The following Saturday, Sam went with Art and Rachel Pohly to Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House. When Rachel had invited him, she said they had an extra ticket, but since he didn’t sit next to them — they were season ticket holders — he suspected they’d bought the ticket to get him out of the house. After the matinee, they went to a Thai restaurant behind Symphony Hall.

“I know it’s early to be eating out,” Rachel said, “but I’m not a night person. This way we’ll be back in Marblehead by seven-thirty and I can stretch out in bed and read until nine.”

“Fine by me,” Sam said. “I’m a morning person, too. Aches and pains wake me up.”

“From the operation?” Rachel asked.

“No. I’m pretty much recovered from that. Just age,” he laughed.

They passed through the bar area and into the dining room, softly lit and decorated with bamboo and paintings of mountains and rickety houses sitting on stilts. The hostess, a slim Thai woman with entrancing eyes and wearing a slit skirt, seated them. She asked if they would like something from the bar.

“You driving?” Art asked Rachel.

“Yes. Feel free.”

“In that case I’ll have a Manhattan. Sam?

“Scotch on the rocks,” he answered, directing his gaze to the captivating eyes of the hostess. “Johnny Walker if you have it.”

“Red or Black?” she asked.

“Red’s fine,” he said, his eyes lingering. It had been a long time since he’d been out.

Rachel ordered an ice tea, then turned to Sam. “We’ve been looking for a chance to get together with you for dinner, but I’m just not up to having people over to the house.” She was Sam’s age, but her lean, finely etched face was that of a younger woman. Her eyes were the softest blue Sam had ever seen.

He spoke to her. “Art tells me you’re working on a new book. What is this, your fifth?”

“It’s finished,” she said proudly. “I sent it off to the publisher last week.”

“Congratulations. That puts you three books ahead of me.”

“I think cook books are a little different from the fiction you do. It’s eighty percent research, and twenty percent creative writing. Once the research is done, the writing goes quickly.”

“What’s the new one about?”

“A hundred ways to cook New England seafood on the grill or in the pot. It’s call, Seafood By The Sea. Art did the illustrations.”

“You didn’t tell me you were doing that,” he said to Art. “And here I’ve been telling you to give up insurance and just paint.”

Art laughed. “I don’t tell you everything.”

A waiter arrived with the drinks and Sam proposed a toast to Rachel’s success.

They all took a sip, and Rachel continued, “I’m concerned about my next book. Sales haven’t been all that great on the previous two and the publisher wants me to, in his words, jazz up the next one. For a joke I suggested to my editor that we call it Food Fun As Foreplay. She loved it and passed the joke along to her marketing department. Well, they thought I was serious. For the jacket cover, one of them asked if I could find a picture of myself at age twenty-five.”

Sam smiled and shook his head. “There you go. These youngsters in New York think you lose your sexiness if you’re over fifty.” They laughed in agreement. “Well, I’ve got one for you, and I’m not joking,” he said. “The sales on my two books have been respectable, but that’s about all. My publisher wants me to add more romance and change my name from Sam to Samantha.”

Art smirked, “I can hardly wait to see what they do to your jacket picture.” They laughed and Sam realized how glad he was to be with them.

The waiter returned and asked for their dinner orders. They studied the menu one more time and give him their choices. When he left, Rachel asked, “How did you like the play?”

Art spoke first. “It was okay as a period piece. Today a woman wouldn’t put up with having her husband call her ‘my little squirrel’ or ‘my sweet little lark’.”

“Now I found it was very contemporary,” Rachel said. “I think Ibsen was saying we assign roles to our husbands or wives so we don’t have to know them as they really are. People still do.”

“I was thinking that during the play,” Sam said, “at least the part about assigning roles. When Sarah and I got married — you know she was twelve years younger than I — her role was ‘dependent child-bride’. I loved it. I was the one with the experience and know-how. I made the decisions. But it wasn’t to avoid really knowing her. I knew her well enough and loved her child-like innocence.”

Rachel looked at Sam with a doubting smile. “And how long did that last?”

“Which? Her innocence or my knowing her?”

“Both, I think.”

Sam felt she’d cornered him, so he answered laughingly. “Well, by the time she became a top manager in her company, she’d pretty well lost her child-like innocence.”

Art fished the cherry out of his Manhattan, popped it into his mouth and came to his friend’s defense. “You and Sarah seemed to have worked it out. You were married for, what? Thirty some years.”

“Thirty-four,” Sam answered.

