Home > Goodnight Beautiful

Goodnight Beautiful
Author: 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.

She smiles as she takes it from him, hooks it under the bar, and returns to her book.

“What’ll it be?” the bartender asks. He’s got slicked-back hair and shockingly white teeth.

“Johnnie Walker Blue,” Sam says. “Neat.”

“A man with expensive taste,” the bartender says, as Sam pulls a credit card from his wallet. “My favorite kind.”

“And I’d like to buy this woman a drink. For inconveniencing her purse like that.”

She smiles tersely. “That’s nice of you. But my purse is fine.”

“No, I insist. What are you drinking?”

She hesitates, takes stock of him. “Okay, fine,” she says. “Gin martini. Five olives.”

“A martini? Would have pegged you more as a rosé drinker.”

“How gendered of you,” she says. “But you know what they say about martinis.”

He’s learned to observe people unobtrusively, a professional necessity that allows him to see that underneath the white tank top she’s wearing a pale pink bra with lace trim, that the skin on her shoulders glistens. “No, what do they say about martinis?” Sam asks her.

“‘The proper union of gin and vermouth is a great and sudden glory; it is one of the happiest marriages on earth and one of the shortest-lived.’” The bartender sets her drink in front of her. “Bernard DeVoto.”

Sam nods down at her book. “Is that who you’re reading?”

She flashes the cover, revealing an image of a woman in silhouette. “No, this is that thriller everyone’s talking about.”

“Any good?”

“Good enough. Another unreliable female narrator. I’m getting a little tired of the way women are being depicted in fiction right now, to be honest.”

“And how’s that?” Sam asks.

“Oh, you know,” she says. “That we’re prone to neurosis and/or hysteria and our judgment shouldn’t be trusted, thus legitimizing the hegemonic idea of masculinity and men’s dominant position in society and justifying the subordination of women.” She picks up her glass and returns to her book. “Anyway, thanks for the drink.”

Sam allows her to read one more page before leaning in. “Hey, smarty pants. You visiting for the weekend?”

“No,” she says, turning the page. “I live here.”

“You’re kidding. Chestnut Hill is a small town. I think I would have remembered seeing you.”

Hot Books
» House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1)
» A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire
» From Blood and Ash (Blood And Ash #1)
» A Million Kisses in Your Lifetime
» Deviant King (Royal Elite #1)
» Den of Vipers
» House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City #2)
» Sweet Temptation
» The Sweetest Oblivion (Made #1)
» Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels #6)
» Wreck & Ruin
» Steel Princess (Royal Elite #2)
» Twisted Hate (Twisted #3)
» The Play (Briar U Book 3)
» The War of Two Queens (Blood and Ash #4)