“Things got pretty burnt up. There wasn’t much . . .” There was another pause on the line. I could hear Jim’s steady breath. “I’m sorry, Maggie.”
“I know, Jim. Thank you.” The necklace, though. At least I’d have the necklace.
I hung up and stared out the window. It was a sunny day and the heat was starting to creep. I should let some air in. I’d been shut up in there for days. But the idea of fresh air, the sharp-sweet smell of newly cut grass on a hot summer’s day, felt like an affront. Grief shouldn’t mix with sunshine.
I thought about what Jim had told me about the pilot of the plane. What was Ally doing on some rich man’s private plane? I tried to imagine the kind of money you’d have to have to be able to afford something like that, but failed. The richest person in Owl’s Creek was a cardiologist who worked out of Penobscot Valley Hospital. She and her husband lived in a redbrick mansion on Hillcrest and owned a pair of Range Rovers with matching vanity plates. Showy, Linda would tut when one of them drove past. But owning your own airplane? I didn’t know how to make sense of that world. It was another piece of proof that I didn’t understand my daughter.
The truth was, things had started going wrong between me and Ally long before Charles got sick. She’d come back from college over break and I’d find her in the kitchen, peering into the refrigerator, or coming out of the bathroom with her hair wrapped up in a towel, and for the briefest second I’d wonder who this woman in my house was. She could feel it, too. I could tell. It was like we couldn’t see each other, like our vision went out of focus when we were in each other’s presence. We were reaching out blindly for each other but could never quite touch.
Shannon turned up a little after two, all nerves. She jangled into the hall in her too-big uniform.
“Do you want some coffee?” I asked, niceties on autopilot.
She took a step back, as if I might bite. “That would be great,” she said shyly, “if it’s not any trouble.”
“No trouble at all.” I tried not to let my irritation show.
She followed me into the kitchen. “I’m so sorry about your daughter,” she said. “It’s just awful.”
Get out, I chanted to myself. Get out get out get out. “Thank you,” I said. “Do you take your coffee regular?”
“Yes please.” She sat down at the kitchen table and started fumbling through her bag. I heaped a teaspoon of sugar into the mug of coffee and added a splash of half-and-half.
“Here you go,” I said, setting it in front of her.
“Thanks.” Her hand was shaking as she picked up the mug and took a sip. She winced—she must have burned her tongue. She slid a brown paper envelope across the table toward me. “From the chief.”
I opened it carefully. Two photographs slid out.
He was handsome, I’d give him that. Dark hair sweeping across his forehead, blue eyes, straight nose, wide, full mouth. Like a soap star, or a game show host. The type of man I might have chased after when I was young, before I knew better.
In the first photo, he was wearing a dark suit and shaking the hand of another man in a suit, both of them wearing self-congratulatory smiles. The second was more casual, him wearing chinos and a light blue button-down while sitting on the deck of what looked like a massive yacht. Maybe he owned that, too. He had a Master of the Universe grin on his face, all even white teeth and suntanned charm, and he was holding a glass of champagne up toward the camera.
“Nice-looking kid,” I said.
Shannon peered at the photograph and frowned. She took a deep breath. “He looks like the quarterback at my old high school.” She blushed deeply. Words seemed to come out of the poor girl only in gulps.
“He looks like the quarterback at every high school,” I said, nodding in agreement. I stared at the photograph for a minute longer. I didn’t like the look of him. There was something in the way he held his mouth that seemed cruel. I sighed. “Do you want some more coffee?”
She shook her head. “No thanks. I should probably get going.”
“Okay,” I said, but neither of us moved. It was strange—now that she was there, sitting across from me, I didn’t want her to go. She brushed her hair back from her face. She looked so young, so—unblemished. Everything about her that had made me angry before was now a strange comfort. I wanted to look at her a little longer. “So, how are you finding Owl’s Creek? Have you been here long?”
“I moved here about a month ago,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I transferred from Jacksonville.”
“Florida?”
“Yeah.” She fiddled with the mug’s handle. “That’s where my family is from.”
“Maine must be a shock to the system, temperature-wise. Though I guess you haven’t faced a winter here yet.”
