Still Here

by Amy Stuart

  Donovan looks to the guard in the corner and shrugs at him, as if he were part of their conversation too.

  “I knew him.”

  “Past tense?” Clare asks.

  “Well, he’s gone, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Clare says. “Gone. But not necessarily dead.”

  “Honestly? I never thought much of him. But I understand why Zoe married him.”

  “Why’d she marry him?” Clare asks.

  Donovan pinches his thumb to his finger and rubs them together in a gesture. Money. Clare knows that Malcolm’s parents were rich, that he was the beneficiary of a vast inheritance once he came of age. She leans forward.

  “From what I can glean,” Clare says, “you and Zoe were quite close. You worked together after her father died. Before you got arrested. She was like a daughter to you, maybe. I know she was trying to keep the business afloat.”

  “A daughter,” Donovan says. “No. She was most definitely not like a daughter to me.”

  He is well-spoken, articulate, and poised, despite the uniform and the setting. Clare notices the guard’s eyes upon her. There isn’t much time, and she needs to make headway. She will backtrack with Donovan. Find his beginning.

  “I’ve read a bit about your family,” Clare says. “Your mother. Lune Bay was her life.”

  Donovan nods. “She used to say it was called Lune Bay because of the moon. On a clear night it would bounce off the ocean and light up the sky like a muted sun. My mother and Jack Westman’s mother were best friends. They moved down the coast together after high school. Got work as secretaries. And by sheer luck, they both married rich.” He leans back in his chair. “Both had firstborn sons. Are you following?”

  “Yes,” Clare says. “You and Jack Westman.”

  “Exactly. When a downturn hit, our families bought up as much land around here as we could. I hated Jack Westman. God, did I ever. I was bookish. He was a jock and a bully. But we were forced together, and really, it worked out quite well. Our sensibilities around what Lune Bay should be were well aligned. We wanted it to feel both remote and well appointed. Like a village. A close-knit community with all the amenities but none of the crowding. The development needed to be managed, distilled. I think we did very well. Lune Bay grew to be quite the destination. People wanted to live here. If you were brave you could even commute into the bigger cities. Jack and I were good at listening to each other. Certainly after he died, Zoe and I had different visions. My vision died when I was arrested. And while I was winding my way through the courts, she drove the real estate business into the ground. Had her eye on other ventures.”

  “So maybe you weren’t heartbroken when she disappeared,” Clare suggests.

  “No.” Donovan offers Clare a surprisingly jovial smile. “I wasn’t.”

  “What was she doing to drive the business into the ground?”

  Donovan pulls his wrists apart until the shackles grow taut. “It’s probably better to keep my mouth closed on that,” he says. “I’m awaiting an appeal. But tell me, how do you know Malcolm?”

  “I’m looking for him. That’s all. It’s my job.”

  “Right. But you use his first name only. Malcolm. You didn’t say Hayes. You just said Malcolm. You know him.”

  Donovan’s gaze is so direct that Clare feels herself withering under it. This room is hot, the lights buzzing and bright.

  “You’re right,” Clare says. “I do know him. After he left Lune Bay, Malcolm Hayes took up looking for missing women. He was… an investigator of sorts. We met, and I started working with him. I won’t get into the details beyond that. But I’m charged with looking for him now. I used his first name because I figured you know him.”

  “I like that you’re telling me the truth,” Donovan says.

  “I’ve got nothing to hide,” Clare says, crossing her arms.

  “Do you believe that Malcolm is guilty of murdering his wife?” Donovan asks.

  “I don’t believe anything yet,” Clare says. “I’m just trying to do my job. Speaking to you is part of that.”

  “I was at Zoe and Malcolm’s wedding, you know.”

  “I’m sure it was quite the event in Lune Bay.”

  “Oh, it was. I was a guest of honor at Zoe’s parents’ table. It was a picture book affair. At a winery with views halfway to Japan. Zoe’s dress was magnificent. And there was a good feeling in the room. But I found myself spending the whole night watching Malcolm. He was a fascinating case study.”

  “Why?”

