The Vanishing Expert Read online

  The idea that Edward might have paid their father a visit worried Kate. In those first weeks and months following her brother’s disappearance, she had no idea where her brother was. Edward hadn’t told her where he was going; he’d left with only a promise that he’d contact her once he was settled. She assumed he’d left the state, and that he wouldn’t be so brazen as to risk a visit to their ailing father’s bedside. But she couldn’t be sure.

  “You saw Edward?” Kenny asked.

  “Yeah!” Bud shouted. “Just now!” He was obviously annoyed by the question, as if Kenny was trying to trick him.

  Kenny and Kate exchanged concerned looks, which irritated Bud even more.

  “Don’t be stupid!” Bud said angrily. “He was just here two minutes ago.” He brushed them off with a wave of his fragile hand. “He came in with you!”

  Kate was relieved to learn that her father was only imagining Edward’s visit. She had a lingering fear that Edward would be found, and that his plan, and her role in it, would be revealed. “Edward’s gone, Dad,” Kate told him.

  “I know he’s gone, for Christ sake!” Bud said. “I’m not an idiot!” He gazed up at the ceiling for a moment, as if trying to sort out the muddled information in his head, and then he rubbed his palm across his face in frustration. “Ah, just forget it.”

  After that day, no one pressed the issue of Edward’s death with Bud Moody. There was no point. He was perfectly content with the belief that Edward was not only still alive, but visited him regularly.

  “How come you don’t come see me anymore?” he asked Kate one day, a few weeks after Edward disappeared.

  Kate had been visiting her father every evening after work and on Saturday and Sunday mornings, and it upset her that he had no recollection of her visits. “I come to see you all the time, Dad. Don’t you remember?”

  Bud shook his head, but then he stared at her as if he had some brief moment of recognition. “Not as much as your brother,” he said. “He comes to see me every day.”

  “That’s good, Pop,” she said. She knew it was just another case of her father’s mind playing tricks on him. It wasn’t his fault, of course, but she couldn’t help but be upset by the idea that, even in his absence, Edward was still the favored child. She had a right to be upset, she thought. After all, it was Edward who abandoned him, while she remained the doting and loyal daughter in his time of need. Yet even now their father seemed to prefer Edward to her. At that moment, she resented Edward more than ever for his selfishness. He’d left to start a new life, while she remained behind to pick up the pieces of the one he discarded.

  Bud Moody’s decline was sudden and unexpected. He suffered his first stroke in 1986 at the age of fifty-eight, which left him with an almost complete loss of the use of his right hand along with partial paralysis of the right side of his face that made speaking difficult and eating and drinking an often messy adventure. His memory began to fail him, and the doctors diagnosed his symptoms as being the onset of Alzheimer’s just before his second stroke a little over a year later.

  What followed were episodes of severe depression and anger. He sometimes lashed out at Kate or Edward, or even Gloria, but they all knew he meant nothing by it. His outbursts usually came during his more lucid moments, when he was acutely aware of his condition, and his obvious decline. When he slipped into that dense cloud of uncertainty, when he couldn’t piece together even his most recent memories or recognize the faces of his own children, he was like a confused child. Ironically, it was during those episodes when Gloria felt closest to him, when he needed her.

  Gloria visited Bud Moody only a few times in the months that followed Edward’s death; it was difficult to see him in his current state. When she met him just ten years earlier, he was a vibrant, healthy man, full of life and laughter. He treated her like a daughter from the start, and being so far away from her own parents, she accepted his effortless affection and the two of them became very close. But this confused and frail man bore no resemblance to the man she remembered.

  It was especially upsetting for Gloria to hear Bud speak of Edward as if he were still alive and well and a frequent visitor at his bedside. She always hoped they could find some way to steer clear of the subject, but it was unavoidable. As soon as Bud saw her, he connected her with his son, and the rest was just a long, painful ordeal for Gloria, who was trying desperately to come to terms with her loss. Having Bud remind her of her dead husband, speaking of him as if he was still there among them and wondering when Edward would be coming to visit him again, was too much for her to bear. Eventually, she simply stopped going to see him for the same reason that she stopped seeing Tracy; they served as a painful reminder of all she’d once had— and all she’d lost.

