“The humidity here is terrible for the wood,” he said, smoothing his fingers over one of the cabinet doors. “But I don’t see the point of making beautiful things if you aren’t going to use them, so I use them.” Damn, he was cute, and I found myself smiling at him. He radiated a relaxed, soft-voiced, blue-eyed charm. The goofy kid who had begged for fish guts was simply not in evidence, and the attraction I’d felt to him in the Spring Lake restaurant was back in spades.
I looked through the kitchen to a jalousied sunroom.
“You enclosed your porch!” I said. Through the open jalousies, I could see the backyard and canal. “Let’s go out there.” I wasn’t sure if I truly wanted to be in the backyard we’d once shared or if I simply wanted to get it over with.
“Sure,” he said.
As we walked onto the sunporch, I squinted my eyes toward the opposite side of the canal. The weathered wooden bulkhead was gone. In its place was a steel bulkhead the color of rust. “What happened to the bulkhead?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you,” Ethan said. “Come on.” He led me through the porch with its white wicker love seat and chaise longue. Once outside, I saw that our two yards were now separated by a decorative wire fence, nearly the color of the sand.
“Who lives there?” I found myself whispering.
He took my elbow. “Come on,” he said again. “Let’s sit down and I can fill you in on the neighborhood.”
There was a beautiful boat in Ethan’s double-wide dock. I no longer knew a thing about boats, but I could tell this one had power and speed.
Ethan pulled two of the handmade wooden beach chairs closer together and patted the back of one, encouraging me to sit.
I sat on the chair, a few feet behind the chain-link fence that separated us from the water.
“God.” I shook my head. “I can’t tell you how strange this feels to be here. To see this water. I feel like I was here just last week, it’s so familiar to me. And look across the canal.” I pointed to the thick green reeds where George and Wanda and their cousins used to fish. No one was fishing there this afternoon. “It’s still undeveloped,” I said.
“Right,” Ethan said. “One of the few areas on the canal.”
“The Rooster Man’s shack is gone, though,” I said, marveling at the cluster of angular gray buildings that stood where the shack had once been.
“Condos,” Ethan said. “If you’ve got about $ 800,000, you can get one with two bedrooms.”
I looked at him, openmouthed. “Are you kidding?” I asked.
“You don’t want to know how much your old house is worth,” he said.
I winced. “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t.” The current value of the bungalow didn’t matter. My grandparents would have sold it even if they’d had a crystal ball to see the future of real estate in the area.
Ethan told me about the old wooden bulkhead succumbing to erosion and being replaced by the rust-colored steel walls years earlier. He told me about the changes on our street, how quickly the houses had gone up during the seventies. We watched as a massive yacht, crowded with well-heeled revelers, sailed by in front of us, and I realized I had not even turned in the direction of my old yard. I sighed.
“It’s easier for me to focus on the bulkhead or the boats—” I nodded toward the yacht “—than over there.” I shifted my gaze to the right, letting myself truly look at the yard for the first time since my arrival at Ethan’s.
“I know,” Ethan said. “I figured you’d get around to it when you were ready.”
The old painted Adirondack chairs were gone and in their place, sleek metal patio furniture sat on the sand. More of the wire fencing surrounded the dock, and nearby was a large tree, barely recognizable as the tree I used to lean my crab net against. The screened porch that had seemed so big in my childhood still ran the length of the house, but it was not nearly as deep as I remembered it. A circular, above-ground swimming pool sat in the shade of the tree, and I could see the top of a motorboat in the dock.
“Who lives there?” I asked again.
“A young couple,” Ethan said. “The Kleins. Very nice. They moved in about four years ago and they have a boy about seven years old.”
“Ah,” I said. Now I understood the need for all the fencing. It gave them the illusion of safety. I said a little prayer that the boy would grow up to be a strong, healthy adult.
“I told them that you—someone who used to live in the house—was coming to visit me,” Ethan said, “and they said you’re welcome to come over and see how the house has changed, if you like.”