She lit up, her whole face breaking into a grin. “I can’t wait for it to snow,” she said. “I always wanted to live somewhere cold. Hot chocolate, fireplaces, white Christmas, all that stuff.”
“Well, you talk to me in March when you’re knee-deep in sludge and scraping an inch of ice off your windshield. Then we’ll see if you’re still keen.”
“Oh, I will be. I hate the heat. I hated Florida, all the sun and the humidity and the thunderstorms every afternoon.” She looked up at me. “Have you ever been to Florida?”
“I have, twice.” Aside from that visit to my sister’s last Thanksgiving, Charles and I had taken Ally to Disney World for her seventh birthday. Charles had eaten a bad order of fish and chips at the England pavilion in Epcot Center and had spent the rest of the vacation lying in a darkened hotel room drinking stale ginger ale and eating overpriced Saltines. Ally and I had forged ahead with Breakfast with Mickey and Big Thunder Mountain and the Country Bear Jamboree, but our hearts hadn’t been in it. Shannon was right: every day at four o’clock sharp, the skies would open and we’d have to scurry for cover underneath whatever themed scrap of tarpaulin we could find. I could picture Ally now, clear as day, hair plastered to her small skull, mouse ears askew, her skinny little arms and legs shaking as we waited for it to clear up. The thought of her then, so tiny and sweet, made my heart ache.
“You know what I mean then.” I liked that she didn’t ask to hear what I’d been doing in Florida, or even if I liked it, but had just assumed that I had the same opinion of it as she did. Which, it turns out, I did.
I got up and poured her more coffee. “So what made you choose Owl’s Creek? Apart from the prospect of a real winter.”
She shrugged. “There weren’t that many places up north that had positions open on the force. It looked like a nice place to live, and Chief Quinn has a great reputation—”
“He does?”
She nodded eagerly. I hadn’t meant to sound surprised. Of course I knew that Jim was good at his job. People in town respected and admired him, but having once been the victim of his spitballs, I found it hard to imagine him in a professional capacity, even if he had been police chief for almost fifteen years. I sat back in my chair and stared at her across the table. I couldn’t get over how young she looked, how . . . unformed. Like if I pressed a thumb into the flesh of her cheek, it would leave an indentation.
“I’ve got to admit,” I said, “you don’t strike me as the police type. How did you end up in it?”
“Oh, you know,” she said, twisting her claddagh ring. “I used to read loads of crime novels, so once I went on to college, I thought criminal justice would be an interesting thing to study. I guess I just fell into it.”
I nodded encouragingly. “Do you enjoy it?”
“Most of the time. I was kind of a jock in high school—I ran cross-country—so I like the fitness part of it. I’m too much of a rookie to get to see much of the interesting stuff, but I guess that will come over time. At least I hope so.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to be stuck at a desk filling out paperwork for the rest of my life.”
“What about being a woman? Do you get much trouble from the men because of it?”
She was so small, so delicate looking. I was suddenly gripped with a desire to keep her safe.
“Nah, they’re all right. If any of them give me any trouble, I just challenge them to a pull-up competition.” She grinned. “I win every time.”
I laughed. “I can’t imagine you doing any pull-ups with those skinny little arms of yours.”
“I’m a lot stronger than I look.” She sat back and flexed her bicep with a shy smile.
“I’ll bet you are. Are you sure I can’t get you something else? Maybe some lunch? I’m drowning in casseroles over here, so you’d be doing me a favor.”
She shook her head. “I really have to get going or I’ll be in deep shit.” She shot me a mortified look. “Excuse my language. Too much time around the guys.”
“I’ve heard worse coming out of my own mouth only this morning,” I said, waving her away.
She laughed and nodded toward the photographs on the table. “Do you want to keep those?”
I looked down at his tanned, glossy face staring back at me and nodded. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with them, but I’d like to hang on to them for now.”
“Sure. We’ve got more copies at the station. I saw the picture of Allison, by the way.”
“The one from the news?” The image of Ally as a blond movie star flashed through my head and I blanched.
She shook her head. “No, the one you gave to Chief Quinn. She was really pretty.”
The light blue dress. The way her hair lit up gold in the sunshine. I smiled. “She was.”
