NANCY WAS WORKING ALONE when I arrived. I poured myself a cup of the strong blend from the self-service urns they had out, then spent a long time fussing with the cream and sugar to give us more time to talk.
“You know what’s funny?” I said. I couldn’t think of a subtle way to start the conversation, so I went for picking up where we had left off. “I just saw Paul Guthy. You know Bess’s uncle?”
“Yeah?” she said uncertainly. I waited for her to offer some commentary, but she was uncharacteristically silent. I went on.
“Well, it turns out—you know how Greg said surfers discovered Bess’s clothes after she drowned?—Paul was one of the surfers.”
“I guess I do remember that,” said Nancy.
“Did he work at the marina then? I was wondering if he’d worked there since Grant died. Taking over for his brother.”
“That’s more recent. Back then he worked for us. He was between things, and Greg liked to help him out.”
“Really? He worked for you around the time Bess drowned?”
“I know he did. He worked the summer fair booth with me the night it happened. I remember thinking afterward how strange it was, everyone in town having fun while that was going on. That’s why I’m sure it wasn’t anyone from here.”
The summer fair was an annual carnival that took place on the green. All the local shops set up booths and there were games and live music. It was funny I hadn’t put together that that had taken place the same night. My mom hadn’t mentioned it in her diary. It was true that the whole island usually did show up for the fair, but I knew that Bess and at least some of her friends had been at The Slip later that night. Mom had mentioned Dad and Jimmy. Was Cat there? The fair ended with a midnight fireworks show. If Paul had worked the Picnic Basket’s booth, he would have stayed for cleanup after that. Nancy couldn’t have moved everything herself. So he couldn’t have been at the lighthouse that night.
“Oh,” I said. “So he wasn’t involved with the marina after the town took over?” I was interrupted by the sound of Greg clearing his throat. Nancy turned and looked like a startled deer. Greg gave her a stern look, and her nervous expression turned to guilt.
“I should get back to work, Eliza. Can I get you anything else?”
“No thanks. Hi, Greg,” I said, super friendly, then slipped out to let them work out whatever domestic squabble was going to ensue. Last time I’d been there, he’d warned her not to talk so much. This time he didn’t want her talking, and she knew it.
BACK AT THE LIBRARY, I was stuck. Paul had seemed like the obvious choice, but now he had an alibi. I went back to searching old issues of the Gazette, but kind of aimlessly. Drowning, I realized, made the truth especially difficult to determine. It wasn’t like a shooting or stabbing. It seemed almost impossible to know exactly what happened, when and how. There had been so many famous, unsolved cases: the actress Natalie Wood, or that architect in the Hamptons. He’d left his clothes behind on the beach as well. Or the singer Jeff Buckley, walking right into the Mississippi River.
BESS HAD NOT COMMITTED suicide, I reminded myself. Her hair had been cut off. Her clothes were covered in blood. I typed in “drowning” in the Gazette archive search, not expecting anything to come up.
I’d made only a few quick notes before a text from Charlie interrupted me. your dad just left. call me when you are alone. need to talk.
I’d lost track of time. My dad would get home before me now unless I ran. I wished for the third time that I hadn’t left my bike. I made it home in a half-run, half-awkward speed walk, my book bag banging the outside of my thigh painfully. No one was home. That either meant I’d beat my dad there or already missed him. I hurried to the shed and opened the drawer. Then I called Charlie.
“The anchor is gone,” I said before he’d even said hello. That was a dumb move, I thought immediately. If this had been a movie, the killer would have answered instead of Charlie.
“I’m glad you called,” said Charlie. He sounded out of breath, a little off balance. “Some weird stuff happened today. I was outside cleaning paint brushes. I heard my dad and your dad talking. My dad said not to worry, now Malloy wouldn’t be a problem. He just needed a reminder.”
“A reminder?”
