“Well, you didn’t,” I said. “Right? Here we are. Alive, still.”
She stopped sweeping and closed her eyes. A buzzing sounded from my purse. At any other moment, I would have ignored it, but grateful for the interruption I hustled across the room. Probably it annoyed Maxine, the way I tossed my purse on the nearest available surface and forgot about it until it was time to leave again. She always hung hers on the coat stand by the front door. Fishing for my phone, I made a mental note to start doing the same.
“It’s Charlie’s father,” I told Maxine before I answered.
“Listen, Brett,” Bob said. Sometimes family can be most evident in a person’s voice. Traces of Charlie and Eli, like living molecules, came wafting in. He said, “I’m heading back to Florida tomorrow and I need to get the keys from you.”
“The keys?”
“The keys to the house. Don’t you have keys?”
“I do.”
“Meet me at the Olde Pub,” he said. “It opens at eleven.”
“He wants his keys back,” I told Maxine when I hung up. Her eyes widened, and I could tell that for a moment she wanted to exclaim over this, the nerve, how could he. But then something shifted, and she kept quiet. I realized that although I’d been staying here in this house for over a week—with no particular plans to go anywhere else—I didn’t have a key. A year ago, my key chain had rattled with our apartment key, and the one to our building, the ones for my office at school. Now, once I handed Bob Moss back his house key, the only key I’d own would be the one to our old car, Charlie’s mother’s car. And quite possibly I’d have no place to drive it.
FOR SO LONG, CARRYING Sarah everywhere, I’d thought life would be easier once she learned to walk. In the parking lot of the Olde Pub, she squirmed in my arms with much more strength than someone her age and size should possess. The second I put her down she didn’t walk but ran, in the direction opposite the restaurant, toward a patch of grass and a couple Canada geese. The larger one spread its wings in warning, and I sprinted after her.
“Oh no you don’t,” I said, in a singsong voice, scooping her up and biting her cheek. She laughed, a burbly giggle, and a small piece of joy rose up inside me. It shocked me, that joy was still a possibility.
“Hey,” I said, holding her fast. My voice sounded so normal. “I know you just learned to walk. When did you learn to run?”
“Run,” she yelled, a primal yawp.
“We’ll get you some fries,” I said. She nodded and put one finger in her mouth.
Bob was already there, sitting at one of the booths. I put Sarah on the bench opposite him; she walked across it, her feet sticking slightly on the beer-scented vinyl. “You brought the baby,” Bob said. His voice was flat, surprised.
“I thought you’d want to see her,” I said.
When the waitress came to deliver his beer, I ordered fries. Bob leaned forward as Sarah examined the deep grooves in the table. She picked up the butter knife and pressed it into a blackened pair of initials.
“Sarah,” Bob said. “It’s me. It’s your grandpa.”
Knife still in hand, she looked up at him. Bob’s face looked jowly and drained of color. The veins on his hands protruded, and they trembled slightly as he looked at Sarah, Charlie’s face in miniature staring back at him. I waited for him to remark on the resemblance, but he didn’t. His eyes look watery and red.
“Do you have the keys?” he said.
The waitress arrived with Sarah’s fries. She slid them in front of her and I pulled them back. “Hot,” I said as Sarah protested. I reached into my purse and grabbed the keys, which I’d already separated from my key chain. Bob didn’t reach out as I handed them across the table, so after a few seconds I just put them down. Sarah picked them up and I started breaking her fries in half so they’d cool off faster.
“I’m going to sell it,” Bob said, staring at the keys in Sarah’s hands. “Put it on the market right away.”
“Okay,” I said, wondering who in the world would buy it now. Bob looked braced for some kind of response, maybe an objection. As if I’d want to go back and live there, ever again.