  Only once did Kate ever witness her father displaying any awareness that Edward was gone. It occurred in late September, about the time James Perkins arrived in Southwest Harbor. Kate arrived in her father’s room to find him whimpering in his bed, and when Bud became aware of her presence, he began pulling at the sheets, balling them up in his fists and pressing them to his face in an effort to conceal his sobbing. When she tried to console him, he gazed at her with sorrowful eyes that were lucid and focused for the first time in days.

  “Why, Katy?” he cried. “Why Edward?”

  It was only a single brief incident, and Bud himself seemed to have no recollection of it on Kate’s next visit the following day, but Kate was as moved by the sight of her father in that condition as she was angry with Edward, the eternally favored son.

  After Edward’s memorial service Gloria Moody began the process of piecing her life back together. In public, she was poised and collected, rarely betraying the heartache that always lay just beneath the surface, though Edward’s name would sometimes catch in her throat when she spoke of him.

  When she was alone, her composure broke. The house, which she’d often complained to Edward was too small, suddenly seemed vast and empty without him. Most nights, she confined herself to only a few rooms. She avoided the bed she’d once shared with Edward, often dozing on the sofa in the family room, the glow of the television keeping the darkness at bay. On those nights when sleep eluded her, she wandered aimlessly from room to room, and finding no comforting trace of her husband in any of them, moved to the next.

  Her circumstances didn’t afford her the luxury of a long grieving period. Along with the cards and letters she received offering heartfelt condolences for her loss were the equally sobering bills and notices of delinquency that were piling up in a basket on the kitchen counter. For weeks, she set them all aside, unable to deal with the harsh reality that awaited her, until one day she sat down and set herself to the task of confronting it.

  With the life insurance settlement, Gloria managed to pay her outstanding debts, including the largest to the Internal Revenue Service. Exactly as Edward had predicted, Gloria had enough money remaining to support herself while she grieved, but just barely, and only briefly.

  It was clear to Gloria from the beginning that she would have to find a job, and it didn’t take her long. A neighbor, Tom Kendall, who was aware of her predicament, offered her a job with his catering service. It wasn’t much to start. She helped a little in the kitchen, she drove a delivery van, and she helped clean up after functions. Frankly, everyone was surprised when she accepted it. Had it not been for what was quickly becoming a very desperate situation, she never would have taken it.

  She had no idea at the time where it would lead.

  Before Edward’s death, Kate and Kenny appeared, at least to a casual observer, to be doing well. Kenny was a successful electrical engineer and Kate had recently been promoted to Senior Marketing Analyst at the pharmaceutical company where she’d worked for nearly five years. They had a modest but lovely home in Narragansett, a loving relationship— although Bud Moody often complained that they were ‘always touching each other’— and a shared dream of raising a family together.

&
nbsp; For almost a year, they’d tried unsuccessfully to have a child. They’d met with several specialists. There was no medical reason why they couldn’t conceive, but for some reason it just hadn’t happened for them, and the long, steady pendulum swings between joyful optimism and the sudden dashing of it had taken their toll.

  At times, they buried themselves in their careers, hoping that success at work might somehow dull the frustration over their failures at home— at the very least, it might provide a brief distraction from them. Over time, they found that even the sex became burdened by their growing cynicism. Any satisfaction they felt during the act was almost immediately accompanied by a shared feeling of dread, as if they were bracing themselves for the disappointment that would inevitably follow.

  Kenny tried to joke once that even their orgasms seemed anticlimactic.

  Kate wasn’t amused. “I wouldn’t know,” she hissed at him.

  Basically, the joy had gone out of even that most joyful part of their relationship, and once that happened, it was just a matter of time before they would feel the distance between them growing ever larger.

