Hannah
One of the things Hannah liked most about Ben—besides how sweet he’d always been with her son—was how nice he’d been to Mike. They were polar opposites in many ways, from the way they voted to the way they dressed, but Ben had always treated him as an equal, approached him on common ground. Hillary said Ben had cried when she told him about their divorce.
Hannah thought of the two brothers-in-law in the kitchen at Thanksgiving, taking turns carving the turkey, helping with the dishes, one washing, one drying. Like they’d known each other forever. A holiday would arrive, inevitably, the first one when Mike wouldn’t be there. Hannah breathed deeply. Maybe she should invite him? Or he could come for dessert? She’d have to think about that. She didn’t want to be a jerk, but she didn’t want to send the wrong signal either.
Ben had an easy comfort with other men; she’d noticed that before, at parties. She supposed it came from being in a fraternity, then working in a male-dominated industry. She imagined it was the same way at poker night. He would be the one who would offer to get others a drink when he folded. Yet he didn’t know everyone’s last name. Hannah couldn’t help smiling at this. The guy in sales? Matt? She bet he knew everyone’s name and email address. Necessary for his job.
She imagined everyone who knew Ben having trouble believing he was guilty. She could picture a parade of character witnesses coming forward, and the first one would be her ex-husband, and the second one would be her son.
Over the past few weeks, Miles had asked her so many questions about his uncle’s arrest she’d had trouble answering them simply, in a way he would understand but wouldn’t worry. She was concerned this was his new obsession, all right, and it wasn’t a sport or a video game. Over a month of school had gone by, and he hadn’t brought home a single friend. That was all she needed this autumn, for Miles to start downloading true crime podcasts or listening to the police scanner.
She stood at her kitchen counter, looking over at her sister’s house. On the porch, the oversize verdigris planters were autumnal now, mums and gourds and greens that looked appropriate without looking stagey or like anyone else’s. Nothing that Hillary did was cliché or wrong or too much. And Hannah knew that while she had been busy working and trying to keep calm, Hillary had been doing projects like assembling those planters herself, on the potting table in her enormous mud room. Hillary simply had an eye for things. She had plenty of cameras, but she didn’t really need them—she noticed everything. How had she not known her husband was having an affair? Or, as he had apparently corrected her, a fling. He’d downgraded it to nothing, to a word you’d use to throw a sock. The sisters had laughed about that, and it felt good to laugh about something.
How had Hillary, all eyes and ears and radar, missed this early on? Hillary, who’d seen her sister’s separation and divorce looming almost a year before Hannah had admitted it to herself? Hillary, who’d asked Hannah if she was pregnant a week before Hannah had even bought the at-home test?
It seemed impossible, yet here they were. Here they were.
Hannah sipped her coffee, dreading the day of work ahead with the Philanthropist’s manuscript. It was the most challenging project she’d ever taken on—and the most lucrative. Lesson learned. She closed her browsing windows and settled in, told herself she had to write a thousand words before she got up for more coffee or checked her email. At the two-hundred-word mark, she started to squirm. This “memoir” was going to be boring no matter what she did, and the sooner she accepted that, the better. She almost wished the detectives would step onto her porch, just to take her away from this tedium. She hadn’t heard anything about the forensic testing of the fox or anything else the police had unearthed. But she imagined it wasn’t a priority now. That it wouldn’t even matter if, for instance, they found animals had been beaten or, who knows what—smothered? strangled? Could you strangle an animal? She shuddered. The idea of it, the picture in her head, was more than she could bear. She shook her head as if to erase it. No. She had to keep working. Some things she did not need to know.
She had made it to almost nine hundred words when she decided to check her email. Just a small break, she told herself. Then I’ll go back to it and type an extra hundred words.
But there, in her email, finally, were the background checks of nearly eighty men who lived in the neighborhood. Hillary had paid for them; she’d want to be there to help look at them now, Hannah knew, but she had a doctor appointment in the city. Hannah looked at her watch—eleven forty-five. She couldn’t help herself. Hillary wouldn’t hesitate—if she were in Hannah’s position, she’d open them all. She decided to open only the files from poker night and save the others for Hillary.
As she opened them one by one, she felt a strange sensation of guilt creeping up into her chest. As if she were reading someone’s mail, going through their drawers. There were some secrets in here, and anyone with a credit card could find them out.
She already knew there were no registered sex offenders in the neighborhood, but she also knew the system worked slowly and was based on convictions. So someone arrested but not yet convicted was therefore not registered. That was the kind of nuance she was looking for. That and any violent crime against women. Domestic abuse, rape. That would be an obvious red flag. But she’d also wondered about some softer violations. Stalking. Voyeurism. Public urinating. Nudity. And yes, cruelty to animals. That kind of unusual arrest could mean something, too. At least it could to a woman, a mom, a person suspicious by nature.
She opened the files one by one. Three years ago, Robert Barker had pled guilty to a DUI. She wondered if that was why he hosted poker night, because he got so shit-faced he couldn’t walk home? Clearly, she and her sister had left too soon, way too soon, to tell if what had happened the night of the disappearance happened every night: that the men drank so much they stumbled home. The men had been on their best behavior during their visit, but it had been early. Still, Robert Barker seemed harmless.
She kept opening files. Nothing, nothing, nothing. She should have felt a sense of relief, but the dread kept growing. She wanted to find something but didn’t want to find something. Who wanted their neighbors to be criminals?
Matt Carruthers, the one in sales? He also had a DUI and an outstanding warrant for speeding tickets. Rushing to the liquor store? Forty miles over the limit? She made a mental note to find out what his car looked like so she could avoid him. She worked her way through alphabetically. Barker, Carruthers, Gilbert. Finally, she got to the S’s. Cat Saunders, nothing. Kendra Harris’s ex-husband, Bill Sinclair, nothing.
Barrett Smith. Her neighbor behind the trees. Her tall, handsome neighbor she’d never seen. The one she certainly would have noticed. The man who worked from home just as she did. Someone she could have a coffee date with on any given day, compared productivity, commiserated. That was what two women working from home in the same neighborhood might do. But he kept to himself.
“That isn’t a crime,” she said out loud as she clicked on his file. Violation of restraining order. She blinked, took this in. Nearly a year ago. A different address, twenty or more miles west, judging from the zip code. Willistown Township. Released on probation. He was divorced, so she automatically assumed it was his wife filing the order. She knew the Main Line was a very small place; you could accidentally cross paths with someone you were supposed to avoid on any given Tuesday. Was that what had happened? An angry ex-wife, punishing him? Should she give him the benefit of the doubt? He’d seemed polite at poker night, but she hadn’t spoken to him for very long.
She quickly opened the last two files—Will Turner. Sam Wainwright. Nothing and nothing.
So she was left with two car-related crimes—DUI and speeding. And one that may or may not be violence against someone who may or may not be a woman. Barrett Smith. Restraining order. Probation. And only a thin stand of trees between them.
She got off the computer and called her sister, who answered with cotton in her mouth, like those wisdom teeth videos Miles loved on YouTube.
“I’ve got the background checks,” she said. “We need to talk.”
“I’m on my way home,” Hillary slurred.
“Great,” Hannah said.
“And I have painkillers.”
“Even better,” she replied.
Hannah never drank and had exactly zero experience with drugs. Even in college, she’d turned away, knew they weren’t right for her. The Sawyer girls had to be better than that to succeed. Maybe Hillary could have a glass of wine with her friends now and then and hang out and smoke pot at a book club, but not Hannah. No. But now? They both might need to be medicated just to find the nerve to continue.
Because Barrett Smith seemed polite and nice.
But he was also the size of a tree. And someone out there was afraid of him.