed to settle in. I realized, as I sat there eating my breakfast with these two relative strangers, that my life, on that morning, was completely different from what it had been the morning before. What my future held, I had no idea. But I knew one thing for sure: I was here at Havenwood to stay.

  TWO

  How did I find myself living at Havenwood, a place I hadn’t even known existed the day before I arrived there? The answer is it found me. Three months after my husband’s funeral, Adrian Sinclair came calling.

  Just answering the door had been quite a feat. I had done nothing but drift around the house since I buried Jeremy, not wanting to talk to anyone or go anywhere. And that, I supposed, was a lucky thing, because nobody but reporters wanted to talk to or see me, either.

  All of our friends had abandoned us when the allegations came to light, when they realized the full extent of what my husband had done. From the first story in the newspaper hinting at what was to come, they began distancing themselves from us. They stopped calling. Stopped returning my calls. I’m not sure if they thought I was involved in the whole sordid business, but the truth is I was just as much a victim as they were. I was left with nothing—no husband, no money, no friends or family to lean on for support.

  It was just a matter of time until my house was gone, too. I was reading the foreclosure notice from the bank when Adrian appeared on my doorstep, standing there in his dark overcoat and hat. I assumed he was another reporter, trying for an interview with the grieving widow of the man who had bilked hundreds of Chicagoans out of their life savings. The Midwestern Bernie Madoff, the newspapers called my husband. What they called me was no better.

  “I have no comment,” I said, eyeing the man through the door’s glass pane. “I’ve asked you people to leave me alone. Please.”

  “I’m not a reporter, Mrs. Bishop,” he said to me, smiling slightly. “Nor am I a police officer, an investigator, or a bill collector. I’m not going to issue you a summons or serve you notice of anything. I’ve come to ask for your help.”

  This was new. I squinted at him, wondering if he was some sort of religious fanatic. “What kind of help?”

  “I have need of your services. And I believe you’re in need of ours.”

  Definitely a religious fanatic, then.

  “I’m really not interested,” I said. “Please go away.”

  “I’ve traveled a very long way to find you, Mrs. Bishop,” he said. “Please. Let me say what I’ve come to say.”

  “And what is that, exactly?”

  “I’ve come to offer you a job.”

  I didn’t know quite how to respond to that. Apparently the look on my face said it all, because he said: “This is a serious offer that I believe will benefit both of us. Won’t you please let me in and we can discuss it?”

  With nothing to lose—what could he possibly take from me that wasn’t already gone?—I sighed and opened the door.

  I led him into the living room and motioned to the sofa. “Something to drink?” I asked as he took off his coat and laid it over the arm of one of the chairs. “Tea? Or something stronger?”

  “Tea would be lovely, thank you,” he said, and I detected a slight English accent buoying his words. “There’s a bite to the wind out there. Winter is on its way.”

  As he settled onto the sofa, I shuffled into the kitchen and turned on the kettle, glad he hadn’t followed me. Dirty dishes were piled in the sink. I hadn’t had much energy for housework since Jeremy died—what was the point? I pulled a box of tea bags and two cups from the cabinet, dropped a few of the bags into a pot, filled it with boiling water, and put the whole mess onto a tray.

  Back in the living room, I set the tray down on the coffee table in front of the sofa. “I hope you like hibiscus tea,” I said, pouring him a cup. “It’s all I had.”

  “That’ll do just fine, thank you.” He smiled, lifting the cup to his lips.

  I sunk into one of the armchairs and crossed my legs, eyeing him. “So. What is this all about?”

  He nodded and cleared his throat. “As I said, I’m here to offer you a position.”

  The earnestness on his face told me he wasn’t joking. “Listen,” I began, reconsidering the decision to let him inside the house. I pushed myself up from my chair. “Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying. I think this was a mistake and you should go.”

  “Please, just hear me out,” he said. “Give me five minutes. If, after that, you’d still like me to go, I’ll simply leave and never bother you again.”

  I settled back into the chair, studying him warily. “Five minutes.”

  “My name is Adrian Sinclair.” He stopped to take a sip of his tea. “I live with my mother at our country estate. Havenwood.”

  The sound of that word, “Havenwood,” crackled through my mind. I had heard it before. I just couldn’t place how, or when.

  “It’s near the Canadian border not far from Lake Superior’s north shore in Minnesota,” Mr. Sinclair went on. “My mother is elderly, of course, and in fairly good health, but she does have episodes.”

  “Episodes?”

  He leaned forward and lowered his voice, as if to take me into his confidence. “Times in which she is not entirely lucid.”

  “I see,” I said, but I really didn’t. I had no idea what any of this had to do with me.

  “I travel on business often, and I’m going away again very soon,” he continued. “Of course, we have several servants, but they’re busy tending to the house and grounds, and what my mother needs in my absence is a full-time companion. Someone who can keep an eye on her, especially on the bad days. She has been known to wander. With winter coming on…” He looked at me with expectant eyes.

