The Last September: A Novel

by Nina de Gramont

  “It’s quite all right,” Daniel said. He smiled at her, and it didn’t look like an obligatory smile. It looked genuine. Sarah returned the picture to the drawer and slid it closed with intense concentration. Daniel asked me, “Does Ladd know you’re here? Did you tell him you were coming?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I’d better go ahead and do that, then. I think he’s in his cottage. Why don’t you take Sarah down to the beach?”

  Sarah and I left the house through the sliding glass door that led to the back deck. The morning sunlight had given way to thick gray clouds, bringing with them a salty, autumnal scent, the slightest chill. Lightfoot skittered out ahead of us, then paused to wait for Sarah. The two of them had adopted a funny way of moving in concert, Sarah swaying back and forth, Lightfoot running in little circles around her. To avoid holding my hand, Sarah descended the beach steps by sliding on her butt from one to the other, one at a time, all the way down.

  On the sand, Sarah and the dog both broke into a run toward the water. It was low tide, the tide pools swept away, the beach strewn with gray foam and pebbles and seaweed. I ran after them but they stopped at the shoreline, Sarah kneeling down to inspect water that ran over her little white sneakers, soaking them. Lightfoot let out three short, sharp yaps of protest, and I started. The dog, I realized, had barely made a sound since I’d found her huddled under the sunporch.

  I knelt down. Lightfoot turned and battered her little body—cold and soaked from the waves—against my chest, leaving a damp blotch on my shirt. The dog knew what had happened to Charlie. If only I could ask her, reach the information stored in her little head. As obvious a suspect as Eli might have been, there should have been other obvious suspects. Like me, or Ladd, or Deirdre. And of course there could be others, people I didn’t know about, people Charlie kept secret. Some man, some husband, whose wife had fallen madly in love like the rest of us. Maybe it was Deirdre’s boyfriend, back in the picture and wildly jealous. Or maybe just some crazy person, happening by the neck and stumbling upon Charlie, killing him, leaving him for Eli to find, and me.

  Some crazy person. A different one, not our own. That new headache of mine, sharp but malleable, like a squiggly piece of mercury, rattled behind my eyes. If I let my brain work hard enough, I could turn this into a murder mystery. I could be the plucky wife, taking on my own detective work, finding the real murderer, saving Eli. Or else, finding Eli, and turning him over.

  From down on the beach, a figure approached as mist gathered. A tall man in a blue rain slicker, with a mop of unruly curls. Sarah sprang to her knees, her gaze serious and intent, looking out toward the bluff.

  “Arooo!” Sarah called, at the top of her voice. Who knew a false elephant trumpet could sound so musical? Up above the skies broke open, dumping rain as if a faucet had been turned on. Lightfoot jumped off my lap and I stood. The rain tried its best, without luck, to tamp down both Sarah’s curls and those of the man who approached us. Sarah lifted up her arm, her hand rolled into a fist, and waved it through the air, a fluid motion from her shoulder through the elbow.

  “Arooo!” she called, “aroo!” and ran down the beach, toward the man.

  If it had been Charlie, how surprised he would have been—seeing her move so quickly and nimbly, just over a week since that very first step. Or maybe he wouldn’t have been surprised at all, believing, as he did, in biding his time, waiting until he could do a thing well before attempting it. As the man approached, he proved himself to be a gangly teenager, smiling perplexedly at Sarah, his curls not yellow but a gingery brown. Sarah halted in disappointment, her face scrunching into an angry expression that was both confusion and realization. The soaking rain fell. Passing us, the young man pulled the hood of his raincoat over his head. I caught up with Sarah and scooped her into my arms. The dog’s ears flattened back against her head. From up above, the top of the beach steps, another man appeared, holding a huge, polka-dotted umbrella.

  “Brett,” Daniel called. “Come up, it’s pouring.”

  I looked down at Lightfoot to see if she would cower or run the other way. But she didn’t, just trotted on ahead, up toward the steps, as if she had seen an umbrella before and knew it meant cover from all this rain.

