I sat without moving. The word separated battered my memory. Had I known this and buried it along with so many other things? Nothing came to me. Not even a shred of recognition.
“Separated?” I said, my voice coming out a little high.
Della looked at me, her face slightly alarmed. “Yes. Your parents had broken up. You don’t remember that, either?”
7
“Hey, you’re back,” Ty said, looking up from the front desk, where he was sorting through a stack of papers. “How’d it go?”
“Okay.” I shifted my purse to the other shoulder. Although the letters from my brother and sister added no real weight, I thought I could feel them inside my purse, waiting.
Ty pushed aside his paperwork and leaned on the counter. “Want to tell me about it?”
I did. I wanted to blurt, “My parents were separated!” But more than anything I wanted to read the letters and see if I could find Dan and Caroline. “Not just yet. Thanks, though.”
A sconce shone behind Ty’s head, making his hair look redder, making him seem younger somehow. “How about going out later?” he said. “I could show you some of the Woodland Dunes hot spots.” He rolled his eyes as he said the phrase “hot spots.”
“Yeah, maybe. I’ve got to read over some things first, and I think I’ll do it on my balcony. Is there any way to get a glass of white wine sent up to my room?”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.” Ty and I stood still a moment, smiling at each other, but then I touched my purse and felt the imagined heft of the letters. “Bye for now,” I said and headed for the stairs.
Fifteen minutes later, I was settled on the chaise lounge on the balcony. On the table at my side was a wedge of Gruyère cheese, a small loaf of bread and a bottle of pinot grigio in a tan plastic bucket that read “Long Beach Inn” on the side. Elaine, the housekeeper, had brought it up, saying it was compliments of the house. A small note had been tucked under the napkin that read, “Hope you find what you’re looking for. Let me know if I can help. Ty.”
The note touched me more than I’d have thought possible, and I kept picking it up, reading it again, running my finger over the blue ink. It was something about the kindness, the offer of assistance without getting anything in return. I had no one in my life who made offers like that except my dad and Maddy. Other associates at work might ask if they could help me, maybe take a court call or a deposition from me. But their offers were more about moving up in the firm, getting in good with the young woman who had started the new department and whose dad was on the executive committee, forcing me to build a shield around myself that protected me from alleged friends looking for something other than friendship.
Ty’s gestures, on the other hand, felt genuine. His open smile and watchful eyes made me want to keep in touch with him even after I’d left Woodland Dunes. He wasn’t bad-looking either, the olive T-shirt barely hid a solid chest and strong arms. Then again, he lived in the Midwest, a thousand miles away from Manhattan.
I stared out at the softly lapping waves, aware that I still hadn’t absorbed the news that my parents had split up before my mother’s death. I must have known that at some point, although Della said that they had lived apart only a few weeks before my mom died. But why hadn’t my father ever mentioned this? And why had he seemed like the grieving widower if they’d broken up?
To distract myself, I got up and checked my voice mail in case there was an SOS call from McKnight Corporation or someone from my office. Nothing.
The letters, I decided. Focus on the letters for now. I went back onto the balcony. I put Caroline’s letters in chronological order, using the postmarks on the outside of the envelopes, then I opened and stacked them, so that the earliest rested on top. The first five letters were written on lined paper, the round holes and frayed edges on the left side making it clear they’d been ripped from a notebook. Tiny cursive handwriting, afraid to take up too much space, covered the pages. The words Brighton Academy were stamped on the top right corner of each sheet of paper.
One afternoon, a few days before our mom died, I had sat on the front porch swing with Caroline, and I asked her what it would be like to go to high school. At the time, she was supposed to attend the local high school in town. Caroline rubbed a hand on my back and said, “You’ll be great when you go to high school. You’re pretty and happy, just the way they like ’em. For me, it’ll be hell.”
“But you’re pretty,” I’d said. Caroline wore no makeup over her peach-toned skin and always had on loose clothes that could have been worn by a boy, but she couldn’t hide the dark eyelashes or her new breasts or the long, thin legs that seemed to have sprouted from her body over the last year.