  When Edward died, Kenny just assumed the tragedy would bring the two of them closer. He expected Kate to break down in a torrent of emotion over the loss of her dear brother, but it never happened. He expected her to grieve, but she never did, at least not so he could see. At first he admired her for it. She was surprisingly composed through the memorial service, and in the days and weeks that followed, when he was convinced she would succumb to her grief at some point, there was nothing.

  He watched her carefully, certain that some small moment would sneak up on her and shatter her stoic Yankee shell— not wishing it upon her, of course, but merely wanting to be there for her when it happened. It just never did.

  The only real emotion he witnessed from her during that time was anger. She seemed to be always lashing out about something. One day it was work, and the next it was her father or Gloria or even Edward. Kenny was often the convenient target for her rage.

  “Why are you always staring at me?” she shouted at him one day in July. “What do you think is gonna happen? Do you think I’m just gonna fall apart and you can come riding in on your white horse and save me?”

  “I’m just trying to be there for you?” Kenny explained.

  “Well, you’re pissing me off!”

  Kate knew she was being unfair to Kenny, but she felt as helpless to change her circumstances as her father was of changing his. No one, not even Kenny, knew everything that was resting on her shoulders. Her brother was gone, her father was slipping away, Tracy had an unsettling fascination with ending her life, and Kate’s own dream of having a child continued to elude her.

  Still, through it all she dutifully did what was expected of her.

  By September, Kate felt as if the weight of it all would crush her.

  And then, the telephone rang.

  Ever since Kate was a little girl, struggling with the loss of her mother, her Aunt Gin had a way of reaching out to her at the perfect time. Whenever she found herself wrestling with a problem that her father was ill-equipped to handle, whenever she was in need of a woman’s perspective, or just when she felt overwhelmed and alone, Aunt Gin always seemed to just appear. During her teen years, Kate always assumed her father had orchestrated these timely interventions, but over time, and especially in recent years, she came to realize that Aunt Gin simply had a knack for knowing when Kate needed her guidance. It was a connection, she believed, that would be more likely to exist between a mother and daughter, but Aunt Gin was as much a mother to her as her own mother had been, and for much longer. So when the phone rang on that September day when she felt like the weight of the world was pressing down upon her, she wasn’t surprised to hear Aunt Gin’s voice on the other end of the line.

  “Hello, Sunshine.” It was a nickname Aunt Gin had bestowed upon Kate when she was a child, not long after she became a fixture in Kate’s life, and it always made Kate smile. Now, she just felt unworthy.

  “Hi, Auntie Gin,” Kate sighed into the phone. She was pleased to hear from her beloved aunt, but Gin could hear the sadness in Kate’s voice, even in the simple greeting.

  Aunt Gin proceeded in her usual bright manner. “I was just looking outside at the trees beginning to turn along the road, and the sun is hitting them just so. It was such a beautiful sight, it made me think of you.”

  It was exactly the kind of thing Aunt Gin had been saying to her since she was young. From anyone else, such sentiments would have sounded contrived or silly, but from Gin, they were always sincere and always welcome. Kate couldn’t keep herself from smiling, despite her melancholy mood.

  “I’ve been thinking about you, too,” Kate offered apologetically. “I’ve been meaning to call you.”

  “I thought I’d save you the trouble, my dear. You have enough on your plate without having to worry about calling your crazy old aunt.”

  There were times when Kate would go weeks without calling her aunt. She thought about her every day, and she meant to call, but somehow she would get distracted, usually by something that mattered far less than her Aunt Gin, and another day would just slip past. But no matter how much time had passed, and no matter how neglectful Kate had been, Aunt Gin never allowed her to agonize over it. She never wanted Kate to apologize.

  “How’s your Dad doing?” Gin asked, changing the subject.

  Kate sighed. “He has good days and bad days like always,” she offered. She wanted to spare Gin the details of her father’s rants and outbursts, but her wise aunt called her on it.