I watched him take another sip of beer. He reached out and took a fry from Sarah’s plate. He bit into it, then returned it to the edge of her plate. I slid it off and hid it under my unused napkin. And although I didn’t want my daughter to eat his half-gnawed food, I couldn’t be mad at him. I recognized the expression on his face, the one staring back at myself from the mirror. He was here, breathing the oxygen, making stabs at eating, for one reason only: he had a living child. So he had to stay in this world, because sooner or later Eli would return. As far as I’d witnessed, Bob had never been much of a parent. He wasn’t enough of a parent now to stay here, on Cape Cod, and look for Eli, or even wait for him to show up. But still a parent. As I stared at him across the knotty pine table, the smell of beer and fried food thick around us, all I could think of was everything he’d lost. His first wife. Both his sons. Any kind of peace of mind, or happiness, ever.
What can a person do when one child murders the other? Murders the other and then disappears—not only into the vast, unknown world but the more unknowable recesses of his mind? I guess you do what Bob Moss did that day at the Olde Pub, right before my very eyes. You turn pale, and frail, and very old. You wring your hands and forget your grandchild. You don’t think to reach out to the daughter-in-law, almost equally ruined, sitting there across the table, except to take the keys from her and say good-bye.
•••
SARAH FELL ASLEEP IN the car. When we got there, a police cruiser was parked in front of the house. I parked beside it and got out, leaving the door open so the sound of it slamming wouldn’t wake Sarah. Inside, the same police officer who’d escorted me back to the Moss house, a young woman, stood in the front hall talking to Maxine. The sight of her back, rigid and official, made me tense. When she turned, I almost expected her to draw her gun, or cuff me.
Maxine nodded toward the counter. “She brought your computer back.”
“Thank you,” I said.
I felt deflated, as if they were making a mistake, and felt another rush of insult at being so easily dismissed as a suspect. They had taken my laptop because Charlie used it, too, and it now sat on Maxine’s counter with the cord wrapped around it. Beside it sat a gallon zip-top plastic bag, filled with everything they’d collected from our station wagon. I could see Ladd’s postcard, the bright toucan’s bill, pressed against the clear plastic. Apparently that wasn’t worth keeping as evidence. I walked across the room and picked up the bag, then threw it away in the garbage bin under Maxine’s sink. Lightfoot clicked across the room to greet me, and I knelt to pet her, then stood to get the computer.
“I can walk you out,” I told the officer. “I’m just going to sit outside a while, my daughter’s asleep in the car.”
On Maxine’s stoop, after the officer had driven away, I turned on my computer. I hadn’t checked email in over a week. My account was clogged with messages from Lands’ End and Old Navy, Planned Parenthood, and the NRDC. Notices from the university, and colleagues checking in. I went down the page, marking them all for deletion. And then I saw it, several pages back, already opened and read by the police. Charlie Moss. Your Dinner was the subject heading. The time next to it, 7:30. An hour or two left for him to live.
Hey, Charlie wrote. I guess I’ll have to feed Eli your coq au vin. Then I’ll tell him he needs to leave in the morning. Please give Sarah a kiss for me. Love, Charlie.
A few feet away, Sarah stirred in her car seat. She lifted her hands off her knees and let out a great sigh, as if she had read the message, too. Then she returned to stillness. Your coq au vin. All the tastes Charlie created, now gone forever. I remembered that pot of food, still sitting on the stove when I went back to get my things. If only I had stopped, to spoon it into my mouth, no matter how spoiled it was, the last thing Charlie ever cooked.
I brought my eyes back to the screen
for a long minute, then hit the Reply button.
Dear Charlie, I wrote, It’s okay. Eli can stay as long as he likes. Just please don’t wait for him. Come over to Maxine’s right away. Spend the night with Sarah and me. We miss you so much.
Up above, a great flutter as a flock of gulls rose into the air and headed out across the lake. For a moment, the sound could almost convince me I had turned back time and even now Charlie was walking across all the miles and endless days that stretched out over this past week. Headed home to us.
“LISTEN,” MAXINE SAID AFTER Sarah had gone to bed. “I have to get out of here.”
I sat in the leather armchair, holding a wineglass as Maxine filled it. She marched the bottle back into the kitchen, filled a glass for herself, and started to return the bottle to the refrigerator. Instead she closed the refrigerator door, filled her glass a little fuller, and left the bottle on the counter.
