A Photographic Death (4 page)

Chapter Seven

T
HE NEXT MORNING
I left before 9 a.m. to open Port Lewis Books. I was sorry I had agreed to spend the day in the shop. I felt too keyed up by everything that had happened yesterday and would go on happening. But I had promised my friend Susie Pevney that I would cover for her so she could fly home to South Dakota for Thanksgiving.

I still thought of the bookstore as the Old Frigate, which it had been known as until last July. The name had been a nod to our village’s sailing history and to Emily Dickinson, whose portrait hung beside the door. The poet had had no connection with Long Island or sailing other than to write, “There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away,” but she remained on the wall, pale and frowning, our patron saint. She might have been bemused that the village’s historic streets were now filled with souvenir shops, yogurt stands, and tarot card readers, all meant to entertain day-trippers who took the ferry over from Connecticut.

I bought a large cappuccino at the Whaler’s Arms next door, then unlocked the bookstore. The new owner, Marty Campagna, had wisely kept the former furnishings. The leather couch, Oriental rugs, and wing chairs arranged around the fireplace gave the room the look of a British men’s club. Marty’s best books were kept on the shelf behind the sales counter. His second-best spilled into the open bookcases, a few even stored in the room behind this one where my books were. Susie’s books, which Marty couldn’t bear to look at, were kept in the back room. Susie had suggested serving coffee, but Marty vetoed that. “Not around
my
books. Let them go to Starbucks if they’re thirsty.”

The shop was soon filled with visitors enjoying the festive holiday weekend. They entered merrily, red-cheeked from the wind off the water, rubbing their hands and moving toward the fire in the grate.

Just before noon, a young woman in a black cashmere coat swept in, trailed by two children in scruffy parkas and sneakers. The boy looked to be about six, the girl younger. The woman’s black hair was lacquered around her face like a Japanese doll’s, eyelashes thickly coated, lips a 1940s red. Somehow the look worked.

“Where’s your children’s section?” A burst of musky perfume.

I stepped around the counter. “We don’t have a special section, but kids’ books are kept in back. I’ll show you.”

Leading them into the last room, I pointed to two low shelves with a ragtag collection of picture books and grade school paperback series. Marty had scoffed when Susie brought them in, claiming that they demeaned the atmosphere of the shop, but Susie insisted that children needed something to look at while their parents browsed.

Susie had been right.

“You don’t have any little tables and chairs?” The woman raised dark penciled eyebrows.

“No. I’m sorry.” Perhaps, I thought, I should mention it to Marty and watch him implode.

“Doesn’t matter. Okay, kids, pick out a book and get comfortable on the floor,” she instructed. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Wait.” I didn’t move from where I stood in the archway. “You can’t just leave them.”

“They’re no trouble. They’ll just read.”

“But you can’t leave them here on their own.”

“Why not?” Her expression told me to get a life. “They’ll be fine. They’re very responsible. If they’d come in alone, you wouldn’t have thrown them out.”

She had been edging toward me, and we were face-to-face now, so close that I could see that her red lipstick was two different shades, darker on the outside. I caught a whiff of that perfume again.

“Sorry, but I’m late.” She tried to step around me. “I came over here specifically for this lunch date.”

“If you leave your kids, I’ll have to report it.”

Where had
that
come from? On a different day, I might have settled the children on chairs in the front room, served them milk and cookies, and found them books they liked. I couldn’t imagine making a phone call to the authorities. It was not like I had been Mother of the Year.

Yes, and you paid the price for it.

We weren’t talking about a moment of inattention here anyway. I knew she would be gone at least an hour.

I stayed in the doorway like a bouncer at a Hollywood club.

When she could see no way to get past me, she said. “Oh, come on, kids. This mean lady won’t let you stay. We’ll find somewhere else.”

“You said there’d be
toys
,” the boy grumbled.

“We’ll find some.”

I wondered if she would try to take them up the street to Howard Riggs, the other bookshop in town. Compared to Howard, I was Mary Poppins.

She had a few words for me on their way out, the mildest of which were, “I’ll tell everyone not to come to your shop. I’ll post it on Facebook!”

I knew that would upset Marty not at all.

Chapter Eight

I
PLANNED TO
pick up a rotisserie chicken and enough different salads that Hannah would not feel slighted but decided to stop at home first to see if the girls were in the mood for anything different.