The word caught in my throat. My dad was taking the anchor to school. Malloy would still be there. Charlie was silent. A hundred thoughts seemed to zip back and forth between us, ricocheting through the cell-o-sphere. I wanted to say, Oh no. Not your dad too. And, How could we not know our own parents? And, What’s going to happen to us, now that everything we thought we could believe in is ruined? I thought Charlie probably wanted to say these things to me too, but he didn’t.
“You should get over to school,” he said instead. “Want me to meet you there?”
“No,” I said. “If I go, I can pretend I needed help with something in English. If you’re there it’ll seem weird. Meet me at the diner though. I have some other stuff I need to tell you.”
I hung up and then I was running again, running and cursing Paul Guthy and hoping I wasn’t too late.
ELEVEN
It was strangely quiet at the school, considering there were still families camped out in the gym and classes had ended only an hour or two earlier. I’d run so fast I almost bumped right into my dad, who was just walking through the front doors when I arrived. I wasn’t sure what tack to take: intercept him before he got to Mr. Malloy or follow him to see what he planned to do, then barge in, making it look like a coincidence that we were both there at the same time. I lingered, thinking, behind some evergreens that hadn’t lost their needles in the storm. Because I still couldn’t really believe my dad could be part of anything deceitful like this, I decided to follow him. Unfortunately, I timed it wrong. When I entered the hall, my dad was nowhere in sight.
I was forced to head straight for Malloy’s office. I hurried up the north stairs to the second floor. When I got to the office, I knocked and swung the door open all at once. Malloy was alone, grading papers and extremely surprised to see me.
“Eliza,” he said, and waited for my explanation.
“Hi, Mr. Malloy,” I said. “You haven’t seen my dad, have you?”
“Your father?” He blinked in apparent confusion, his forehead creased.
“Oh, I thought I saw him on my way in. But maybe I made a mistake.” If my dad wasn’t here yet, then I would need to keep Malloy talking until he arrived.
“The other day …” I began, not really knowing where I was going. “The other day you mentioned what a great writer Bess Linsky was.” He looked completely blank. I hadn’t imagined that, had I? He didn’t say anything, so I forged ahead.
“I’d be really interested to read that paper she wrote. The example you said you used in European lit?”
“I have no idea where that would be, if I still even have it. I haven’t taught that class in a long time. With all the testing we’re required to do, the curriculum has become much more … focused.”
“Oh,” I said. I had nowhere to go from here.
“You weren’t in class today.”
Damn. I’d forgotten I’d be busting myself by showing up at school. That had been stupid.
“I know,” I said. “My mom is going to write me a note.” Keep it vague, I told myself.
“Eliza, I don’t know what has inspired your interest in Bess, but I’m not sure it’s healthy. We are all under tremendous stress since the hurricane. I wonder if this … obsession, not to put too fine a point on it … is a reaction on your part to the recent events here.”
“Did someone tell you to say that to me?” I asked, pointblank. I was fed up with being kept in the dark.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked me. His eyes narrowed and I didn’t know if he was thinking I was paranoid or if he thought I was somehow threatening him. I swallowed, imagining him thinking: The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
“Nothing,” I said. “People just don’t like to talk ab
out Bess, and I don’t understand why.” He nodded but didn’t say anything. “I should go.”
If my dad were coming here, he would have arrived by now. I left Malloy’s office and closed the door behind me. I stepped to the side so he wouldn’t see me through the glass door and timed ten minutes on my phone. I waited, leaning against the chilly wall, for Dad to show up. When he didn’t, I smiled to myself. Charlie and I could be wrong about all of this. There were lots of possible explanations.
As I left the school, my dad was the one to spot me.
“Eliza,” he called across the lawn. “Feeling better?” I joined him, and he hugged me around the shoulders with one arm. I noticed he was in jeans and a sweater and he carried nothing with him. The anchor was four inches long. It wouldn’t fit in a pocket without being visible.
“I had a meeting with my English teacher,” I lied. Dad didn’t react at all. “What about you?”
“Swim coach meeting,” he said.