“A lot of people never sort it out. They get divorced and run away to find themselves, like Nora in the play.”

Rachel mused. “And that’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes you get so enmeshed in a relationship you can’t see the forest for the trees. Nora did what she had to.”

“Leaving her kids?” Art declared. “That’s downright selfish.”

Sam agreed. “I can’t imagine a woman doing that.”

Rachel looked first at Art, then at Sam, then back at her husband. She took a deep breath and exhaled. “I don’t think I’ve ever told even you Art, but . .” Art cleared his throat and stared at her as if she were about to reveal a family secret. “No, this is all right.” She tried to reassure him with a smile, but he remained skeptical. “Ten years ago, I was in New York for a meeting with my publisher after they accepted the manuscript for my first book. At the end of the meeting he gave me an advance check for five thousand dollars. I looked at it, the most money I’d ever held in my hand and I’d earned it all myself. Then he said, jokingly, ‘If you’re worried about it being good, you can cash it in our bank across the street.’ And I said, ‘I believe I will’. I went across the street and cashed it.” Art looked critically at his wife. “I know it was foolish to walk around New York with that much money in my purse, but it felt good. I went back to my hotel room and sat in front of the window. I was high up, maybe thirty stories, and I could see New York spread out before me. It was like I was seeing the world for the first time. I took out the money and held it in my hand. Five thousand dollars. It felt like . . like freedom.” She looked at her husband and went on. “What would it be like, I asked myself, if I never went back?”

“Rachel!” Art said, shocked.

“I know, but listen. The kids didn’t really need me anymore even though they kept coming back with their problems. I know this sounds heartless, but I was tired of them. And I was tired of constantly adjusting my wants to other people’s needs.” Her husband frowned. “What would it be like, I wondered, if I were really free of a life-time of accumulated responsibilities, free to walk away and never come back? God! It was exhilarating.”

“But you did come back,” Art said, reassuring himself.

“Of course. I’m not stupid. I would’ve gone through five thousand dollars in two weeks.”

Rachel smiled and Sam laughed. Art forced a smile. He finished his Manhattan and looked around for the waiter. When he caught his eye he made a circling motions indicating another round of drinks.

Rachel leaned back in her chair and said, “It was great while it lasted.”

“I take it you’re not sorry you came back,” Sam said.

“No, and I’m not sorry I experienced that moment, either.”

Art was still uncomfortable, and looked at Sam. Sam acknowledged him with a shrug, but he was already involved with his own thoughts. The play and Rachel’s story made him wonder if Sarah had so longed for freedom that she left him and the kids. Maybe the vision he’d seen in the rain and on the Fourth was the real, live Sarah, looking at him, thinking about returning. But why would she have run away in the first place? he thought, frowning unconsciously.

The waiter returned with the second round and Sam took a hefty slug. Rachel noticed his agitation. “You okay, Sam?”

“I’m okay.” But he wasn’t. To divert the conversation away from him and Sarah, Sam decided to tell them about Russ and Teresa. “You mentioned your grown kids coming to you with problems. My son and his wife had a fight and she’s moved out. Now he wants me to intercede for him, and she wants to set up her computer on my dining room table so she can work at my house.”

Art laughed. “Kids are like the young gull I saw at the beach the other day. It was a brownish colored and as big as its mother. Instead of looking for its own food it followed her around screaming at her to feed him. She’d fly away and he’d fly after her. She couldn’t get rid of him.”

Sam nodded. “Exactly.”

“You understand then what I mean,” Rachel said, “about wanting to get away.” Sam wrinkled his brow as he thought of being on his own. “If you could,” Rachel continued, cocking her head to one side, “where would you go?”

“Where would I go?” What a question, Sam thought. But it was more that he could comprehend. “Why would I want to go anywhere? I’ve got a nice house not far from the ocean. People come from all over the world to visit Marblehead, and I already live there.”

“But you’re alone now. The kids are grown and you don’t have to adjust your wishes to someone else.”

She means Sarah, Sam said to himself. For a moment he thought about the schooner trip to the Caribbean that Sarah wouldn’t take. He already knew that wasn’t the kind of escape he wanted. Then, to his surprise, a boyhood dream long buried in his brain popped into his mind.