Shannon got up from the table and took her mug to the sink. She turned on the tap and started washing it out, but I shooed her away. “Leave that,” I said. “It’ll give me something to do.”
I walked her to the hall, and she paused at the front door. “I know you have loads of people looking out for you and everything, but if there’s anything I can do to help . . . I’d be happy to come by sometime?”
“I’d like that,” I said, and I was surprised to find that it was the truth.
“Good,” she said, giving me that same shy grin. “I’ll see you soon, then.”
I went back into the kitchen and stared at the man smiling up at me from the photograph. For the first time in a long time, I felt the dark clouds in my mind part.
Who are you? And what on earth were you doing with my Ally?
Allison
I can’t tell what time it is. The woods seem to grow darker every time I take a step, the branches above closing in on me, forcing me to stoop. My back is in agony. I’m trying to fight the waves of panic with the breathing I’d learned at countless hot yoga sessions back in San Diego. The instructor had been a tall, rangy guy with a ponytail and a pungent odor. He would scold us like children throughout the class, lecturing us about our closed hearts and our poor alignment. Still, the classes were full each week, the room crowded with women lying on their mats, waiting for a man to tell them what they were doing wrong in the name of enlightenment. We were used to it, I guess. It felt natural. The smell of his sweat pushed its way into our pores and up our noses as we practiced our ujjayi breath and tried to bend ourselves into shapes that would please him.
I should have known how easily I’d be turned around. I should have known I’d lose my way.
It’s high summer but there’s a chill in the air, and I know it’ll be cold by nightfall. What I’d give for one of those endless California days right now, my skin bronzed and warm to the touch. I close my eyes, just for a minute, and I can see him standing on the beach, his blue eyes shining like two polished marbles, his bare shoulders pinked and sandy, his hand outstretched, waiting for mine.
I’d loved him then.
I heave the bag off my back and sit down heavily on the ground. In front of me there’s a tree with a perfect hollow cut in the center of its broad trunk, like something Winnie-the-Pooh would get stuck in looking for honey. I look up, eyes straining through the trees, but the sun can’t reach me down here.
A dragonfly hovers above a tuft of crabgrass, its febrile wings stuttering before it darts and swoops away. Dragonflies are usually near water—I can’t be too far. The drumbeat in my head starts up again. I get to my feet and lift the bag onto my back once more.
I saw the ad on Craigslist while using the free Wi-Fi in the library. “Wanted: waitresses/hostesses for upscale private bar. No experience necessary. Send résumé and photographs—head shot and full length—to the email address below. $75 a shift plus tips. Uniform provided.”
I sent them photographs in the morning taken under the too-bright fluorescents of a McDonald’s bathroom—and got a call from the manager that afternoon. When could I start?
It was a place in the Gaslamp Quarter. A heavyset bouncer opened the unmarked door and I stepped inside someone’s idea of luxury, though it wasn’t mine. It was darkly lit and velvet flocked and filled with men in suits being waited on by women in short black skirts and high heels. A jaundiced man with slicked-back hair and an earpiece handed me a little package of black cloth wrapped in cellophane. Uniform provided. “The first night is a trial,” he said as he showed me where I could change. “You don’t get paid until you’re hired.”
I can still feel the weight of the knife in my hand as I sliced lemons for garnish behind the bar. The wince of citrus on bitten-down cuticles. The dull ache in my back and my hips and the arches of my feet as I stood behind the bar, watching the other waitresses swoop and dive like seagulls across the room. Backs straight, chins tilted upward, asses only barely covered by the mandatory short black skirt, feet dancing in vertiginous high heels. Minimum four inches. Some of them managed six with a platform.
“You’re not ready for the big time yet, chickadee,” the head waitress said when I hesitated over the cash register. She shoved me out of the way, stabbed an order onto the screen with a fingernail, grabbed a bottle of champagne from the fridge with one hand and two glasses from the chiller with the other before sauntering over to her waiting table, lipsticked mouth stretched into a blinding smile.
I edged a heel out of one of my shoes and placed it down on the sticky concrete floor. The balls of my feet had gone numb. It would take days to get the feeling back.
