I told them about Deirdre, too, about her affair with Charlie, and the way she used to watch us. They nodded and took notes, asked a couple questions about the timing, and the last time I’d seen her. Just going through the motions, not particularly interested. As far as I could tell, in this killing there was only one suspect.
But they couldn’t find him. Eli seemed to have evaporated into the late-summer air or flown away with the migrating bank swallows. Maybe if I’d been able to dial 911 as soon as I’d left the house, the police would have been there in time to catch him. One thing we knew, Eli hadn’t driven away, at least not in his own car, which still sat in the driveway when the police arrived. But he didn’t leave any small personal items behind, not an overnight bag, not even a toothbrush.
Maybe Eli had swum out to sea, shoes and all, and drowned himself. But then: wouldn’t his body have washed up on shore? The police scoured the tide line, the cranberry bogs, the lakes, the scrub oak woods. According to all evidence Eli had come to Saturday Cove, killed his brother—and then vanished.
That didn’t stop me from expecting him to return at any moment. The evening of the day I found Charlie dead—when uniformed police officers and swirling lights and sirens had finally dispersed—Ladd showed up on Maxine’s doorstep. When he rang the bell, Maxine and I both jumped, grabbing on to each other. Sarah looked up from the floor where she sat stacking red plastic cups, her hand stalling in midair, staring at us.
“It can’t be him,” Maxine said, meaning Eli. There was a patrol car stationed in her driveway. Anyone who made it to the front door would have been vetted by those officers. Still, Maxine wouldn’t step forward, and I wondered if she’d ever be able to open her door again, to anyone. She hadn’t even seen Charlie dead, and she was wrecked by it all, the proximity to so much violence. I started to move and she pulled me back.
“It’s okay,” I said, twisting my arm from her grip. As I headed toward the door, she walked to the counter to grab her phone, and stood there, watching me—her fingers poised, even though the nearest officers sat just a couple yards from her front door, and we could probably call them faster just by screaming.
I looked through the peephole. It was Ladd, his dark head bent, his shoulders tense. I turned toward Maxine and told her, “It’s only Ladd.” The bell rang once more, and I looked through the peephole again. In the triangulated glare of the motion-detected porch light, Ladd looked determined, like a man running to his lover in her time of need. When I opened the door, he stepped forward toward me, ready to gather me up in his arms. The movement I made—stepping back, my hands rising the barest bit—stopped him just short of the threshold.
The police officers had gotten out of the car. They stood there, watching us, the sound of their radio crackling into the evening. They must have spoken to Ladd, cleared him for visiting, but still they kept careful eyes on us. It made me wonder if I was a suspect. Shouldn’t I be a suspect? Wasn’t the spouse, always? Sarah toddled over to my side, gripping my pants leg and staring up at Ladd. He started at the sight of her, this indelible bit of proof—of my real life.
“Brett,” he said, recovering. He made a motion with his hands, almost but not quite opening his arms, still expecting me to fall into them. “I have to know if you’re all right.” Realizing the ridiculousness of this statement, he amended. “Tell me what I can do.”
Tell me what I can do. Charlie had only just died. I had found him that morning. And I had not touched my phone all day. My mother no longer existed for me to call. Yet here Ladd stood, frantic with knowing. For a moment, the air radiated with the news, spreading in its small town way. Charlie Moss murdered. Can you believe it? I just saw him yesterday. The words from every house in town gathered around our heads, buzzing. I didn’t want to stand out here, exposed.
“You can go away,” I said. “Please. Go away and leave me alone.”
And I closed the door, turning the dead bolt as soon as the latch clicked. Then I scooped up our baby—Charlie’s and mine—and held her close, breathing in her skin, her scent, as if it might erase everything that had happened these past forty-eight hours.
BOB MOSS CAME UP from Florida with his second wife, to arrange the funeral. They stayed in a hotel and managed everything with barely a word to me. All I had to do was show up. Maxine loaned me a dress and found a babysitter to stay with Sarah. The church was already packed when we arrived. As I walked down the aisle, I felt an illogical longing for Eli. After all these years, I still barely knew Charlie’s dad. Both my parents were gone, and now my husband. I remembered the way Eli had brought Charlie back to the altar on our wedding day.