“I’m not sleeping,” she said. “It’s hard to eat.” She let her voice trail off as her eyes roamed around the house, falling on the spot where I’d entered after finding Charlie.
“When I didn’t know where you were this morning,” Maxine said, “it just all came washing over me. I can barely stand to leave the house. I’m so scared, Brett. I’m so scared that he’ll show up.”
“Who?” I asked.
Maxine put her glass down. Lightfoot jumped into my lap. I knew Maxine didn’t want the dog on the furniture, but maybe she wouldn’t mind if I was operating as a buffer. Against my body, the dog quivered.
“Who?” Maxine said, her face incredulous. “Who do you think? Charlie’s brother.”
She knew Eli’s name. But it had become too heinous to speak. Someone out there lurking, waiting to appear, to pounce. I remembered Eli flying off the roof of the fraternity house, arms outstretched, a superbeing with heightened powers. Until he hit the ground and became mortal. I remembered another dusky night, the way Charlie had let his own head smash to the pavement to save his brother.
“Eli wouldn’t hurt us,” I said. “I’m not even sure he hurt Charlie.”
I recognized the look on Maxine’s face. It was the same way Charlie and I used to look at Eli. The moment someone said something so off the wall that you knew logic had left the building, so you had no idea what to do or say next. Maxine took a sip of wine and then a deep breath, visibly composing herself.
“Brett,” she said. “Who else? Who else in the world? And how?”
“I don’t know. But someone else. And Eli saw it. Or else he showed up just after and found Charlie that way.”
“He was covered in blood.”
“So was I. I was covered in blood, but nobody suspects me.”
Maxine frowned, as if what I’d said was worrisome on some level that made it more necessary than she’d thought, to stay with me. Lightfoot’s ears twitched. The house ticked a bit in the silence between us. Water whooshed as the automatic sprinklers outside turned on. I ran my hand over Lightfoot’s tiny spine. She sat taut, alert and listening.
“I’m so sorry, Brett,” Maxine said, moving past whatever guilt she was grappling with. “For everything. But I have to go away for a while. I have to close the house and go home. I would have by now, you know, anyway, if not for all this.”
I nodded, mostly because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Either now or later, when Maxine left. If only I could disappear, like Eli. But I had a small child. The money in my bank account would only carry me through these next months if I didn’t have expenses like rent. What would your mother say? For the first time, I knew. She would tell me to get out of Saturday Cove as fast as possible. But even if I’d been able to come up with a destination and the means to get there, Charlie lay buried in the Blue Creek cemetery. I’d rather be with Brett. How could I leave him?
“I’m sorry,” Maxine said again. “I wanted to help.”
“You have,” I said. “You really have. So much.” I took a sip of wine, less because I wanted it and more because I wanted her to see me accepting something she’d given me. Being helped. Maxine could have offered to let Sarah and me stay here, in her empty house, after she’d gone. She could have invited us to come with her to Newton. But if we stayed or followed, the fear of Eli would remain with us and therefore with her. She had already done as much as she possibly could, and a person can never do any more than that.
“Do you have somewhere to go?” she asked. “Someone who can help you?”
I looked up at the ceiling, toward the room where Sarah lay, breathing quietly. She had no way of knowing that in the whole world, there was only one broken person to look after her. And there remained the possibility—what all reasonable people would call a very strong possibility—that Maxine was right to be afraid. Maybe at this very moment Eli stood out by the lake, watching the house, keeping tabs on my movements, waiting to make a movement of his own. Even if Eli hadn’t killed Charlie, someone else had. A murderer still moved freely about the world, our world, his whereabouts a mystery.
“Yes,” I told Maxine. “I have someone who can help me.”
ON THE DAY CHARLIE died, when I moved to get out of the chair, Ladd held me closer. “Don’t go,” he said. “Stay.”
I let him kiss me a little longer.
