For the first few minutes, she just drives. She does not permit herself to think. Not about Marilyn, not about the voice, and most of all, not about Veda. Not yet.
Traffic is still heavy on Route 2 but at least it's moving. People are getting back to their homes, settling in for the evening, switching on the TV, perhaps pouring themselves a glass of wine. For those unfortunate enough to be on the road, the first few white flakes are starting to sift down, bouncing off her windshield as she heads north. Eventually she gets off on Everett Road, two lanes of nothing much at all.
Her mind drifts slightly. It is not advisable, this drifting, but there it is.
She cannot help but think what it would be like if Phillip were here.
The temptation to try to call him, to grab the phone and punch in the West Coast number he left on her machine a year or so ago, six months after stepping permanently out of her life, is far stronger than any urge to call the police. Sue does not have much faith in the police. She doesn't exactly have a whole lot of faith in Phillip, either-what can you say about a man who abandons his wife and one-month-old daughter, even if he leaves them with a yacht, anArchitectural Digest home, and full ownership of the third largest real estate office in Boston?
Abandoned is abandoned, as her friend Natalie is fond of saying, and scum is scum. Of course Natalie always sounds a little envious when she says this, like she wouldn't mind finding out firsthand what it's like being abandoned with a big house and millions of dollars to spend, but Sue is not even remotely deluded about the emotional fallout of Phillip's disappearance. She knows that Veda will grow up without a father, nothing more than a tall, narrow-shouldered shadow with graying hair leaning over her bassinet on the videotape that Sue has no intention of ever allowing her daughter to watch.
But the fact is that Phillip Chamberlain has been a part of her life for almost as far back as Sue can remember. In elementary school back in their hometown of Gray Haven, Massachusetts, they were the two classic pillars upon which the caste system rested: Nerd Boy and Fat Girl. They've been through the shit together. By tenth grade Sue thinned out and sprouted breasts, and the big lips that had once been the object of such unimaginative scorn were regarded with admiration, jealousy, and flat-out lust. Meanwhile it was obvious to everyone that the reason Phillip didn't give a rat's ass what anybody thought was because he was smart enough to do whatever he wanted. And the first thing he wanted was to get out of Gray Haven.
But even after he started getting scholarship offers to Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford, and she was turning down dates from quarterbacks, the glue between them-the intractable outsiders' bond-had only grown stronger. They tried being boyfriend and girlfriend for a while, even made out a few times in the backseat of Phillip's Toyota-it seemed like Extreme's "More Than Words" was always playing on the stereo-but it was always easier being friends.
With that in mind, somebody once remarked (was it Phillip himself?) that their eventual marriage was built more on inevitability than any sort of romance or even affection. Certainly therewas plenty of affection too, maybe even a little steamy romance in their backseat mash sessions. But more than anything there was just the sense of having been there for each other during a particularly awful period of their lives, a moment so horrible that you needed to share it with somebody or else it would destroy you.
After high school there was a ten-year-plus lull when they rarely saw each other. Phillip graduated from Harvard and began buying apartment buildings around town, little ones and then big ones. Sue dropped out of college and started driving an ambulance for a living, a job she found just crazy enough to temporarily satisfy the chaos-addict that she'd discovered lurking inside herself. Throughout the nineties they kept in touch via phone calls, Christmas cards, and e-mails, along with that occasional moment of ESP when she was sure that he was thinking about her at the same moment she was thinking about him. She worked maniacal hours, dated the usual string of police-scanner geeks and buzz-cut paramedics, went to bars, took drugs, and woke up in too many different places without knowing exactly where her clothes were.