  I let what I thought he was saying to me sink in.

  “You want me to be her companion, is that it?”

  “Yes. Live in, full time.”

  I snorted. “But that’s ridiculous. You don’t even know me.”

  He didn’t respond to that. Instead, he just went ahead with his pitch. “The estate is quite lovely, I assure you.”

  He reached into the briefcase he was carrying, pulled out an iPad, and began scrolling through several photographs. I liked to think I had seen it all—Jeremy and I had traveled to some of the loveliest, most expensive places on earth during the course of our marriage—but at the sight of this estate, my mouth dropped open. It looked like an ancient English castle, someplace where I could imagine kings and queens living.

  Havenwood was massive, with turrets and parapets and stained-glass windows and balconies and chimneys. The house was surrounded by several outbuildings and delicately manicured gardens, through which a river flowed. Not far from the house, I noticed a lake—not Lake Superior, but a smaller inland lake. One of the photos showed two kayaks bobbing lazily on its surface, the house standing sentinel in the distance.

  I found myself strangely drawn to the photographs and could not look away. “This is on Lake Superior’s north shore near the Canadian border? It looks like it was built in the 1600s in Europe somewhere.”

  He smiled an indulgent smile, and I got the feeling he had heard this question many times before. “You’re right, it’s a replica of a castle that was built around that time. In Scotland. As to how it got here, Havenwood was built by a nobleman who, when charged with running the fur trade in the area in the mid-1800s, missed the opulence he was used to in his native land. Or so the story goes. My family bought it decades ago, when
I was just a lad.”

  “You grew up there?”

  “I wouldn’t say that, no,” he said. “Summer vacations, that sort of thing. I spent much of my youth in English boarding schools, St. Andrews in Scotland after that. It was only after I had graduated from university that I came to live at Havenwood with my mother full time to handle her business affairs.”

  “And this,” I said, still enthralled by the photographs, “this is where you want me to live and look after your mother?”

  “That is what I’ve come here to ask of you.”

  “But why? Why in the world would you ever trust me to move into this place, your home, and care for your mother? I don’t understand, Mr. Sinclair. You don’t know the first thing about me.”

  “I do know you. I’ve read the newspapers. I’ve seen the reports on television.”

  “That’s my point,” I said. “Those reports vilified my husband and me. Everyone else, even my own friends and family, believes that I was a part of it.”

  “I’ve done a little digging on my own,” he said, smoothing his suit jacket. “I know you buried your husband some three months ago. I know he left you with nothing. I know the bank is foreclosing on your home. I know you have nowhere to go and no one to turn to. I know your friends and family have abandoned you. Not to be unkind, but your prospects at the moment are rather bleak.”

  I sighed heavily and slumped against the back of my chair. He had pretty much summed up my life.

  “As for believing you were part of it all, anyone with eyes can see that you weren’t,” he went on, his voice gentle and low. “You wouldn’t be destitute right now, for one thing. You certainly wouldn’t be holed up in this house; you’d be on a remote beach somewhere enjoying your ill-gotten millions. So, despite what the police and the courts and public opinion might say, I know you’re just as much a victim as anyone else in this case, even more so.”

  It had been a long time since I had heard words of support from anyone. Now this stranger was saying what even my closest friends couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. “Thank you,” I coughed out. “But even so… I’m still not quite getting it. Why don’t you simply hire a nurse? Why ask me?”

  “Here’s where it gets a little bit delicate.” He paused a moment before continuing. “I need someone upon whose discretion I can completely rely.”

  I stifled a laugh. “What makes you think you can rely on mine?”

  “Because of your recent circumstances, I gather that you don’t have an especially cozy relationship with the press,” he said, flipping through the photos on his iPad to a shot of me in bitter confrontation with reporters, and then another, and then another. “In fact, I’d say that it’s rather hostile. Correct?”

  I shivered when I saw myself on this stranger’s computer. It felt intrusive. Yet these photos were public knowledge, they were in the news, and it was only reasonable that he had researched my background. I would have done the same, in his place.

  “That’s correct.”

  “So, I can be assured that you, of all people, won’t be running to the media about this.”

  Now it was my turn to smile. “About what? The breaking news that an elderly woman needs a companion?”

  “Not about that, no. About my mother’s identity.”

  I put my cup down on the end table. “What about it?”

  “My mother is Amaris Sinclair.”

  The words sent a tingle up my spine and I took a quick breath. “The writer?”

  “The same.”

  Amaris Sinclair’s books and short stories were required reading in my high school and college literature classes. They were frightening gothic tales about madness and murder and monstrosities. She was often called the female Edgar Allan Poe. I had devoured her books, one after the other, when I was in school. They had made me want to write similar tales myself, and indeed I had. Amaris Sinclair was the reason I had become a writer, all those years ago, before Jeremy and his machinations took over my life.

