Last Day

by Luanne Rice

  “Well,” Kate said.

  “Today,” Sam said. “I need to be with Dad. And with Mom. Because if she’s anywhere, she’s there. I know she is. It won’t matter that I can’t see her. She’ll be there, at home. I want to sleep in my own bed on the sheets she put on it. And go into Matthew’s room and put up the mobile I made for him.”

  “Okay then,” Kate said.

  She stood, clipped the leash on Popcorn, and went down to the street. She had to call Pete and tell him to get himself home. She had to tell him his days at Mathilda’s were over, she was kicking him and Nicola out, and that he’d better keep Nicola away from Sam. He’d better.

  Her emotions weighed on her, made her feel leaden, but she told herself that with Sam gone, at least she’d be able to spend more time figuring out who’d done the drawing of Beth, to find the lock that fit the key.

  20

  Lulu Granville was back from Asia. She had actually requested a series of trips starting in Tokyo that kept her as far away from the people she loved most in the world, and she felt completely guilty for it. Thoughts of what she had missed sliced her like knives, especially Beth’s funeral.

  Being present for Kate should have mattered more than anything, but Lulu had been too selfish. She needed time to pull herself together, to grow a shell too thick for Kate to see through. She hated herself for doing it, but the idea of seeing Kate, talking about Beth—not just her death, but the secret she’d told Lulu—was unbearable.

  For many years, Lulu had been a nomad, sharing apartments with other pilots. She loved moving around, seeing the world, and because she was single, she had had the luxury of changing her base whenever she wanted. At various times she had flown out of New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. Her last share, five years ago in Greenwich Village, had been a nightmare, so she had transferred down to Atlanta and bought a cozy Victorian bungalow in Grant Park. Because shoreline Connecticut would always be her true home, she rented a guest house close to where she had grown up, on Black Hall’s Main Street. The point was to stay close to Kate. Beth and Scotty too.

  But she’d chosen to be as far away as possible, just when Kate needed her most. Now that she felt centered enough to handle it, she was back in Connecticut.

  She spent the morning at Hubbard’s Point beach, swimming to clear her head. Long Island Sound was blue and calm. She swam out to the raft, then around the big rock, slicing through the water with long, sure strokes. She felt streamlined as a jet in her sleek red tank suit, long hair drifting out behind her. She had left the roped-off swimming area, swam along the far side of the breakwater, heading for Little Beach. A couple in kayaks slid by, calling hello. A jerk in a Grady-White shouted that she’d better be careful; she’d get run over.

  If Kate were here, they’d laugh. They’d never kept inside the lines their whole lives. Of the four best friends, she and Kate were the fearless ones. The foursome had called themselves the Compass Rose in high school, each representing a different point on the compass but swearing they’d stay together for life because they needed each other to find their way and stay on course.

  Lulu was west—after the great aviator Beryl Markham’s West with the Night; Scotty was east because she was so East Coast, in love with the comforts and conventions of life in their small town; Beth was south, her personality as warm as the sea breezes off South Carolina, as sweet as magnolias; Kate was, of course, north—at times distant and chilly, but brighter than anyone, a blazing aurora, the northern lights over the Arctic tundra.

  After her mother’s death, Kate had stopped seeing Michael. Her protective shell kept everyone away but Lulu, Beth, and Scotty. High school kids said she was cold, but Lulu knew she was the opposite—so warmhearted, she shut down after the nightmare, knowing what her mother had suffered. She had never recovered the part of her that had been lost that day. She refused to allow herself physical, or even emotional, pleasure.

  Lulu’s heart was pumping, her eyes stung from salt water, and her muscles released the tension that had built up since her arrival in Connecticut. The idea of seeing Kate was both thrilling and unbearable. The Compass Rose hadn’t exactly stayed intact. Although the four of them had remained friends, their closeness over the years had dissolved. Even Kate’s and Beth’s. Lulu and Kate had stuck together tighter than the others.