  INSIDE I MET DANIEL’S housekeeper, Mrs. Duffy. She was warm and round, with silver curls and a faint Irish accent. She told me that during the winter she lived in her own place in Boston and went to Daniel’s house to clean and make dinner. In the summer, she came with him to Saturday Cove and lived in one of the old Sears kit cottages overlooking the ocean. “It was ordered right from the catalog in the 1930s,” she said as she whipped together a toddler supper for Sarah, homemade chicken nuggets and cooked carrots. “The first year I lived there I found an old shipping label under the staircase.”

  I leaned in the doorway, nodding. I imagined her cottage as rustic, disposable, nothing but tin silverware and old board games inside, because you never knew when a hurricane might sweep through and take everything away. Just what all seaside homes should be.

  “Usually we’d be back in Boston by now,” Mrs. Duffy said. “It’s your good luck he decided to stay a bit longer.” She patted my cheek. “Why don’t you go into the living room and have a drink with Daniel before dinner? I’ll take care of this one.”

  To my surprise, Sarah didn’t protest when Mrs. Duffy hoisted her from my side into a waiting high chair—another inexplicable piece of baby equipment. Maybe very wealthy people just owned everything anybody might ever need. Mrs. Duffy handed Sarah a spatula, which she immediately began pounding on the tray. Lightfoot sat stock still right beside it, knowing that food would soon begin tumbling to the ground. I headed into the living room at the same time Daniel emerged from the Butler’s pantry with a tumbler of scotch and a glass of white wine.

  “Thanks,” I said. I sat down on the sofa and he took one of the matching wing-backed armchairs, wondering if Ladd would show up and what he would think about my coming here.

  “How are you?” Daniel asked, crossing his long legs.

  “I don’t know. It’s like I’m traveling from panicked to broken to numb and back again. You know? Did you feel this way when Sylvia died?” It didn’t feel insensitive asking this question. Maybe at another time it would have. But just then I felt a strong sense of kinship with Daniel, who couldn’t stand to come around corners and be taken surprise by his wife’s face.

  “When Sylvia died,” he said, “I was broken and confused. But she had been sick. I knew it was coming. Prepared isn’t the word I’d use, because really you can never prepare for something like that. Still, if it had just come out of nowhere, and so violently. I can’t imagine what you must be feeling now.”

  “I can’t imagine, either.”

  “It’s too soon,” he said.

  “Yes. Too soon.”

  “We’ll wait,” he said.

  I nodded, and at the same time wondered for what, exactly. What would it look like, when all this became permanent. Sarah rounded the corner with Lightfoot click-clacking beside her. I thought she was headed toward me, but instead she stopped at the side table next to the couch and opened the drawer.

  “Sarah,” I said, more for Daniel’s sake than hers. If there was a verbal way to stop a toddler from doing something, I hadn’t yet discovered it.

  “It’s okay,” Daniel said as Sarah found what she wanted—another small leather envelope. She held it over her head in triumph, then brought it over to me. I looked at Daniel, asking permission. He nodded.

  This picture was different from the other I’d seen. Still by the water, but wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and holding a smiling blond toddler around Sarah’s age.

  “That’s Eli,” Daniel said. He leaned forward, peering at the picture. “I used to look at her with him and think: that’s what she’ll be like with our children.”

  “Charlie, too?” I said.

  Daniel nodded. “Charlie, too,” he said, but I could tell from a note of apology
in his voice, Eli had been her favorite.

  My eyes lowered, back to the picture, but before I had a chance to examine it more closely, Sarah snatched the envelope back and returned it to its drawer. Then she toddled past the coffee table—priding herself, I noticed, in not touching it for balance—in search of more drawers.

  As her chubby hand closed around the knob to the matching end table, Daniel said, “I’m afraid she’ll find one there, too. One for nearly every drawer. My own morbid scavenger hunt.”

  “I don’t think it’s morbid,” I said, having very recently sent an email to my murdered husband. Charlie always kept a clean inbox, deleting email after he read it. Now mine would sit there unopened, forever.

  Mrs. Duffy came into the room and told us dinner was ready. She scooped up Sarah and said, “I’ll bring this one outside so you can eat in peace.”

  In the dining room, our meal was a grown-up version of the meal that Mrs. Duffy had fed Sarah—breaded chicken cutlets with wild rice and a salad of mixed field greens. When we sat down, Daniel continued the conversation about Sylvia.