“No,” I said quickly. I didn’t want to set foot in that house of memories. “Do they know…you know…what happened?”
“No.” Ethan smiled, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “Julie, you have to realize that that house has probably had—” He looked out at the water for a moment, thinking. “I don’t remember, exactly. Probably eight or nine owners in the last forty-one years.”
I chuckled at my foolishness. To me, what happened in that house seemed like only yesterday. I wanted to ask Ethan if he missed being able to sit out on the wooden bulkhead; the steel one offered no place to sit. I wanted to ask him if he missed the blueberry bushes and the woods we used to play in and the clanging sound of the old bridge when it swung open to let the boats through. But I realized those changes, like the eight or nine owners of our house and the Rooster Man’s shack being taken over by condos, were ancient history to him. In Bay Head Shores, he lived in the present, while I was still stuck in the past.
“This is hard for you, isn’t it?” he asked. “Being here?”
I nodded, staring at the water. “A tragedy occurs,” I mused. “Then you move on, or at least you try to move on, and you go through the motions of living your life, but you never quite forget it. It’s always there under the perfectly calm surface. And then…wham.” I pounded my fist on my thigh. “Something happens—like Ned’s letter—and you’re forced to deal with it all over again.”
“You’re the one who wanted me to take it to the police,”he said.
I looked at him sharply. “It’s not your taking it that shook things up,” I said. “The letter existed, whether you took it or not.”
He reached over to squeeze my shoulder. “You’re right,” he said. “And I didn’t mean to sound glib or like I’m blaming you. It was the right thing to do to take it to the cops, and they got on my case for not bringing it sooner.” He stared at his hands, rubbed them together, turned them palm side up, and I saw the signs of his work on his fingers. The skin looked rough and callused.
I wanted to take one of his hands in mine. I felt bad for snapping at him. This was no easier for him than it was for me. “I think they suspect that I wanted the time to clean out Ned’s house,” Ethan said. “You know, to make sure they wouldn’t be able to find anything incriminating.”
“I assume they didn’t find anything?” I asked.
“No, and I hadn’t found anything when I went through his stuff, either. No secret journals. No letters of confession. My friend who works at the department, though, told me they were able to find enough hairs and…whatever at his house to use for DNA matching.”
“Well, that’s good,” I said, although I didn’t know exactly how Ned’s DNA could be used at that point. “What did they ask when they interviewed you? What are they going to ask me tomorrow?”
He sat back in his chair, hands flat now on his denim-covered thighs. “They wanted me to give them the names of everyone Ned knows. Knew,” he corrected himself. “His drinking buddies. Women he dated. College friends. People he might have confided in. I couldn’t come up with many. Ned kept to himself. He wasn’t a social drinker. He drank to get drunk. Solo. Period.”
“What sort of relationship did you have with him?” I asked.
“Very difficult,” Ethan said. “He didn’t want to be around me because I was always badgering him about his drinking. About getting help. He didn’t want to hear
it. He rarely saw Dad, either, which I know just killed my father. He still feels as though he failed Ned, that he should have been able to do something to help him.”
“Oh!” I said. “I forgot to tell you something.”
He looked at me, waiting.
“Did you know your father went to see my mother?”
His eyes grew wide. “What?”
“He did,” I said. “He showed up at her house the same day you and I met in Spring Lake.”
He looked as though I’d imagined it. “Why would he do that?” he asked.
“I don’t know, and she wasn’t very forthcoming,” I said. “She said he was thinking about us and decided to visit her. Does he know about the letter?”
Ethan shook his head. “He couldn’t possibly,” he said. “And I’ve talked to him since you and I met and he never said a thing about visiting your mother. Did he drive all the way up to Westfield to see her?”
“Yes. At least, he came to her house. I assume he drove.”
