I set my bag on the floor and walked from room to room, throwing open windows, letting in fresh air. It was not until after I’d showered, shaved, and changed and was back in the kitchen that I noticed the message light blinking on the phone. I pressed the message button and was so sure it was Sophie—who else would call? I hadn’t gotten a message from anyone else in months—that it took a moment to recognize Father Gervase’s voice. I erased it before hearing why the priest was phoning, knowing I wasn’t up to yet another directive from the bishop, if that was his purpose. The second message was Father Gervase again, and again I hit the erase button, but when I heard the next voice on the machine, my finger, poised above the pad, froze.
“Mr. Light? Will? This is Dan Gordon. Would you please return my call when you get this message? I can be reached at the station house.” He left the number.
Strength left my legs, and I sank into a chair. It could be anything. Anything. But I knew it wasn’t. My finger trembled as I punched in the number. Gordon picked up on the second ring.
“Thanks for getting back to me.”
“I was away for a few days.”
“Yes, if you’re going to be there for a bit, I’d like to stop by.”
“Now?”
“When it’s convenient.”
“What’s going on?”
“We have a new development around your daughter’s face.”
Lucy’s face? I pictured the last time I had seen her. In the funeral home, before they lowered the lid on her casket. “Lucy’s face?”
“Her case, Will. A new development in the case.”
A new development. After all this time. I swallowed against the sour taste of coffee that rose to my throat, coffee I’d had with Sophie at dawn before I left Maine. “I’ll be here,” I said. While I waited for him, I debated whether or not to call Sophie but decided to wait until I learned what Gordon had to say.
He looked older, more tired than the last time I’d seen him.
“You said you have a new development?”
“Yes. Of course, it could mean nothing.”
He wouldn’t have called or be sitting there if it were nothing.
“Father Gervase called us. He said he’d been trying to reach you, and when he couldn’t, he came to us.”
I remembered the messages on the machine from the priest that I had erased. “I just got home and haven’t had a chance to return his calls. What’s going on?”
“He told us he found something in the chapel that he gave to you, something you believe belongs to your daughter. A toy figure.”
Lucy’s Yoda. “Yes. Yes, he did. But he couldn’t remember when or how he found it.”
“Yes. Well, apparently sometime during the past couple of days, he remembered. I’d like to take a look at it. If you still have it.”
If I still had it? Of course I had it. It was Lucy’s. I climbed to her room, slowly, as if scaling a mountain. I opened the door and glanced at the shelf, half expecting to find an empty spot where I’d placed it, as if it had all been a dream, but there it was. I cupped it in my hand, took a minute to steady myself before I descended.
“And you are sure this is hers?” Gordon said when I handed it to him.
“Absolutely.” I pointed to the bottom of one of the little reptilian feet. “See here, those three Ls—that is a mark Lucy made to put on things. Like a brand. I know absolutely that this is hers.”
Gordon ran a finger over the looped letters. “Do you have any idea how it might have ended up in the chapel?”
“I didn’t even realize it was missing from her room.”
“So as far as you know your daughter didn’t give it to one of her friends.”
“No. No. Of course not. Why? Did someone say Lucy did?”
Gordon didn’t answer the question. “And neither you nor your wife gave it to anyone?”
“No. This isn’t making sense.”
Absently, Gordon ran his thumb over the inscribed Ls. “As it turns out, a boy from the high school admitted that he had it. He said he must have dropped it when he was in the chapel. He said Lucy gave it to him.”
That couldn’t be true. Why would Lucy give her Yoda to anyone? “Who?”
Gordon didn’t answer straightaway. “At this point, this person, this boy is only someone who knew your daughter and had this.”
“Who is it?”
Gordon studied him, considered the question. “You understand, Will, we are only trying to sort things out here. As far as we know, the boy has done nothing wrong.”
“Who is it?”
“Duane LaBrea.”
“Duane?” I pictured the boy. Thin, lost, vulnerable.
“Did your daughter talk about him? Did they spend time together?”
I searched my memory. I couldn’t even remember seeing them together except that time Duane had driven both Lucy and Rain home. “No. I can’t even recall her mentioning him.”
“So they weren’t involved?”
Involved? “No.”
“Is there a chance they might have been friends and you weren’t aware of it?”
“No. We would have known. Lucy told us everything.”
An expression I couldn’t read crossed Gordon’s face. “Not always,” he said. “It’s normal for kids Lucy’s age to have a few secrets.”
Not Lucy, I thought. Not our Lucy. “Duane told you that Lucy gave it to him?”
“Well, not initially. When we first questioned him, he denied it, but the second time we spoke to him, he admitted he had dropped it in the chapel.” Gordon held out the toy. “So you have no idea why he would have had this?”
I stared at it. “None,” I said flatly, and then a thought occurred to me. “Unless—”
“What?”
“Maybe Lucy gave it to Duane’s sister, Rain, or something. They were friends. That’s the only thing I can think of.” But even as I said this, I realized it didn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t Duane just tell the police that? Why would he say Lucy had given it to him? Why would he lie about having it?
“Well, I guess that’s it.” Gordon rose.
“That’s it?” I got up, a beat behind and let down that the new development had not been more significant.