“But I’m not happy.” Caroline pulled her hand away from my back, wrapping her arms around her knees.
“Why?”
Caroline shrugged. “I never have been. I don’t know how.”
A month later, with our mother dead, and Dan gone to college, Caroline was sent to Brighton Academy, a boarding school outside Detroit. The letter I held in my hand had been written in September 1982, Caroline’s first year there.
Dear Della, I hate it here,
the first letter started.
The other girls are assholes. I know I’m not supposed to swear, but there’s no one around to stop me anymore. The classes are fine, I guess. Algebra is my favorite, because if you learn the rules and stick by them, everything works out the way it’s supposed to. I don’t know why people think math is so hard. I hope things are good with you in Woodland Dunes. I miss you a lot.
Caroline wrote Della once or twice a year from Brighton Academy, and the majority of the letters were in a similar vein. I hate this place, she said. I hate the other girls. It seemed she hated everything—the teachers, the food, her roommate—everything except a few classes. And she was lonely.
In the spring of what I figured should have been her senior year, Caroline wrote:
Well, I’m staying here for one more go-around. I flunked three classes accidentally. It was better than the alternative.
What, I wondered, was the alternative? Graduating and moving on to college or out into the world? Why wouldn’t she have wanted that if she hated the place so much?
The next letter came in the spring of the following year, Caroline’s fifth at Brighton.
They passed me, and now I’m slated to walk the plank so I can leave. I don’t think I actually did better in class. In fact, I think they passed me to get rid of me, or maybe my father paid them. Wouldn’t surprise me. He’s supposed to be here tomorrow. Nice of him, don’t you think?
I put the letter facedown on my lap. Caroline’s sarcasm made me anxious and confused. I took a sip of my wine, but it tasted too warm and citrusy now. The sun was starting to slide into a thicker, yellow color, threatening to turn rust-red and hot-pink, but I couldn’t appreciate it. Why, why, why, I kept thinking, why hadn’t I been allowed to see Caroline? Why hadn’t my father and I both gone to her graduation? Was Caroline’s resentment based solely on her being sent away to boarding school? Or was it the result of something more?
I lifted the knife off the tray to cut a piece of cheese, more for something to do than out of any real hunger, but as I sliced through the brick of Gruyère, my hand slipped and the knife made a sharp scrape on the bottom of the silver tray, nearly missing the index finger of my other hand. I put the finger to my mouth, as though I had cut myself, feeling jumpy, nervous.
I managed to cut a slice of cheese, and then lifted the stack of mail from Caroline again. The next letter on the pile was written on lavender stationery and was dated seven months after Caroline’s high-school graduation.
Dear Della,
Merry Christmas. Sorry I haven’t written sooner. They asked me not to contact anyone for a while, so that I could stay “in touch” with myself instead. I keep telling them how ironic that request is. I’m already too in touch with myself. Oh well. It�
�s not all bad here. Hope you are happy in Woodland Dunes. You can write me at the address on the envelope, and if you feel like sending some of your oatmeal cookies, I would be thrilled.
Miss you, Caroline.
I found the envelope the card had been in and looked at the return address. Caroline’s name was listed there and below that, “Crestwood Home” and an address in “Holly Knolls, Connecticut.” Crestwood Home? I swallowed hard on a piece of cheese.
I went inside and turned on my laptop. I could hear a peal of laughter from downstairs and the low rumble of voices. Probably the happy hour Ty had told me about. Every Friday and Saturday from May to October, he opened the small bar on the deck and treated guests to a few cocktails. Normally, it was the kind of gathering I would have joined with optimism, hoping to meet a few nice people, hoping for that rush of belonging, even if it was just for a few hours. Right now, though, I wasn’t feeling very social.
