The Last September: A Novel (21 page)

“I’m not sleeping,” she said. “It’s hard to eat.” She let her voice trail off as her eyes roamed around the house, falling on the spot where I’d entered after finding Charlie.

“When I didn’t know where you were this morning,” Maxine said, “it just all came washing over me. I can barely stand to leave the house. I’m so scared, Brett. I’m so scared that he’ll show up.”

“Who?” I asked.

Maxine put her glass down. Lightfoot jumped into my lap. I knew Maxine didn’t want the dog on the furniture, but maybe she wouldn’t mind if I was operating as a buffer. Against my body, the dog quivered.

“Who?” Maxine said, her face incredulous. “Who do you think? Charlie’s brother.”

She knew Eli’s name. But it had become too heinous to speak. Someone out there lurking, waiting to appear, to pounce. I remembered Eli flying off the roof of the fraternity house, arms outstretched, a superbeing with heightened powers. Until he hit the ground and became mortal. I remembered another dusky night, the way Charlie had let his own head smash to the pavement to save his brother.

“Eli wouldn’t hurt us,” I said. “I’m not even sure he hurt Charlie.”

I recognized the look on Maxine’s face. It was the same way Charlie and I used to look at Eli. The moment someone said something so off the wall that you knew logic had left the building, so you had no idea what to do or say next. Maxine took a sip of wine and then a deep breath, visibly composing herself.

“Brett,” she said. “Who else? Who else in the world? And how?”

“I don’t know. But someone else. And Eli saw it. Or else he showed up just after and found Charlie that way.”

“He was covered in blood.”

“So was I. I was covered in blood, but nobody suspects me.”

Maxine frowned, as if what I’d said was worrisome on some level that made it more necessary than she’d thought, to stay with me. Lightfoot’s ears twitched. The house ticked a bit in the silence between us. Water whooshed as the automatic sprinklers outside turned on. I ran my hand over Lightfoot’s tiny spine. She sat taut, alert and listening.

“I’m so sorry, Brett,” Maxine said, moving past whatever guilt she was grappling with. “For everything. But I have to go away for a while. I have to close the house and go home. I would have by now, you know, anyway, if not for all this.”

I nodded, mostly because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Either now or later, when Maxine left. If only I could disappear, like Eli. But I had a small child. The money in my bank account would only carry me through these next months if I didn’t have expenses like rent.
What would your mother say?
For the first time, I knew. She would tell me to get out of Saturday Cove as fast as possible. But even if I’d been able to come up with a destination and the means to get there, Charlie lay buried in the Blue Creek cemetery.
I’d rather be with Brett
. How could I leave him?

“I’m sorry,” Maxine said again. “I wanted to help.”

“You have,” I said. “You really have. So much.” I took a sip of wine, less because I wanted it and more because I wanted her to see me accepting something she’d given me. Being helped. Maxine could have offered to let Sarah and me stay here, in her empty house, after she’d gone. She could have invited us to come with her to Newton. But if we stayed or followed, the fear of Eli would remain with us and therefore with her. She had already done as much as she possibly could, and a person can never do any more than that.

“Do you have somewhere to go?” she asked. “Someone who can help you?”

I looked up at the ceiling, toward the room where Sarah lay, breathing quietly. She had no way of knowing that in the whole world, there was only one broken person to look after her. And there remained the possibility—what all reasonable people would call a very strong possibility—that Maxine was right to be afraid. Maybe at this very moment Eli stood out by the lake, watching the house, keeping tabs on my movements, waiting to make a movement of his own. Even if Eli hadn’t killed Charlie, someone else had. A murderer still moved freely about the world, our world, his whereabouts a mystery.

“Yes,” I told Maxine. “I have someone who can help me.”

ON THE DAY CHARLIE
died, when I moved to get out of the chair, Ladd held me closer. “Don’t go,” he said. “Stay.”

I let him kiss me a little longer.

“What is there to go back to?” he said when I pulled away and started to get up. He tightened his grip in protest but then—remembering—let me go.