“Oh, brother,” Ethan said. “He scares me when he drives around the corner, much less to Westfield. I’ll have to talk to him about it. I don’t know how long I can let him live independently. He’s…” He shook his head. “Now, this is where Ned and I communicated,” he said. “We could talk about Dad—what should be done as far as taking care of him and that sort of the thing. I’m on my own with it now.”
I thought of Lucy, how glad I was to have her as my sister. How much I treasured her.
Ethan rested his head against the seat back, and a faraway look came into his eyes. “I just want…” he began. “I wish there was something I could do to keep the police from talking to my father,” he said. “I know they plan to, and probably soon, since he’s the only one who can support Ned’s alibi. I’m afraid they’re going to badger him because they probably think he used his influence to get Ned off.” He shook his head. “I dread telling him about that letter.”
“I know,” I said. “I can’t imagine telling my mother about it.”
“You might have to, Julie.” He looked at me, the blue in his eyes so clear I felt like diving into them.
“I know,” I said again, but I was thinking, Not if I can help it.
“Well,” Ethan said, “here’s what I think you and I can do that might help the investigation,” he said. “We should try to remember Ned and Isabel’s friends from 1962 and anything important about them. The police might want to talk to them.”
I leaned my head back against the wood of the chair. I thought about Isabel’s old crowd that used to hang out on the beach. “Why can’t they find Bruno?” I asked.
“He’s left the area, his parents are dead, and his real name—Bruce Walker—is pretty common,” Ethan said. “But my friend assures me they’re looking for him.”
“Isabel had two best girlfriends here,” I said. “Pamela Durant and—”
“Oh, yeah,” Ethan said, a little of the lecher in his voice. “Hard to forget her. She never came back to the shore, though, after that summer, but I still remember her.”
“Down, boy.” I smiled. “I didn’t know you had any interest in the opposite sex back then, except as something to study under a microscope.”
He returned the smile. “The geeky thing was just a facade,” he said.
I laughed.
“Who was the other girl Isabel hung around with?” he asked.
“Mitzi Caruso,” I said. “She lived on the corner. Right down there.” I pointed in the general direction of the Carusos’ house.
“I vaguely remember her,” Ethan said. “I think she came back a few more summers, but I couldn’t really say for sure. There were a couple other guys Ned hung around with, but I’m completely blank on their names. Summer kids. Do you remember any of them?”
I shook my head. The rest of those teenagers from Izzy and Ned’s crowd were as faceless to me as they were nameless.
Ethan looked at his watch, then stood up.
“Listen,” he said, “it’s a gorgeous evening. Let’s go out in the boat, and then we can make dinner—I picked up some flounder—and talk some more.”
I glanced toward his dock. “I don’t do boats these days,” I said.
“Really?” He looked puzzled. “When I picture you, it’s in that little runabout of yours. Out there by yourself on the canal, twelve years old, zipping around like you owned the water.”
It was hard to believe I’d ever been that child. “I haven’t been on a boat since that summer,” I said.
“Come on.” He held out his hand to me. “Let’s go. We can head toward the river if the bay upsets you.”
He didn’t understand. There would be no pleasure in it for me, only a sort of panic. “I don’t want to, Ethan,” I said.
He saw that I was serious and gave up. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll skip the boat ride and go right to dinner, then. Are you hungry?”
I helped him cook, although he was at ease in the kitchen. Watching him, I realized he was a man at ease, period. And lying here now in his handmade guest-room bed, it occurred to me that he had always been that way. Even when he was a nerdy little kid, he hadn’t cared what others thought of him. He’d been comfortable in his own skin. I hadn’t expected to find myself admiring him any more than I’d expected to find myself attracted to him. And yet I was both.
CHAPTER 19
Julie
Sometimes you could find yourself feeling very anxious about one thing only to discover that you should have been anxious about something entirely different. That’s what happened to me the morning of my interview by the police.