Once my computer was powered up, I got on the Internet, clicked on “Web Search,” then typed in “Crestwood Home.” The search brought up a number of results that I had to scroll through, including a few Crestwood Inns and B and Bs. Finally, I found a Web site for Crestwood Home in Holly Knolls, Connecticut. Under a banner with the Crestwood name hung a photo of a beautiful estate on a green lawn. Below that, in scrolling script it said, At the Crestwood Home and Psychiatric Institute, we are devoted to the restoration of well-balanced mental health. Our residents live in the peaceful harmony of Connecticut horse country until that restoration is achieved.
Oh, God. I sat back, away from the laptop, staring back and forth between the photo of the lovely brick mansion that looked more like a country inn and the words Psychiatric Institute. I pushed the laptop away and leaned on the desk, cupping my face in my hands. Why had Caroline been there? Because she had seen something too awful, because she had known something too painful?
Or maybe, I thought, because she had done something too horrible.
8
I pried open one eye and groaned. Even that minor movement caused a lurch of pain in my head so severe it blinded me for a second. There was light. Way too much light.
I blinked repeatedly until the other eye opened and focused. A small, black alarm clock was on a nightstand, I could see that much, but it didn’t tell me anything except that I was in a hotel, not an uncommon event. I opened my eyes wider and moved my head toward the clock. Now I could see that it was on a white wicker nightstand instead of the usual lacquered wood veneer of most hotel tables. I continued to stare at the clock until the numbers made sense. Finally, I grasped that it was 11:00 a.m., an ungodly late hour for me. I forced my eyes past the nightstand to the source of the light—sun streaming through white-trimmed French doors. That’s when I remembered that I was in Woodland Dunes. And as I pushed myself up on my arms and took in my clothes scattered in a trail toward the bed, I realized that I was very hungover.
Last night, Ty had called and told me that I should get out of the room. “You need something to eat, and c’mon, you can’t work all night,” he said.
I laughed. I wanted to say, “Tell that to the people at my firm,” but he was right. I was famished, and the text of Caroline’s letters had begun to swim and merge in front of my eyes. I wanted an excuse to escape.
“Great,” Ty said when I accepted. “We’ll get you something to eat, and we’ll have a few beers.”
But a few beers had turned into six. Or seven. Okay, possibly eight. I lost count. What I did remember was Ty shaking his head at some point, saying, “You don’t need another one,” and me grabbing the beer out of his hand, saying, “I sure as hell do.”
I rarely get drunk, and if I do, it’s with Maddy, someone I can let down my guard with, no one else. But it turned out that I felt I could relax with Ty. It was something about the kind eyes that watched my face as I talked, the way he held the barstool out for me, the way he tried to get me to slow down on the alcohol. And he had danced with me to “Brown Eyed Girl” when I’d played it on the jukebox, even though there was no dance floor, even though some guys he knew jeered at us.
I found some ibuprofen in my bag and took two. Then another one for good measure. I lay down again, waiting for the drug to take the edge off. I buried my head under the pillow, but still the light from the beach forced its way into the room.
That’s what I should do, I realized, go running on the beach. I wanted to get back to the letters, but more than anything, I wanted to sweat out some of the alcohol.
I changed into running shorts and a T-shirt, trying to ignore my parched throat and the throbbing blood vessel in my temple. I trod lightly down the back stairs and out onto the beach, wanting to avoid Ty for the moment. I was sure I looked like absolute hell, and I was embarrassed about my drunken conduct last night. As I stepped onto the sand, the sunlight pierced my eyes like a thousand needles, almost making me turn around and scrap the run. Then a thought struck me—had I kissed Ty last night? Some slobbering attempt at comfort? Mentally, I scrolled through the end of the night. He had walked me to my room, letting me lean on his shoulder after I stumbled twice on the stairs. Finally, he’d unlocked the door with my key, which he gave back to me, and told me he’d had a good time, that he would see me tomorrow. Then he left. Thank God. Thank God I hadn’t made an even bigger ass of myself.
I made my feet move over the sand, down toward the water where the sand would be packed and firm. I turned right and walked for the first few minutes, letting my muscles and my brain warm up. No clouds hid the absurd brightness of the sun, which had brought all types onto the beach for the first taste of summer—parents with armies of little kids, a few teenage girls in bikinis, their towels angled away from the lake but toward the sun.