I let my eyes roam up each aisle. I saw family friends and friends of mine from grad school; even a couple of professors had made the trip. But I didn’t see Ladd. Daniel Williams was there—he nodded at me as my eyes fell upon him—and so were Ladd’s parents. Why wasn’t Ladd sitting with them? When I had told him to leave me alone, I certainly hadn’t meant that he shouldn’t come to the funeral. He must have realized that. After all. He and Charlie had grown up together, summers here in Saturday Cove. They were practically cousins. Ladd lived just down the road from this church, close enough to ride his bicycle or even walk. Of course he shouldn’t be banging on my door, wanting to see me alone. But if he didn’t come to Charlie’s funeral, everyone would know the only possible reason: he had been with me the day before, the two of us betraying Charlie with only hours left of his life. Before the funeral even began, everyone would know.
And then my eyes stopped cold on a familiar figure in the second row, precisely behind the spot they’d saved for me. Deirdre Bennet, sandwiched between the Saturday Cove librarian and Charlie’s aunt Marian—not as she should have been (if she had to come at all) with the rest of the crew from the Sun Also Rises, who were sitting in the back. My feet halted, and I stared at her, and she stared back with her pale, watery eyes, as if she’d been crying nonstop for days. Her dress was yellow, too cheerful, with long sleeves. The color and weight were wrong for the day; she should have been sweating. Around her neck she wore an owl pendant. At first I thought it was on a leather string, and I pictured her, spattered with blood, leaning over Charlie, removing it from his neck and tying it onto hers. After a second, I realized it wasn’t leather but a slim black ribbon. The way she brought her fingers to her neck, just short of touching it, made me wonder if it had been a gift from Charlie. Or maybe it was just because of the way I was staring.
“Come on,” Maxine said gently. She still didn’t touch my arm. “Let’s sit.”
The two of us sidled down the row, squeezing into the one spot reserved for me next to Bob. I could feel Deirdre’s eyes, intent on the back of my head, and I sat still as possible, not wanting to give her even the slightest movement. As the service began, I found myself wishing again for Eli. In fact as the minutes ticked by I became more and more convinced that he would show up. Because how could he miss it? His own brother’s funeral?
I barely listened to the verses that were read or the people who spoke. Charlie never cared about things like that, about ceremonies. About poems. But he would have wanted his brother to be there. The past few days I had cowered in Maxine’s house when what I should have been doing was searching for Eli. Not so he could face any kind of justice. But so he could be here, with us, attending Charlie’s funeral as he had not been able to attend their mother’s. As I sat in the front pew, what I saw in my mind was not the pastor—a stranger—but Eli rushing down the aisle in a coat and tie, late for the seat we should have saved for him.
I could hear the sound of people trying to muffle their crying. I could hear Deirdre, behind me, and Maxine, next to me. But Bob and I, neither of us cried, we just sat there, carved from stone, waiting for the service to end. Which it finally did. People stood, began shuffling out. I stood. The back of the pew separated Deirdre and me. She reached forward and I flinched, but she was only returning the hymnal.
Outside, afternoon sun had shift
ed to its widest, most unflattering filter; it sifted into the church even through the stained glass, and I could see the places in Deirdre’s translucent skin where small veins had broken and pores had muddied. I thought of our twin griefs—having been left by Charlie once when he rejected us. And now. How could he be gone? Standing there between Bob Moss and Maxine, staring rudely and unstoppingly at Deirdre while she refused to look back at me, I could feel the realization like something hovering, a hand raised to hit me full force, as it had not yet, not even when I’d knelt beside his body and tried to lift it. Charlie dead. Gone. Never coming back.
I sat back down in the pew. Was it possible that once upon a time, Deirdre’s face represented the most pain I had ever experienced? Was it possible to feel the weight of this loss and ever stand again? A hand came down on top of my head, its palm flat. Thinking that it was Deirdre, I jerked away, then looked up to see Bob, staring down.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice gnarled as the scrub oaks that lined his property. He nodded and then turned away. I looked up to where Deirdre had been standing. The row was empty.