Jane was in the living room in Colin’s wing chair, frowning at her phone. The furniture was as soft and faded as a stage set from
Death of a Salesman.
There was a striped tuxedo-style sofa from Colin’s parents, maroon and beige, several wing chairs, an oak rocker that had been in the farmhouse when we moved in, and portraits of my great-grandparents behind convex glass. The dry, dusty smell of summer attics was always in the room, though I tried to cover it with pine or citrus air fresheners when we were having company.

Jane looked up. “Ryan isn’t happy that I canceled tonight.”

“You called him?”

“Sent a text. We were going to a cast party.”

“Where’s Hannah? Upstairs?” I suddenly felt anxious about seeing her. She had had more time to process yesterday’s huge revelation. Would she decide she wanted to find Caitlin after all? Would she blame me for carelessly losing her sister?

Jane shook her head so emphatically that her light hair bounced against her face. “She’s having dinner with Daddy. He picked her up a few minutes ago.”

“Are you kidding?” Then I added belatedly, “You could have gone too. I would have been okay.”

“Nope. Wasn’t invited.”

“Really? He asked her and not you?” It was bad enough that Colin had co-opted Hannah in the struggle over Caitlin, but to ignore Jane was unprecedented. Evidently she was being punished for siding with me.

“He insisted she put on something decent, but she hadn’t brought anything.”

I sank onto the striped sofa. “What did she do?”

Jane grinned. “She found this thrift store upstairs.”

“You mean my closet?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to let her stretch out any of
my
things.”

“You think she’s put on weight?”

“
Mom
. I doubt that she’s hiding bales of cotton under there.”

“I just thought she looked healthy. I was thinking, I could pick up a chicken and some salads if you’d like.”

Jane made a face. “What would you be having if I wasn’t here?”

“After working at the bookshop all day? Probably something unhealthy.”

“Bring it on.”

T
A
C
O
B
E
L
L
H
A
D
probably not intended for their burritos to be washed down with lime margaritas, but Jane insisted on stopping at the liquor store on the way home.

“After yesterday I’m sick of wine,” she announced, and I didn’t argue.

When we got back we ate sprawled on the old Oriental rug in the living room. Our plan to look at the albums after dinner was as tangible in the room as third diner. I was glad Jane didn’t mention it. I thought of myself as easygoing, not given to emotional extremes or hysteria, but as I sipped the sweet fruity drink my emotions were running as wild as brats at a birthday party. If the girls decided they didn’t want to see the albums after all, I would feel let down—and relieved. I knew I would be reliving every day, every feeling, behind each photograph.

When we were folding up the yellow wrappers, Jane said, “Let’s get started.”

“You mean with the albums? But Hannah’s not here yet.”

“We’ll have everything ready for her.” She looked at me with patient amusement. “You can’t keep putting it off.”

“I’m not putting it off.”

“Yes, you are. We want to find Cate, remember, and we want Hannah on our side. Besides, I’m dying to see those photos!” She gave me a teasing, margarita-fueled look. “This isn’t just about you, you know.”

“I know.” But going through those early years would be excruciating.

The albums and mementos were stored in two Del Monte crates with a blue-script logo on the side advertising canned peaches. I had hidden the boxes beneath cartons of books, classics that I would never get around to listing online. I had been certain that
The Three Musketeers
and
The Mill on the Floss
would discourage the curious from looking further.

Jane helped me carry the boxes in from the barn and set them down on the rug. We knelt down beside them. I stared at the way the cardboard flaps curled up, how shabby the cartons seemed. I could at least have stored them better. It seemed careless, disrespectful.

“Well, go on,” Jane encouraged.

“I will.” But my hand stayed where it was.

“It’s okay to feel sad.”

“It’s more than sad. It’s going to hurt.”

“Come on, Mom. You
know
we’re going to find her. Think of this as the first step in the process.”

I thought of the billions of people in the world, both alive and dead. But I said, “You’re right.”

Still I teared up immediately, unpacking a tiny pink dress my mother had hand-smocked. By the time I came across a sweater that Patience had had made with “CAITLIN” knitted under a black Scottie, my eyes were streaming.

How different our lives could easily have been. If only. If Colin hadn’t gotten that archeology fellowship. If only one of the girls had had the sniffles and we hadn’t gone to the park that day. If only I had been paying more attention. The twins would have grown up together, we would have been an intact family; we would have known nothing but the ordinary joys and setbacks. We might even have had the additional children that Colin had wanted before it happened.

Could this be the chance—not to change the past, of course—but to make the future what it was meant to have been?

“They’re so small,” Jane marveled, running her hands over the pieces of clothing. “I can’t believe we were ever that small.”