One of the other waitresses, a brassy-haired girl with a yoga instructor’s body and big green eyes fringed with false eyelashes, appeared at my elbow. “The boss will freak out if he sees you out of your shoes,” she whispered, darting a glance at the closed door off the other end of the bar.
I shoved my foot back into the shoe. “Thanks,” I said, bowing my head over the cutting board and slicing a lemon in half. The knife slipped and nicked the delicate skin between thumb and forefinger. Blood bloomed. “Shit.” I raised my hand to my mouth and sucked.
The brassy-haired waitress rolled her eyes. “Come on,” she said, casting another nervous look at the manager’s door before pulling me into the stairwell.
The staff room was downstairs, a tiny box room that perpetually smelled of hairspray and damp and sweaty feet. One side of the room was lined with lockers—this was where the waitresses kept their stuff during their shifts. The rest of the room was empty save for a beat-up old chair and a small table on which sat an ashtray piled with cigarette butts. The strict smoking ban didn’t apply in there.
The waitress reached into her locker and pulled out a glittery purple makeup bag. I was expecting her to produce a Band-Aid, or a skein of gauze, but instead she pulled out a small plastic vial filled with white powder. She untwisted the top and tapped a little bit out onto the flat of her hand. “Here,” she said, offering it up.
I hadn’t done coke since college, when giggling friends had pulled me into the bathroom of a dive bar off Commonwealth Avenue. I hadn’t liked it then. It had made me feel out of control. But then I thought of my father lying still on the sofa, and the look on my mother’s face when her eyes met mine, and the blankets tucked under the back seat of my car, and the pain that was already shooting its way up my calves from my heels
. She was offering me something that I suddenly, desperately wanted: to lose myself completely. I bent my head over the girl’s hand and inhaled sharply. I felt it hit the back of my skull, and my whole body seemed to lift off the floor.
“We call it Snow White around here,” the brassy-haired girl said with a wink. “It makes you whistle while you work.” She tapped out a bump for herself and inhaled it in one quick sniff. “I’m Dee, by the way.” She slipped the purple bag back into her locker and slammed the door shut.
At some point, I must have started to sing. Who knows how long I’ve been doing it, but when my voice finally registers in my ears, I’m startled by the sound. It’s a Beatles song, of course, because what other songs does anyone know by heart? God knows how much of the back catalog I’ve gone through already—Was it chronological? Did I start with the Hamburg days before moving into psychedelia?—but I catch myself on “Eleanor Rigby.” Not exactly one to lift the spirits. I stop and switch to “Good Day Sunshine,” though it feels perverse given the circumstances and the fact that the slivers of sky available to me through the trees have turned a pale purple. It’ll be dark soon, and I still haven’t found water. Maybe the dragonfly was lost. I sure as hell am.
I don’t have a good voice—it’s too low, gravelly. I was a soprano as a kid, voice high and clear as glass, but something shifted during puberty and I was relegated to the back of the school choir. Still, he loved it when I sang. “Janis Joplin, eat your heart out!” he’d call when he’d catch me singing in the shower. I was always embarrassed afterward, but he’d just shake his head and laugh. “You sound perfect,” he’d say, pulling me close and kissing the damp coils of hair. “You sound happy.”
It’s you, I would say. You’ve made me happy. It’s you.
He loved when anyone sang, really. Not just me. He loved hearing the housekeeper sing to herself as she polished the floor. He loved spotting a teenager wearing those huge can headphones and singing quietly to himself on the street, lips barely moving, eyes focused on the cracks in the pavement. Whenever he saw someone playing on a street corner, an old acoustic strapped around his shoulder, maybe a beat-up amp squatting next to him, he’d always stop. It didn’t matter how good the performer was. He would listen to him, a slow smile spreading across his face, head nodding approvingly. People would push past, a few of them shoving a couple of quarters into the open case, but he’d stay until the song was finished, and then he’d walk up to the musician, take him by the hand, look him in the eye, and say, Wow, that was great, that was wonderful, I loved it. And then he’d give the performer money. Real money, not a handful of change dug from a back pocket but a crisp bill in a high denomination. The first time I saw him do it, I watched with a quiet awe: his kindness, his patience, his generosity not just with his money but with his time, his appreciation, his approval. His approval was the most valued thing of all.
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