“For now. Let us know if you or your wife remember anything. I’ll stay in touch.”
“Sure.”
After Gordon left, I picked up the phone to call Sophie but set the handset down before I even began to dial. The coffee and conversation we’d shared at dawn, our lovemaking—for that was what it had been, tender and urgent and deep—all that felt as if it had happened in a dream. I needed some time to think about the information from Gordon. My portfolio was still on the table where I’d set it earlier. I opened it and flipped through the drawings until I came to the rendering of Saint Sebastian, remembering the day Duane had come alone to the studio and agreed to pose. Why me?, he had asked. I see a vulnerability and a strength, I had replied. That’s exactly what Lucy said. That’s what Duane had told him. Exactly what Lucy said. I had let it slip right by, hadn’t paid attention.
It hit me then, something so obvious I wondered why I hadn’t realized the significance of this before. Lucy would never have gone off into those woods with someone she didn’t know. Someone she didn’t know and trust. Never.
CHAPTER FORTY
Duane was off scooping ice cream at the creamery.
Rain crouched at the head of the basement stairs, close enough to eavesdrop on the conversation in the kitchen.
“The police are making a big deal out of nothing,” her mother said.
“It was a mistake for him to have lied to them, Beth.”
“What? Are you taking their side now?”
“Of course not. I’m just saying he shouldn’t have lied to them.”
“It’s ridiculous. So he had Lucy’s Yoda. That’s no crime. The girl gave it to him.”
“But what was he thinking? To lie to the police like that.”
“Oh, for
heaven’s sake. Obviously, he didn’t want to get involved. That’s all.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to talk to an attorney.”
“That’s your great idea? Get a lawyer? Do you even know how much they charge?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Beth.”
“And it will just make it look like he has something to hide. Duane has nothing to hide, and we shouldn’t run around acting like he does. Like he has some big guilty secret or something. If we get a lawyer for anything it should be to sue the police for harassment.”
Rain shifted her weight on the step. That was her mother. The Queen of D-Ni-Al. That was all she knew about her precious Duane. She slipped down the stairs and crossed to her brother’s room, tried the handle, found it locked. Knowing Duane, he had stashed the key somewhere close by. She slid her fingers along the top of the doorframe. Nothing. So not in an obvious place. But where? Overhead, she heard the scrape of chairs against the kitchen tiles, the creak of the floor, the closing of the back door. Silence. Then her mother calling her name. What had she expected to find in Duane’s room anyway? The answer to his dark secret? She should have forced him to tell her, should have kept at him until he gave in, but they’d only had a minute or two to talk before he left for work.
“You should have heard them, Rainy,” he’d said. “They kept asking me about Lucy and that toy, and I thought about what you had said about them knowing I was lying, and so finally to shut them up I told them the truth, that Lucy had given it to me. I thought that would make them stop, but it didn’t. I swear, they think I had something to do with what happened to Lucy.”
“I don’t understand, Duane. Why would she give her Yoda to you?”
“Cripes, I wish everyone would just forget about the fucking Yoda. I’m sorry I ever saw it.” He yanked off his shirt, pulled a clean one out of a drawer.
Rain stared at his back, so thin she could see his spine, his winglike shoulder blades, and again wondered if he was doing drugs. He seemed a stranger to her. “I mean, it’s not like you were friends or something. Why would she give it to you? Tell me that.”
He avoided her gaze. “I can’t—I can’t tell you, Rainy.”
She narrowed her eyes, considering, combing her memory of anytime she had seen Lucy even having a conversation with Duane. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll trade secrets.” She shoved her hand into the pocket of her shorts and took out the Lucky Strike stone. “Lucy gave me this and I gave her one of mine and we swore to be sisters. Chosen sisters. That was our secret. Now I told you. You tell me what yours is.”
Duane pulled on his clean shirt. “Christ, I’m going to be late for work. I’ll probably get fired.”
“Duane? Come on. Just tell me.” She knew she was begging, sounded like a little girl, but she couldn’t help it.
“I can’t, Rainy. It’s private, okay? Just forget it, will you?”
She stared at the locked door. There were about three thousand places he could have hidden a key. She could spend all day down there and she probably wouldn’t find it, and even if she did, did she think Duane’s private secret was stashed in his room somewhere? It was hopeless.
“Rain?” Her mother’s voice floated down the stairs.
It’s private, okay? She thought about what Dr. Mallory had said about secrets. Good ones. What did she call them? Benign ones. And harmful ones. Ones kept for the right reasons and ones kept for the wrong reasons. She wondered what kind her brother had.
“Rain?” her mother called again.
She thought of a game she and Lucy used to play when they were much younger. They would close their eyes and pretend to be invisible. She wished she could be invisible now. Just disappear. For the first time in days, she thought about the razor taped to the bottom of her bureau drawer. She climbed the stairs, stopping at the top to look back one last time at her brother’s locked door.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I did not hesitate.
