“Don’t worry about delicate,” I tell him. “Just give me the facts.”

“We had an affair,” he says quietly, reexamining the rug.

I nod and wait for him to continue.

“It went on for about a year. And then my wife found out.”

“How?”

He shakes his head and sighs. “She and Abby went to San Francisco to spend a week with my in-laws. Michelle stayed with me in Boston for part of that time.”

“In Boston?” When they’re not in Washington, D.C., or Chatham, the Kendricks live on a frequently photographed hillside estate in Concord. I didn’t know they had a place in Boston as well.

“I keep an apartment there,” he says. “I have for years. I’m in the city a lot for political events and fund-raisers. Sometimes I’m just too damned tired to drive home afterward.”

That makes sense. But taking Michelle Forrester there sure as hell didn’t. I raise my eyebrows at him.

“I know,” he says. “It was stupid. But remember, we couldn’t go to a hotel. Or even a restaurant.”

He’s right, of course. They would have been on the front page of every rag in the nation if they had.

“In any event,” he says, “Honey had a tiff with her mother, cut the visit short by a couple of days. She and Abby flew into Logan late one night and decided to stay at the apartment, drive out to Concord in the morning.” He looks up at me and shakes his head, then closes his eyes. “It was ugly,” he mutters.

“How long ago?”

He leans back against the couch, stretches his long legs, and faces me. “Four months. Just before Abby went back to school.”

And just as rumors of his potential bid for the Democratic nomination were reaching a crescendo. I keep that thought to myself. “What happened?” I ask.

He half laughs. “What didn’t happen? Tears. Threats. Tantrums. And not just Honey. Abby too. I swear, sometimes those two seem more like sisters than mother and daughter. There’s not a dinner plate left in the place.”

“But your wife didn’t leave you.”

“No,” he says. “I begged her not to. I swore I’d end it with Michelle. And I did. That day.”

“Okay.” I stand and cross the room, my back to him, then take the chair behind my desk. “You don’t need me to tell you this is going to come out, Senator. Law enforcement will analyze every detail of Michelle Forrester’s existence with a fine-tooth comb before this is over. Sooner or later, they’ll get to you.”

“Sooner,” he says.

“Pardon?”

It’s his turn to stand now. He walks toward the two upholstered wing chairs facing my desk, leans on the back of one, and stares down at his clasped hands. “Sooner,” he repeats. “They’ll get to me sooner, not later.”

“There’s more.”

He nods. “We were together Thursday night,” he says, “the night before she disappeared.”

Sometimes I think no client can say anything to surprise me anymore. Other times, I know better.

“It wasn’t planned,” he continues, not looking at me. “She stopped by the Old Harbor Road house after she finished at Four Cs.”

“Four Cs” is local parlance for Cape Cod Community College—the last place Michelle Forrester was seen by anyone who’s come forward. Anyone other than the Senator, I realize now.

“Hold it.” I raise my hands to stop him. “She was in Hyannis. She was due in Stamford, Connecticut, the next morning. Are you telling me she drove a half hour in the wrong direction for an impromptu visit?”

He nods again, a faint smile on his face. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. She knew Honey and Abby weren’t coming to the Cape until the next day, knew I’d be at the house alone. She showed up at about seven. She was quite pleased with the way the press conference had gone. I was too; I’d just watched parts of it on the news. Michelle wanted to talk about it. I fixed her a drink.”

He shrugs, as if the rest was inevitable.

“What time did she leave?”

“Before six,” he says, “the next morning.”

“In the dark.”

“That’s right.” He meets my gaze now. “We have a neighbor—in the bungalow behind our place. She’s a year-rounder.”

Let’s hope she’s a blind year-rounder.

“Michelle and I had spent time at the Chatham house before,” he says. “She always parked in the garage, left before daybreak, kept her headlights off until she reached the main road.”

“Give me a minute,” I tell him. I plant my elbows on the desk and knead my temples. I wish I had eaten the damned cranberry muffin at the Piccadilly Deli a few hours ago. My head aches.

Senator Kendrick straightens, walks around the chair he’s been leaning on, and drops into it. “I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I know I should have told you sooner. But I kept thinking we’d hear from Michelle.”

His eyes meet mine when I look up and the emotion in them is genuine. He’s beyond worried; he’s terrified. “I just didn’t think anything bad had happened to her,” he says. “But now I’m afraid I was wrong.”

Chapter 13

The neighbor isn’t blind, as it turns out. She’s deaf. Helene Wilson greeted me at her kitchen door with a broad smile, a notepad and a pen. When I started to explain my uninvited appearance on her doorstep, she shook her head at me. “I’m deaf,” she said, handing the pen and paper to me. “You’ll have to use this.”

I wrote my name, then a short message explaining my role as her neighbor’s attorney. She invited me inside at once, and the clarity of her speech took me by surprise. It gave no hint that her world is silent.

“My deafness,” she says now, as if reading my mind, “is relatively new. Until a few years ago, my hearing was perfect.”

What happened? I write on the notepad.

She takes my parka and scarf, hangs them on a hook to the side of the door, and shrugs. “I’m what’s known as a late deafened adult,” she says. “There are more of us around than most people realize.”

This is news to me. Again, she seems to read my mind.

“There are so many of us, in fact, that the Association of Late Deafened Adults has fifteen chapters throughout the United States. Our most famous member is King Jordan, the president of Gallaudet University. But all the members are like me: folks born into the hearing world, enjoying the pleasures sound brings to life—music, laughter, rainfall—and then it all starts to fade. The process gains momentum until—poof!—one day sound is gone. Completely.”

Look out, King Jordan. Having known her all of three minutes, I’m willing to bet Helene Wilson will be the association’s most famous member before long. She delivers her history without a shred of self-pity, with an “ain’t that the darnedest thing you ever heard” expression on her face. A fifty-something, blue-eyed blonde who’s probably five feet on her tiptoes, she’s got hot ticket written all over her. She leads the way through a galley kitchen and into a softly lit living room, then directs me to the sofa with a sweep of her hand.

Her place is compact—smaller than my Windmill Lane cottage, even—but it’s huge on charm. I’ve noticed this bungalow from the outside many times, even before I got the first worried phone calls from the Senator next door. It has access to all the same outdoor amenities of the Kendrick estate—the drop-dead views, the stilt-legged shorebirds, the salt-laden winds—all with a fraction of the upkeep. My kind of real estate.

The living room is richly decorated in a colorful Southwestern motif, warmed by a crackling fire. A pair of glasses sits on top of an open hardback on the coffee table, a half-filled goblet of red wine next to it. “Can I get you anything?” Helene gestures toward a wet bar at the other end of the room. “A cocktail, maybe?”