Look Closely - Laura Caldwell [83]
“And they actually talked to you? I mean, they told you about Caroline’s treatment?” His accusatory tone was impossible to miss.
“Yeah, they did. And I would think you’d want to know about it. I think you’d want to know anything that can help us find her.”
“Well, did you find anything other than she used to cut herself and she tried to kill herself? Jesus, how could you do that? How could they do that? That’s an invasion of her privacy! I don’t want to know anything unless she’s called them in the last few weeks, which I assume she hasn’t.”
“No,” I said simply. I got off the highway and started making my way over the bridge into the city. Matt’s palpable anger was making me shaky, unsure, and I was glad to hit a patch of traffic so I could slow the car.
He was quiet for a second. “I’m sorry. I’m taking this out on you, when I shouldn’t be. I guess I’ve been hoping that you’d find something out from your father.”
“I’m not sure he knows anything about Caroline or Dan, and if he does, I’m not sure he’d tell me.”
“Dan? What do you mean he doesn’t know anything about Caroline or Dan?”
Traffic had started moving again. My car growled as it slowly inched over the steel grid lines of the bridge. The closer I got to the middle, the more anxious it made me, just as my search into my mother’s death made me more uneasy all the time. I explained as quickly as I could what I’d learned about Dan’s life, about how no one had heard from him since that Saturday, the same day Caroline disappeared. I didn’t tell him what Annie said about New Orleans. I had promised her after all, and it was something I hadn’t been able to follow up on yet.
“Christ,” Matt said. “This is too fucking weird. I mean, excuse my language, but a brother and sister both walking off into the sunset on the same day? Your goddamn dad has to know something.”
“You’re right. Look, I’ll go over to his house tonight, okay? I’ll find something.”
“Please,” Matt said, his voice soft once more. “Do whatever you have to do. I miss my wife. I miss her so much.”
My father’s house was dark. It was a large, Georgian home with redbrick, white square columns holding up the portico over the front door, and black shutters framing the windows. The setting sun cast a sinister orange glow behind it. The front-hall lights were off, a sure sign he wasn’t home. After thinking about it all afternoon, I had decided to drive out here and simply confront him, ask him what he knew about Caroline and Dan. I procrastinated at first by halfheartedly working on the McKnight case. I took a walk around the neighborhood. Finally, I got up the courage to drive out to Manhasset. But where was he? Maybe out of town for a deposition? Or maybe just out to dinner? Despite the messages he’d left me, I hadn’t spoken to him since that night at the Van Newton Guild.
I would just go inside and wait for him, I decided. But even as I thought it, I knew that I wouldn’t simply wait. I wouldn’t lie on the plump couches in the den and watch TV, the way I used to in high school, nor would I sit on the sunporch off the kitchen. Instead I would go into his study. The place my father kept all the documents and bits of information that made up his life. Maybe I’d find something there about my siblings.
I drove down the street and pulled my car into the lot of a small park, where I used to make out with high-school boyfriends. Tucking my keys into my pocket, I walked back down the darkening street to his house. Once there, I reached under the shutter to the right of the front door and felt around the windowsill for the spare key. My fingers brushed over the stone of the sill that felt sandy to the touch. Where was it? Maybe he didn’t keep a spare key outside anymore. I pushed my arm back farther, my cardigan sweater catching on a shrub, and finally I felt the cold metal of the key.
I glanced around guiltily as I put the key in the lock, but there was no one around. The houses were set far apart, not