“Do you know that girl?” Maxine asked.
“That’s Deirdre,” I said. Maxine sat down, and I added, “I wonder if she’ll go to the reception.” Bob had hired a private room at a local restaurant. Obviously he couldn’t have it at the house.
“If she does,” Maxine said, “I can tell her to leave.”
“Or I could just not go. Do you think I have to go?”
“No,” she said. “I think people will understand. But you know. If you want to go. You should.”
“The only thing in the world,” I said, “that would make me strong enough to go to that reception would be if Charlie were there, too.”
“Because of her?”
“Because of Charlie,” I said.
Sitting next to me, equipped with hat and handkerchief, Maxine did what I couldn’t. She cried. I put my hand on her knee, my eyes still facing forward. All the noise had shifted to the back, a receiving line, where I was expected to be, shaking hands, accepting condolences. A pair of soft soled footsteps approached, polite steps.
“Brett,” Daniel Williams said, stepping into and blocking out that intrusive shaft of light, placing us in his shade. “I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am.”
“Thank you,” I said.
For some reason, it was easier to meet his eyes. He kept his hands in his coat pockets, his straight shoulders at ease. Unlike everyone else—even Maxine—he didn’t seem to be braced for my hysteria. I wondered if he was still staying on the Cape, his summer spilling into the fall, or if he’d come down from Boston especially for the funeral.
“If there’s anything I can do,” Daniel said. He removed one hand from his pocket and gestured outward, a graceful and elbow-driven movement, indicating the church, the neighborhood, the wide world. “Anything at all.”
“Thank you.” I hoped I sounded sincere enough to convey that I knew: while other people said this, Daniel meant it.
He nodded, and then turned to walk back down the aisle. With his having paved the way, other people moved from the back to offer their hands and their sympathies. Until finally the church emptied out, and Maxine and I sat there, alone, the only mourners left.
THE NEXT MORNING SARAH stirred, as always, with first light. She sat up, delighted to find Lightfoot lying between us once again, and set immediately to examining the dog’s ears, prodding her fingers into the exposed cartilage. Lightfoot woke and must have remembered everything she’d seen, because she set immediately to trembling.
“Gentle,” I told Sarah as she pitched forward to press her face against Lightfoot’s, one hand still clutching a pointy ear. Sarah scrunched up her brow and looked at me reproachfully. Then she slid off the bed and marched to the window. Maybe if I’d remembered to close the blinds, she would have slept later. Sun poured in with increasing speed. Outside, it reflected off the lake in small explosions, gathering itself for the day. It would be hot, another stretch of Indian summer.
“Pool,” Sarah said. “Pool.”
I dressed us both in our bathing suits and we headed downstairs. Maxine had set the coffeepot to brew automatically, so I poured a cup and hoisted Sarah to my hip, not quite ready to let her practice walking on the steep slate steps to the water. I put her down where pebbly dirt met sand, and dumped our towels. Lightfoot rushed forward, touching the top of the water with one delicate paw. A pink plastic shovel rested near the bottom of the steps, making up for my absentmindedness in forgetting to bring toys, and I handed it to Sarah. She knelt in the inch or two of water, scooping up the silt and watching it plop back through the wavelets. She babbled to herself, some words recognizable and some not. It felt so strange that something so devastating could have occurred without her knowing.
From up above, I heard a car pull into Maxine’s driveway, and turned, putting one hand over my heart. I didn’t know where Eli’s car was now—impounded in Hyannis, it would have become evidence. A door slammed, and in a moment Ladd appeared at the top of the steps. He must have seen us from the road. With Sarah so close to the water, I couldn’t keep my eyes on him as he walked toward us.
“Brett,” Ladd said. He stopped several feet short of me.
I didn’t feel like small talk. “Why didn’t you go?” I asked, still not looking at him.
“What do you mean?” Ladd said. “Go where?” I glanced over as his face shifted, confused.