  “Ladd must have told you,” he said, “that’s how we met. My sister-in-law Rebecca and Charlie’s mother were good friends. The boys had a standing invitation to use this beach, and Sylvia used to bring them here to play with Ladd.”

  I pictured it, Daniel—young uncle and gentleman—hosting the children and their pretty au pair. He would have stood back, not overtly interested, just watching her very carefully, sometimes offering to help with the boys.

  “It turned out we were both at Harvard,” Daniel said. “I was going to business school. She was getting her PhD in English. Her dissertation was on The Faerie Queen.” He looked at me, waiting for a professional response, maybe even hoping I shared the same specialty.

  “Nineteenth-century American poetry,” I said, pointing to myself, apologetic for the distance from Spenser. “Late nineteenth century.”

  Daniel speared a piece of arugula, too polite to express disappointment. “It would have broken her heart, what happened to Eli. And now Charlie.”

  Years ago, when Ladd told me that Daniel had paid for Eli’s hospitalization at McLean, I’d assumed this was the reason—his late wife’s attachment. Sitting across from him, now myself the beneficiary of his impulse to help, I thought there was something more to it. Most of us think of ourselves—our true selves—in terms of intention, the person we’re trying to be. Whereas everyone else sees the failure, the flailing, between the intention and the attempt, Daniel seemed wholly contained of these two spaces, with no bridge in between.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, not sure if I was expressing sympathy for Sylvia’s death or her would-be broken heart.

  Daniel didn’t seem to mind the lack of clarity. He just said, “Thank you.”

  “And now,” I said. “Don’t you have to go back? To Boston, and your job?”

  I had no idea what he did for work. Something to do with banks. All the men’s work in Ladd’s family had something to do with banks. Probably one day soon, after he was finished with English degrees and travels, Ladd would give up and go to work in a bank. I wondered where he was now, what he was having for dinner. If he was angry with me for showing up here, when I had told him so firmly to stay away.

  “I can work from here,” Daniel said. “Often I stay late into the fall, through the end of October.”

  I knew from what Mrs. Duffy had said this wasn’t true, but I didn’t say anything. Maybe he was doing this for Charlie and, by association, Sylvia. Maybe he was doing it for Ladd. It didn’t matter, I just clung to the offered harbor, calculating in my mind the time this would buy me, if Daniel let me stay. Time to do what, I still wasn’t sure. Figure out what to do next. Go back to Amherst? I couldn’t see how I could possibly leave before Eli was found. Charlie wouldn’t have left before Eli was found.

  “It’s the best time here,” Daniel said. “The fall.”

  “That’s what Charlie always says. Said.”

  Daniel nodded. For a moment I waited for tears to come to my eyes. It would be a good time, here in the safety of Daniel’s gaze, with such a sympathetic audience. A torrent of tears, a good session of sobbing. The way I had in this very house when my mother died. The way I had when I thought my marriage was over. The way Deirdre had been crying at the funeral and—from the looks of her—for days before. A few years ago, here in Saturday Cove, Charlie and I had visited an old friend of his after her sister had died unexpectedly in a boating accident. Keening, that would have been the only way to describe how his friend had wept, bereft and shaking. The way I should have been, this past week, more than a week now, since I found Charlie. I should have been shaking and sobbing and keening to the rafters. But so far, I only moved in circles. Expecting tears was like expecting Charlie to walk through the door. It always seemed like it might happen at any moment, but it never did.

  OUR ROOM WAS JUST above Daniel’s. When I lay down, stroking Sarah’s curly head, I could hear him through the old floorboards, moving around, water turning on and off, drawers opening and closing. He sounded fastidious and graceful, a routine that had been performed a thousand times in exactly the same order. Lying awake, staring at the beams above the bed, I listened to Sarah’s soft breath, my hand resting on the rise and fall of her chest. And I imagined I could hear Daniel’s breath, too, from the room below.

