wishing I had a bag I could shove them into. I’ve done something horribly, irrevocably wrong. Made some mysterious faux pas. Jake brushes against my legs, and I pat the top of his head, more to reassure myself than anything else.
“You should go,” Caden says as I’m already turning toward the door, ready to leave Windermere and never return. Maybe Paisley was right. This place is haunted. Not by the dead, but by the flinty secrets of the living.
I stumble down the porch steps and back to the gate, which Caden has mercifully left open as if he knew my stay inside the Windermere grounds would be brief. I turn the corner onto Linden Lane and sprint toward Clovelly Cottage, punching in the code at the end of the drive with trembling fingers. I mess it up the first time, then make myself stop a moment, take a breath. Down the road, just past Claudia Cooper’s house, Tom’s Lexus is parked on the street. He’s standing outside, leaning against the SUV’s driver’s side door, and raking his fingers through his hair. I raise my hand to wave, but he doesn’t see me. He’s clearly involved in a very intense phone call that doesn’t seem close to ending anytime soon, so I get my shit together and punch in the gate code again.
Instead of going in through the front door, I duck around the side of the house and cross behind the pool, waving feebly to Mary and Paisley, who are carrying glasses and a stack of plates out to the table on the porch, then slip into my cottage. I jam the plate of cookies into the trash, then collapse on the bed, tears filling my eyes.
I swipe them away, angry at myself for letting Caden get to me. He was the rude one, stormy and harsh for no good reason. I didn’t do anything wrong. Did I?
The clock on my phone says there’s still an hour until dinner. I need to move, to get this funk out of my system. I won’t have time to shower again, but I don’t care. I slip out of my sundress and into my one athletic outfit and sneakers, then grab my phone and earbuds and start jogging back around the house, down the drive. When I turn onto Linden Lane, the street is empty where Tom’s Lexus was parked a few minutes ago. Instead of music, I pull up my podcasts and hit play on the second episode of Missing Zoe.
TRANSCRIPT OF MISSING ZOE EPISODE TWO: THE BOYFRIEND THEORY
[ELECTRONIC BACKGROUND MUSIC]
YOUNG FEMALE VOICE: They were “that couple,” you know?
YOUNG MALE VOICE: I thought something might have happened, but I didn’t want to ask. But then Zoe was with Caden at the gospel choir’s winter concert right before break, and everything seemed fine. That was the last time I saw her.
[END BACKGROUND MUSIC]
MARTINA GREEN: Hi, listeners, and welcome back. Today, I’ve got the second episode of Missing Zoe for you. But if you didn’t catch Episode One, you should probably start there to learn about Zoe Spanos, the young woman who vanished without a trace from her Herron Mills hometown last New Year’s Eve, and why we’re discussing her case here. Go ahead and listen; I’ll be here when you get back.
[BRIEF PAUSE]
Okay, everybody ready? Today is Tuesday, February eighteenth, and it’s been seven weeks to the day since Zoe disappeared. Zoe Spanos is still missing. And we’re missing Zoe.
[MISSING ZOE INSTRUMENTAL THEME]
MARTINA GREEN: If you know Zoe personally or if you’ve been following the media coverage of her case, you may have noticed that I left out something—or rather, someone—important in last week’s episode: Zoe’s long-time boyfriend, Caden Talbot.
And that’s because I’m going to devote the majority of this episode to Caden and his relationship with Zoe. If you follow true crime media at all—or read murder mysteries or missing girl stories or watch Law & Order or CSI—you know that the husband or boyfriend is the first person the police bring in when a woman goes missing or is the victim of a violent crime.
In July 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report that showed over half of women killed in the United States are victims of intimate partner violence. I spoke with Judith Corrado Smith, assistant director for Communication at the CDC, over the phone from her Atlanta, Georgia, office. Here’s what she had to say:
JUDITH CORRADO SMITH: Our study looked at 10,018 murders of women