Chapter 3

Amy Ryan Marinouncorks the bottle of Shiraz left from the previous night’s dinner and pulls an oversized red wine glass down from the cabinet. She pours ruby-colored liquid into the glass, careful to stop when she reaches the line she’s drawn on the glass with a Sharpie at the five-ounce mark. Rich teases her about her precision, but as perimenopause has taught her, five ounces of wine is plenty; anything more disrupts her sleep, and the extra calories get harder to shake with every passing year. So, every wine glass in the cabinet sports a thin black marker line.

She carries the drink into the living room and sinks into her favorite chair, the one by the window with a soft, lightweight blanket draped over its back. There’s still a chill in the spring air, and she could use some coziness, so she pulls the blanket down over her shoulders, sinks into the chair, and sips her wine, willing the tension in her chest to ease.

The house is quiet, which means the kids must not be back from their movie, and Rich is probably puttering in his garage workshop. She savors the silence and stillness, trailing one hand over the arm of the chair and listening to her even breathing. She takes another sip of the wine before placing it on the coaster to her left and closing her eyes. Her breathing slows and her eyelids grow heavy, then flutter closed. She won’t sleep, she tells herself. She only needs a few minutes to decompress and relax.

But she must’ve fallen asleep because the next thing she knows, the front door slams shut and loud voices and stomping feet fill the hallway. She jerks and her eyes pop open.

“Mom, we’re home!” her youngest calls before thundering up the stairs to her bedroom. The instant Ava turned thirteen, she started to spend more time in her bedroom than anywhere else. Amy would worry if she hadn’t been through the same thing with the older two.

Evan, the oldest, pops his head into the sitting room. “You okay, Mom?”

“Just relaxing,” she tells him. “How was the matinee?”

He shrugs. “Okay.”

“Well, thanks for driving your siblings,” she says. “Dad and I appreciate it.”

She means it. She’d forgotten the school district had a planned half-day when she’d accepted Diana’s lunch invitation. The kids are old enough to stay home alone, but they jumped at the chance to go to the movies instead.

“It was no problem. They saw their stupid superhero movie, and I met Becca to watch a real film.”

She smiles, indulging his belief that he’s a cinema aficionado. After all, she remembers going through the same phase when she was about his age. She and Heather fancied themselves sophisticated film buffs. They’d go into Pittsburgh to watch foreign movies and independent films at the Regent Square Theater. She and Rich went back a few times over the years to see film festivals. But the theater closed several years back. Now it’s an art gallery. Just another reminder of something she’s lost. Her smile fades.

Her son eyes her closely. “You met with Aunt Diana and Aunt Kristy today, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“How’d it go?”

She hesitates. She should talk to Rich first, but the decision she and her sisters made is going to impact the kids, too, so she might as well let him know now. “We have an appointment to meet with Maisy Farley next week.”

“So you’re doing it?”

“We are, and I know that’s going to have an effect on you, Owen, and Ava?—”

He cuts her off. “Mom, don’t worry about it. Aunt Heather’s your sister.”

Amy has always found it odd that her kids call Heather ‘Aunt Heather,’ even though she disappeared long before any of them were born, long before she and Rich were even married. But hearing Evan say it now makes her heart swell.

“Thanks, honey,” she says, blinking back tears at his compassion.

He nods and then changes gears as only a seventeen-year-old can. “I need to go to the library and do some research for my group project. What time’s dinner?”

“The same time it’s been for the past six years. Seven o’clock, after your brother’s fencing class and Ava’s play rehearsal.”

“Kay. Bye.”

He twirls the car keys around his finger in a fast circle then grabs his backpack from the kitchen table where he dumped it after school and she left it because she stopped providing maid service a full decade ago.

“Good luck with your research,” she says to his back.

He goes out through the mudroom and into the attached garage. She hears a muffled conversation between him and his dad. A moment later, the garage bay door chugs open, then Rich enters the house.

“Evan’s headed to the library,” he tells her as he walks over to the kitchen sink and turns on the water. He scrubs his hands with the orange pumice soap she keeps on the windowsill for just this purpose.

She waits until he’s drying them to answer. “He just stopped home to drop the other two off after the movies.”

Rich nods upstairs. “Are they in their rooms?”

She nods. “Ava made a beeline for the stairs. I didn’t hear a peep out of Owen, but I assume he went upstairs, too. He’s probably getting ready for fencing.”

Rich’s eyes flick to the clock on the mantel and then to the glass of wine at her elbow. “I’ll drive both of them. We’ll drop him at the studio and then I’ll take Ava to play rehearsal.