  She swam over the rocky bottom, climbing out at Little Beach and scraping her thigh on barnacles. She shook salt water off her dark-blonde hair, staring at graffiti on the granite boulders. This was a nature sanctuary. When she and the rest of the Compass Rose were young, they had respect for the beauty here. They cleaned up beach litter, would never have dreamed of desecrating the rocks with spray paint like this: a black-and-red bull’s-eye, splotches of bright blue and yellow flowers, a Jet Ski. Some idiot had actually painted Hubbard’s Point is Great! It made her feel sick.

  She wiped the blood off her thigh as she walked through the oak-and-black-walnut-spiced woods, along the twisting path back to Hubbard’s Point. The graffiti made her want to never come back here again. Hubbard’s Point people had used Little Beach for decades, although it was private and a nature preserve. Now they’d damaged it. She felt like building a fence across the path.

  It was a hot August day. The sand—though not as crowded as July—was still covered with low chairs, striped umbrellas, beach blankets. Scotty sat below the tide line, her chair so close to the edge that small waves licked her toes. She waved Lulu over. Lulu gave her a long hug, then sat in the wet sand beside her.

  “It’s awful,” Scotty said.

  Lulu’s mind was still on the graffiti, but then reality slammed back.

  “Beth,” Lulu said.

  “We just can’t believe it. It’s all beyond. Nick was on the boat with Pete when he got the news. He had to call and tell me! That’s how I found out. Lulu, I thought I would die too. I’m still in shock over it; we all are.”

  “How is Kate?”

  “You haven’t seen her yet?” Scotty asked.

  “I’m going to today.” The words kicked Lulu’s heart rate up. She started to stand, brushing sand off, noticing the blood from her scraped thigh had pretty much stopped. The cuts weren’t deep, but they stung.

  “That’s good, Lulu. She’s such a tough girl, but she needs us.”

  “I know. I’m heading to meet her now.”

  “I wish I could be with you two, but I have to volunteer in New London. Beth got me started working at the soup kitchen once a week, and today’s my day. I did it for her, and I don’t know, I guess I’ll keep at it for now.”

  “Does Jed still go there?” Lulu asked.

  “I haven’t seen him since Beth died,” Scotty said.

  “So no one has talked to him?”

  “Well, I haven’t,” Scotty said, her voice sounding surprisingly sharp.

  Lulu was about to ask her what was bothering her, but Scotty gasped. “Oh God, no,” Scotty said. “I can’t believe it. Don’t turn around.”

  Lulu immediately turned her head and saw Pete walking down the hot sand from the seawall toward the tide line. He carried two chairs, a beach bag, and an umbrella. Nicola walked beside him, holding a baby in a pale-blue sun hat.

  “What gall, what absolute nerve of him to parade around with her,” Scotty said.

  “That’s not new,” Lulu said. “He hasn’t exactly been discreet.”

  “I know, but have some decency, so soon after your wife’s been murdered.”

  “I guess there’s no point in hiding now,” Lulu said and stared: Pete was tan, his hair sun bleached, his hibiscus-printed board shorts salt-water faded. He frowned with concentration as he worked the aluminum umbrella stand into the sand, set up the chairs, shook out and arranged the blanket. Lulu’s stomach clenched because she recognized it: a Hudson Bay blanket from L.L.Bean. She knew where Pete had found it.

  She and Kate had pulled it from Mathilda’s linen closet back when they were in high school, taken it camping and beaching. White
with black, yellow, red, and green stripes at one end—the white had yellowed over the years and with outdoor use.

  “They’re still living at Cloudlands?” Lulu asked.

  “Yup,” Scotty said. “So far Sam hasn’t wanted to go home, so that’s his excuse.”

  “I can’t see Kate letting them stay at Mathilda’s much longer.”

  “Why Beth did, I’ll never know,” Scotty said.

  Pete held the baby while Nicola settled herself on the blanket. She smiled as she reached up to take her son. Pete’s face was impassive—or was that still a frown, the wrinkles in his brow, his set mouth? Nicola bent her head to free her left breast, and Pete draped a towel over her shoulder as she began to feed the baby.