“What are you going to do?” he asked. I was standing now. One motion to smooth my skirt down, another few to comb my hair back into its ponytail, as if these simple movements could erase what just happened.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t think yet.”

“Is that what you said to him?” Ladd asked. The hardness in his voice told me we’d traveled back in time, a full seven years.

“It wasn’t like that,” I said. “It wasn’t like this.” I sank into one of the small wooden chairs at his table. Our mugs of tea sat there, gone cold.

“What was it like, then,” Ladd said, with that same angry edge.

“His mother was dying. His brother was nuts. It was hectic. And complicated.”

“Right.”

“We didn’t have sex. I swear we didn’t.”

The bizarreness wasn’t lost on either of us, but I didn’t know what else to say. The best defense I had for myself—that I had always loved Charlie—would have been the most damning. Ladd held his arms out to me. I stayed where I was, already separating, worrying, giving my brain back to my husband.

“I’m sorry,” I said for what felt like the hundredth time, though I hadn’t said it—for that particular wrongdoing—in years.

“Well,” Ladd pressed, “what now?”

My mind tangled up with everything I still had to deal with, Sarah at Maxine’s, Charlie back at home, Eli on his way. I remembered the way Ladd had grabbed my wrist years before. Would he repeat that assault, holding me there with him? Would Charlie recognize the injury when I finally showed up?

And what if I didn’t end things with Ladd, right then and there. If I let the summer unfold, carving out moments like this for the two of us. Would it be any different from what Charlie had done with Deirdre? And another thing: I could leave Charlie for Ladd. I thought that. I admit it, I did. Worries about Eli, money, fidelity—all gone.

“Look,” I said to Ladd. “I don’t know. I just don’t know anything right now. But I’ll call you. I promise.”

When I drove away, leaving the house behind me, my life stretched ahead. And the emotion that took over was fear: somehow Charlie would find out, and I would lose him forever.

JUST OVER A WEEK
later, on a sunny morning, Maxine hugged me good-bye and apologized again. I drove away from the lake, across Route 6A and over to Eldredge Lane. The Moss house was a little more than a mile down the road. I turned, down a longer and more private driveway, the wheels of my ancient car rumbling over dirt and roots.

I parked in front of the garage. The ocean stood below the lawn, a wide patch of grass to traverse, a steep drop of beach steps, so I could let Sarah walk, her lurching steps with Lightfoot trotting beside her, up toward the house. Even older than the Moss house—built in 1720—a mixture of white clapboard and gray cedar shingles, the original front door now standing open. Sarah reached it first, slamming her little body into the rattly metal of the screen door, so Daniel got there before I did and was holding it open when I reached the short brick steps. Something about his face, the way he held it as he watched our approach—too calm or maybe concealing—made me feel he’d been expecting us.

“You said if there was anything you could do,” I told him.

Sarah and Lightfoot had already disappeared around his legs into the house. Daniel held the door open wider and moved aside so that I could come in.

Daniel’s bedroom must have been downstairs; the upstairs was nothing but guest rooms. He led me to the largest room, past the crawl space, at the end of the long hallway. There was a crib in the corner with a fat teddy bear that looked brand new. It had a lemon-yellow bow around its neck. Sarah marched over and reached through the bars, trying to pull it out toward her. She’d never slept in a crib in her life. Curtains swayed in the open window, a perfect view of Cape Cod Bay. I turned toward Daniel.

“Sometimes guests have children,” he said.

We walked back to the stairs. Sarah protested as I insisted on holding her hand going down the steep eighteenth-century staircase. At the foot of the stairs, she broke away and pulled open the drawer to the occasional table, the one Daniel had led me to all those years ago. There it still sat, the little leather envelope. Sarah opened it and examined Sylvia’s picture solemnly.

“Lady,” she said. Then she snapped it shut and held it over her head to show us. “Lady,” she said again.

“Sarah,” I said weakly. “Don’t open drawers.”

