The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer: A gripping new thriller with a killer twist by Joël Dicker (ebook reader play store .txt) 📕

his hand and look at it for a long time. He would tell himself that maybe it was better not to throw everything away, that he should keep a few souvenirs, to recall all that happiness, and he would put the object down on the table in full sight to preserve it. Then he would start taking back out of the cardboard box everything he had put in it. You’re not going to throw this away, are you? he would ask himself. Or this? Oh, no, you’re not going to do without the cup you bought at MoMa that she drank her tea in!Jesse ended up taking everything out of the boxes. And the living room, which had briefly been swept clean of all these objects, took on the appearance of a museum devoted to Natasha. Sitting on the couch, his grandparents watched him, eyes overflowing with tears, murmuring, “That’s shit.”

*

By mid-December, Darla had emptied the whole of Little Russia. The neon sign had been taken down and put in a dumpster, all the furniture sold off to pay the last few months’ rent and allow the termination of the lease.

The removers took away the last chairs to deliver them to the restaurant that had bought them, while Darla watched, sitting on the sidewalk, in the cold. One of the removers came and brought her a cardboard box.

“We found this in a corner of the kitchen, we thought you might want to keep it.”

Darla examined the contents of the box. There were notes made by Natasha, ideas for menus, her recipes, all the souvenirs of what they had been planning. There was also a photograph of Jesse, Natasha, Derek, and her. She took the photograph in her hands and looked at it for a long time.

“I’ll keep the photograph,” she said to the remover. “Thanks. You can throw away the rest.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

The remover nodded and walked back to his van. Darla, devastated, burst into tears.

Everything had to be forgotten.

JESSE ROSENBERG

Friday, August 1, 2014

Six days after opening night

Had Meghan threatened to leave Samuel Padalin? Maybe Padalin hadn’t taken it well and had killed her, pocketing his wife’s life insurance in the process.

He was not at home when we arrived that morning. We decided to go to see him in his place of work. Advised of our arrival by the receptionist, he led us without a word to his office and waited until he had closed the door behind us before exploding.

“Are you crazy, coming here unannounced like this? Do you want me to lose my job?”

He seemed furious.

“Are you a man who loses his temper easily, Mr Padalin?” Betsy said.

“Why do you ask me that?”

“Because you used to beat your wife.”

Padalin was aghast. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t pretend to be surprised,” Betsy said.

“I’d like to know who told you.”

“That hardly matters.”

“Listen, about a month before she died, Meghan and I had a big argument, that’s true. I slapped her, and I shouldn’t have. I went off the rails. I have no excuse. But that was the only time.”

“What was the argument about?”

“I found out that Meghan had been cheating on me. I wanted to leave her.”

* * *

Monday, June 6, 1994

That morning, as Samuel Padalin was finishing his coffee and getting ready to leave for work, his wife joined him in her robe.

“Aren’t you going to work today?” he said.

“I have a fever, I don’t feel well. I just called Cody and told him I wouldn’t be coming in today.”

“Good idea,” Padalin said, gulping down the rest of his coffee. “Go back to bed.”

He put his cup in the sink, kissed his wife on the forehead, and set off for work.

He probably would never have known a thing if he hadn’t had to return home one hour later to pick up a file he had taken home to study during the weekend and had left on the living room table.

As he got to the street, he saw Meghan coming out of the house. She was wearing a beautiful summer dress and elegant sandals. She was smiling and seemed in a good mood, nothing like the woman he had said goodbye to an hour earlier. He stopped and watched her as she got in her car. She hadn’t seen him. He decided to follow her.

Meghan drove to Bridgehampton, unaware that her husband was a few cars behind her. After driving along the main street of the town, she turned onto the road to Sag Harbor, then, after another two hundred yards, turned into the sumptuous property of the Northern Rose Hotel. It was a highly regarded but discreet little hotel, much appreciated by celebrities from New York City. When she got to the majestic building with its colonnades, she entrusted her vehicle to the valet and went into the hotel. Samuel did the same, giving his wife a head start in order not to be seen. Once in the building, he couldn’t find her either in the bar or in the restaurant. She had gone directly upstairs. Obviously to join someone in a room.

That day, Padalin did not go back to work. He waited for his wife in the hotel parking lot for hours. When she did not reappear, he returned home and hurried to look at her diaries. He discovered to his horror that she had been meeting with this guy at the Northern Rose Hotel for several months. Who was he? She said she had met him at the New Year’s gala. They had been there together, so he must have seen him. It might even be someone he knew. He felt like throwing up. He went back to the car and drove for a long time, not knowing what he should do.

By the time he got back home, Meghan had returned. He found her in bed, in her nightdress, pretending to be ill.

“My poor darling,” he said, trying very hard to keep his voice steady, “aren’t you feeling any better?”

“No,” she said in a thin voice, “I