His eyes lit up and he said without further thought, “I think I’d go to western Mass near Easthampton where I grew up. Mom taught English in the local high school and Dad worked for the WPA as a time keeper. It was during the Depression and he was lucky to have the job. Sometimes he’d take me with him when he visited job sites. The WPA was building bridges and roads through the Hampshire hills and the Berkshires. One night Dad’s old ford broke down and we had to spend the night in a CCC camp. They had tents on wooden platforms. Dad and I got dinner in the mess tent then went down to the river that flowed by the camp. I remember it was fall and the setting sun shining on the tree-covered hills turned them to gold and orange.” Sam stopped for a moment, letting his mind’s eye relish the scene. Then he looked at Rachel and said, “If I could, that’s where I’d go.”

That night Sam couldn’t get to sleep. He tried to pretend it was the “Dancing Shrimp in Hot Curry Pool” that he’d had at the restaurant, but he knew it was Ibsen’s play and Rachel’s story. He hadn’t told Rachel about the mysterious woman he’d seen, but now she was there looking at him every time he closed his eyes. He saw her across the street at the parade and through the smoky haze at the fireworks. “Are you Sarah?” he called to the chimera. She stared at him silently.

“Enough,” he said and got up. In the kitchen he opened a beer and took it to the deck. Stars filled the moonless sky. He took a swig and leaned back in his chair. “Okay, Sam,” he said aloud, “let’s look at this thing rationally before it drives you nuts.”

Where do I start? he wondered. If she’d run off somewhere she would need money or credit cards. “Credit cards!” he repeated aloud. The words hit him like a slap, and grabbing his beer he hurried to the study. He pulled out their tax files from two years ago and went through the credit card statements for the period right after she disappeared. Even as he did it, he felt like he was snooping on his wife. He examined the statements for the three months following her disappearance. There were no charges he hadn’t made himself. He put the files away, turned off the light and went back to the deck.

A mocking bird was filling the night air with its repertoire of songs. Each succeeding set of tunes was a variation on the one preceding it. Sam listened and tried to let his mind go blank.

The credit card search had been fruitless as he figured it would be, but he had to do it to clear his mind. It was time to go back to bed. As he drained the bottle and started to get up, he found himself thinking, If the woman I saw was Sarah, she would have known where to stand for the parade and where to go for the fireworks. We went to the same spot every year. If that woman wasn’t Sarah it would have been a thousand to one chance of seeing her twice in the same day.

“Damn!” he said and shook his head hard. “I’m obsessing.”

If she truly was Sarah, why didn’t she just call me up or come to the house?” He slapped at a mosquito. “Probably because there never was a woman in the rain or at the parade or at the fireworks. Probably because I’m going nuts.”

Back in bed he closed his eyes, but his mind wouldn’t stop. “If she didn’t use credit cards, maybe she had money wired to her from her savings account. It was hers — money she’d inherited when her mother died.”

Or maybe she didn’t need her own money. Maybe she was with someone who paid her way. This possibility had always been in the corner of Sam’s mind, but the humiliation of considering it had been more than he could bare.

Monday morning Sam went to the bank where Sarah had kept her savings account.

“How are you Sam?” Barry Godwin, the bank president, said when Sam was shown into his office. “It’s been a long time.” A few years before they had been regular golfing partners.

“It has.” They talked generally for a minute or two, then Sam asked, “Remember the savings account that Sarah had here after her mother died?”

“Yes,” he said nodding.

“That was her own account and I never asked about it. She had it in her name and used it for gifts for herself and the family. I wonder, now that she’s gone, if you could tell me what the average balance of that account was?”

“As an old friend I’d like to be able to, but first you’d have to show me something that proves she’s legally dead and you’re the beneficiary. These accounts are confidential.”

“I was afraid you’d say that. There’s nothing specific to prove that she died.” He thought for a moment, then asked, “Could you just look up her account and without showing it to me, tell if any withdrawals have been made within the last two years?”

“No I can’t,” but as he spoke he rotated his swivel chair to the computer next to his desk and began pulling up old accounts. “Hmm,” he said as he examined a page in the computer. “Sarah Langley doesn’t have an account with us anymore.”

“What happened to it?”

“It was closed out in March, two years ago. All the money was withdrawn.” He glanced over at Sam who was visibly shaken. “I take it this comes as a surprise.”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “That’s about three months before she disappeared. I don’t suppose you can tell me how much was withdrawn?”

“No,” he said, giving him a clandestine smile, “I’m not allowed to tell you it was more than a hundred thousand dollars.”

“My God! That much? Was it a transfer to another bank?”

“There’s no record of a transfer. She just withdrew it.”

“Then there’s a lot of money out there somewhere and nobody knows where.”

“I guess so, unless she spent it.”

Chapter Seven