“I saved your things too.”

“Did you really? Funny, I don’t think of you as sentimental. And you’re certainly not a hoarder.”

“I don’t know what I am.”

What I dreaded most was unpacking the worn white lamb Caitlin had insisted on sleeping with, though she usually left Sheepie home during the day. When I did unwrap the little animal from its white tissue slumber, I held it tightly against my chest, then brought it to my face to see if any scent still lingered. Anything from my little one at all—a sniff of baby powder or the sweetness of the graham crackers she loved. There had to be
something
left behind. But I could pick out only the dry, powdery smell that I identified with books long-stored in attics.

My tears dropped on the matted wool.

Sheepie was the key. If we ever found Caitlin, would seeing him stir any deeply buried memories? Would it reach down to the place where language had not yet existed and let her realize the truth of what we were telling her? Hannah hadn’t had a favorite animal. She’d had a blanket she called Boo which she would never be separated from. She had been curled up with Boo on the bench the day everything happened.

I didn’t wail or collapse on the floor, just let the tears continue to run down my face. It was as if I had been storing them up for years, waiting for the time I would be free to release them without Colin scolding me. Now and then Jane reached over and squeezed my arm.

The photo albums were in the second carton we opened. When I had crept home from Stratford with one less child—I gave birth to Jason a month later—I hadn’t separated out Caitlin’s photos from the others; I had just shoved all the albums into this box. So there were photos of themselves as little girls that Hannah and Jane had never seen.

Jane turned the pages wonderingly. “I can’t believe how alike the twins looked. Did they act identical too?”

“No, not at all. Caitlin was always the adventurous, outgoing one. She loved new things, meeting new people. Hannah was more clingy.” Whiny as well, but it sounded unfair to say after my conversation with Jane last night.

At the bottom of the carton were some eight-by-ten black-and-white photos that I had taken and developed myself. There weren’t many of the girls, I had concentrated professionally on slice-of-life scenes from the world around me. The photo that wasn’t here was my favorite, the twins sitting facing each other in the grass, gravely exchanging daffodils. I had let myself keep that one hidden in a portfolio in the barn.

Jane and I both jumped when we heard the kitchen door open, caught out, though we weren’t doing anything wrong. I suddenly felt we should have waited for Hannah to be here before opening the boxes.

She appeared in the living room archway and removed her blue down jacket, revealing my black velvet blazer and white turtleneck. She looked fine in it. Only my black corduroy pants were suffering, straining across her thighs and unfastened at the waist. “Whatcha up to?”

“Where did you have dinner?”

“The Mexican place. Are those the photos?” She came over and knelt down next to me, then reached over and picked up the little dress. “
I
was never that small.”

“Oh, yes, you were. I have an identical dress of yours in mint green.”

Hannah’s hand moved restlessly through the other clothes, then she picked up a photo album with yellow chicks on a baby blue background. Neither Jane nor I said anything as she turned the pages.

“Wow,” Hannah said softly. “I can’t believe what I’m seeing. We really
did
look alike. I didn’t know what to think when you told me, but—I’m not even sure which one is me!” She turned the album around and showed me the pair of them in winter jackets at the top of a slide.

I knew immediately. Caitlin was the triumphant one in front, Hannah clinging to her sister’s waist and looking terrified. In most of the photos I could separate the twins by their expressions.

“My hair is darker now,” Hannah said dubiously, as if she was not sure she was the baby in the photographs. Over the years her hair had gone from dandelion fluff to a rich, wavy gold. She didn’t treat it like the treasure it was, most of the time jerking it back into a careless ponytail.

“
Her
hair’s probably darker too,” Jane said. “I bet you still look alike though.”

“I bet we don’t.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“Oh—she’s probably thin and gorgeous. She’d think I was disgusting.”

“Stop eating dorm food then. By the time we find her you could lose twenty pounds.”

“Jane, stop! Hannah, you look fine,” I protested. “You’re beautiful and healthy and that’s what counts.”

She pushed herself up. “It’s not just that. What if you find her and she’s the daughter you’ve always wanted? What if you love her more than me? You always did.”

It was the kind of comment from Hannah that could make me crazy. But I held myself in check. “Considering you don’t even remember her, why would you think I loved her more? And for the record, I didn’t.”

“Whatever. I have to study.”

“But you do want to find her, don’t you?” Jane asked.

“I
told
you. I’m not interested.” And she was gone.

Jane looked at me over the pathetic little pile of memories. “Now what?”