“Where?” I asked.
“In that boat.” George held the binoculars steady as he pointed to our right. I turned and could see several boats in the area, but from that distance, I never would have been able to tell who was in them. “I think that’s him for sure,” George said, “but I got a news flash. That ain’t your sister he’s with.”
I forgot about my drifting boat for a moment. “Let me see!” I reached for the binoculars and he pulled them over his head and handed them to me. I held them to my eyes. “Where?” I said, trying to adjust the focus from George’s needs to mine.
“Well, I can’t tell now,” George complained. “Them boats is specks without them binoculars.”
“We’re gonna float clear out to the ocean, you don’t get this boat runnin’,” Wanda said.
She was right. I slipped the binoculars’ strap over my head and pulled once more on the cord. The motor sputtered again, then went silent.
“What’s wrong with it?” Wanda asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. Sometimes I did have to yank two or three times to get it going, but I’d never had this much trouble. “Let me,” George said. We shifted positions in the boat so that he was near the motor. He held on to the cord and pulled it back so fast his arm was a blur. Instantly the motor came to life and I could finally breathe. As we sailed toward the canal, though, my mind returned to the boat George had seen through the binoculars.
“Are you sure it was Ned?” I asked.
“I think it was that white boy you showed me the other day,” he said. “Your sister’s boyfriend.”
I’d pointed Ned out to George and Wanda through the binoculars.
“And who was he with?” I asked. “What did she look like?”
“I couldn’t see her that good,” he said, “but good enough I could tell she’s easy on the eyes. A blondie with a long pigtail.”
“Pam Durant?” I asked, my voice high. “Was the ponytail on the
side
of her head? Were there other people with them?”
“Girl, don’t get your drawers all tight.” George laughed. “Maybe they was just taking a boat ride as friends. Like we doing.”
We headed back to the canal, the current nearly slack now, much to my relief, making the bridges far less difficult to negotiate. I pulled into the dock where their cousins were fishing, and Salena and one of the men came over to look down into the boat, marveling at our catch. I moved a few fish from my bucket to theirs. George looked at me quizzically, then seemed to get it.
“Tell your folks it was just a good fishin’ day on the canal,” he said, slipping the largest black fish back into my own bucket.
I crossed the canal and docked my boat. Climbing up the ladder with the bucket of fish, I thought that as much as I craved a good adventure, I really couldn’t handle a day like this one more than once a month or so. There’d been too many close calls. My guardian angel must have been looking out for me.
I was relieved to find that no one was home yet. I got the scaler and a knife from the kitchen and went out to the cleaning table in the side yard to work on the fish. It took me a long time, and when I was finished, I looked at the pile of filets and knew there was no way I could explain them to my mother. I
left six of them on the cleaning table, then put the rest onto the cutting board along with their heads and tails and guts, and I carried them to the canal and tossed them into the water.
After dinner, I went out in the yard with the little baby doll I’d found in the river. I sat at the corner of the house and smoothed a couple of inches of sand from the buried bread box. I was just starting to lift the top of the box when it suddenly flew up into the air. I shrieked, jumping quickly to my feet. Then I saw what had raised the lid: a large, coiled toy caterpillar had been pushed into the box, ready to spring out at me like a jackin-the-box. I heard laughter, and turned to see Ned Chapman standing in his yard, hands on his hips, a look of amusement on his face.
“Did you put this here?” I yelled, getting to my feet, marching in his direction.
He held his hands up in the air. “Don’t look at me,” he said. He was trying not to smile.
I knew he’d done it, and I knew Isabel must have told him about the box. How else could he know?
“Don’t you
ever
touch my things again!” I said, a fury in my voice that I was not truly feeling. I was secretly thrilled by his attention. I thought of asking him if he’d been out on his boat with Pam Durant, but I suddenly realized he couldn’t possibly have been. He would have been lifeguarding at the Baby Beach. George had probably made the whole thing up just to tease me.
It was still light out, so I sat on the bulkhead with a book. I was there about fifteen minutes when Isabel came out into the yard. She walked beyond the fence and sat down on the bulkhead a few feet away from me. She had the giraffe towel knot
ted around her waist and she was staring at me, no expression on her face whatsoever.
“What?” I asked.
“I know what you’re doing,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I was doing so many things I wasn’t supposed to be doing that I didn’t know which one she was talking about.
“I mean, I know you’ve been going out in the boat at night,” she said.
I tried to put an expression of confused disbelief on my face. “What are you talking about?” I asked.
She leaned down to scratch her calf. “I happened to go outside the other night and I noticed the boat was gone,” she said. “I knew Grandpop hadn’t taken it because I could hear him snoring practically from the yard. I went upstairs and saw your bed was empty.”
