Why don’t you climb in and have a look around, Sanchez says.
She does. She slides behind the wheel, the seat worn to his shape. She can smell him, his pine-smelling soap. Like an extension of his studio, the truck is his own little world. In truth, she’s rarely ridden in it. When they go out together, they always take her Saab, and she does the driving. The truck is in its usual state, the floor littered with paper coffee cups, receipts, empty water bottles.
Where was the note?
Tucked right up here, under the visor.
And the ring?
Johnson points to the cup holder. Right in there.
Simone shakes her head. This is surreal. I’m not sure I believe it. It’s almost too—
She doesn’t want to cry here, not now, not in front of these strangers. She gets out and stands there a minute, trying to breathe. It’s just very unlike him to do something like this, she says finally.
You have any idea what he was doing over here?
He may have been on assignment. She explains about Rye’s work.
May have been? You don’t know?
She wonders if it’s some sort of a crime not to know your spouse’s schedule. We kind of lead independent lives, she says.
But the cop only looks at her with troubled confusion.
We spend a lot of time apart.
I see—
He likes a lot of—
Ma’am?
Space.
Johnson nods, but she can feel him judging her, their messed-up marriage, their sprawling farm, their money. There’s a bag back here, he says, and opens the back door, where Rye’s canvas bag is nestled on the floor. Why don’t you have a look.
He sets it on the seat and steps aside. Unzipping the black canvas, she thinks vaguely of a body bag. The dirty clothes inside are stiff and cold. She finds his camera, not his usual digital Nikon but an old film camera, and a couple canisters of film. There are Kind bars, a frozen bottle of water, half full. At the very bottom, there’s a large manila envelope. She opens it carefully and discovers a collection of photographs, all of the same boy, not just any boy, but a version of her husband. Her heart beats a little faster. They have the same eyes.
Any idea who that is? Sanchez asks.
It’s not easy to lie to this woman, this fierce, seasoned cop. But she isn’t ready to talk about this, not with her. I have no idea, she says. It’s probably something he was working on for his latest monograph. We have pictures of strangers all over the house.
They want to show her the bridge. They climb up the steps and over the rope. The wind is stronger up here. Simone grasps at her wildly blowing hair.
It’s about four hundred acres, Johnson shouts, sweeping his arm over the river where the island sits. Most of that land’s been donated to the state. There’s an old hotel on it. Used to be a real showplace. It’s been closed now almost fifty years. My grandparents were married there. The state’s been trying to buy it, but the owner’s in a nursing home someplace with dementia, with no heirs, and refuses to sell it. We got history around here with the river. You can find it all over these parts, just staring you in the face.
Maybe he fell, Simone says. Maybe he was trying to get a shot.
Could be. But that doesn’t explain the stuff he left behind, Sanchez says. The note, the ring. The keys—
She looks out at the bleak sky, the icy water below. Could he survive it?
Ma’am?
She gestures with her chin, unable to say the words.
Let me put it to you this way, Mrs. Adler. Nobody has before.
When she gets home, she parks Rye’s truck on the grass, just like he always did. The dogs run over expectantly, but when he doesn’t step out, they whimper and whine with disappointment. It’s only me, she says.
She grabs the bag off the back seat and brings it into the kitchen and sets it down on the table. She fishes out the envelope that contains the pictures of the boy and flips through them a second time. For the briefest moment, it’s almost like he’s theirs, the child they never had together. She’d always wanted to, but after Yana, Rye didn’t want any more kids. At the time, she’d been all right with it, but now, with everything so crazy, she can’t help rethinking her life and all the things she might’ve done differently.
Theo. She says his name aloud. Strange. He looks so much like his father. The eyes, the narrow chin, even the eyebrows. It’s one of those school pictures. The shiny blue backdrop. He’s maybe seven or so. Sitting there, smiling. She turns it over: Theodore Ladd, Grade 2.
Ladd, she whispers.
She opens her laptop and googles Magda Ladd. Sure enough, a website comes up: Celebrations Photography by Magda P. Ladd. Encouraged, she opens the site and finds Magda’s picture, not the girl she remembers, but a woman twenty years older. No longer the wild beauty her husband had photographed, but a grown woman etched with her own fraught history.
She clicks on the contact page and a phone number appears. She forces herself to dial it and waits expectantly as it rings. She will tell her everything, she decides. She will confess that instead of giving her husband the letter, she buried it deep in the tomb of her closet. And like all things that are hidden, it has remained a symbol of distrust. A curse on their marriage. She will tell her that from the moment she first saw her, she envied her beauty, her exquisite power. And that she hated her for it. Yes, she will tell her that too. I never meant to hurt anyone, she imagines declaring. And she will admit how terribly sorry she is.
But it isn’t Magda who answers. Instead, a recording informs her that the number is no longer in service.
In frustration, she walks into the field with the dogs. It is beginning to sleet, and she can hear her wind chimes jangling in the trees, an overture to the nearing storm. Back inside, she lights the woodstove and makes some tea, then thinks better of it and pours a glass of whiskey. She drinks it down like a cure, watching her reflection come clear in the darkening glass.
