“There probably wasn’t,” Harry said. “His car was pretty old.”
“It’s not that . . . Sorry, I know. You’re right. I still wish I’d tried. I just lay there, praying that the next person who came along wasn’t him, and then my prayer came true. It was you.”
“Do you remember telling me his name, that it was John Richards who did that to you? You could barely talk.”
“I do remember that. Of course, it wasn’t his real name.”
She shivered a little, even though it was still pretty warm out, the sky purple hued and filled with stars.
“It was the name he was going by. And it was a smart thing to do,” Harry said. “Remembering his name. Telling me right away.”
“Do you keep thinking about it?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Harry said. “Every minute of every day. It’s a loop in my head. What he did to my father and to your sister, and then to you.”
“What he almost did to me.”
“Yeah, I think about that, as well. He could have killed you, then killed my stepmother.”
“He could have killed you.”
“He could have, yes.”
They were quiet for a few steps. They’d taken several turns, and the houses were now larger and spread farther apart. “It’s not far, now,” Caitlin said. “This was good. I needed to talk about what happened with someone who was there. Everyone keeps tiptoeing around me.”
“They’re just worried.”
“I know they are.”
They turned again, down a street lined with tall trees, their leaves bristling in the light breeze. “I’m right down here,” Caitlin said, and pointed toward a white Colonial, lights on in all the windows. “Want to walk around the block? I don’t want to stop talking.”
“Okay.”
As they walked, Caitlin asked Harry about his plans, and he told her he didn’t have any, except that he wasn’t going to stay in Maine.
“Will your stepmother be upset?”
“I’m sure, but I can’t go back to living with her. I feel for her, because of what she went through, but there’s still a part of me . . . It’s hard to explain, but I don’t entirely trust her. I feel like there’s more to the story between her and Jake than I’ll ever know.”
“You think she was in on it?”
“No, not really. I don’t know.”
When they reached the front of Caitlin’s house again, Caitlin said, “Can I ask a favor?”
“Sure, anything.”
“Will you come in and spend the night? Not with me, but there’s a guest room you can sleep in.”
Harry hesitated, but Caitlin’s eyes, dark in the moonlight, were large with fear and anticipation, and he said, “Of course.”
Inside, she introduced him to her mother, who was standing in the kitchen, wearing a robe, and drinking a cup of tea. “Oh, Harry,” she said. “I’m so sorry about your father.” She looked like both of her daughters, but more like Grace, Harry thought, with her firm jawline and upturned nose. She had kind eyes. Harry told her how sorry he was about Grace, about how much he’d liked her in the short time he had known her.
“She was troubled, but she’d have turned it around. I know it.”
“She would have, Mom,” Caitlin said, and rolled her eyes slightly so that only Harry could see.
The guest room was on the second floor. Caitlin, suddenly hostess-like, showed him where the spare blankets were in the closet, and brought him a pair of pajamas that belonged to her brother, plus an unused toothbrush. “Pajamas are clean, I promise,” she said. “This is weird, me wanting you to stay here, isn’t it?”
“No, it really isn’t.”
“When do you think we’ll feel normal again?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said. “I don’t know if we’ll ever feel normal, but I think we’ll feel better.”
Caitlin shut the door of the guest room almost all the way closed, and kissed him. Her sweater was thin cashmere, and he could feel her ribs through the fabric, her heartbeat, the ridge of a bra strap. They kept kissing until there were footsteps on the stairs, and Caitlin opened the door wider, stepped out into the hall, and said to Harry, “Breakfast will be at the crack of dawn, unfortunately.”
“I heard that,” Mrs. McGowan said from the hall.
“Perfect,” Harry said.
After she left, he changed into the pajamas, texted Paul to let him know where he was, and slid into the unfamiliar bed. After turning the lamp off, he thought, There’s no way I’ll ever fall asleep here, but then the next thing he knew there was faint light coming through the curtains on the window, and he could smell bacon being cooked. He sat up a little in bed, and listened to the sounds of the house coming alive. He had slept through the entire night—a dreamless abyss of sleep. It was definitely strange that he was suddenly here, in Caitlin’s childhood home, but it was no stranger than anywhere else he might be right now. He had no real home.
He was about to get out of bed when his phone on the bedside table began to vibrate. He checked the screen. It was a Kennewick number.
“Harry, it’s Detective Dixon. Sorry to bother you so early.”
“It’s okay. What’s happened?”
“I was wondering if you knew where your stepmother was.”
“Is she missing?”
“She is, actually.”
“I don’t know where she is. I’m actually not in Maine right now. What do you mean, she’s missing?”
“Well, she never came home to her friend’s house last night, and no one can find her. Her car’s at Jake Richter’s condo, but she’s not there.”
“I’m sorry. I have no idea where she might be.”
“We’ll keep looking. I’m sure she’s fine, but call me if you hear from her, okay, Harry?”
Harry promised he would, and ended the call. The mention of Alice jarred loose a dream he’d had the night before last. Alice, naked, in the window of Grey Lady, Harry watching from the driveway. She was tapping on the glass, but it wasn’t making any sound. His father was there as well, changing a tire on his old Volvo, not paying a whole lot of attention to anyone. The house was stirring, and the dream disappeared. Harry sat for a moment longer in the bed, knowing, somehow instinctively, and with complete certainty, that Alice, despite what Detective Dixon had just said, was not going to be fine.
Chapter 35
Then and Now
Once Alice went back to her bedroom—after Jake had told her he’d seen her return from the beach the night Gina drowned—she knew she’d never sleep with Jake again. That part of her life, the part with Jake, was over. Life was restarts, one after another, and some were good and some weren’t. Her life had first restarted when her mother got the settlement money and they moved to Kennewick. It started again when Jake arrived, standing over her on the beach, and she could feel the way he was looking at her. It even restarted after Scott Morgan told everyone at school she was a slut, and she decided it didn’t matter, that whatever they said couldn’t touch her. And now she would have to start again, because Jake thought she’d had something to do with killing her own mother, or letting Gina drown, when both those things had happened accidentally. They’d happened to her, not because of her.
Jake, in the days following, tried only once to get Alice back. She was in her room, the door closed, rereading Tender Rebel, a dumb romance novel she’d read many, many times. Jake knocked, then half entered, standing in the door frame.
“What’re you doing?” he asked.
She held the book up. “Reading.”
“Thought you might like to read a little in bed with me. It’s lonely in there.”
“I’m fine here, Jake.”
“Okay,” he said. “Just checking.” She remembered what he’d been like immediately after her mother’s funeral, the way he’d taken control of her. He’d become a different man now that she didn’t love him, or trust him, anymore. Her indifference gave her the upper hand, a fact she decided to file away.
“Jake,” she said, as he was departing.
“Yeah?” he said, a hopeful look on his face.
“I’m going to look for a new job. And a new apartment.”
“Oh.”