those at the party knew about what had happened to her. It had made the news, her identity revealed by a tabloid reporter. Once they knew the name of the artist who’d been assaulted, the other media decided they had free reign, and Kate had fifteen minutes of unwanted fame.
“Her poor mother,” Clara said, and Kate remembered the voracious reporters calling and visiting, their false sympathy and strident pleas to tell her story, some of them arguing that the public had a “right to know” and others that she should “warn others.” Warn them about what? That their lives could be interrupted by tragedy?
“I just keep hoping to open the paper and read that she’s been found alive and well in another state. Like that runaway bride.”
Jerry Virgoli smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He said to Kate, “Wickfield must seem very provincial to you.”
“We were hoping so.” Kate gulped at her wine and it burned in her throat. She looked out the window again, anxious. Grace was gone. Kate’s eyes flicked over the clusters of partygoers, but she couldn’t find her.
Jerry Virgoli talked on, but the words flowed over her like water, a rush of sound she couldn’t process because her entire focus was on her daughter.
“I think mothers worry wherever they are,” Clara Beetleman murmured. She’d followed Kate’s gaze and was searching the lawn, too.
“Even with these missing girls, the crime rate is still lower than Manhattan’s,” Jerry Virgoli said.
“Excuse me.” Kate moved past them and out the French doors. Anxiety propelled her through the people milling about on the deck. A group on the lawn shifted, and suddenly she spotted Grace leaning against the wall of what looked like a cottage tucked in a back corner of the yard.
Kate felt relieved just to have her in sight, though she could see the boredom clearly visible on her pretty face. As she watched, Grace dug into the small knit bag hanging from one shoulder and brought out her cell phone.
Kate’s body responded before her brain, tension tightening the muscles in her back, knotting at the top of her spine. She knew what number was being tapped into Grace’s phone.
“If I find out you’ve called him again, I’m taking away your cell phone.” Ian’s declaration had been backed up by Kate, even though she knew that by drawing that line Ian was practically daring Grace to cross it.
Kate’s heels sunk in the soft grass as she stepped off the deck. Grace didn’t hear her approach across the soft curve of lawn. She had her back to her mother, phone held against her ear like a talisman. Her voice, high-pitched and sulky, said, “It’s just some stupid party they made me attend.”
Then Kate’s hand was over hers, pulling the phone away from her daughter’s ear.
“Hey!” Grace cried. “What are you doing?” She tried to hold on, but Kate pried the phone from her, held it to her own ear.
“Who is this?” she demanded, knowing she sounded shrill and not caring.
“Hi, Mrs. Corbin.” A high-pitched voice, amused. “It’s Madison.”
A female school friend, not that boy. Not Damien. Stunned, Kate let the phone slip from her ear.
“Jesus, Mom.” Grace easily plucked it out of Kate’s hand and pressed it back to her own ear before turning away. “Sorry, Mad, my mom’s just having some freak-out.”
She was gone before Kate could apologize, striding away from her mother back across the lawn, heading in the direction of the house. She disappeared inside.
Four hours had to be endured before Ian was ready to leave and Kate could stop smiling. Every hour counted, each minute taking an eternity to pass.
There was silence in the car as Ian drove the secondhand Volvo through Wickfield’s quiet streets. The new house was only a few blocks from the center of town, an older residential street with sidewalks in front of frame homes, most with front porches, built in the early years of the twentieth century. Sycamore trees lined both sides of the street, branches stretched to form a canopy high above the road. Street lamps spaced at equally measured intervals cast soft yellow puddles onto the asphalt.
It was too quiet here. There were no sirens, no trucks, no sound of rushing cabs or the subterranean rumble of trains to help lull her to sleep. She found the silence unnerving.
Their house was two-story with a wide front porch. Four bedrooms, two full baths, an updated kitchen, but original hardwood floors and beautiful molding. The selling point, though, was in the back of the house, at the end of a pavered driveway. A previous owner, a furniture maker who liked light, had turned the detached garage into a workroom complete with lots of large windows. It was a perfect studio.
Yet Kate’s canvases and easels were still wrapped, sitting in the center of the room with the crates of supplies she’d cleared out of her studio in Brooklyn. Every time she went to unpack them, something else needed to be done in the house. It wasn’t that she was avoiding it, or at least that’s what she tried to tell herself.
Ian parked on the driveway and they made their way, still in silence, up the path to the front door. Once they were all inside, Kate turned back to check that it was locked.
Ian’s soft chuckle surprised her.
“What?”
“You don’t have to check here. I’m sure that even if we left the door unlocked nothing would happen.”
“There’s still crime even in small towns.”
“Sure, but c’mon. This isn’t like the city.”
Grace spoke from the stairs. “Yeah, it isn’t nearly as cool.”
Ian sighed. “It’s late. You need to get to bed, Grace.”
“Whatever.” The tone was pure teenage disdain. She ran up the stairs before either parent could respond.
Ian scowled and started after her, but Kate stopped him with a touch on his arm. “Let her go.”
“And let her get away with talking to us like that?”
“Pick your battles—she’s tired and angry about the move.”
“She’s spoiled is what she is.” He ushered Kate ahead of him up the stairs and switched off the hall lights before following. “When I was her age, I held down two jobs to help support my family.”
Kate stifled a yawn. Not this story again. She knew it so well that sometimes she felt as if she had been Ian’s sibling and had lived through the death of his father and watched Ian deliver newspapers every morning and bag groceries every evening to help his widowed mother make ends meet.
She’d seen Grace roll her eyes when Ian told this story, and knew that she thought it was at best an exaggeration. Not because she doubted the truth of what her father said, but because she couldn’t relate at all to the story. Grace’s life was too far removed from that kind of suffering to be able to relate. Kate’s life had been like that, too. Raised by two doting parents with enough time and money to lavish on her, she’d been protected from grief.
“I can remember