  “Jesus,” Scotty said, turning away.

  “Seriously, you have a problem with that?”

  “Of course not. I’m just thinking of Beth and Matthew.”

  Lulu squeezed her eyes tight. She pictured Beth, heard her soft voice. Can you keep a secret? When she opened her eyes, she looked at her hand, saw the small scar. It reminded her of the last time she saw Beth. A huge shiver ran through her body.

  “What’s wrong?” Scotty asked.

  “It’s just all so sad,” Lulu said, giving her a hug. “I’ve got to go see Kate.”

  “Don’t leave me alone with those two right there.”

  “Just look the other way,” Lulu said. And she stood behind Scotty’s chair and swiveled it, the aluminum rungs digging through the sand, so it was facing away from Pete and his new family.

  “Thanks,” Scotty said, but she moved her chair back to where it had been. “Look at him. Flaunting his other family. People are saying he killed her to be with them. I just can’t bear thinking about it.”

  Lulu didn’t reply. It was all too depressing. When she got to her green Range Rover in the sandy parking lot, she pulled a white cotton sundress over her damp bathing suit and drove out of Hubbard’s Point. She pictured Pete and Nicola on the beach. He was a creep; there was no doubt about it.

  But Beth hadn’t been a saint either.

  21

  Kate had arranged to meet Lulu at Cloudlands. Mathilda’s 120-acre property ranged across two hilltops in the lower Connecticut River Valley, with views of Essex and the estuary, down to the two lighthouses at Saybrook Point, then across Long Island Sound to Orient Point. Late golden light filled the haze, made the river shimmer like a blue mirage.

  Mathilda had loved follies—little secret places built of stone, set all around her property. Kate sat in her favorite now, the crenellated tower of small stone hideaway built in homage to Gillette Castle up the river. She opened the heavy manila envelope she’d brought to show Lulu and withdrew the small key she’d found in Beth’s desk. She had tried it everywhere she could think of, but it was such an unusual size it didn’t fit any lock. Right now, in the tower, she stared at a weathered wooden door. It was only waist high, and she remembered looking inside as a little girl—Mathilda had kept some garden supplies in there. She tried Beth’s key now but no luck.

  When she looked up, she saw Lulu walking across the wide lawn. Kate saw in her the sixteen-year-old girl she used to be, carefree in that white dress, in the way she waved and started to run when she spotted Kate.

  “Finally,” Kate said when Lulu had climbed the stairs.

  “I’m sorry,” Lulu said, squeezing beside her on the narrow bench, throwing her arms around Kate, kissing her forehead, both cheeks. “There’s no excuse for taking so long.”

  “You’re right; there isn’t,” Kate said. “You were in Tokyo?”

  “And Beijing, and . . .”

  “But you couldn’t make it back for Beth’s funeral?”

  “Katy, I hate myself,” Lulu said. “But I literally couldn’t show up. I was so afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “You?”

  Kate was stunned. “What are you talking about?”

  “I just couldn’t bear to see you. It’s the most unbearable thing, you losing Beth. I couldn’t face you, Kate. I was too scared . . . of this.”

  “But I’ve needed you,” Kate said. She rarely cried except, for some reason, with Lulu. She tried to blink back a million burning tears, but they poured down her face.

  “Our girl, our South,” Lulu said.

  “Lulu, I saw her. I’m the one who found her,” Kate said. “She was broken, Lu. Her head was cracked. Her neck . . .”

  “Oh, Kate,” Lulu said, holding her tighter.

  “My little sister,” Kate said. “Her beautiful eyes were so cloudy, staring into nothing. The last thing she saw was someone killing her.”

  “This is what I was so scared of,” Lulu whispered, stroking her hair. “Not being able to face what I know you’ve been through. Why did you have to find her? Of everyone, why did it have to be you? I don’t want it in your mind, that sight of her. I want you to remember her alive and happy, our girl . . .”