It was as if I had been sleepwalking all summer and now had been shocked awake. My mind was clear, clearer than it had been in months with no doubt or indecision. Looking back now from this distance it seems like insanity, and I suppose in a way it was, but that day it seemed reasoned. I never thought of the consequences as I walked to the shed and retrieved the gun. Soon one year would have passed since the day Lucy left the house for school never to come home, leaving a hole that couldn’t be filled. The abyss. Like a vital organ that had been removed from the center of my being—a crater occupying the center and one, I knew, that would soon grow larger. The weapon was where I had hidden it in the paint can in the shed.
There was a line at the takeout window at the creamery. Even now, and in spite of all that was to come, I remember that clearly. The line at the window that snaked along the front of the building. Off to the side of the lot, families gathered at the several picnic benches placed on the grass: a family of five; a mother with a double-wide stroller that held twins; a father wiping melted ice cream from his young daughter’s chin. Families, I thought. The word was a bitterness on my tongue, as was the knowledge that my family was forever gone, taken from me in one evil act. I shut off the engine and waited, watched and waited. I didn’t allow myself to think. To think of Sophie at that moment, of the days we had just spent, that last night of love, would weaken me. And to consider the future, the consequences of what I had to do didn’t bear thinking of. There was only the present. Only what I had to do. Minutes passed. An hour. Cars came and went around me. Finally the door opened, and the boy in yellow high-tops walked out. I rolled down the window and called.
He turned, came toward my car. “Hi, Mr. Light.”
“Hi, Duane.” Purple-tinged shadows rimmed his eyes, as if he had not slept. Or was ill. “Hop in.”
Duane set his hand on the passenger-side handle, hesitated only a minute. Had Lucy hesitated that final day? Had she sensed anything wrong?
“Come on. Hop in. I’ll give you a ride.”
He opened the door. So unsuspecting. Trusting. Just as Lucy had trusted.
I drove down Main Street, along the way to the harbor and my studio, Duane slouched in the seat beside me. “Where are we heading?” he asked as I drove past the studio barn.
I didn’t answer. I drove on, on to Dogtown, to the woods where my daughter had been killed, her body left to decay. Murder is rage turned outward, Sophie had said over the weekend. Just one day ago. Another lifetime ago. When I had still believed it was possible to go on. I was relieved to see there were no other cars in the parking lot, an unpaved square carpeted with pine needles. I switched off the engine.
“So I understand you told the police that Lucy gave you her Yoda,” I said. The boy shot me a look, and I saw the guilt in his eyes and any last doubt disappeared. “I was wondering why she would do that. Why would she do that, Duane?”
“I don’t know.”
“She loved it. Her mother gave it to her. Did she tell you that?” In the distance a dog barked. I wondered if someone else was in the woods. I remembered that it had been a person walking his dog who had found Lucy. “So I’m just wondering why she would give it to you.”
The boy stared down at his sneakers. The top of one was smudged with chocolate. “For strength,” he said after a minute. “She said it would give me strength.”
The sun had disappeared behind a cloud, and the smell of peat, of decay floated through the car window. The last earthly odor Lucy would have smelled. “Why? I need to know why.”
“Why she thought I needed strength?”
“Yes.” The gun was heavy in my pocket. I was calmer than you would ever imagine you could be, the calmness born of certainty of what I must do. What are we capable of? I had wondered that back in the spring when I’d first looked at the paintings of the saints in Father Gervase’s book. What, I had mused, if tested, what would I be capable of?
“I just want to know what Lucy ever did to you?”
“Did to me? Nothing. No
thing. I swear.”
It was satisfying to hear the fear in the boy’s voice.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Everyone has secrets.
Rain collapsed on her bed and tried to figure out what to do. She’d made a promise to Lucy she wouldn’t tell anyone that she had gone for a ride with Jared Phillips. It had seemed harmless enough when she made the promise. (They had been in her bedroom, sprawled on the bed and idly making plans for the weekend with no idea of what that weekend would hold.) After Lucy was killed, she’d continued to keep the secret because she didn’t want to upset Mr. and Mrs. Light any more by letting them know Lucy had ridden in Jared’s car when she wasn’t supposed to. Now it didn’t seem so clear. She didn’t think it was really important. It wasn’t like Jared had anything to do with Lucy’s disappearance any more than Duane did. He was vice president of the student council for God’s sake, and wasn’t that a sign he had totally changed from the reckless boy who had been responsible for the deadly accident? But still the burden of the secret was heavy. Maybe if she told now, there would be one less secret to weigh on her and, it occurred to her, it would also deflect some of the attention from Duane. Rain fastened her eyes on the stain in the ceiling as if the answer could be found there. Won’t you let me try to help? Dr. Mallory’s words echoed, but Rain didn’t see how she could help. She traced the brown sprawl of stain that ran from the corner above the window in toward the light fixture, the result of an ice dam over the winter. The icicles hanging from the gutter had seemed harmless (like secrets) until water leaked through her ceiling. Won’t you let me try to help? It took a minute to find the card, and she let another few minutes pass before she keyed the number on her cell.
“Hello?”
“Dr. Mallory?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Rain.”
“Hello, Rain.”
“I was wondering if—”
“Yes. Go on, dear.”
“If I could ask you something. It’s about what we talked about. About secrets.” As soon as she spoke the words she could feel the burden lifting, lifting, lifting.
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