“It’s quite all right,” Daniel said. He smiled at her, and it didn’t look like an obligatory smile. It looked genuine. Sarah returned the picture to the drawer and slid it closed with intense concentration. Daniel asked me, “Does Ladd know you’re here? Did you tell him you were coming?”

“No,” I said.

“I’d better go ahead and do that, then. I think he’s in his cottage. Why don’t you take Sarah down to the beach?”

Sarah and I left the house through the sliding glass door that led to the back deck. The morning sunlight had given way to thick gray clouds, bringing with them a salty, autumnal scent, the slightest chill. Lightfoot skittered out ahead of us, then paused to wait for Sarah. The two of them had adopted a funny way of moving in concert, Sarah swaying back and forth, Lightfoot running in little circles around her. To avoid holding my hand, Sarah descended the beach steps by sliding on her butt from one to the other, one at a time, all the way down.

On the sand, Sarah and the dog both broke into a run toward the water. It was low tide, the tide pools swept away, the beach strewn with gray foam and pebbles and seaweed. I ran after them but they stopped at the shoreline, Sarah kneeling down to inspect water that ran over her little white sneakers, soaking them. Lightfoot let out three short, sharp yaps of protest, and I started. The dog, I realized, had barely made a sound since I’d found her huddled under the sunporch.

I knelt down. Lightfoot turned and battered her little body—cold and soaked from the waves—against my chest, leaving a damp blotch on my shirt. The dog knew what had happened to Charlie. If only I could ask her, reach the information stored in her little head. As obvious a suspect as Eli might have been, there should have been other obvious suspects. Like me, or Ladd, or Deirdre. And of course there could be others, people I didn’t know about, people Charlie kept secret. Some man, some husband, whose wife had fallen madly in love like the rest of us. Maybe it was Deirdre’s boyfriend, back in the picture and wildly jealous. Or maybe just some crazy person, happening by the neck and stumbling upon Charlie, killing him, leaving him for Eli to find, and me.

Some crazy person
. A different one, not our own. That new headache of mine, sharp but malleable, like a squiggly piece of mercury, rattled behind my eyes. If I let my brain work hard enough, I could turn this into a murder mystery. I could be the plucky wife, taking on my own detective work, finding the real murderer, saving Eli. Or else, finding Eli, and turning him over.

From down on the beach, a figure approached as mist gathered. A tall man in a blue rain slicker, with a mop of unruly curls. Sarah sprang to her knees, her gaze serious and intent, looking out toward the bluff.

“Arooo!” Sarah called, at the top of her voice. Who knew a false elephant trumpet could sound so musical? Up above the skies broke open, dumping rain as if a faucet had been turned on. Lightfoot jumped off my lap and I stood. The rain tried its best, without luck, to tamp down both Sarah’s curls and those of the man who approached us. Sarah lifted up her arm, her hand rolled into a fist, and waved it through the air, a fluid motion from her shoulder through the elbow.

“Arooo!” she called, “aroo!” and ran down the beach, toward the man.

If it had been Charlie, how surprised he would have been—seeing her move so quickly and nimbly, just over a week since that very first step. Or maybe he wouldn’t have been surprised at all, believing, as he did, in biding his time, waiting until he could do a thing well before attempting it. As the man approached, he proved himself to be a gangly teenager, smiling perplexedly at Sarah, his curls not yellow but a gingery brown. Sarah halted in disappointment, her face scrunching into an angry expression that was both confusion and realization. The soaking rain fell. Passing us, the young man pulled the hood of his raincoat over his head. I caught up with Sarah and scooped her into my arms. The dog’s ears flattened back against her head. From up above, the top of the beach steps, another man appeared, holding a huge, polka-dotted umbrella.

“Brett,” Daniel called. “Come up, it’s pouring.”

I looked down at Lightfoot to see if she would cower or run the other way. But she didn’t, just trotted on ahead, up toward the steps, as if she had seen an umbrella before and knew it meant cover from all this rain.