I dropped my attention to my book again, as if I could possibly read after hearing what she’d said. “So?” I asked.
“Where are you going in the middle of the night?”
“None of your business.” She’d used that line on me so often it felt good to be able to say it back to her.
“Look, Julie,” she said. “You’re only twelve. I’m afraid you’re going to get in big trouble.”
“I can take care of myself,” I said.
“Either you tell me what you’re up to,” Isabel used her bossiest tone, “or I’m going to have to tell Mom what you’re doing.”
I looked at her sharply. “Go ahead and tell her,” I said. “And then I’ll tell her
where you
go in the middle of the night.”
She didn’t budge from her seat on the bulkhead, but I could see her face blanch beneath her tan.
“How would you know where I go?” she asked, some of the bluster gone from her voice.
“I have my ways,” I said. “Just…you just keep what you know about me to yourself, and I’ll keep what I know about you to myself.” I had the upper hand with her for the first time in my life. It was an extraordinary feeling of power. I could tell she was struggling with a response, and that pleased me. “By the way,” I added, “was Ned at the beach today?”
She looked confused. “What does that matter?”
“Just, was he?”
“No,” she said. “He had errands to run.”
My heart twisted a bit in my chest. I’d thought it would give me pleasure to imagine Ned cheating on her, but pleasure was not what I was feeling. I was about to ask her if Pam had been at the beach that morning, but she spoke first.
“I’m so in love with him, Jules,” she said. She looked out toward the water, a smile growing on her lips. “I know it’s hard for you to understand, but someday you will. It’s amazing to feel this way. To love someone so much and to know he loves you back.”
What could I say? That I was in love with Ned, too? That I understood how that half of the equation felt?
Suddenly she moved closer and put her arm around me. I stiffened, but it felt so soft and warm that my shoulders relaxed. I couldn’t remember the last time Isabel had touched me with affection. “Julie,” she said, and her voice was very quiet, so quiet that I had to look at her to truly hear her. Her face was very close to mine. Her eyes were like something edible, like chocolate pudding. I could imagine how Ned felt when he was this close to her. “Listen to me, Julie,” she began again. “I’m seventeen
years old. What I’m doing may not be right, but it’s my business and I’m old enough to take care of myself.You’re not. I’m worried about you. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
The surprising tenderness in her words, the love behind them, stung my eyes. “I’m okay,” I said, my voice small now.
“Tell me you won’t do it anymore.” She squeezed my shoulders. “Whatever it is you’re up to. Tell me.”
“I won’t,” I said, although I knew I was lying. My sister and I had both turned into liars this summer.
And we would both pay.
Julie
I
hadn’t intended to call Ethan after I got out of the interview. I was certain I’d cut into his work time the day before and didn’t want to take up any more of it, so my plan was to drive back to his house, leave him a thank-you note, and head home. But as I pulled away from the police department, still shaken from so many unexpected questions, the memories churned in my head and I felt lonely with the weight of them.
George. Ned. Isabel.
They were all I could think about, and I hadn’t said anything I’d wanted to say about them to the police. I’d screwed up the interview, letting my interrogators rattle me. I needed Ethan. I needed to talk. To vent. I swerved over to the side of Bridge Avenue, stepped on the brake and grabbed my cell phone. I had to dial three times before I managed to tap out the right number.
“Julie?” Ethan answered the phone. “How’d it go?”
I started to cry, unable to find my voice.
“Meet me at my house,” he said. “Are you okay to drive?”
“Yes,” I managed to say. I felt such relief at reaching him.
His truck was already in his driveway when I arrived at his house. I walked inside without knocking and he greeted me in the hallway, pulling me into a hug as he had the day before, but this one was not a surprise and it felt natural and welcome to me. I pressed my forehead into his shoulder, my hand against his back, clutching the fabric of his shirt.
“Shh,” he said, as if comforting a child in the middle of a nightmare. “It’s going to be okay. It’s all going to be okay.” He took a step away from me. “Do you want to sit outside or on the sunporch?”
I thought of the neighbors in my old bungalow, possibly sitting on my old screened porch, watching me fall apart in Ethan’s backyard. “Sunporch,” I said, already walking toward the back of his house.
I sat on the white wicker love seat facing the canal, and although there were other seating options available to him, Ethan sat down next to me. He’d been working outside; the skin of his arm was hot against mine and I could smell the scent of sun and soap on him. I was glad he was there with me. We were on different teams in the investigation, wanting and expecting different outcomes, yet I knew he would understand how I felt.
“So,” he said, “what got you so upset?”
“They questioned me as if I were a suspect,” I said.
We were sitting so close together that I couldn’t really look at him, but I felt him nodding.
“I was afraid of that from some of the questions they’d asked me about you,” he said. “I’m sure they don’t really suspect you, though. They just need to rule you out. They have to look at
everyone who was involved at the time. They asked me some tough questions, too.”