She gives him a grateful smile.

He comes into the room and sits on the ottoman in front of her, taking both of her hands in his. “How bad was it?”

It was hellish, as expected. Every conversation she and her sisters have had about Heather in the past thirty years has been some degree of hellish. But Rich is already worried about this decision, and she doesn’t want to feed the flames. So she says, “It was fine.”

He squints at her. “Fine?”

“Yeah, fine. We reached an understanding. Diana acknowledged she shouldn’t have reached out to Maisy Farley without talking to me and Kristy first, and we agreed that?—”

He barks out a laugh. “But that’s just like her, isn’t it?”

Amy’s instinct is to defend her sister, but the truth is, he’s right. As the oldest, Diana’s always been the self-appointed leader. Her bossiness only grew more pronounced after Heather vanished. Diana arranged for a leave of absence from college to take over parenting Kristy during that first year, when their mother was a shell of a human. It had been Diana, not their parents, who insisted Heather stay the course. Diana who dropped her off for college orientation; Diana who sent her care packages. Her older sister may be hard and unyielding, like a rock. But she’s also steady and solid, like a rock.

Amy lets out a breath now. “Diana’s right though, Rich. We’ve needed to address this for a long time, but it has to be resolved now. She’s the executor of Mom and Dad’s estate, and she can’t close probate without either having Heather declared dead or setting up a trust to hold her share of the estate.”

Kristy had pushed hard for the trust, and Amy understood. She didn’t want to have a court formally declare their sister dead, either. The idea feels like a betrayal of both Heather and their parents, who never stopped believing that she’d walk through their front door. But Amy thinks it’s time. The finality of closing the chapter on that terrible night will be good for all of them, she thinks.

From the outside, it looks as though the Ryan sisters have moved on. Diana returned to college, graduated, married, started her own human resources consulting business, and raised a family. Her daughters are grown and flown, living out of state. She’s divorced now. Maybe that has something to do with how brittle and mistrusting she became after Heather vanished. But Amy secretly believes that Diana and her ex-husband were never a good match and wouldn’t have gone the distance under any circumstances.

Kristy’s married—about to celebrate ten years with her husband. They have two little boys in elementary school. As the youngest, she’s probably the one who was changed the most by Heather’s disappearance. She was only eight when Heather vanished, and once their parents emerged from their cocoon of frozen grief, they were laser-focused on keeping her safe. Amy understands they were trying to protect Kristy, but they stunted her, robbing her of so many of the life experiences—both good and bad—her older sisters had. Sheltered, stifled, and fearful, Kristy is also nurturing and empathetic, albeit terrified of her own shadow.

Amy’d like to think she’s the most well-adjusted of the three. She’s had the most therapy, and she’s been diligent about not smothering her children, fostering their independence and instilling them with self-confidence. But the sleepless nights spent staring at her ceiling fan as her heart pounds and worries race through her mind suggest otherwise. She lays awake imagining scenarios as plausible as Evan being in a car accident on his way home from Becca’s place and as unlikely as Owen meeting a predator on the internet and running away and Ava overdosing on street drugs. Her friends assure her the same anxieties and catastrophizing thoughts loop through their heads in the middle of the night. But she’s sure it’s different. None of her friends was the last person to see their sister before she vanished without a trace.

She looks now at Rich. She loves him deeply, and she knows he loves her. But their relationship was born out of tragedy, and that’s always made it seem more fragile, less resilient than it might have been if Heather hadn’t disappeared. Her biggest concern is that her marriage won’t withstand reopening this thirty-year-old wound.

He squeezes her hands gently, as if he can read her mind, and says, “You know I’ll support you, whatever the three of you decide.”

“Thank you.”

He goes on. “I’m worried that you’ll get your hopes up.”

She shakes her head sadly. “We all know there’s no happy ending to be had here, Rich. If Maisy Farley can get to the truth of what happened to Heather, it’s not going to be the news that she’s living happily somewhere under an assumed name. Let’s be honest, the best we can hope for is a body to bury.”

His sharp intake of breath surprises her. Surely he doesn’t think she’s that deluded. Does he?

She tilts her head and looks at him. “I’m okay, really.”

He studies her for a moment longer before leaning in to kiss the top of her forehead. “Drink your wine. I’ll make dinner tonight after I drop the kids off.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she protests.

“I want to.” He smooths a lock of hair behind her ear. “You just take care of yourself tonight.”

She smiles up at him and picks up her glass. Their relationship may have been born out of tragedy, but she’s lucky to have him, and she knows it.