Sleep will not come. She lies there in bed, thinking about Rye. Wondering what might have been in his head to make him do such a thing. If in fact he has.
Julian
Julian had never been better.
Back in the city, ensconced in his usual routine, he felt lighter. Freer.
Absolved.
It was over a month now, and nothing had happened. His greatest fear—waking in the night to police banging on his door—had not been realized.
That night, driving cautiously home on icy roads, he’d made the decision to turn his life around. What else could he do? That was how he’d described it to his mother when he called her the next morning. I’m a changed man, he’d told her. I’ve experienced a revelation.
The bad thing he’d done to Adler had inspired introspection more than guilt. What was the point of guilt? It didn’t change anything. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t take it back.
Methodically he’d embarked on a crusade of change.
In the weeks that followed, he became a model citizen, courteous to his neighbors and coworkers, offering to help whenever it was needed, in some cases going out of his way to appease or comfort someone, like the old lady who lived above him with her little shrieking dog. His coworkers called him a workaholic, and he supposed it was true; he rarely left the office before ten. As a result, he’d garnered several new and important accounts.
If it weren’t for his troublesome wife, things would be almost normal.
Her lawyer had been sending nasty, irate letters.
He ignored them. He just couldn’t—
In fact, things had been going so well that—
He had all but forgotten about Rye Adler.
It wasn’t until he saw the headline in the Times that morning in late January that he could fully remember what had so compelled him to do what he’d done. Rye Adler, Renowned Photographer, Reported Missing, it read, along with an ominous picture of Adler’s truck in the empty lot.
He sat down at his kitchen table and made
himself read the article out loud, word for word. A note had been found in the truck; Julian hadn’t been aware of one. They’d found his wedding band and wallet, and on the nearby bridge a footprint had been discovered in the snow that closely matched the underside pattern of Adler’s sneakers, suggesting that he might have fallen or jumped. The article was so convincing, he almost believed it himself, that Rye’s fall from the bridge had been deliberate, provoked by a deep and unbearable sadness.
It was becoming increasingly clear to Julian that there was a very good chance, an exceptional chance, in fact, that he’d gotten away with it.
Funny how life turned out. He’d always had a talent for operating under the radar. Somehow going unnoticed. Fading into the background. You could see an awful lot when nobody noticed you. He thought of his photographs, shoved into a box somewhere. The lovely sweeping open views he’d captured. That compelling horizon. It was so simple, really, two bands of color, separated by a perfect, infinite line.
It was strange not knowing where she was. Hurtful, really. He’d left several voice mails, none of them returned. He knew he wasn’t supposed to call. She didn’t want to talk to him. She’d made that perfectly clear. And the judge had warned him at his hearing, when he’d shown up to defend himself, that he had no business contacting her. More out of curiosity than anything else, he’d been tracking her phone and the strangest location kept coming up, in the Bronx. He’d been checking it obsessively, at least three times a day, and the location had not changed.
With their home in Westchester so obviously unbearable to her, he assumed she’d taken a rental, but when he flipped through his bank statements, he found no evidence of such an expense, and there were no charges on her credit cards.
Cleary, his spoiled immigrant wife had outsmarted him.
He didn’t have a clue where she was.
A few days later, his Realtor called to say they’d gotten an offer on the house. It’s full price, she declared. You might want to go out there and start cleaning up, the inspection’s next Friday.
He broke down and rang his wife’s lawyer in her Madison Avenue office. The assistant put him through right away. He explained about the house being under contract. I’m just letting you know, he told her. If she wants any of her things, she’ll have to get them this week.
I’ll tell you what your wife wants, Mr. Ladd. She wants those papers signed. You realize, it’ll be a whole lot better for you if you do.
It sounded like a threat.
It may interest you to know that she’s kidnapped our son. Last time I checked, that was a federal offense. I’m his father, he shouted. I have a right to know where he is!
She hasn’t kidnapped anybody, the lawyer snapped. And your rights happen to be quite limited just now. Need I remind you that you have a restraining order issued against you? If I were you, Mr. Ladd, I’d get those papers back to me so you can both move on as quickly as possible.
With that, she hung up on him. Move on, he thought bitterly. The two most expensive words in the English language.
The next morning, he drove out to Westchester with empty boxes and cleaning supplies. The bare wood floors creaked as he walked around. For obvious reasons, he’d turned down the temperature, and the house was cold; it seemed relentlessly hostile to his presence. He wasn’t going to miss this place, he was glad to be getting rid of it. He’d never really been comfortable on this street, and in all their years here, he couldn’t remember ever feeling quite at home. It bothered him now to think that Theo probably hadn’t either.
He grabbed a couple garbage bags and went up to their bedroom. He emptied the contents of her drawers, sweaters and sweatpants and nightgowns and underwear, fighting the impulse to pull the garments to his nose, to breathe in her scent one last time. Closing the last drawer, he heard something rattling around inside it. Annoyed by this minor disruption, he yanked it open and found the culprit, a small pink shell. He picked it up and examined it in his palm. It was shaped like a fan, the size of a nickel. He ran his fingertip across its scalloped edge.
