“Not for Chicago.” He starts to say more, but at that instant he hears Lucy coming down the stairs. When their daughter enters the kitchen, his smile of anticipation morphs into a frown as he observes the snugness of her sweater, the length of her skirt that in his mind should be illegal, then intercepts a look from Sophie. Let it go. She’s accused Will of being overly protective. “What would you prefer she wear? A caftan?” she recently asked him. Clearly she is better at handling their daughter’s nascent sexuality than he, but doesn’t she understand that a man’s central purpose and desire is to protect those he loves? Now he looks at the contours of Lucy’s breasts and her long thighs still tinged with the last of her summer tan. Their daughter is developing into a beauty on the cusp of womanhood, but it seems to Will she is remarkably innocent of the power this will give her. Yes, a caftan would be fine with him.
They eat what he has prepared. Cold cereal with sliced banana. Sophie pours them a second mug of coffee. Lucy gulps OJ. They sit in a comfortable domestic silence broken only by the faint tapping of Lucy’s thumbs on her iPhone, the digits moving faster than Will would think possible on the screen’s miniature keys and icons. If he’d done this at the table, his father would have cut off his hands. He wishes they would ban those things. Cell phones, social networking, Facebook, Twitter—ridiculous name. All the things pulling their daughter from them. He starts to speak but gets another look from Sophie. Let it go. Then, as if a switch has flipped, the morning ritual ends, and there is a flurry signaling departure. Sophie grabs her briefcase. At the door, she turns to ask, “Shall I stop on the way home and pick up dinner at the Kottage Kitchen?”
“I’ve got tonight covered,” Will says.
Lucy kisses his cheek, and he smells the banana on her breath, inhales the apple-scented shampoo of her hair, the sweet fruitiness of her, and he knows a moment of fear and again the desire to protect her from danger large or small.
“Bye, Da,” she says in a voice still morning husky.
He nods his goodbye. He kisses Sophie, a lingering kiss that draws a mock sigh from Lucy and a “Hey, you guys, I’m still in the room,” but when he looks over at her, she is grinning. Then they are gone, and he resumes the morning rituals, wiping off the table, stacking dishes, turning off the coffee, already slipping into his own day, thinking now of the painting waiting upstairs on the easel, the supplies he’ll need to order before the weekend. It is Tuesday, the day Sophie holds after-school rehearsal for the chorus and Lucy stays late for French club, then a field hockey scrimmage. Eight hours stretch before him, an ocean of quiet with no husbandly or fatherly obligations, and he feels a fleeting twinge of guilt at the pleasure the idea of this brings him.
An ordinary day in Port Fortune.
Until it isn’t.
Until Lucy Light doesn’t come home.
PART ONE
SINNERS
CHAPTER ONE
First they sent the priest.
Looking back I can see the inevitability that it should be the priest who would come, but of course that morning, not given the knowledge of foresight, I had no idea of how our fates were to become entwined. It was one of those warm and gentle days of late spring, and I’d opened the eaves window several inches, so the echo of a car door slamming floated up to the attic where I was working. I wondered if it was Sophie. I hadn’t expected her, and things were often strained between us now, so I wasn’t sure whether to go down or stay in the studio—a simple enough decision but just one of the many things I was no longer certain of in the unmoored ship of my life. My one or two absolutes, no one wanted to hear, least of all my wife.
I crossed to the window and looked down at the drive, but the black sedan parked next to my gray Prius was unfamiliar. A man stood beside it; I recognized the garb. A priest. Instantly I understood. Sophie was behind this. I heard the echo of her voice, the words she’d spoken the last time we’d talked, her voice soft with concern but steady, firm in her conviction. You need to talk to someone, Will. You need to talk to someone about your anger, about the way you’ve isolated yourself, shut yourself off from everyone. Well, screw that. I didn’t need to talk to anyone and certainly not a goddamn priest. Reflexively I stepped to one side so the angle of the attic shadow would conceal me from view if he looked up, but the priest, who was carrying a small yellow parcel, didn’t raise his eyes, his attention focused on the flagstone walk where shallow puddles lingered from the rain that had fallen in the early morning, a shower much welcome, for the water table was low that year. Petals from the early-blooming azalea floated on the puddles like confetti. I watched as he negotiated around them carefully, made his way to the steps. Even from this distance, I could see his frailty, evident in the way he grasped the railing with his free hand, the way two-footed, like a child, he made his way slowly up the wide steps that rose to the front porch, planks I had reclaimed from disrepair, sanded bare and stained with Sherwin-Williams WoodScapes Exterior. Rookwood Amber. Not long ago, I’d found satisfaction in poring over color charts as if they were oracles. Just as once, not so very long ago, I’d found a comforting, nearly meditative pleasure in cutting cracked putty from sashes and replacing and repointing window panes, restoring elaborate wainscot, and planing the bottom of doors until they again swung free. How quickly what once were priorities could be upended. The man below disappeared from my line of vision, but I continued to stand at the window. I watched a car pass in the street and heard the engine of a low-flying plane overhead, something I normally would not have heard since I usually kept the window shut and all sounds from outside were silenced by thick walls, one of the benefits of houses built more than a century ago. Our street was lined with such well-constructed buildings. The doorbell rang, and again, a moment later, came a second chime. I knew I could outwait him—eventually even a man of the cloth schooled in patience would have to acknowledge defeat. Man of the cloth. How readily that antiquated phrase came to mind. I heard in it my mother, who’d had an idiosyncratic affection for outdated expressions. And for clergy, too, now that I thought of it, though our family had been Episcopalian, not Catholic. Yes, I could have waited up there until the priest left. Over and over since then I have wondered how things might have changed if I had never gone to answer his ring. Instead, determined to conclusively settle this matter that had brought the priest to my home—goddamn it, I did not need to talk to anyone about my anger—I wrapped my brush in a square of foil, found a rag, and wiped my hands, got them as clean as they would ever be. Before I went down, I remember switching off the large fan, an industrial one I’d installed myself to protect my family from toxic fumes, to keep them safe.