Alice breathes.
What else, Dr. Lewis would say. She can almost hear him saying it.
She looks out the window. It’s sunny outside, she thinks. It’s sunny outside, and there’s light on the water, and a worker, in the garden, is pulling weeds.
“Mrs. Van Laar,” says the man on the phone. In his voice is a note of fear. “Mrs. Van Laar, I regret to inform you that your daughter seems to be missing.”
What do you smell, Dr. Lewis would ask her.
“Are you there,” says the man on the phone. “Mrs. Van Laar, a squad is on its way. Are you there?”
I smell day-old alcohol, she thinks. I smell stale smoke from cigars and cigarettes. Underneath it all, a lemony smell—the wood polish used on the furniture.
“Are you there, Mrs. Van Laar?”
And hear? Dr. Lewis would ask her.
“Mrs. Van Laar?”
I hear a dial tone, Alice thinks. She places the receiver in its cradle. The sound goes away.
And now? Dr. Lewis would say.
Alice closes her eyes. If she tries very hard—if the wind blows right—she can sometimes hear the voices of children from Camp Emerson.
Sometimes, she can even hear Bear’s.
What do you taste, Dr. Lewis would ask her.
I taste nothing.
Focus on your senses. Anchor yourself to the world. What do you taste?
Nothing, thinks Alice. I taste nothing.
• • •
Through the sliding glass doors that lead to the lakeside lawn, someone enters the great room. It’s one of the two young cleaning girls they’ve hired from town, just for the week of the party. She pauses on the threshold, holding her mop and bucket in her hands, surveying the damage: the worst to date. She has not noticed Alice yet, and for this reason she allows herself to register on her face the disdain she clearly feels, to mutter something under her breath. Disgusting, perhaps, or fucking. Fucking unbelievable.
“Good morning,” says Alice, and the girl snaps to attention, looking guilty.
“Morning, ma’am,” she says, and sets her mop and bucket down, and begins a retreat to the north wing, presumably for more supplies.
“Did you not hear the phone, earlier?” Alice says. “Or the knocking?”
“No, ma’am,” says the girl. “I was out the back, putting the laundry on the line.”
• • •
Reluctantly, Alice jerks herself into action. She strides down the hallway, toward the bedroom where Peter is sleeping. She throws open the door, telling herself that she is unafraid of what—or whom—she’ll see inside.
But it’s only Peter in the bed, sleeping hard, one elbow crooked over his forehead, as if to block the light. She has not seen him in this way—asleep, or in a bed, or even supine—in a year. More.
She says his name aloud. Once, twice.
“What is it?” he mumbles, at last.
“It’s Barbara,” she says. “She’s gone missing.”
Alice
Two Months Earlier
June 1975
Following Barbara’s departure for Camp Emerson, it had taken Alice nearly a week to notice the padlock on her daughter’s bedroom door. Barbara’s room was on the other wing of the house; Alice had no reason to pass it.
But after six days of sitting in the sunroom, or lying in her bed, she had begun at last to feel lonely. Peter was gone, too; to Manhattan, most likely, though she could never keep track. And in the absence of her daughter and husband, the house had gone quiet.
And so, that morning, propelled from her chair by sheer boredom, Alice had decided to take a walk.
• • •
Now she stood outside her daughter’s room, holding the padlock in her hand, marveling at Barbara’s boldness. Surely she must have understood how angry Peter would be when he returned from his trip to find the doorframe damaged by the screws that held the lock in place. More than the doorframe, he would be angered by the implication of the act: that Barbara had any right to privacy, after the way she had recently behaved.
The lock, Alice knew, would have to be removed. The doorframe would have to be carefully repaired: that much was certain. Peter noticed everything about the house.
One of the gardeners made quick work of the lock. Promised to relay a message to a skillful carpenter he knew who could probably fix or replace the damaged wood.
“Thank you,” said Alice, absently. But she was already willing him away.
She didn’t want anyone watching her as she opened the door.