“I just never expected it,” I said. “I’d never thought about the case from the authorities’ perspective. I
do
look guilty. I had the motive. I knew where she’d be. I was there at the same time.” I shook my head. “I understand why they’d have to look at me that way. It’s just that it took me completely by surprise. And I got angry and said I had nothing to do with her murder, but of course…” My voice caught in my throat.
“Of course what?” Ethan asked.
“Of course I
did
have something to do with it.”
“Julie.” He took my hand and held it on his thigh. “You were only twelve. You were a child.”
People had said that to me before. Friends. Therapists. But Ethan had
been
there. He’d known me. He’d known the sort of person I was. The words meant more to me coming from him.
“Thinking about everything made me remember…
caring
things about Isabel,” I said. “We didn’t get along that summer, but I know deep down we cared about each other. I know I loved her.”
“Of course you did,” Ethan said. “Ned thought I was a jerk and treated me accordingly back then, but I still know he loved me. And,” he added, “I also know he loved Isabel. That’s why it doesn’t make sense that he’d kill her.”
I watched a sailboat make its graceful way toward the bridge. A child wearing a life preserver was on board with her two parents, and it looked like her father was trying to teach her to dance.
“I’ll tell you what I told the police,” I said, my thoughts returning to Ethan’s comment about Ned. “I told them that you can never really know another person.You don’t know what was really going on inside of Ned, Ethan. No one could.” Glen had pro
vided my unhappy introduction to that theory. “I thought I knew my ex-husband as well as I knew myself,” I said. “I thought he was so in love with me. I thought he was honest and honorable. But while I was thinking all those things, he was having an affair.”
“Oh.” Ethan rubbed the back of my hand with his thumb. “I know what that’s like,” he said. “So did Karen. My ex-wife.”
“Really?” I wondered how similar our experiences had been. “Did it go on a long time?”
“About a year.”
“Glen’s, too,” I said. “At least I think it was only a year, but like I said, I didn’t really know him. How did you find out?”
“She told me. She was in a play with the local community theater and she came home one night and told me she was in love with the director of the play and wanted a divorce.”
“Wow,” I said. I tried to imagine the scene. Which room of this house had they been in when she told him? Had he slept in the guest room that night? Or had she? Glen had slept on the sofa in the family room; our guest-room bed had been covered with boxes of my books. “Were you devastated?” I asked.
“Completely,” he said. “I’d never pictured myself getting a divorce. It wasn’t a word in my vocabulary. My parents were married nearly sixty years, and they were excellent role models on how to run a marriage. They had good communication and a lot of love. I thought my marriage was the same way, but I was wrong.”
“That’s what I mean,” I said. “You have this illusion of what someone is like.You assume that if the marriage is great for you, it’s great for them, and unless they speak up, you don’t have a clue.”
“Your husband didn’t speak up?”
I shook my head. “No, and guess how I found out?”
“How?”
“The woman called me. She said she knew Glen was struggling with how to tell me, so she decided to tell me herself.”
Ethan laughed. “Well, you know who wore the pants in
that
relationship,” he said.
“I thought it was a cruel hoax,” I said. “Maybe one of Glen’s co-workers was angry with him and trying to hurt him. But when Glen came home that evening and I told him about the call, he started to cry…and that was the beginning of the end.” I let out my breath in a long stream. “It was so incredibly painful to imagine him with someone else.”
“Oh, yeah,” Ethan said, and I knew he understood. “Did he end up marrying her?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “They broke up right after he and I separated.” I looked down at our hands where they rested together on his thigh. His skin was a ruddy color, his beautiful fingers smooth on top, rough on the bottom where they pressed against my skin. There were tiny, nearly microscopic, lines everywhere on the back of my own olive-toned hand. My hands were turning into my mother’s. “It was partly my fault,” I said. “The end of our marriage. I was a workaholic.”
“Are you still?”
I had to laugh. “Well, I
was
, until this whole thing with Ned’s letter came up. I haven’t written a word since then. At least not a word worth publishing.”
“I try not to think in terms of fault,” Ethan said. “I know it sounds trite, but Karen and I just drifted apart. She got very involved in her theater work and it was new and exciting for her. She got more and more into it until she said she wanted to move to New York to have a better chance at acting.”
“Really! Is that where she is?”
“Uh-huh. She married her lover, but she’s not acting, ironically. She’s still teaching, just as she was here. I think she’s happy, though.”
“You don’t sound angry,” I marveled.
“I’m not. I’ve forgiven her. It wasn’t easy for her, either.”