I sighed with a shaky smile. In the chaos since the storm, in the whirlwind of Charlie and everything else, I’d almost lost track of the days of the week. Today was Thursday. He had a swim team meeting every other Thursday. I hadn’t thought of that. I hugged him back. There was a reasonable explanation after all. “Where are you headed?”
“The diner,” I said. “Meeting Charlie.”
He flashed me an unreadable look.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said, his lopsided smile taking over. “It’s nice to have him back on the island, isn’t it? He’s a good kid.”
WHEN I GOT TO the diner, to my surprise, Charlie wasn’t there. I found a booth and sat alone, opening Mom’s diary at random. Mom and Bess had taken a day trip to Salem—research, Bess said, for her part in the play The Crucible. Bess was obsessed with the history about the witch trials. She led Mom from place to place, pointing out where the real Goody Proctor had lived, the Witch House where Judge Corwin lived, and the house where Nathaniel Hawthorne had written The Scarlet Letter. Mom, who, I imagined, was too shy for theater, was along for the ride. The two of them, wandering the crooked narrow streets, pigging out on fudge from a tourist shop, talking about everything under the sun.
“Nice to be away from Misery Island,” Bess joked. I could see my mom smiling. It was the first passage I’d read where my mom seemed to feel free. She was happy that day, I thought, something I realized I couldn’t picture for myself. Had I ever really seen her that way? I skipped ahead to an entry from May, right after the Spring Fling:
Bess made me throw up. She said it was the best thing to do. She stood above me, holding my hair back in a damp knot against my head. Like she was a grown-up, like a mother. I could feel how clammy and sweaty the back of my neck was. I was disgusting. The strands of hair near my face smelled like vomit. I was ashamed to have her so close. Bess didn’t care.
I told her I was sorry.
She said, I know. Tonight it feels like it’s all too much. Tomorrow you’ll be yourself again. You just have to look ahead to tomorrow. Imagine you’re already there and this feeling is behind you.
I believed her, the way she said that. I thanked her four times, and I made her promise not to tell anyone, and she made me promise that I’d call her the next time I felt this way. I said there wouldn’t be a next time, but she made me promise, anyway.
She said that tomorrow, it will be better.
I hoped she was right. She helped me lie down on the floor. She zipped the sleeping bag up for me. Then she lay down on her own bed, right above me. I closed my eyes. The room spun. Tomorrow, it will be better.
Wow. My mom, drunk. My dad was right, I thought. It seemed like Bess had been a good friend to her. I wondered what she’d been up to that night, to end up in that state. I reread the entry to see if my mom mentioned a party or bar. She made me promise I’d call her the next time I felt this way. Had I read it wrong? Had my mom been drunk? Or was her suicide attempt after Bess’s death not her first? Was it possible I really was endangering Mom by delving into her unstable past?
I didn’t even hear Charlie come in. When I looked up next, he was sitting across from me. For a minute, those gold-flecked brown eyes tugged me from the grim place I’d been visiting in my mind. Then I saw that he looked equally shaken. His dad was “taking care of things” with Malloy, whatever that meant. My dad and Jimmy, talking behind closed doors, planning something. I felt like my life was a puppet show where the curtains had been thrown back and suddenly you could see all the wires being pulled behind the stage.
“So, hi,” I said.
“So, hi. Did you make it to school before your dad?”
“Not exactly. He was on his way in when I got there. He didn’t go to see Mr. Malloy though. He was at a swim team meeting.” Even to me my smile felt forced.
“Did he see you?”
“Not until afterward,” I said. “He didn’t have the anchor with him. I don’t know what happened. Could we have been wrong about all of this?”
“What were they talking about then, giving Malloy a reminder?”
I shrugged. “Maybe he got the message on his own. He wouldn’t talk to me about Bess, pretended he’d never said anything about her. Told me I was developing an unhealthy obsession.”
“You probably are,” Charlie joked. “And so am I.” We both laughed and I turned away, feeling suddenly shy. Were we still talking about Bess?
Kelly set two paper place mats, showing a cartoon map of the states with a giant lobster looming over New England, down in front of us. So far, I had only ordered coffee.
