The Last September: A Novel

What did I know about the way my life would change in a matter of hours? Absolutely nothing. Murder. It’s a word out of potboilers and film noir. It leaps from the TV screen during police dramas or the evening news. It doesn’t sound real. It’s nothing you ever think will have to do with you.

AT HOME, THE HOUSE smelled rich with wine and garlic. I walked into the kitchen and plopped Sarah on the floor, then opened the lid on the stock pot and breathed in the damp steam. Coq au vin, to celebrate Sarah’s first step. Charlie would let it simmer all day so that it would be falling off the bone by the time we sat down to dinner. Which was lovely, but he had also left the kitchen a wreck. The sauté pan still sat on the stove with olive oil burnt into its copper bottom. The cutting board was exactly where he’d used it, with a garlic-encrusted knife next to it on the counter. I saw the hours of my day tick away with child care, errands, and now this toppled kitchen. I pictured my study upstairs—compromised enough with the baby accoutrements that spread into every room in the house—and decided to go outside and ask Charlie to attend to his appointed parenting duties.

I followed the sound of the hammer to the back deck. Charlie’s father planned to come for Thanksgiving; reshingling the house was a surprise for him. In a week of laboring—the stop and start tempo of our life—only one wall had been completed.

“Hey,” Charlie said, barely looking back at us.

Seeing her father, Sarah lifted up her arm as if it were an elephant’s trunk and trumpeted. “Arrrooo,” she said. “Arooo.” Charlie laughed and turned, then did the same. Thanks to Babar, Sarah was fascinated by elephants, and this was their customary greeting.

“I got a postcard from Ladd,” I said. “He’s back in Saturday Cove.”

Charlie still hadn’t put on a shirt. Broad freckles speckled his fair shoulders and sinewy back. His stomach sloped outward, a healthy and muscular version of distention. In a typically strange but successful act of vanity, he’d tied a leather shoelace around his neck. My resolve to confront him weakened, and I thought—as I often had in the years since I first kissed him—that he was put together exactly right.

“Ladd’s home?” Charlie said. “Seems like he just left.”

“I guess it’s been two years. He says he has a book I might be interested in.”

Charlie turned his head half toward me, raising an eyebrow, but the response was more reflexive than agitated. “That’s good,” he said. “Are you going over there?”

“Maybe later.”

“Oh yeah? Think he’ll show you his etchings?”

“Sure,” I said. And then added, in the baiting tone a marriage counselor had recently warned me against: “Then we’ll make out on his chaise longue while Sarah takes a nap on his bed.”

Charlie was better at following the counselor’s advice. He put down his hammer and turned toward us, reaching out to touch the top of Sarah’s head, then mine. He let his palm stay there for a moment, cradling my skull, conferring the warmth of apology, instead of saying anything.

The battered old squirrel we called One-Eyed Wally scrambled across the deck’s rail and stood up on its back legs. Sarah pointed and said, “Wally.” The squirrel was the closest thing we had to a pet since my cat had been hit by a car in July. Even during Tab’s reign, Wally used to sit on the deck’s railing waiting for the birdseed or bread crusts we fed him in spite of ourselves. Sarah reached her hand closer to him; instead of running away, he skittered a little closer.

“Shoo,” I said mildly, waving my hand at him. “Get away from here.”

Charlie climbed off the ladder and headed inside, motioning with his head for me to follow. I adjusted Sarah on my hip and trailed into the kitchen, where Charlie lifted the lid of his simmering pot and stirred. His brow furrowed as he stared into the garlic-scented steam.

“Eli called,” he said.

I’d started to put Sarah on the floor—giving her a chance to repeat the earlier steps—but instead picked her up and held her closer.