Men handled the end of relationships better than women did, I thought. “I think I’ve forgiven Glen,” I said, not sure it was the truth. “But I still get angry with him for not letting me know he was unhappy. For being so passive. It’s hard to fix something if you don’t know it’s broken.” I thought of Shannon and the toll the divorce had taken on her. “Does Abby know about her mother?” I asked.
“That she left me for another guy?” he asked, and I nodded. “Yes. It was no secret. She was furious with her for a while, but they’ve worked it out.”
“Shannon doesn’t know,” I said. “I don’t want her to think badly of her father.”
“That’s wise of you,” he said.
I rested my head against the wicker back of the love seat, looking at the paneled ceiling of the porch. “My own relationship with her is going south fast, though,” I said.
“How come?”
“She says I’ve suffocated her and I probably have,” I said. “Sometimes I feel as though she hates me. When I came to your house the first time and Abby was leaving, she told you she loved you, and I realized I couldn’t remember the last time Shannon
said those words to me.”
“You tell her, I guess?” Ethan asked.
“Of course. And either she doesn’t respond, or she says something like ‘uh-huh.’”
Ethan chuckled. Then he asked, “How often do you tell
your
mother you love her?”
I was taken aback.
Never
, I thought with a jolt. The last time had probably been when I was a child. Probably before Isabel’s death. “I show her I love her in a lot of ways,” I said.
“It’s not the same, though,” he said. “You want to hear those words from Shannon, but how can you expect her to say them to you when you don’t even say them to your own mother?”
I was quiet, thinking. How did you express those feelings after a lifetime of holding them in? I thought of calling my mother right that moment and telling her I loved her. I couldn’t do it, and I knew the reason why: I was afraid she wouldn’t be able to say the same words back to me.
The topic was a sad, difficult one, and still I liked sitting there with Ethan, talking with him about everything on our minds. It was perfect, like pillow talk without the sex. What could be better? Yet there was a very small part of me that was wondering how it would feel if our hands were resting on
my
thigh instead of on his. I liked this new and improved Ethan very much.
“I’m sorry I was so cold to you when we were twelve,” I said.
He laughed. “Don’t be,” he said. “I was in my own little world. I was an oddball, and a frustrated one, because I had a huge crush on you that summer.”
“You’re kidding?”
“I thought you were so cool, a tomboy but with a certain twelve-year-old feminine charm.”
I laughed as well.
“But I didn’t know how to talk to you anymore,” he said. “You’d matured beyond my reach. I wanted to go crabbing and
fishing with you, like we used to. I wanted to ask if I could go out in your boat with you, but I knew you didn’t want me hanging around you anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “If I’d known you’d turn out this good, I would have let you tag along, believe me.” The words poured out easily, and I was not sorry I’d said them.
“Thank you,” he said. “That’s really nice to hear.”
A moment passed and again I found myself imagining his hand on my thigh, my belly tightening a bit at the thought.
“You had so much spirit,” Ethan said. “You were such an adventurer.”
“That girl’s gone,” I said with some sadness. “She died when Isabel did.”
“I bet she’s still in there somewhere,” he said.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Life is so good, Julie,” he said. “And it’s so short. We’ve got to take advantage of every minute we’re given.”
“Are you on antidepressants or something?”
He laughed again. “I’m just lucky,” he said. “I think I got an overabundance of serotonin when I was born. Maybe I got Ned’s share.” He sobered at that thought, growing quiet, and I let him have his silence. Then he spoke again. “I think I was influenced by my parents,” he said. “They were very positive, can-do sort of people. I always remember something my father said in one of his speeches after he lost his bid for governor. We were all there with him. It was in Trenton, and I was standing behind him with my mother and Ned, and I was about fifteen and trying not to cry because I didn’t want to look like a jerk, but I felt really sorry for my father. He’d worked so hard on his campaign and, to me, it seemed as though nothing mattered any
more. Dad did the usual sort of speech about thanking his staff and the people who’d voted for him. A reporter shouted out the question, ‘What will you do now?’ and my father waited a minute and then answered that he didn’t believe the old adage that when a door closes, a window opens. He said he believed that when a door closed, the entire world opened up to you, and that he would find other ways of serving the people. And that’s what he did. He reopened his law practice and took pro bono work. We had money, so that was never the issue. He worked quietly and tirelessly until he retired. Anyhow, his words that day stuck with me. He didn’t stay mired in his sadness.”
“He was a wise man,” I said. I was thinking,
A man like that would be able to tolerate learning about his son’s guilt. He would be able to bounce back from that revelation.
Ethan must have been thinking along similar lines.
“You know what, Julie?” he asked.
“What?”
“We’re going to have to tell our parents about Ned’s letter before the cops do.”
“I know,” I said, resigned.
Ethan let go of my hand and put his arm around me. “And maybe an ‘I love you’ when you share that news with your mother might soften the blow,” he said.