  At about 5 a.m. I slipped out of bed, placing a pillow beside Sarah. In addition to the crib, there was a simple table and chair in the room, pressed against the far wall. Yesterday I’d slid my computer onto the table, and now I opened it and turned it on. For a long time, I sat staring at the email Charlie had written. He didn’t have a computer, just borrowed mine once a day to go online. His fingers would have moved over these very keys, in his surprisingly fast hunt-and-peck. I could picture him, sitting in the chair in my makeshift study, maybe with a beer in one hand. He always drank from a glass, never a bottle, and would have perched the glass right next to the laptop, the way he always did, the way that drove me crazy. Maybe, remembering this and conscious that he was trying to make amends, he would have stopped for a moment and pushed it away toward the stack of books I’d left there, one of them still open, the words I’d underlined so angrily, “Sue, you can go or stay.”

  My books. The day I’d gone back to collect my things, I’d only thought about what we’d need to get us through a few days or a week. Clothes and baby equipment. But I’d left all my books behind. Although my old life hovered so close in the past, it was impossible to imagine I’d ever return to any part of it. It only hit me now: I needed my books. Once today began—the sun rising in earnest—I would have to go and get them. Bob Moss may have taken back my keys, but I knew where Charlie had hidden a spare.

  Sarah kicked her feet out of the covers, the first sign of approaching wakefulness. I turned back to the computer, like I was a machine myself, programmed to respond one way. Dear Charlie, I wrote again, the same words, the only ones I could think of. 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.

  BY EARLY AFTERNOON, DANIEL was working in his office, the door shut. When I asked Mrs. Duffy to watch Sarah, she accepted the vague word errands. As I walked out to the car, Lightfoot trotted after me and hopped in. But when we arrived at our destination, wheels crunching over the seashell driveway, I realized it had been insensitive, thoughtless, to let the dog come along. At the sight of the Moss house, she started trembling and crawled in the back to cower underneath the seats. I rolled down the windows and left her there. Hopefully the cross breeze would keep her from overheating; if not, she could gather up her courage and jump out.

  No birds except gulls, flying above. I walked around the house, across the lawn. The swallows must have started their journey south this past week. I wondered if the police officers and detectives had stopped to appreciate the staging, tiny birds practicing th
eir formations, wonderful swoops and swells. From around the rails of the deck, the police tape had been removed, but I could see that the boards where Charlie’s body had lain were gone, either collected as evidence or simply removed for replacement. I knelt down and looked under the deck. Even the dirt looked new, its top layer swept away.

  I sat down and lay back. The grass felt wrong, sharp, too groomed. My eyelids fluttered closed, and I stretched out my legs. The sounds I could hear included the waves, the wind, a cardinal’s trill. A car drove by, too fast. The sound of a squirrel’s tiny feet skittered across the rail, then stopped. I lifted my head to confirm: one-eyed Wally, already thinner and more scraggly, as if we’d been grooming as well as feeding him.

  “Hey, Wally,” I said.

  He twitched his tail, waiting for a nut or bread crust. I wished I had something for him. It felt right, somehow, returning to this, the seminal moment and place, around which everything would always revolve, and around which everything always had revolved, whether or not I’d known it. It felt wrong—that I wasn’t cowering, trembling, like Lightfoot.

  He’s not dangerous, Charlie always said. It was just that the only way to get him the help he needed was to provoke him into danger.

  According to the coroner, Charlie had been killed by the hammer. A blow to the back of his head. Why would he have turned his back on Eli in the midst of trying to provoke him? Charlie would turn his back on me, on Ladd, even on Deirdre. But on Eli he would have remained focused, watching him, registering his every move. I remembered the way Eli’s hands had come down on Charlie’s head, regretful, after knocking him down. Whoever had killed Charlie with the hammer had also slit his throat, still vengeful.

  I stood up and walked around to the garage to retrieve the hidden key, then let myself into the house through the side door. Upstairs, the books I’d left out on the desk had been moved back to the shelf. Rowing in Eden. Open Me Carefully. Master Letters. The Life of Emily Dickinson. Austin and Mabel. There were too many to carry at once, so I made a couple trips to the car. Then I went into the kitchen and started collecting all of Charlie’s good pots and pans. His wood knife block, minus the one the killer had used. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was trespassing. And stealing. But I wanted Charlie’s copper pots. Never mind that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cooked anything more complicated than instant oatmeal or scrambled eggs. I carried them to the car a few armloads at a time, the metal conducting particles of Charlie into my bare skin.