INSIDE I MET DANIEL’S
housekeeper, Mrs. Duffy. She was warm and round, with silver curls and a faint Irish accent. She told me that during the winter she lived in her own place in Boston and went to Daniel’s house to clean and make dinner. In the summer, she came with him to Saturday Cove and lived in one of the old Sears kit cottages overlooking the ocean. “It was ordered right from the catalog in the 1930s,” she said as she whipped together a toddler supper for Sarah, homemade chicken nuggets and cooked carrots. “The first year I lived there I found an old shipping label under the staircase.”

I leaned in the doorway, nodding. I imagined her cottage as rustic, disposable, nothing but tin silverware and old board games inside, because you never knew when a hurricane might sweep through and take everything away. Just what all seaside homes should be.

“Usually we’d be back in Boston by now,” Mrs. Duffy said. “It’s your good luck he decided to stay a bit longer.” She patted my cheek. “Why don’t you go into the living room and have a drink with Daniel before dinner? I’ll take care of this one.”

To my surprise, Sarah didn’t protest when Mrs. Duffy hoisted her from my side into a waiting high chair—another inexplicable piece of baby equipment. Maybe very wealthy people just owned everything anybody might ever need. Mrs. Duffy handed Sarah a spatula, which she immediately began pounding on the tray. Lightfoot sat stock still right beside it, knowing that food would soon begin tumbling to the ground. I headed into the living room at the same time Daniel emerged from the Butler’s pantry with a tumbler of scotch and a glass of white wine.

“Thanks,” I said. I sat down on the sofa and he took one of the matching wing-backed armchairs, wondering if Ladd would show up and what he would think about my coming here.

“How are you?” Daniel asked, crossing his long legs.

“I don’t know. It’s like I’m traveling from panicked to broken to numb and back again. You know? Did you feel this way when Sylvia died?” It didn’t feel insensitive asking this question. Maybe at another time it would have. But just then I felt a strong sense of kinship with Daniel, who couldn’t stand to come around corners and be taken surprise by his wife’s face.

“When Sylvia died,” he said, “I was broken and confused. But she had been sick. I knew it was coming.
Prepared
isn’t the word I’d use, because really you can never prepare for something like that. Still, if it had just come out of nowhere, and so violently. I can’t imagine what you must be feeling now.”

“I can’t imagine, either.”

“It’s too soon,” he said.

“Yes. Too soon.”

“We’ll wait,” he said.

I nodded, and at the same time wondered for what, exactly. What would it look like, when all this became permanent. Sarah rounded the corner with Lightfoot click-clacking beside her. I thought she was headed toward me, but instead she stopped at the side table next to the couch and opened the drawer.

“Sarah,” I said, more for Daniel’s sake than hers. If there was a verbal way to stop a toddler from doing something, I hadn’t yet discovered it.

“It’s okay,” Daniel said as Sarah found what she wanted—another small leather envelope. She held it over her head in triumph, then brought it over to me. I looked at Daniel, asking permission. He nodded.

This picture was different from the other I’d seen. Still by the water, but wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and holding a smiling blond toddler around Sarah’s age.

“That’s Eli,” Daniel said. He leaned forward, peering at the picture. “I used to look at her with him and think: that’s what she’ll be like with our children.”

“Charlie, too?” I said.

Daniel nodded. “Charlie, too,” he said, but I could tell from a note of apology in his voice, Eli had been her favorite.

My eyes lowered, back to the picture, but before I had a chance to examine it more closely, Sarah snatched the envelope back and returned it to its drawer. Then she toddled past the coffee table—priding herself, I noticed, in not touching it for balance—in search of more drawers.

As her chubby hand closed around the knob to the matching end table, Daniel said, “I’m afraid she’ll find one there, too. One for nearly every drawer. My own morbid scavenger hunt.”

“I don’t think it’s morbid,” I said, having very recently sent an email to my murdered husband. Charlie always kept a clean inbox, deleting email after he read it. Now mine would sit there unopened, forever.

Mrs. Duffy came into the room and told us dinner was ready. She scooped up Sarah and said, “I’ll bring this one outside so you can eat in peace.”