“What is there to go back to?” he said when I pulled away and started to get up. He tightened his grip in protest but then—remembering—let me go.
“What are you going to do?” he asked. I was standing now. One motion to smooth my skirt down, another few to comb my hair back into its ponytail, as if these simple movements could erase what just happened.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t think yet.”
“Is that what you said to him?” Ladd asked. The hardness in his voice told me we’d traveled back in time, a full seven years.
“It wasn’t like that,” I said. “It wasn’t like this.” I sank into one of the small wooden chairs at his table. Our mugs of tea sat there, gone cold.
“What was it like, then,” Ladd said, with that same angry edge.
“His mother was dying. His brother was nuts. It was hectic. And complicated.”
“Right.”
“We didn’t have sex. I swear we didn’t.”
The bizarreness wasn’t lost on either of us, but I didn’t know what else to say. The best defense I had for myself—that I had always loved Charlie—would have been the most damning. Ladd held his arms out to me. I stayed where I was, already separating, worrying, giving my brain back to my husband.
“I’m sorry,” I said for what felt like the hundredth time, though I hadn’t said it—for that particular wrongdoing—in years.
“Well,” Ladd pressed, “what now?”
My mind tangled up with everything I still had to deal with, Sarah at Maxine’s, Charlie back at home, Eli on his way. I remembered the way Ladd had grabbed my wrist years before. Would he repeat that assault, holding me there with him? Would Charlie recognize the injury when I finally showed up?
And what if I didn’t end things with Ladd, right then and there. If I let the summer unfold, carving out moments like this for the two of us. Would it be any different from what Charlie had done with Deirdre? And another thing: I could leave Charlie for Ladd. I thought that. I admit it, I did. Worries about Eli, money, fidelity—all gone.
“Look,” I said to Ladd. “I don’t know. I just don’t know anything right now. But I’ll call you. I promise.”
When I drove away, leaving the house behind me, my life stretched ahead. And the emotion that took over was fear: somehow Charlie would find out, and I would lose him forever.
JUST OVER A WEEK later, on a sunny morning, Maxine hugged me good-bye and apologized again. I drove away from the lake, across Route 6A and over to Eldredge Lane. The Moss house was a little more than a mile down the road. I turned, down a longer and more private driveway, the wheels of my ancient car rumbling over dirt and roots.
I parked in front of the garage. The ocean stood below t
he lawn, a wide patch of grass to traverse, a steep drop of beach steps, so I could let Sarah walk, her lurching steps with Lightfoot trotting beside her, up toward the house. Even older than the Moss house—built in 1720—a mixture of white clapboard and gray cedar shingles, the original front door now standing open. Sarah reached it first, slamming her little body into the rattly metal of the screen door, so Daniel got there before I did and was holding it open when I reached the short brick steps. Something about his face, the way he held it as he watched our approach—too calm or maybe concealing—made me feel he’d been expecting us.
“You said if there was anything you could do,” I told him.
Sarah and Lightfoot had already disappeared around his legs into the house. Daniel held the door open wider and moved aside so that I could come in.
12
Daniel’s bedroom must have been downstairs; the upstairs was nothing but guest rooms. He led me to the largest room, past the crawl space, at the end of the long hallway. There was a crib in the corner with a fat teddy bear that looked brand new. It had a lemon-yellow bow around its neck. Sarah marched over and reached through the bars, trying to pull it out toward her. She’d never slept in a crib in her life. Curtains swayed in the open window, a perfect view of Cape Cod Bay. I turned toward Daniel.
“Sometimes guests have children,” he said.
We walked back to the stairs. Sarah protested as I insisted on holding her hand going down the steep eighteenth-century staircase. At the foot of the stairs, she broke away and pulled open the drawer to the occasional table, the one Daniel had led me to all those years ago. There it still sat, the little leather envelope. Sarah opened it and examined Sylvia’s picture solemnly.
“Lady,” she said. Then she snapped it shut and held it over her head to show us. “Lady,” she said again.
“Sarah,” I said weakly. “Don’t open drawers.”
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