“To the funeral,” I said, turning my eyes back toward Sarah. “You should have been there.”
“I was. I was there. I promise. I got there just after you, I saw you go to the front with Maxine. I had to stand in the back, it was crowded. You didn’t go to the receiving line. I thought I would see you at the reception.”
A fat cloud blew overhead, white and empty of rain, but for a moment blocking the gathering sun. I stepped back toward Sarah, noticing for the first time that Lightfoot was gone. I lifted my hand to shade my eyes as the cloud wisped away, looking out toward the lake to see if a little black dog was struggling in the water.
“They read the Twenty-Third Psalm,” Ladd said, as if he needed to prove it to me. But don’t they read the Twenty-Third Psalm at every funeral?
“Charlie wouldn’t have cared about that,” I said.
“No,” Ladd agreed.
I knelt down next to Sarah, digging my hand through the little trough she’d made where the water met the soaking sand. “No,” she said, pushing my hand away. “No, Mommy.”
I looked up. A red-tailed hawk swooped in lazy circles, and I wondered if it was the same one that nested in the cranberry bog by the Moss house, less than two miles away. Maybe it was heading back there right now. What sort of activity would it find below if it executed the same meandering wing flutters it did now? Did the house stand empty, yellow crime-scene tape rustling under heavy sun and vague wind? Or did the police have more business there? Was someone stationed, waiting for Eli, in case he came back? Was Bob there, collecting whatever last items he wanted to take with him?
“I told you not to come back here,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed on Sarah’s shovel, not wanting to see any kind of expression on Ladd’s face. “I told you to leave me alone.”
“I know,” he said, very quietly. “I know you did. I’m sorry.”
“Did you think I was joking?”
Ladd’s shadow, elongated on the sand, quivered. I spoke to it, refusing to be moved by the way it had brought one hand to rest on top of its head, a characteristic gesture of helplessness.
“I wasn’t joking,” I said. “There’s nothing you can do to help. You are not my boyfriend.”
The shadow’s hand came down, its body spilling wider as another cloud moved overhead. Sarah still sat beyond its reaches, concentrating, her hat falling nearly over her eyes. And I finally stated the most obvious thing, which I’d never had the courage to say aloud, to Ladd, not even when I’d left him.
“I don’t love you.
I love Charlie.”
The shadow shifted, uncomfortable. Several sharp retorts floated down from Maxine’s house. Ladd, Sarah, and I all turned our heads toward the noise. We saw Maxine, standing at a back window. She held Lightfoot under one arm and lifted her hand to rap on the window again, frantic. Unimpressed, Sarah went back to her digging, but Ladd and I both looked around, obediently, trying to locate whatever had alarmed her so. It took us almost a minute to realize it was just us, out here and vulnerable in the open air.
“I THOUGHT I WOULD die,” Maxine said.
We were back inside the house, Sarah and I—Ladd having driven away before we gathered ourselves from the lake. I put Sarah down on the floor and an impressive hunk of sand dropped from her bathing suit. Maxine grabbed a broom and started sweeping furiously, still wearing her nightgown, her hair disarranged from sleep. Her salient trait had always been a cool put-togetherness; it was disconcerting, this new impression of utter disarray.
“I woke up,” she went on, “and your bedroom door was open and both of you were gone. Then the little dog is scratching at the door, all frantic. I was almost too scared to open it.”
I could imagine Maxine, mustering up her courage to open the door just narrowly enough to let the dog shoot through. Lightfoot, recovered from whatever fright Ladd had given her, jumped up on a broad leather armchair. With the broom, Maxine reached out and gently shoved her off. “Then I look out the window,” she said, “and there’s this man . . .”
“It was just Ladd,” I said, conscious that my voice should sound soothing and not defensive. As far as Maxine knew, Ladd was not upsetting.
“I know that now,” Maxine said. “But for that one second . . . I thought I would die.” She looked briefly remorseful at repeating that most extreme of expressions, but then, reconsidering, wanting to affect me, she said it again. “I thought I would die.”
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