In the dining room, our meal was a grown-up version of the meal that Mrs. Duffy had fed Sarah—breaded chicken cutlets with wild rice and a salad of mixed field greens. When we sat down, Daniel continued the conversation about Sylvia.

“Ladd must have told you,” he said, “that’s how we met. My sister-in-law Rebecca and Charlie’s mother were good friends. The boys had a standing invitation to use this beach, and Sylvia used to bring them here to play with Ladd.”

I pictured it, Daniel—young uncle and gentleman—hosting the children and their pretty au pair. He would have stood back, not overtly interested, just watching her very carefully, sometimes offering to help with the boys.

“It turned out we were both at Harvard,” Daniel said. “I was going to business school. She was getting her PhD in English. Her dissertation was on
Th
e Faerie Queen
.” He looked at me, waiting for a professional response, maybe even hoping I shared the same specialty.

“Nineteenth-century American poetry,” I said, pointing to myself, apologetic for the distance from Spenser. “Late nineteenth century.”

Daniel speared a piece of arugula, too polite to express disappointment. “It would have broken her heart, what happened to Eli. And now Charlie.”

Years ago, when Ladd told me that Daniel had paid for Eli’s hospitalization at McLean, I’d assumed this was the reason—his late wife’s attachment. Sitting across from him, now myself the beneficiary of his impulse to help, I thought there was something more to it. Most of us think of ourselves—our true selves—in terms of intention, the person we’re trying to be. Whereas everyone else sees the failure, the flailing, between the intention and the attempt, Daniel seemed wholly contained of these two spaces, with no bridge in between.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not sure if I was expressing sympathy for Sylvia’s death or her would-be broken heart.

Daniel didn’t seem to mind the lack of clarity. He just said, “Thank you.”

“And now,” I said. “Don’t you have to go back? To Boston, and your job?”

I had no idea what he did for work. Something to do with banks. All the men’s work in Ladd’s family had something to do with banks. Probably one day soon, after he was finished with English degrees and travels, Ladd would give up and go to work in a bank. I wondered where he was now, what he was having for dinner. If he was angry with me for showing up here, when I had told him so firmly to stay away.

“I can work from here,” Daniel said. “Often I stay late into the fall, through the end of October.”

I knew from what Mrs. Duffy had said this wasn’t true, but I didn’t say anything. Maybe he was doing this for Charlie and, by association, Sylvia. Maybe he was doing it for Ladd. It didn’t matter, I just clung to the offered harbor, calculating in my mind the time this would buy me, if Daniel let me stay. Time to do what, I still wasn’t sure. Figure out what to do next. Go back to Amherst? I couldn’t see how I could possibly leave before Eli was found. Charlie wouldn’t have left before Eli was found.

“It’s the best time here,” Daniel said. “The fall.”

“That’s what Charlie always says. Said.”

Daniel nodded. For a moment I waited for tears to come to my eyes. It would be a good time, here in the safety of Daniel’s gaze, with such a sympathetic audience. A torrent of tears, a good session of sobbing. The way I had in this very house when my mother died. The way I had when I thought my marriage was over. The way Deirdre had been crying at the funeral and—from the looks of her—for days before. A few years ago, here in Saturday Cove, Charlie and I had visited an old friend of his after her sister had died unexpectedly in a boating accident.
Keening
, that would have been the only way to describe how his friend had wept, bereft and shaking. The way I should have been, this past week, more than a week now, since I found Charlie. I should have been shaking and sobbing and keening to the rafters. But so far, I only moved in circles. Expecting tears was like expecting Charlie to walk through the door. It always seemed like it might happen at any moment, but it never did.

OUR ROOM WAS JUST
above Daniel’s. When I lay down, stroking Sarah’s curly head, I could hear him through the old floorboards, moving around, water turning on and off, drawers opening and closing. He sounded fastidious and graceful, a routine that had been performed a thousand times in exactly the same order. Lying awake, staring at the beams above the bed, I listened to Sarah’s soft breath, my hand resting on the rise and fall of her chest. And I imagined I could hear Daniel’s breath, too, from the room below.