“You need menus?” she asked.
Charlie shook his head. “You hungry?” he asked me. “You want to share some fries?”
I nodded. Kelly disappeared to the kitchen. Charlie traced the lobster on the placemat with one finger. I pointed to Chicago, illustrated with a cluster of tall buildings surrounded by cornfields.
“Do you like corn?” I said. “I wish we had some crayons. We could color these in.” In Texas, there was a bull with a big star on his forehead.
“Where do you want to go?” Charlie asked. “For college, I mean.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll probably stay in state. Or in New England, at least. UMass, or maybe UNH.”
He laughed. “That’d be some serious culture shock,” he teased. University of New Hampshire was less than two hours away. “Don’t you want to get out and see the world a little? Or at least the country? You can always come back.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m happy here. I’m not in a rush to get out. I’m not saying you shouldn’t. I just haven’t felt the need.”
“How do you know what you’re missing if you never even look around?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I know people think college is everything, but I don’t. I mean, I’ll go. It’s not that I don’t think it’s important, but I think you can get a good education anywhere.”
“But it’s not just the courses,” he argued. “It’s the people around you, the place, the culture, new ideas, the stuff you didn’t expect before you got there.”
I returned his gaze. “How do you know? You haven’t gone yet.”
“I don’t,” he said. “But I can hope, right?”
I nodded.
“Listen, do one thing for me.”
“What?” I asked.
“Close your eyes and pick a spot on the map. Apply to one school in that place, wherever you land. You don’t have to go if you get in. Just … give yourself the option, in case you change your mind.”
“Are you serious?” I smiled.
“Why not? You can pick a common app school. It won’t be any extra work.”
“Okay,” I said. “Why not?” I closed my eyes and spiraled my finger above the table. I half hoped to land on Chicago. Thoughts of how little time was left before Charlie went away were already starting to pop into my brain with annoying frequency. Lame, I told myself. You are not going to follow your boyfriend to college. Th
en I had to correct myself: Charlie wasn’t even really my boyfriend.
“Am I still over the map?” I asked, still circling my finger at random.
“Yup. Come on. Stop procrastinating and pick a spot.”
“Okay.” I veered in the direction I thought was west. “Maybe I’ll go for Hawaii. Another island might feel like home.” I put my finger down and opened my eyes.
“All right,” said Charlie. “Looks like you’re going to UCLA. Or USC. Congratulations.”
I wrinkled my nose. “USC is too expensive. Ugly school colors. And, the Trojans?”
“I see your point. UCLA it is.”
“You’re crazy,” I told him.
“You have to apply. You promised.”
“Fine. I’ll check the UCLA box, okay? Are you happy now?”
“I am, actually.” He returned my smile, but then his expression turned serious. “What do you think our dads are really up to?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m kind of afraid to find out.”
He nodded. “You said you found out something else that you wanted to tell me.”
“Yeah. After last night, I was convinced Paul was the only likely … killer? That sounds so weird to say about a person you know. But it turns out Paul used to work for the Picnic Basket back then. The night Bess drowned was the night of the summer fair. Paul was there working until at least midnight and probably way later. Most of the island would have been there.”
“That’s good for the random tourist or serial killer theory. Although, looking at Jay’s notes, there wasn’t anything to back up the idea of a serial killer. Unless Bess was the first victim and then the guy retired prematurely. Sorry, I don’t mean to make jokes. I don’t really know how to talk about this.”
I nodded. “But from my mom’s diary, we know that Bess showed my mom the letter. Why would a random stranger write her a letter before he killed her? Why would he say she knew why she deserved to die? And any number of people could have left the fair in time to be at the lighthouse when Bess left the bar. We know my dad and your dad and maybe your mom all went to The Slip that night, maybe late if they also went to the fair, but the bars are only open till, what, one A.M.? Who else was there with them?” And where had my mother been? I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud. Everyone knew that saying you were home alone was the world’s worst alibi, at least on TV cop shows.
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