Tell Me Everything

The winding back roads along the Maine coast are beautiful in almost every season. Though the people who live here don’t always think about this beauty consciously, “it is part of the landscape of their lives.” On one of these back roads, near Shirley Falls, a man named Matthew Beach lives with his 86-year-old mother Gloria Beach. One November day, two weeks after Lucy’s visit to Olive, Matthew returns home from the grocery store to find that his mother has vanished.

Matt calls the police right away. When the case makes the local newspapers, Bob calls his twin sister Susan Olson, who still lives in Shirley Falls. Susan remembers that Gloria was the cafeteria lunch-lady, and that all the kids at school called her “Bitch Ball” because of her unfriendly demeanor. In addition to Matt, Gloria had a son named Thomas and a very pretty daughter named Diana, who has spent her life working as a guidance counselor in Connecticut.

Susan thinks Matt killed Gloria (though she wouldn’t blame him for doing so, given how awful “Bitch Ball” could be). Then, the police discover that the day Gloria Beach went missing, someone using the name Ashley Munroe had rented a car in the nearby town of Saco—and never returned it. But Ashley has an alibi: she was having a baby when the car went missing.

Susan and Bob were in the same grade as Diana at school. Susan now recalls what Diana would do at recess: as the other girls listened in fear, Diana would tell horrible stories of men sexually abusing women. The stories were always detailed and believable, set on back roads and in quiet corners of the woods.

Now, Susan is telling these stories to her friend Gerry O’Hare, the retired former police chief of Shirley Falls. Gerry has a paunch and a bald head, but Susan likes having coffee with him twice a week. Together, Susan and Gerry talk about Gloria Beach’s death. Susan recalls that when they were younger, Diana used to take her friends “prisoner” on sleepovers, forbidding them from moving until she told them it was okay.

Gerry has come to rely on these morning coffees with Susan. The pair had dated in high school, but Gerry broke things off; now, he privately hopes their romance can begin again. Susan is still talking about the Beach case—how sick Matthew Beach looks, how clean the house is. “Anyways,” the narrator interjects, “as we have said, the Gloria Beach case had gone cold.”