I’d awakened early to the sun-washed blue of Ethan’s guest room and the comforting scent of coffee. I longed to stay in that room all day. My head hurt a little and I thought of calling the police department, telling them I couldn’t come in, that I was sick. I did not want to go over what had happened in 1962, detail by detail, which is what I figured they would ask me to do. How would I be able to bear it? Putting the interview off until later, though, would provide only temporary relief, so I got up, showered, dried my hair, dressed in khaki pants and my red sleeveless shirt and walked downstairs. Ethan was reading the paper at the table on his sunporch, but he hopped up when he saw me in the kitchen.
“Eggs or pancakes?” He put the newspaper down on the counter. “I can go either way.”
“Toast?” I asked. “And bacon.” I motioned toward the plate of bacon he’d already prepared, although I wasn’t sure I’d be able to eat anything at all.
“Sit down and I’ll feed you,” he said.
I took a seat at the kitchen table, lifting up the tablecloth to admire what I knew would be beneath it—another of Ethan’s creations.
“How are you doing this morning?” he asked, putting two slices of bread in the toaster.
“I think I’m okay,” I said slowly, like someone who had just sustained an injury and was trying out the muscle to be sure it wasn’t sprained.
“Do you want me to drive you?” he asked.
“Just give me directions and I’ll be fine,” I said with false bravado. I liked the idea of him coming with me, but I was sure he had work to do.
He jotted a phone number on a slip of paper and handed it to me. “This is my cell number,” he said. “I’m stopping over at a job this morning, but let me know when you’re done and I’ll meet you back here.”
I nodded. The toast was ready and I carried it and the bacon onto the sunporch while he followed with two cups of coffee. The jalousies were wide-open, and the reedy scent of the canal, the swift current, and the boats cutting through the water all combined to take hold of my heart and squeeze. I nibbled at the toast, my appetite gone as I tried to carry on a conversation about the job Ethan had to check on that morning. I had made it through half a slice of toast and an inch of bacon by the time I needed to leave, and as I headed out the door, I wished that I’d accepted his offer to go with me.
The room I was taken to at the Point Pleasan
t Police Department was small and bare, and there was nothing to look at other than the faces of my two questioners. I sat on a hard, straightbacked chair across a table from Lieutenant Michael Jaffe from the Prosecutor’s Office and a very young, blond detective, Grace Engelmann, from the Police Department. They each had a notepad in front of them, and a tape recorder rested on the table between us, a thick file of papers next to it.
There was a little small talk at first, designed, I thought, to put me at ease.
“It’s changed a lot since you were a kid here, huh?” Lieutenant Jaffe asked after he’d introduced himself and the detective. He was a handsome man with wavy salt-and-pepper hair and a youthful face.
“Yes,” I said. “I haven’t been back since my sister’s death.”
“Really,” he said, as if that surprised him. “I didn’t come here until ninety-two myself, so I’ve only known it the way it is now. What sort of changes have you noticed?”
He had to know how the area had changed, whether he’d lived here or not, but I figured I would play along with the putting-me-at-ease game.
“Well,” I said, “there were a lot of summer people back then. And far fewer houses. The bulkhead is different. That new bridge wasn’t there.”
He frowned. “The new bridge?”
“Over the canal,” I said, and he and Detective Engelmann both laughed.
“We call that the old bridge now,” he said. “It really has been a long time for you, hasn’t it?”
I smiled. I could hear the tape running in the small machine resting on the table.
“You know,” he said, “my wife and I love your books.”
“Thank you.” I was tempted, as I always was, to ask which book he liked best, but decided against it, in case he was simply making conversation and had not read them at all. The last thing I wanted to do was make him uncomfortable. Detective Engelmann wrote something down on her pad. What I had said to prompt her to do that, I couldn’t imagine.
“How did you happen to go into mystery writing?” Lieutenant Jaffe asked.
I always got that question. I had a long answer designed for speaking engagements and a short answer designed for times like this.
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