  “He never smiled. I like to think I’m good at reading people. And I remember wondering to myself: Is this man a sociopath? And then Charlotte caught my eye. Dear Charlotte. I always loved her. What a sweetheart she was. And funny, she was watching Malcolm too. Charlotte seemed onto him as well.”

  “Onto what?” Clare asks. “Be more specific.”

  “I spend a lot of time thinking these days. I interact with people I never would have crossed paths with on the outside. The same men I’d read about in the papers. And they aren’t bad. Not all of them, anyway. Maybe some of us here at the Roy Mason are good men who did bad things in the name of someone we love. Maybe some of us were framed, or wrongly convicted. Put in here for things we didn’t do. Who decides between bad and good? What’s that saying? History is written by the victors?”

  “You’re losing me,” Clare says.

  “Malcolm?” he says. “He’s not one of the good guys. I don’t think he was capable of feeling any real emotion.”

  A long stretch of silence passes between them. Clare draws a deep breath. She would like to think she has the same ability to detect good from bad, but her history, her experiences with men and even with this line of work, tells her that she’s got a long way to go yet. It’s too hard to know who means well and who doesn’t. Of course, she knows that Donovan may be trying to throw her off. She will not allow it.

  “I don’t know what you did, Mr. Hughes. I know nothing about you. But a lot of terrible things have happened in Lune Bay in the past five years. Your partner’s murder, his daughter’s disappearance. Other women missing too. Women with ties to the Westmans. Maybe you didn’t kill anyone, but I imagine you’re not innocent.”

  Donovan smiles. “No one is.”

  “Time’s up,” the guard says.

  “Can we have five more minutes?” Clare pleads with the guard, her hands in prayer position. “Please?”

  “You’re lucky to be here at all,” the guard says. “My shift ended ten minutes ago. You’re done.”

  “I’d like to come back,” Clare says, standing. “I’ll have more questions. If you’ll see me again.”

  “Anytime,” he says. “It’s been a pleasure.”

  The guard takes Donovan by the elbow to support him as he hoists to his feet. Clare watches as he shuffles through the door. Donovan looks back to Clare as the guard bends to remove his shackles. She is grateful for the metal door between them.

  The sand is dark and gritty under Clare’s shoes. She digs a heel in and drags it to draw a line parallel to the water. Every color on this beach is washed out by the last of the day’s light. At the end of the beach is a peninsula with a suspension bridge spanning the bay, the beams of oncoming headlights like yellow eyes pointed at Clare.

  Pebble Beach, Charlotte had written. 8pm.

  It is 7:57. Clare arrived here directly from the prison. The shore is dotted with gray driftwood but devoid of people. Clare thinks of her mother, dead in her forties without ever having set foot in the ocean. When Clare was little, summers were about their farm, about the harvest. Any trips they took were perfunctory visits to see family members in the city. Their entire life unfolded within a small radius, the ocean a distant dream. How easy it is, Clare knows, to remain tethered to your small corner of the world. She inhales deeply. This day has been too long, too overwhelming. The salt in the air burns her lungs.

  “Clare,” says a voice behind her.

  Clare turns to find Charlotte
almost upon her, her approach drowned out by the noise of the ocean. Charlotte sidles up to her so they are shoulder to shoulder, both squared to the horizon.

  “I was trying not to startle you,” Charlotte says.

  “You didn’t,” Clare says. “I’m glad you texted.”

  Everything about Charlotte’s demeanor has shifted from yesterday morning. She seems relaxed next to Clare, her shoulders loose, hands in her pockets, an entirely different person from the woman Clare encountered at Malcolm and Zoe’s home yesterday.

  “I was thinking about you last night,” Charlotte says. “It kept me up, actually. We got off on the wrong foot.”

  “A gun at my head is the wrong foot?” Clare says. “You don’t say.”

  “Well. You broke into my dead sister’s house.”

  Dead. Why, Clare wonders, does Charlotte keep insisting that Zoe is dead? It’s as if she’s goading Clare.

  “No more guns, then,” Clare says. “We agree on that?”

  “No more guns. Kavita talked to me, by the way. She thinks I should trust you.”

