Why are you assuming there is a connection? Cops are just grabbing at straws, IMHO.

posted by: carolinekinney at 11:15 a.m.

That guy is the worst!!! Tried to charge me 3K just to do my taxes. What a scam artist.

posted by: alanovid at 2:36 p.m.

bettyb00p is right. Everything happens online nowadays. Was Madeline on Facebook?

posted by: runner88 at 3:45 p.m.

No. I checked.

posted by: carolinekinney at 3:57 p.m.

Still. These sickos always find a way.

posted by: bettyb00p at 4:02 p.m.

See additional 107 comments

JULY 23

Dara

8:30 p.m.

Until I turned fourteen, my parents took Nick and me to Sergei’s every other week. Sergei’s is wedged between a dentist’s office and a children’s shoe store that I have never known a single person to shop at. There is no actual Sergei; the owner’s name is Steve, and the closest he ever got to Italy was the time he lived for two years in an Italian neighborhood in Queens, New York. The garlic is from a jar and the Parmesan cheese is the crumbly kind that comes in an airtight container, the kind you can keep in a pantry for years or through nuclear catastrophes. The tablecloths are paper, and each place setting comes with a different-colored crayon.

But the meatballs are fluffy and as big as softballs, and the pizza comes in thick slices, layered with melted cheese, and the baked ziti is always bubbly brown and crusty at the corners, just how I like it. Besides, Sergei’s is ours. Even after Mom and Dad started making excuses to avoid each other, claiming late hours at work or developing colds or other obligations, Nick and I used to go together. For $12.95 we could get two Cokes and a large pizza and hit up the salad bar, too.

Il Sodi, the restaurant Cheryl has selected, has crisp white linen tablecloths and fresh flowers arranged in the center of every table. The floors are polished wood and so slick even standing up to go to the bathroom makes me nervous. Waiters swan between tables, cranking out fresh pepper and grating fine flakes of cheese onto pasta portions so small they look accidental. Everyone has the pushed and prodded and tugged look that rich people have, like they’re just giant pieces of taffy, ready to be molded. Cheryl lives in Egremont, just next to Main Heights, in the house she inherited after her last husband got flattened by an unexpected heart attack the day before his fiftieth birthday.

I’ve heard the story before, but for some reason she feels the need to tell it to me again, as if she’s expecting my sympathy—the phone call from the hospital, her frantic rush to his bedside, regrets about all the things she wishes she got the chance to say—while Dad sits and fiddles with a sweating glass of whiskey on the rocks. I’m not sure when he started drinking. He never used to have more than a beer or two at barbecues; he always used to say alcohol was how boring people had fun.

“And of course it was just devastating for Avery and Josh.” Josh is Cheryl’s eighteen-year-old son. He goes to Duke, a fact she has found ingenious ways to work into almost any conversation. I met him once, at a meet-and-greet dinner for the new “family” in March, and I swear he spent the whole dinner staring at my tits. Avery is fifteen, about as much fun as a Band-Aid, and just as clingy. “To be honest, even though we lost Robert five years ago, I don’t think we’ll ever be done grieving. You have to give yourself time.” I shoot my dad a look—does she think this is good dinner-party conversation?—but he’s studiously avoiding my eyes and instead using his phone under the table. Despite the fact that this dinner was his idea—he wanted some “quality time” with me, to “check in,” which I guess is why he didn’t invite Nick—he’s hardly said a word to me since I sat down.

Cheryl keeps prattling on. “I wish you’d talk to Avery. Maybe we can have a girls’ day. I’ll treat you to the spa. Would you like that?”

I’d rather spend the day sticking needles under my nails, but of course at that precise moment Dad’s eyes tick to mine, both a warning and a command. I smile and make a noncommittal noise.

“I’d love that. And Avery would love that.” Three things about Cheryl: she loves anything having to do with “girl time,” “spa time,” or “sauvignon blanc.” She leans back while three waiters materialize and deposit identical plates of what look like bean sprouts in front of us. “Micro greens,” Cheryl clarifies, when she sees my face. She has insisted on doing the ordering. “With chervil and fresh chives. Go on, dig in.”

Digging in is the wrong expression. I’ve finished the plate of rabbit kibble in about two bites, and I can’t help but think of the all-you-can-eat salad bar at Sergei’s: the electric glowing cubes of cheddar cheese, the proud trays of iceberg and individual tubs of store-bought croutons and pickled green beans. Even the beets, which Nick and I both agree taste like an open grave.

I wonder where Nick is eating tonight.

“So how’s your summer going?” Cheryl says, once the plates have been cleared. “I hear you’re working at FanLand.”

I shoot Dad another look—Cheryl can’t even keep Nick and me straight. For Christ’s sake, there’s only two of us. It’s not like I sit around asking how Avery likes Duke. But once again, he has returned to his phone.

“Everything’s fine,” I say. No point in telling Cheryl the truth: that Nick and I have been completely avoiding each other, that I’ve been bored out of my mind, that Mom floats through the house like a balloon, lashed to the TV.

“Listen to this.” Dad speaks up suddenly. “‘The police have named Nicholas Sanderson, forty-three, an accountant with a home in the upscale beachfront community of Heron Bay—’”