This side of the beach housed the larger, grander homes, and they seemed to grow with each step. From Mediterranean villas to Cape Cod clapboard houses, there was no set style requirement except for jaw-droppingly big. I forced my reluctant feet into a run. Every jolt of my heel sent an equally jolting clang to my head, but eventually, I found my running void. I watched the sand, the water, the homes, but I didn’t process much anymore.
I ran like that for at least twenty minutes before I made a wide turn and headed back. As I did, something familiar shook me out of my zone. An odd feeling like the one I’d had at the cemetery, the sensation that someone was watching me. A tingle of fear ticked its way up the back of my neck, making me light-headed and dizzy. Or maybe it was the hangover.
I jogged in place for a moment, taking time to breathe, to look around. There were no other joggers near me, and the closest person on the beach was a man a few hundred feet away, his head in a paperback. I glanced out at the water. A couple of boats bobbed in the distance, but they were so far away I couldn’t even make out what type of crafts they were. I turned my attention to the houses lining the beach. Immediately behind me, sitting high on a dune, was a massive, white contemporary home with flat roofs and walls of glass that faced the beach. The boxy structure made it look cold and unappealing, but it had probably cost millions.
The reflective glare of the glass made it impossible to see if anyone was inside, and I was just about to begin running again, when an image snagged my attention. I continued jogging in place, squinting up at the house, until I could determine what it was. On the far right side, a figure stood at the corner of the deck. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. I could only make out a baseball hat, an orange windbreaker, and arms that were holding something up to the person’s face. I stopped running, and without the bouncing I could see that it was a pair of binoculars. And the binoculars were facing toward the lake and down to the beach. Right at me.
I looked both ways, but there was no one close to me, no one else that the person could be focusing on. Doesn’t matter, I told myself. It must be a home owner simply checking out the beach. But the person didn’t sweep the water or the length of the sand with the binoculars. Instead, the orange-clad arms held fast, the body facing mine,
not wavering, frozen.
I took off running back the way I’d come. I was moving too fast, and the speed would soon tire me, I knew, but I had an irrational desire to get away from the house, from that person, quickly. Yet I couldn’t outrun the feeling of being under surveillance, and when I stopped and looked back, I thought I could still see the figure, turned toward me.
When I got back, I peeked in at the front desk. The housekeeper was on the phone taking a reservation. Ty was nowhere in sight. Then I remembered he’d said that he spent most Sundays at his parents’ until high season. He had told me that he would come back to the inn in the early evening to pick me up for dinner, a dinner where I would meet his father and, hopefully, find out what the police knew about my mother’s death.
I was glad Ty wasn’t at the desk. I didn’t want him to see me right now, looking sweaty and smelling as if I’d bathed in a pool of beer, but at the same time, I couldn’t stop the feeling of wanting him around, wanting that ease.
“Excuse me, Elaine?” I said, stepping into the lobby.
The housekeeper looked up and gave me a smile. “Good morning.”
“I was wondering if you know who owns that big white house down the beach.”
“Down to the right, you mean? The one with all the windows?”
“Right.”
“Ah, probably just some summer resident. I can’t keep them all straight. Sorry.”
I thanked her and went to my room.
After a shower, two more ibuprofen and a raid of the minibar that included every bottle of water and miniature bag of chips, I felt somewhat human. I padded barefoot out onto the deck and again settled into the Adirondack chair with Caroline’s and Dan’s letters.
I began with the next few from Caroline. She had, it seemed, stayed at Crestwood Home for five years. Five years, five years, I kept thinking. Surely that was a hell of a long stay for inpatient treatment. I tried to think of every reason that a nineteen-year-old girl might be in a psychiatric clinic for that length of a time—anorexia, bulimia, depression, drugs—but did any of those require five years of inpatient treatment? I wanted to believe that Caroline had just needed some help, that she needed counseling and had gotten it, but my mind kept coming back to the same thought, that her stay at Crestwood had something to do with my mom’s death, what Caroline knew about it or what part she’d played in it.
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