  “I wish you would,” Clare says. “I think we want the same thing.”

  “I just want my life back.”

  “Yes,” Clare says. She pauses for a few beats. “This really is a beautiful spot.”

  “We used to come here when I was young. My mom would pack us these picnics. She insisted on these gestures of togetherness.” Charlotte points to the waves. “I never swam. The water is too cold, and the undertow is fierce. But Zoe and my dad…” She pauses, remembering. “They’d swim far out. Zoe would let these huge waves crash into her. I remember my mom yelling at my dad that one of the waves was going to snap her neck. She was so reckless, even back then. So was he.”

  “My mother used to say the same thing about me,” Clare says.

  Charlotte shifts so she is facing Clare. “I need her to be dead. Officially declared dead.”

  “Why?”

  “You said yesterday that you can help. Kavita says you’ll help.”

  “I can,” Clare says. “But I can’t have someone declared dead when there’s no proof that they are. Honestly, Charlotte? I find it strange that this is what you want. Your sister dead.”

  “What do you know about my dad?” Charlotte asks.

  “I’ve done some research. I’m not sure all of your father’s business dealings were on the up-and-up.”

  “Ha. I’ll say. But he had this thing about ‘taking care of us.’ My mom. Zoe and me. Zoe went to college but I never did. I got married and had a kid when I was twenty. My dad loved my daughter. She lived like a princess.”

  “And then your dad was murdered.”

  “Yeah. It was like it never fucking occurred to me that he wouldn’t be there to take care of me.” She laughs. “That the money wouldn’t be there. My dad died, then the family business went to shit. My husband left, took our daughter. My mom’s heart gave out. My parents’ house was repossessed after my dad’s business partner was convicted. Zoe was fine. She had Malcolm to take care of her. Then she vanishes. Then Malcolm vanishes too. Jesus. Malcolm was rich, you know that, right?”

  “Yes,” Clare says. “But I still don’t understand why you want Zoe dead.”

  For a moment Charlotte stares out to the water, kicking at the sand.

  “I don’t want her dead,” she says. “I want her declared dead. It’s not the same thing. The glass house is in Zoe’s name. It’s worth millions. I need a place to live. I need to clean up and hire a good lawyer. I need… stability. That’s all I want. And I’m Zoe’s next of kin.”

  “Isn’t Malcolm the next of kin? They never got divorced.”

  “Next of kin? He’s evil. He’s a fucking murderer.”

  The venom in Charlotte’s words rattles Clare. A murderer. Clare’s every instinct wants to push back against this notion, to defend Malcolm against such an accusation. How well Clare knows that she could be wrong about him. After all, what is her life so far but failing to see men for their true colors until it’s too late? She thinks of the Westman family photograph, the way Charlotte leaned into Malcolm. Clare crouches to pick up a rock and toss it under a curling wave.

  “You believe that Malcolm killed Zoe?”

  Charlotte stares forward. Clare waits for an answer, but none comes.

  “I don’t know what Malcolm did or didn’t do,” Clare says. “I’m here to find out. He never spoke much about your sister. His wife. I have no grasp on her.”

  Charlotte looks up to the darkening sky. “Some people are evil. They’ll do anything to keep what they have. To get more. I grew up around a lot of people like that on account of my father. But when they’re close to you, it’s harder to spot. My father was like that. He had two sides to him. One side was a doting family man, and the other was pretty much heartless. He loved his granddaughter, that’s for certain. But he crossed a lot of people, and not just in business. I think he took pleasure in it. Lune Bay seems like this paradise, right? But there was money flowing in from everywhere. And my dad was at the coffers. He was king of this place. My mother was a dutiful wife, she stood by him. But she used to yell at him at the dinner table that he was going to get us all killed. She’d ask him, right in front of Zoe and me, how he’d feel if some henchman showed up at our school and shot us in the head.”

  “Jesus,” Clare says.

  “I get where she was coming from, though,” Charlotte says. “She’d say those things because she wanted Zoe and me to be scared too. To be vigilant. To keep our eyes open, because anything could happen at any time. I don’t know if my mother knew the extent of it, but she knew enough to be scared for us.”