That period of her life had bottomed out on one Fourth of July weekend on the night she tried to drive home from Singing Beach, blind drunk, to the vacation condo she was renting in Beverly Farms. Despite the fact that the road refused to hold still, ambulance-driver bravado carried the day and she was sure she could make it, right up to the moment her old Jeep Wrangler left the road and rolled over three times before hitting a tree. Sue spent six hours in the OR but made it out alive, scared, scarred, and sober. It was all veryBehind the Music, but no less effective for all of that, a reminder that when life wants to get our attention it doesn't bother with half-measures. Eight months later she ran into Phillip at a Super Bowl party at a mutual friend's house. They ended up back at his brownstone on Beacon Hill, where he said nothing about the scars running up her abdomen and cleaving her right nipple in half, but only kissed her and held her in his arms. And Sue would be lying if she didn't admit, at least to herself, that the first emotion that she felt was a sense of relief, of finally being home.
Six months later she was pregnant with Veda. The sensible thing, Phillip said, was to get married so Sue could quit her job and they could get busy taking vacations, spending the money he was making, and spoiling their kid. Sue surprised herself by saying okay. That was a little over two years ago, when they were both in their early thirties. He was already running a multimillion-dollar real estate business out of his office in Cambridge, holding business meetings by cell phone from his Boston Whaler, or telecommuting from his house on Nantucket-all of which, upon edict from Phillip's lawyers, now belongs to Sue. Phillip has seen to that, shifting ownership of everything to Sue in the seemingly endless jet stream of phone calls, e-mails, legal documents, and bank transfers sweeping out of Malibu over the first twelve months immediately following his departure. Throughout this last summer communications between them dwindled to a trickle, as the last loose ends were tied up, everything going into Sue's name. She hasn't heard from him at all since September, not even a Christmas card. And though he is scum for leaving, she can't help but think that having him here might somehow reassure her that she isn't losing her mind.
The notion evaporates, and she is just driving again. After a moment she tastes salt.
She realizes that she is thinking about Veda, and weeping.
And just like that, the phone is in her hand.
It occurs to her that the man's threat of listening in on her calls could be a bluff, but probably not. After all, she owns a baby monitor, and she's been on her cell phone and heard snatches of her own conversation crackling through Veda's bedroom enough times that she doesn't even use the cell inside the house when her daughter is upstairs napping. And the paramedics and ham radio operators that she's dated used to entertain themselves for hours listening in on other people's calls, miles away. It not onlycould happen; it happened all the time.
Then you have to assume that he is listening. All the time.
But in the silent emptiness of the wooded road around her, the thought of calling Phillip refuses to go away. What if she were to call him and havehim call the police, using some kind of code that Veda's abductor might not recognize, and then hang up? She already knows what she could say, the phrase that would send up a red flag for him, without alerting the man on the phone what she was talking about.
She picks up the phone.
Don't be stupid. Is it really worth risking Veda's life for this?
What if she doesn't say a word? She could just dial his number. He'd see it on his caller ID, andThen she sees them, a half mile back.
Headlights.
I'm watching you.
They're coming up fast, too fast, swooping to narrow the distance between them in what seems like a split second, already close enough to drag her shadow upward across the dashboard.
Sue shoves the phone down between the seats as the headlights swallow her. She can hear the engine, an irregularBLAT BLAT BLAT that sounds more like a single-engine plane than a car. Now it is alongside her, and she sees it's a truck, actually, but the driver's face is obscured as it plows past her and swings up in front, cutting her off.
Sue hits the brakes, dropping back, tasting a sudden reflux of fear. Brake lights flare in front of her, forcing her to slow even more. Her tires squeal; the seat belt catches her hard and makes her sternum ache. The box containing the steamed lobsters tips up on its side and she hears them flop over sideways with a thump. Up ahead of her, twenty feet away, the truck has come to a complete stop, its engine throbbing. It is one of those old no-color farm pickups with rounded corners, a great grinning grille, and something boisterously wrong with its muffler.
She can feel the driver's eyes gleaming in his sideview mirror, reflected back at her in the volcanic-black darkness. Examining her face.
Then she can't move.
Sherecognizes this truck. She's seen it before. Now that it's right in front of her, she's almost positive that it's the same one thatThe phone rings.