Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [103]
After the service—small, just for the family—everyone came back to the apartment. Someone, probably Paul, had arranged for food and a waitstaff, strangers in white shirts and black pants or skirts discretely moving through the room holding platters or picking up empty plates and glasses. I stood by the front door, next to a girl who’d been hired to hang coats on the rolling wire coat racks my mother had bought for occasions like these—well, not like this exactly, but any time we hosted more than a few dozen people—accepting condolences and answering questions. No, we haven’t seen her. No, we’ve been unable to reach her. No, I have no idea where she went.
After enduring an hour of this, I’d gotten Tommy to take my place. Telling myself that I wasn’t snooping but investigating, I slipped into their bedroom and, then, to India’s dressing room. India had kept the dove-gray walls and the ivory carpets and crown moldings, but she’d reupholstered my mother’s zebra-print chair in pink toile and had replaced the antique gold-framed mirror with something high-tech and fancy, circled by pink-tinted bulbs. The better to see your Botox in, I thought, which was a little unfair because before she’d espoused the principles of spirituality and a vegan diet, my mom had shot her share of fillers.
I trailed my finger along the sleeves of India’s blouses, the tweeds and cottons of her skirts, the silk and wool of her sweaters. I considered the sequined and beaded evening gowns, each in its own zippered plastic bag. It would be impossible to figure out whether anything was missing. She could have packed for a long weekend or a week away or a three-week cruise that would take her from Alaska to the tropics, and I’d never be able to tell from the contents of her closet. There was simply too much stuff. Her laptop, which I found in the media room, was what told the story.
At first I’d tried to open her inbox, but it was locked and password protected, and, after it rejected MARCUS as a password, I’d quit trying. But her Internet browser opened with a single click, and she hadn’t erased her history.
“Oh my God.” I hurried back into the living room, dodging a few well-meaning aunts and cousins and my father’s assistants weeping in the corner, and found Darren, who was eating cocktail shrimp and staring out the window, down at the park.
He perked up when he saw me. “Hey, Bettina.”
“I need to show you something,” I told him, and took his hand and led him to the media room, where I’d left her laptop open.
“She bought tickets to Mexico . . . and Los Angeles . . . and the Bahamas . . . and Vancouver . . . and Paris . . . and Kentucky. All the flights left four days ago.”
He cut and pasted the information and e-mailed it to himself. “I can call the airlines, ask if she made the flights.”
“So we’ll know where she went.”
“But not where she is. I mean, say she went to Topeka. She could have bought a ticket in the airport from there to Los Angeles. Or Paris. Or Cancun. She could be . . .”
“... anywhere by now,” I said. The house phone rang. A minute later, the housekeeper, looking apologetic, was at my side.
“Missy Bettina? Sorry to interrupt, but this lady’s been calling for Mrs. Croft. She says it’s important.”
I lifted the phone to my ear. “Yes?”
That was when I first spoke to Leslie Stalling of the Princeton Fertility Clinic. She apologized for bothering me during such a difficult time. She told me she was sorry to be adding to my worry and stress. Then she said it was imperative that she get in touch with India Croft.
“You and me both, sister,” I said. Leslie Stalling sucked in her breath. “I’m sorry,” I said. “We haven’t seen or heard from her in days, and now I’m here at my father’s house, and I think . . . it’s kind of unbelievable, really, but it’s looking like she left town.”
“Oh, dear,” Leslie Stallings said. “That’s what I was afraid of.” She paused, a little three-second break to serve as a transition between life as I’d known it, ending forever, and life with a baby beginning. Then