  “Don’t you go sugar-coating anything for me, Sunshine,” Gin scolded. “You’re my eyes and ears out there. I expect you’ll tell it to me like it is.”

  Kate apologized, which Gin allowed to pass, and she proceeded to describe her father’s frustrated tirades when his mind was clear, and his sweet, child-like nature when it fogged over. She explained that her father often mistook her for Gin, and she had long since stopped correcting him. When he was confused, there was no point, and when he was angry, she simply didn’t dare.

  “Now listen here, Sunshine,” Aunt Gin chided. “Don’t you let him give you a bad time, especially if he thinks he’s talking to me. You just give it right back to him. I can tell you I never took any guff from my brother, and I’m not about to start now. So I expect you to stand right up to him and tell him to stick it where the sun don’t shine. That’s what I’d do if I was there. You hear me?”

  Kate laughed. Had she thought about it, she would have realized it was the first time she’d laughed in some time, but she never stopped to think about such things. “Okay, Auntie. I sure will.”

  “You’d better, or I’ll come out there and do it myself.”

  “I will,” Kate promised.

  Gin could hear the resignation in her voice. “How’re you holding up, Sunshine? You sound a little bit down.”

  “I’m okay,” Kate said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I can’t complain,” Kate lied.

  “Well, that’s just bullshit,” Gin said. “You can always complain. I know sometimes you feel like no one wants to listen, but your Auntie Gin will. If you’ve got something you want to talk about, you just come out with it. Don’t hold it in.”

  There was so much Kate wanted to share with her aunt but she resisted the urge. Tracy’s struggle wasn’t hers to share, and her issues with Kenny were just too intimate. It made no sense to talk about the pain of losing her father— her aunt was losing her brother, and Gin’s sense of loss, she assumed, had to be at least equal to her own. And Kate knew she could never reveal the truth about Edward or her role in his deception, and that was by far the heaviest burden she carried. “There’s just a lot at the moment,” she sighed, hoping it would appease her aunt.

  “I know there is, Sunshine,” Gin said sweetly. “And I don’t mean to make you talk about anything you don’t want to. I just
want you to know that you can. Okay?”

  “I know,” Kate said.

  “There isn’t anything you can’t talk to me about,” Gin assured her. “You know that, right?”

  Kate wished that were true, but she knew that for the first time in her life, there were secrets she would have to keep from her aunt. That was something she’d never done, and while she should have been comforted by Gin’s words, the truth was they added still more weight to the load she already carried.

  Her conversations with Aunt Gin always left Kate feeling empowered, though perhaps less so on this particular day, but at least when she hung up the phone she felt less alone.

  When the phone rang again, just a moment after she’d hung it up, Kate smiled. Gin had a habit of calling her back with one more thing she’d forgotten to tell her. She did it so often that Kate sometimes lingered near the phone after they ended their conversations and answered the phone on the first ring, as she did this time.

  “Hello, Aunt Gin,” Kate said.

  “Hello, Kate.”

  Kate nearly dropped the phone. She heard herself gasp, just a small sound, as if it came from someone else in another room, and then she waited, unable to form the words to respond to her brother’s voice.

  6

  A Simple Life

  Mount Desert Island grew quiet in late October. Once the leaves had fallen and the air turned cold, the tourists gradually stopped coming, and many of the shops that catered to them began to close for the season. Those locals who remained tended to their own affairs, and began to brace themselves for a long, cold winter. No one paid much attention to James Perkins, and even though he knew that to be true, he couldn’t shake the underlying sense of dread, as if someone, somewhere, was looking for him.

  He decided that the best way to escape that feeling was by pouring himself into his work, and each morning, he hurried off to The Bay View Inn, where he and Peter were now working. He was enjoying his apprenticeship with Peter even more than he ever imagined. The work was physical and exhausting, but he knew that at the end of each day, he could look back and see the evidence of his labor, and every morning he awoke even earlier, eager to return for more.