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

“Oh, please, don’t play with words!”

Gradually, the guests gathered on the lawn to observe the scene. Among them was Mark, sporting his best hangdog look.

“It’s my fault,” he said. “I should have talked to Betsy first. We ought to cancel.”

“We’re not canceling anything, Mark!” Betsy’s mother said. “You don’t have to justify yourself to my daughter!”

Betsy heard someone murmur: “Poor Mark, being humiliated like this when he was kind enough to invite us.”

Betsy felt all eyes on her, heavy with disapproval. She didn’t want to give Mark a reason to unite her own family against her. She got out of the car and joined the party, which was taking place in the rear part of the garden, by the swimming pool.

Mark and Betsy’s father, wearing identical aprons, were bustling around the barbecue. Everyone was in ecstasy over Mark’s new house and the quality of his hamburgers. Betsy grabbed a bottle of white wine and sat down in a corner, resolved to remain polite and not cause a scandal.

*

A few dozen miles away, in Manhattan, in the study of his apartment on Central Park West, Meta Ostrovski was looking sadly through the window. He had thought at first that his dismissal from the New York Literary Review was merely a passing whim and that Bergdorf would call him back the next day to tell him how indispensable he was. But Bergdorf had not called back. Ostrovski had gone to the offices and discovered that his desk had been emptied, his books piled up in cardboard boxes, ready, presumably, to be shipped to his home.

What was to become of him?

His cleaning woman came into the room, bringing him a cup of tea.

“I’ll be off now, Mr Ostrovski,” she said softly. “I’m going to my son’s for the Fourth of July.”

“That’s fine, Erika,” Ostrovski said.

“Is there anything I can do for you before I go?”

“Would you be so kind as to take a cushion and stifle me with it?”

“No, sir, I can’t do that.”

Ostrovski sighed. “Then you may as well go.”

On the other side of the park, in their apartment on Fifth Avenue, Jerry and Cynthia Eden were getting ready to celebrate the Fourth of July with friends.

Carolina said she preferred to stay home because she had a migraine. They raised no objection. They preferred to know she was at home. When they left, she was in the living room, watching T.V. A few hours went by. Weary and alone in that vast apartment, she eventually rolled a joint, took a bottle of vodka from her father’s bar—she knew where he hid the key—and sat down under the fan in the kitchen to drink and smoke. Once she had finished her joint, slightly high and a little drunk, she went to her room. She took out her high school yearbook, found the page she was looking for, and went back into the kitchen. She rolled another joint, drank some more, and ran her fingertip over one of the photographs. Tara Scalini.

She spoke the name out loud. Tara. She started laughing, but then tears ran from her eyes and she burst into uncontrollable sobs. She slid to the ground, weeping in silence. She stayed like that until her cell phone rang. It was Leyla.

“Hi, Leyl,” Carolina said, picking up.

“You sound like shit, Carolina. Have you been crying?”

“Yes.”

She was young and beautiful, still not much more than a child, lying on the floor, her hair scattered like a mane around her thin face.

“Want to join me?” Leyla said.

“I promised my parents I’d stay home. But it’d be great if you could come over. I don’t want to be alone.”

“I’ll get a cab and be right there.”

Carolina hung up and took from her pocket a plastic sachet containing a clear powder. Ketamine. She poured some into the bottom of the glass, diluted it with vodka, and swallowed it in one go.

It was not until the following morning, a Saturday, that Eden discovered the vodka bottle, three-quarters empty. He then searched through the garbage can in the kitchen and found the butts of two joints. He was ready to tip his daughter from her bed, but Cynthia begged him to wait until she got up.

As soon as Carolina emerged from her room, he demanded an explanation.

“You betrayed our trust again!” he cried, brandishing the bottle and the butts.

“Oh, don’t be so hung up!” Carolina said. “It’s like you were never young.”

She went straight to her room and got back into bed. Her parents came into the room after her.

“Do you realize you got through almost a whole bottle of vodka and smoked marijuana in our house?” her father said, furious.

“Why are you destroying yourself like this?” Cynthia said, trying hard not to offend her.

“What do you care?” Carolina said. “You’ll be pleased when I’m not here!”

“Carolina!” her mother protested. “How can you say such things?”

“There were two glasses in the sink,” Eden said. “Who was here? Do you just invite people like that?”

“I invite friends, what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that you’re consuming marijuana!”

“Relax, it was just a joint.”

“You think I’m some kind of idiot? I know the crap you take! Who was with you? That little bitch Neila?”

“It’s Leyla, Daddy, not Neila! And she’s not a bitch! Stop thinking you’re superior to everybody just because you have money!”

“It’s my money that keeps you going!” Eden shouted at her

“Sweetheart,” Cynthia said, in an attempt to calm things down, “your father and I are worried. We think you should go and have your addiction problem treated.”

“I’m already seeing Dr Lern.”

“We were thinking of somewhere more specialized.”

“A detox clinic? I’m not going back to a place like that! Get out of my room!”

She grabbed a fluffy toy that jarred with the rest of the room and threw it in the direction of the door.

“You’ll do what we say,” Eden said.

“I won’t go, do you hear me? I won’t go! I hate you, both of you!”

She got up from her bed and slammed the door on