A Grave Beneath the Floorboards novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Tooth

Macy's chart for Carly shows a bonded front tooth the woman at the bar doesn't have, and Carly's employer says she resigned in March by email. Her landlord says Carly is still in the apartment and was there this morning.

I did not sleep on Friday night, and on Monday I went to work anyway.

At the office I pulled Carly's chart before my first patient came in.

She had been coming to me for cleanings for six years, and I knew her mouth better than my own.

The chart said what I remembered.

Tooth nine, upper left front, chipped in 2010, bonded in 2012, redone in 2019.

There was a bitewing x-ray attached, and a close-up photo she had let me take because she was proud of how well the repair had held.

I looked at it for a long time.

The edge of the tooth was slightly rounded, with a faint line where the bonding met the enamel.

On Friday night the woman across the table had a front tooth with no line at all.

I had counted every tooth in her smile, the way I count them for a living, and none of them had ever been touched.

"You look like you saw a ghost," the office manager said, leaning in my doorway with a coffee.

"I'm fine. Just checking a chart."

"Carly's? Is she coming in?"

"Not yet," I said. "She moved to Columbus."

That was what the woman had told me in March, in a text that came on the ninth.

I had been home from my sister's wedding for one day.

Landed a job in Columbus, moving this week, will call when I'm settled!!

I had read it standing in my kitchen with my suitcase still open on the floor.

I had been a little hurt that she didn't call.

I had told myself that was just how Carly did things when she was nervous.

I took out my phone and found the name of the design firm where Carly worked, and I called it on my lunch break in the stairwell.

The woman who answered put me on hold twice.

"Carly Keelan," she said at last. "Let me see. Oh, she resigned. That was in March."

"Do you know the date?"

"The sixth. She sent it by email, and her last paycheck went straight to her account."

On the sixth of March I had been in Tucson, standing in a bridesmaid's dress, watching my sister cry at her own reception.

The woman on the phone cleared her throat.

"Is everything all right?"

"Did she say anything about Columbus?" I asked. "A job offer?"

"No. Just that she had to leave quickly for personal reasons."

I thanked her and hung up.

The stairwell was cold, and I stood in it with my hand flat against the wall.

Carly had told me everything for sixteen years.

She had called me from the car crying when her father died, and she had called me in the middle of the night to complain about a bad haircut.

She would not have quit her job and left town without calling me from the driveway.

I went back and finished my afternoon, and my hands were steady on every patient.

That evening I drove to Pelham Road.

Carly had moved into a one-bedroom there in January, a brick building with a green awning and a laundromat on the corner.

I had helped her carry the couch up the stairs.

I parked across the street and looked up at the third floor.

The window was lit.

A woman's shadow crossed it, and then a man's.

I sat there with my fingers locked around the steering wheel.

Carly was supposed to be in Columbus.

Someone knocked on my passenger window, and I nearly hit the roof of the car.

An older man in a cardigan was standing on the sidewalk with a ring of keys in his hand.

I rolled the window down.

"Can I help you?" he asked. "You've been sitting here a while."

"I'm a friend of Carly Keelan's," I said. "I thought she moved."

"Carly?" He frowned. "Third floor? Nope. She's still here. Pays in money orders, never late."

"She's here?"

"I saw her this morning carrying groceries," the landlord said. "Why? Is something wrong?"

I looked up at the lit window again, and I didn't answer him.

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