She placed her hand on his chest and said quietly, “Go.”
—
Diana was already out of sight as Bob hurried after her. He walked down to baggage claim and she was not there. She had not had a suitcase with her, he remembered, nothing but the large orange bag. He waited to see if she would show up as the bags became available, but there was no sign of her. He walked across the street to where the car rental place was, but she was not there either. Where had she gone? Was she in a restroom? He went back into the terminal and waited by the women’s room downstairs for five minutes but she did not appear. Finally he went outside again to the taxi stand, and he asked the dispatcher there if a woman with a large bright orange leather bag had gotten into a cab, and the man said, “Yeah, I think so.”
“How long ago?”
The man said, “Oh, not that long, twenty minutes maybe?”
Bob got into the backseat of a waiting cab and gave the address of Matt’s house, and then he sat back. He fumbled for his phone, and he called Matt’s number. “Pick up pick up pick up,” he said softly, but Matt did not pick up. So Bob looked on his locator app and saw that Matt was in Shirley Falls driving over the bridge close to the hotel on the river.
—
In just a few minutes Matt called back. “Hi, Bob,” Matt said, sounding happy to have heard from him. Bob asked Matt if he was expecting his sister today. Matt said, “Yeah, she called me last night and told me to meet her at the hotel this morning. But I just got here, and they said she never checked in.”
“Check her on your locator app,” Bob said.
“Oh yeah! I’m so stupid, Bob. Hold on, hold on.” And then after a few moments Matt said, “Bob? She’s headed toward my house. I should—”
“Stay right where you are. Listen to me. Do not go back home. Stay where you are until you hear from me. Understand? Just stay where you are. Are you in the parking lot of the hotel?”
“Yeah, but what’s happening?” said Matt.
“I’m not sure. But stay where you are, Matt. Stay right there until you hear from me. Okay?” And Matt said “Okay” in an uncertain-sounding voice.
—
Bob waited a few minutes, collecting his thoughts, and then he called the police. “No sirens. Probably best not to use any sirens at all,” he said.
5
A week later the new leaves shone in the early afternoon bright sunlight. Bob, sitting on the side steps of Matt’s house, looked around and was struck by the beauty of the natural world, as though he had never really seen it before. A robin hopped across the side lawn, and white flowered bushes pressed against the windows of the house. Bob could even hear the faint burble of the stream that ran through the woods nearby. He was thinking about Lucy. He was thinking about how he was supposed to have seen her apartment a week ago; a shyness came to him as he imagined the two of them together in her small studio in New York. He thought of the packet of matches he had put in his pocket in case he’d had to use the bathroom while he was there. He had spoken to her once on the telephone. “Oh Bob,” she had said. She was coming back to Crosby tomorrow.
But Bob had been staying with Matt. He had spent each night for the first five nights and had come over during each day just to be with him. Matt appeared now at the door and said, “Bob, I’m not doing so well.”
“That means you’re normal,” Bob said, standing up and going back inside with Matt.
“I’m not normal,” Matt said.
“Well, you’re at least a lot more normal than you think you are,” Bob told him.
*
For a week the news of Diana Beach’s suicide ran in the local papers. Woman comes home to kill herself in childhood room, one headline screeched. As it turned out, Diana had only recently become the number one suspect in the case: A red wig had floated to the surface of the quarry pool—it was not red by the time it was discovered, of course, it looked like a dead brown animal—and the state police, having returned to the quarry to look for fresh evidence, had found it. The police also discovered that in a store an hour away from Saco, a red wig had been bought, shortly before Gloria Beach’s disappearance, by a woman who matched Diana Beach’s description and who had paid for it in cash. Shown a photo by the police, the salesclerk still remembered her all these months later and said, “This woman was acting strangely.” The police had tracked every car on the turnpike the night of the disappearance of Gloria Beach—they had tracked this through E-ZPass—and they found that a car with a Connecticut license plate registered to Diana Beach had gone through a toll booth.
By the time the Connecticut state police were heading to Diana’s home with a warrant for her arrest, she was already on her way to Maine to kill herself. The newspapers made reference to a suicide note, but its contents were not disclosed.
Matthew Beach was no longer a person of interest in the case; the case was now closed.
—
Bob had told Matt not to read any of the newspapers, and Matt said, “I don’t read newspapers anyway.”
And now—mostly—Matt slept. He slept at night, waking in the early hours, crying out, and then he slept during the days, waking and saying, “Wait!”
—
The first evening after Diana had died upstairs on the third floor, Matt sat on the edge of his bed. He looked up at Bob and said, “I’m having some trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” Bob asked gently.
“I can’t get any of this through my head.”
“It’s going to take time.”
Matt asked, “How much time?”
And Bob said that he did not know.
Then Bob said, “Want to come stay at my house tonight?”
“No.”
“Okay,” Bob said. “Then I’m going to stay here.”
Matt looked up at him. “You are?”
“Yeah.” Bob turned partway toward the door. “I’ll stay in your mother’s room, if you don’t mind.” And when Matt didn’t answer, Bob thought, Oh God, I have to stay.