  “But that’s impossible,” I said to him, standing up from my chair and backing away from him slowly, calculating in my mind how long it would take me to dash to the door. “Amaris Sinclair is dead.”

  THREE

  Yes.” Adrian nodded, shifting a bit in his chair. “That’s what the world believes. Now you understand my need for discretion.”

  “But I read about her death,” I protested, inching toward the door. “It was some years ago.”

  “I know.”

  “But—” I pressed. He held up his hand in response, stopping my words.

  “For reasons that I cannot say, my mother chose to drop out of sight a decade ago,” he said. A fleeting look of sadness washed over his face and was gone just as quickly. “She has been living in seclusion at the estate ever since.”

  This stopped me, my hand on the doorknob. “Why would she do that?” I wanted to know. “She was at the height of her success. Why would anyone…?”

  “I cannot say why she chose to do it, only that she did.”

  “She never goes out?”

  “Well, it’s not like she’s a shut-in, if that’s what you mean. You have to understand, the estate is quite large. The house and the grounds. Hundreds of acres, maybe more than that. The servants do the shopping in the nearby village and my mother has gone there from time to time—not lately—but the villagers think of her as an eccentric English lady who tends to keep to herself. And quite frankly, the estate encompasses much of the land for miles around it—she owns the town, in other words—so the people there don’t ask too many questions, if you get my meaning.”

  “Amaris Sinclair,” I mused. “It would be a real honor to meet her.”

  His face broke into a grin. “I see I’ve intrigued you. Imagine the conversations you could have, one writer to another.”

  I eyed him. “How did you know I was a writer?”

  “As I said, I did some digging into your background. By all accounts, you were quite good. One book of fiction, released to moderate success. You mentioned my mother’s influence on your acknowledgments page. A pity you gave it up.”

  I intended to object when he interrupted me yet again. “My mother does not write anymore. Her eyesight is failing, for one thing, and there are a myriad of other issues preventing her from doing so. But her head is filled with stories. And I believe she’d enjoy talking about them with you. You might even get some ideas from her that you could put to use.”

  He sipped his tea as I waited for him to continue.

  “You see, the truth is, my mother doesn’t think she needs a companion,” he admitted. “I’ve sold this idea to her on the basis that you’re a writer and can learn from her and perhaps even help her. I know she has missed telling stories and I even floated the idea that you and she could collaborate. She’s delighted with that prospect. But a simple companion, like a nurse, as you suggested a moment ago? She’d get rid of her the moment I left the house. Indeed she has, in the past. It has been quite vexing. When I came upon your story and investigated your background, you seemed to be the perfect solution to my problem.”

  I hadn’t been the perfect solution to anything in a very long time. Still. This just wasn’t adding up.

  “You’re asking me to believe that you saw me on television, and you thought I, the disgraced wife of the Midwestern Bernie Madoff, might be a good companion to your elderly, obviously wealthy mother? Most people would think: fox, meet henhouse.”

  He smiled. “The Sinclairs aren’t most people,” he said.

  “I’m starting to see that.”

  We held each other’s gaze for a moment, and then he spoke. “Yes, we saw you on the news. And no, I didn’t immediately think of you as a companion. But the more time went on, and especially after your husband’s death, we began to see you as a victim of all of this. I wondered if, and how, I could help. When I saw that you had mentioned my mother’s influence in your novel, that just sealed the deal. It seemed like it was meant to be.”

 
; I nodded, considering. It was starting to make a strange kind of sense.

  “Let me close the deal with one more reason you should take me up on this offer,” he pressed.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s an opportunity for you to vanish, just as my mother did.”

  The words crept up my spine and took hold. Vanishing, dropping out of sight—the very idea of it seemed utterly peaceful after the chaos that my life had become.

  “Think about it, Julia,” he said, his face serious now. “You need saving. Your legal troubles didn’t stop when that gunshot ended your husband’s life; in fact, they just began. As an officer in his company, you are going to be held accountable for all the money he defrauded investors out of. People’s life savings, Julia. The police are compiling their case against you right now, and there are private lawsuits snaking through the civil court system with your name on them.”

  “But I don’t have a dime to my name!” I protested. “There’s nothing left after the police froze our assets. What are they going to take?”

  “Future earnings, for one thing,” he said, shaking his head slightly. “And that’s not all. There could be some serious jail time. Not to mention hundreds of angry victims, any one of whom might turn violent. Surely your attorney…”

  But his words trailed off when he saw my expression. I ran a hand through my hair and sighed. My attorney had stopped returning my calls long before Jeremy’s funeral. He knew full well I couldn’t pay for his services.

  Adrian was exactly right: legal trouble was hanging over my head, poised to crush what was left of my life. And I’d had to change my phone number twice since Jeremy’s death because of the threatening calls I’d been getting from angry victims. I was paranoid to leave my house—I couldn’t remember the last time I had. And I could indeed be facing jail time. All of it had been eating me up for months.