  “That’s not a great way to grow up.”

  “No. It isn’t.”

  Mist from the ocean coats Clare’s skin. Since they arrived here, there’s been a change in the air, a sharp cooling. Charlotte bites a hangnail from her thumb and spits it to the ground, her face twisted anxiously.

  “But Zoe loved it,” Charlotte continues. “We’d be walking home from school and some guy would watch us a little too long from across the road, or another guy would drive his Cadillac past us and she’d grab my arm and tuck herself behind me. ‘Do you think he’s here to get us?’ she’d say. But she always had a smile on her face as she said it. Like the idea of being kidnapped for ransom was romantic to her. The idea of our dad going on a killing spree to avenge us. We were tight, Zoe and me. I think she loved me. I know she loved my daughter. But she was hollow. She was drawn to evil. Always looking for something to fill her up. She was like my dad in that way.”

  In her case file, the stories about Zoe had painted a different picture from the one Charlotte offers now, profiles outlining her successes as a high school student, national wins at debating events, track and field. And in the family photographs printed in news stories, Zoe was always at the center of the frame, her father’s hands on her shoulders, Charlotte to the side, often gazing up at her taller sister, her expression mimicking. Clare knows how this feels, her brother, Christopher, a straight-A student and lettered athlete in high school, so that by the time Clare arrived a few years after him, the stage was already set for her to seem the lowly disappointment in comparison.

  “You say Zoe was reckless. After your father was killed, was she engaging in the same criminal activities as he was?”

  Charlotte throws her head back in laughter. “Engaging? You make it sound so quaint. I have no fucking idea what Zoe was doing after my dad died. Kavita has theories, but I was on a spiral of my own. I lost custody of my kid. I was too distracted to watch her drive the family business over a cliff. She came to me a few days before she disappeared and claimed that Malcolm was going crazy. That she was scared of him, scared of what he might do. But she was giddy when she was telling me. Like she was delivering a speech, planting a seed or something. But hey, your sister tells you something like that, you shouldn’t just ignore it. But I did. I didn’t act because I’m a terrible person, I guess. And I wa
s busy losing my kid.”

  Clare cannot bring herself to express sympathy. It was almost exactly a year ago that Clare’s pregnancy ended in stillbirth after Jason pushed her down the stairs. Almost a year since Clare lay in that hospital bed after the delivery and began to formulate her plan to leave, to escape Jason. She too has lost a child, the circumstances different from Charlotte’s, even if the grief is similar. But Clare will not empathize with this woman whose life has deteriorated in parallel ways to her own. She allows the moment to pass.

  “You asked me to meet you here, Charlotte. But I’m not totally sure why.”

  “Neither am I. I guess I just want this all to end. I want some kind of resolution. And I have no idea how to go about it.”

  A plane circles overhead, angling its wings to align for descent. Clare looks at her phone. 8:10 p.m. The light is fading fast.

  “Kavita and I are going to The Cabin later,” Charlotte says. “I hear you’ve been.”

  “I was there last night with Austin Lantz,” Clare says. “He says you’re staying at his place.”

  “Yeah. I’ve had a rough month. He’s been good to me, actually.” Charlotte shifts awkwardly from foot to foot. “You could come. Tonight, I mean. To The Cabin. If you want.”

  Clare closes her eyes to absorb the wave of exhaustion that rolls in at this prospect. The bar, the drinks. The effort to control herself. But she must go.

  “I’d like that.” Clare looks side to side, searching up and down the beach. “Are we close to Malcolm and Zoe’s house? I can’t orient myself.”

  “If you follow the coast about a mile south.” Zoe points. “You’ll see it hanging over the edge.”

  The waves have picked up against the breeze, crashing harder, moving closer. The tide must be coming in.

  “You said Malcolm is evil. Do you think that’s what brought them together?” Clare asks.

  “I never said my sister was evil. I said she was drawn to evil people.”

  “Like Malcolm,” Clare suggests.

  “Yeah,” Charlotte says before turning to walk back to her car. “Like Malcolm.”