It was a sign, he thought.
The following Saturday he drove out there. With the cold weather, there wasn’t much traffic, and the small towns along the shore were fairly desolate. Montauk was just as he remembered it. More than twenty years had passed since that weekend, what Julian had always considered an invitation into Rye’s exclusive little circle, but it hadn’t amounted to much. For reasons that had never been explained, Rye had dropped Julian. That last day, when they’d moved out of their apartment, Rye merely muttered, I guess I’ll see you around, before driving off in his mother’s old station wagon. Julian had stood there a moment on the sidewalk, feeling like a spurned lover.
He turned off the old highway into a neighborhood of small cottages, angling down toward the beach, and retraced his memory to find the private, sand-covered lane that ran up to the house. With satisfaction, he drove slowly up the long hill. At the top, just as he had suspected, he saw her car sitting in the driveway.
He pulled over and parked in a cluster of seagrass. He felt a little sick. His mouth was very dry. He stumbled out, taking in the expansive horizon, the wind filling up his jacket, rippling the legs of his pants. This cliff, he thought, where nothing can touch you.
He looked out at the ocean, the red sun sinking into it.
It was the end, he knew. He had come to that point.
He walked up to the house, aware that Theo was standing at the upstairs window, gazing down at him.
Magda opened the door. She looked a little frightened. How did you—
He stood there, shaking his head. You’ve always underestimated me, Magda.
Why are you here?
There was so much he wanted to say, and yet, at that moment, he was unable to form even a single sentence.
He doesn’t want to see you. He’s not ready.
I know, he said. I understand.
You know you’re not allowed to be here. You’re breaking the—
Please, he said. Is that really necessary?
She sighed and shook her head, and he asked her if she’d seen the article about Adler.
It’s horrible. Nobody seems to know what happened.
He’s missing, apparently.
But his truck. Just sitting there in that lot. It’s so eerie. Her voice trailed off. I don’t know what to think, she said. You may as well know that I love him. I’ve loved him my whole life.
She started to cry, and it was in that moment that Julian understood he’d been a fool to think killing Adler would bring her back to him.
Well, he said. I brought you something. She waited as he took the envelope out of his pocket. I wanted to personally hand these to you. They’re all signed. You’re a free woman.
She stared down at the envelope in her hands. Thank you, Julian.
I need to say something to you.
Okay. She looked at him with interest, waiting, her long, thin arms crossed over her breasts like a shield.
I always thought I loved you more, he said. But now I’m wondering if I loved you at all.
She nodded that she understood. I know I did a terrible thing to you, Julian. I don’t expect you to forgive me. I’m sorry. You need to know that.
I’m sorry too, Magda, he said finally. Then he took the shell out of his pocket. I thought you might want this. It was in your drawer.
He dropped the little shell into her palm. She seemed to recognize it and clasped her fingers around it. I thought I’d lost it, she said.
I think it belongs here. He looked at her a long moment. Goodbye, Magda.
With resolve, he turned and got into his car and pulled out of there.
He knew he’d never see her again.
Rye
He is better, stronger. Lying here for all this time, receiving the care of these good people, getting up only to use the outhouse out back, hobbling to it on a pair of crutches they have left for him, his feet pushed into a stranger’s shoes. Wearing
another man’s clothes. Somehow, they give him strength. Again and again, he finds himself.
He thinks of Magda. That night when he’d held her, body and soul, in his undeserving hands. She is always in his head. He imagines her inside his mother’s house. They called it the cottage—built in 1900 by a captain’s widow—it has a widow’s walk. There is a story people tell about the widow, how you can see her ghost up there on certain nights, waiting for her husband’s return. With irony, he thinks of Magda now, staring out at the sea, waiting for him.
It was their safe house, his father used to say. The place you went to when you needed to disappear. You couldn’t find it on any map. You couldn’t see it from the road. The ocean embraced it. The cold bare floors and iron beds, the rooms smelling of the sea, the salt and the wind, the dampness. You understood the passage of time as the sun roamed the floors, the corners. You’d look out at an expanse of nothingness, thinking about your life, where you were inside it, what you wanted to do, your future, and your death—yes, you even thought about death. What it might be like once it came. Once it found you.
It’s what the wild places do to us, he reasons. They remind us that we’re vulnerable, expendable. And so briefly here.
In the afternoon, the children come. They have brought supplies.
The girl is Cleo. She kneels beside him and opens the jar of tea and waits as he struggles to sit up. He takes the jar with his good hand. The tea is green, tepid, and he can taste the honey they’ve added to obscure the bitterness. The children watch with fascination as he drinks down the entire jar. The girl’s brother, Gus, holds the bread like a small, round shield. With dirty fingers, he tears off a piece and gives it to him. Thank you, Rye says. The bread is soft and fresh. He chews, swallows. It’s good, he says.
Even this simple exchange exhausts him. For some reason, there are tears running down his cheeks.
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