Goodnight Beautiful by Aimee Molloy
Prologue
October 20
I look up as a man with ruddy cheeks and a crew cut walks into the restaurant, shaking rain from his baseball cap. “Hey, sweetheart,” he calls to the pink-haired girl mixing drinks behind the bar. “Any chance you can hang this in the window?”
“Sure thing,” she says, nodding toward the piece of paper in his hand. “Another fundraiser for the fire department?”
“No, someone’s gone missing,” he says.
“Missing? What happened to her?”
“Not her. Him.”
“Him? Well, that’s not something you hear every day.”
“Disappeared the night of the storm. Trying to get the word out.”
The door closes behind him as she walks to the end of the bar and picks up the flyer, reading aloud to the woman eating lunch at the corner seat. “Dr. Sam Statler, a local therapist, is six foot one, with black hair and green eyes. He’s believed to be driving a 2019 Lexus RX 350.” Whistling, she holds up the piece of paper. “Whoever he’s gone missing with is a lucky lady.” I steal a glance at Sam’s photograph—those eyes, that dimple, the word MISSING in seventy-two-point font above his head.
“I saw the story in the paper this morning,” the woman at the bar says. “He went to work and never came home. His wife reported him missing.”
The pink-haired girl goes to the window. “Wife, huh? Sure hope she has a good alibi. You know the old saying: ‘When a man goes missing, it’s always the wife.’”
The two of them laugh as she presses the photograph of Sam’s face against the rain-blurred glass and I dip my spoon into my soup, taking small, careful sips, my eyes on the bowl, a sick feeling in my stomach.
Chapter 1
Three Months Earlier
That ass.
It’s incredible.
An ass so perfect there’s no way Sam can pull his eyes away as he walks half a block behind her up the hill, past the cheese shop, the bookstore, the lauded new wine place with the bright red door. He pretends to browse the table of American flags, half off at Hoyts Hardware, as she approaches the Parlor, the upscale small-plate restaurant that opened three months ago. A man on his way out behind his wife holds the door open for her, lingers to catch a glimpse of her from the back, no doubt praying his wife doesn’t see.
Like Sam said: that ass.
The restaurant took over the space once occupied by two generations of Finnerty dentists, the brick facade replaced by a sleek glass wall. Sam pauses in front of it, watching her cross the room and sit at the bar.
Linen blazer off.
Drink ordered.
She takes a book from her bag, her shoulder blades rising like the wings of a bird under a thin white tank top as he passes, stopping to look at the listings in the window of the realtor’s office next door. Exactly nine minutes he waits, long enough for her to be nearing the end of her drink, feeling the familiar rush of adrenaline as he loosens his tie an inch and turns around.
Game on.
The door to the Parlor opens as Sam approaches, releasing an air-conditioned gust into the humid evening air. “Dr. Statler.” A patient is standing in front of him, and he has to hunt for her name. Started two weeks ago. Carolyn. Caroline.
“Catherine,” Sam says. Fuck. What absolutely never happened to him back in New York happens all the time here—running into patients on the street, in the grocery store, yesterday at the gym, where he ran three miles on the treadmill while Alicia Chao, the newly divorced humanities professor with a history of anxiety, worked the elliptical—and it makes him feel off-balance every time. “How are you?”
“I’m good,” Catherine says. Catherine Walker. She’s a well-known painter in New York, bought a million-dollar home overlooking the river. “This is Brian.” Sam shakes his hand. Brian: the restaurateur who doesn’t satisfy her in bed. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Catherine says as Sam steps inside.
“Will you be dining with us tonight?” the girl at the podium asks. She’s young and blond. Tattoos. Very pretty. An art student is his guess, with a piercing hidden somewhere under her clothing, the type he once would have assuredly had in bed by ten tonight.
“No,” Sam says. “Just a quick drink.”
The bar is crowded with recent transplants from the city, sharing plates of roasted brussels sprouts and nine-dollar pickles. Sam makes his way toward the woman, allowing his elbow to graze her arm as he passes.
Her purse is resting on the stool between them, and Sam bumps one of its legs as he sits, hard enough to knock it to the floor. “Sorry,” he says, reaching down for it.