Page 27 of The Summer Guests

“Colin was looking forward to it?”

“Of course. He hardly gets a chance to see Ethan. And they had so many happy times on this pond.”

That was not the way Ethan had described their boyhood summers here. How different the past looked through another pair of eyes. Could Colin really be that blind to all the ways he’d tormented his younger brother? But then, Susan had to admit she had her own blind spots.When she’d first met Brooke, with her designer dresses and her Upper West Side address, she’d seen a woman who had everything. Now she noticed the cracks in that flawless facade: The brusque and arrogant husband. The pathologically shy son. No one’s life was perfect, and Brooke, for all her earlier aloofness, really was trying to be a friend.

“Thank you,” Susan said. “For the posters. For everything.”

“I’m happy to do it.” Brooke stood up. “I’ll go call the print shop. First thing in the morning, we’ll start putting up these posters.”

She heard Brooke descend the stairs, heard Arthur’s voice rumbling above the others, something about the state police. She couldn’t hide in this bedroom forever, but there were too many people in the house right now, and she couldn’t face them, couldn’t bear the looks they gave her, their murmurs of sympathy, however sincere. She couldn’t even bear the proximity of her own husband. As much as Ethan might care about Zoe, he’d been her stepfather for only two years; he couldn’t possibly know the pain Susan was going through.

She rose from the bed and opened the door, and the voices downstairs became clearer. Colin, asking if he should pick up pizzas for dinner. Elizabeth responding yes, since no one had the energy to cook tonight. For them, life went on. Her daughter was missing, and these people were discussing their next meal. She left her bedroom, stepped into Zoe’s room, and closed the door behind her, shutting out the voices and their trivial conversation. Sinking onto the bed, she took a deep breath. Inhaled the same air that Zoe had breathed. Beside her on the bed was a laundry basket with freshly washed towels and clothes that had not been here this morning. Brooke must have taken them out of the dryer and brought them upstairs. On top was Zoe’s T-shirt, the one she’d worn on the drive to Maine. She took it out of the basket and pressed it to her face, but it smelled only of laundry soap, not her daughter. Just anonymous cotton, with no trace of Zoe’s scent. She set it back in the basket and suddenly glimpsed a sliver of red peeking out from beneath the mound of laundry. A shade of red that was alarmingly familiar. She dug into the pile and pulled out a red-and-pink dress withpuff sleeves, gauzy and almost see-through from too many washings. She stared at it, remembering what Ethan had said when Jo Thibodeau asked what Zoe was wearing the last time he saw her.

A dress. Something red and pink, I think.

This made no sense. If Zoe had been wearing this dress when she was abducted, why was it here in the laundry basket, freshly washed? She thought back to the afternoon when she’d returned from Bar Harbor with Hannah. Remembered that the dryer had been rumbling when she walked into the house, a detail that suddenly seemed important. If Zoe had taken off this dress and added it to the dirty laundry, what had she changed into next? What had she been wearing when she vanished?

She jumped up, went to Zoe’s open suitcase, and began pulling out clothing. Out came underwear and bras, T-shirts and shorts and jeans. Zoe’s swimsuit wasn’t in the suitcase. She thought of the last time she’d seen Zoe wearing it, swimming with that local girl. Splashing, laughing. And then what? Zoe would have hung up the swimsuit to dry.

Susan ran to the bathroom and glanced at the shower rod, the towel racks. The bathing suit wasn’t there.

She ran downstairs, ignoring the alarmed looks from Elizabeth and Arthur, and darted straight to the laundry room. In the washing machine were damp towels and two of Kit’s dirty T-shirts, but she did not see Zoe’s purple bathing suit. She remembered the day they’d bought it. Remembered that Zoe insisted it had to be a chlorine-resistant Speedo, because she spent so many hours training in the pool. And her goggles—where were Zoe’s swim goggles?

“Susan?” said Ethan, frowning at her from the doorway.

She sagged backward, against the dryer. No, this wasn’t possible. Her daughter was too good a swimmer. She could hold her breath for two and a half minutes, could free dive deeper than any of her classmates. She was practically a mermaid. How could she ...

“What’s going on?” said Ethan.

“The pond.” Susan pressed her hand to her mouth, but the sob spilled out anyway. “They have to search the pond.”

Chapter 13

Jo

“I looked for it everywhere,” said Susan. She stood hugging herself in a corner of Zoe’s bedroom, and even though her husband Ethan stood beside her, supporting her, she seemed wrapped in her own cocoon of grief, beyond the reach of any comforting touch. “All the bathrooms, the laundry room. The deck. It’s gone. Her bathing suit’s gone.”

Jo surveyed the aftermath of Susan’s frantic search. The empty suitcase lay open on the floor, every compartment unzipped, and Zoe’s clothing was strewed across the bed and floor. Susan had turned over every inch of this room as thoroughly as any crack team of federal agents, and Jo had no doubt the girl’s bathing suit was nowhere in this house.

“Let’s go downstairs, darling,” said Ethan. “Let Chief Thibodeau search the room. Brooke’s made a pot of tea.”

“I don’t want tea.”

“We’ll just get in the way up here.”

Susan wrenched away from him. “This doesn’t make any sense! She passed the lifeguard test. She canswim.”

“Why don’t we all go downstairs?” said Jo. “We need to talk.”

The rest of the family was gathered in the living room, along with two of their neighbors, Arthur Fox and Hannah Greene. It was nearly6:00 p.m. now, and although this latest development had disrupted their evening meal, it clearly had not kept them from dipping into the liquor cabinet. Both Arthur and Hannah, as well as Colin, had drinks in hand. Except for the clatter of ice cubes in Colin’s drink, the room was silent as Jo came down the stairs with Susan and Ethan.

“Couldn’t her bathing suit have just blown off the dock?” said Brooke. “She might have left it out there to dry.”

“Her swim goggles are missing too,” said Ethan. “Those wouldn’t have blown off the dock.”

There was a pause as they all considered this detail. As they all came to the obvious conclusion.

Jo turned to Ethan. “You said that when you last saw Zoe, she was wearing that red-and-pink dress. Yet the dress is here, in the house.”

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