  “I’m so glad it was me,” Kate said. “It was as if . . . I was taking care of her, for the last time. Being with her. Not turning away. I had to see her, Lulu. It would have been ten times worse if I hadn’t. She was so alone at the end. And she lay there all that time, by herself in that cold room, and no one knew. I had to be the one to find her.”

  “I should have been here,” Lulu said.

  Kate pushed herself away to dry her tears. She nodded. “Yeah, you should have. I know what you said, but I still don’t get why you weren’t. Not really.” She waited for Lulu to reply, but Lulu just stared down at her feet, shaking her head.

  Kate’s gaze fell upon Lulu’s leg, crisscrossed with thin bloody lines.

  “What happened?” Kate asked.

  “I had an incident at Little Beach. Barnacles.” Lulu paused. “Have you been through the path lately?”

  “No,” Kate said.

  “Kids sprayed paint all over the rocks,” Lulu said, the awkward non sequitur hovering between them.

  Kate closed her eyes. The last time she’d been there was with Beth. This past June they had walked to Little Beach, along the water’s edge at dusk, looking for moonstones. The pebbles had glistened in the wet sand, opalescent in late-day amber light, lighting their path like tiny fallen moons.

  “Are you okay?” Lulu asked, watching Kate, bringing her back to the present.

  “I’m kicking Pete and Nicola out today. The locksmith is coming.”

  “Can you imagine what Mathilda would say if she knew Pete was here? After what he’s put Beth and Sam through?” Lulu asked.

  “She’d be apoplectic. Beth should have made them leave the minute she found out they were here.”

  Lulu looked away, seeming to think about it. “Maybe she had other things on her mind.”

  Of course Beth had had plenty on her mind, but the way Lulu said it made Kate feel uneasy. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  Lulu didn’t reply.

  “Well, my theory is it made her feel strong,” Kate said. “Like she had the power. Knowing she could get rid of them at any time.”

  “She had a lot going on,” Lulu said.

  “Yes, the pregnancy, running the gallery . . .”

  “Et cetera,” Lulu said.

  Kate gave her a sharp glance. “Et cetera? Is there something you want to tell me?”

  “No. I’m just upset. Who’s going to run the gallery now?” Lulu asked.

  “Maybe I’ll have to.”

  “What about your job? Uh, you’re a pilot.”

  “I know. Maybe I can do both.”

  Lulu gave her a skeptical look. “They’re both kind of full time, aren’t they?”

  “I’m not ready to think about this,” Kate said.

  “You can hire someone to run the gallery. As long as you don’t sell it. You have to keep it in the family. I still think of it as Mathilda’s.”

  It touched Kate how loyal Lulu was to Mathilda. Mathilda had influenced both of them to become pilots. Lulu had gone up with Kate and Mathilda many
times. But Lulu was right: the gallery had always been and would always be Mathilda’s. It bore the stamp of her style and personality, a home for the art of the Black Hall Colony.

  “Beth was planning an exhibit around Hassam’s World War I flag paintings. It would have been an homage to Mathilda. She really loved that series.”

  “Well, she was a veteran, a patriot.”

  “She always told us that Hassam had wanted to volunteer to go to Europe and record the war. I think she wished a Black Hall artist had done that for her war.”

  Her war. World War II, when she’d learned to fly. As Kate and Lulu headed across the lawn to meet the locksmith, Kate thought of the Harkness-Woodward women, how they had been shaped by their grandmother’s bravery. She’d withstood bullets and bombs and being demeaned by men in power. There must have been times when she had been so afraid, but she’d never talked about it to Kate. Maybe she had to Ruth. Kate thought about how even the strongest women could feel fear. The idea of Beth’s last hour filled her mind.

  “She must have been terrified,” Kate said.

  “Mathilda?”

  Kate shook her head. “Beth. At the end, when he was strangling her, knowing that she was going to die. That she’d lose the baby. And whatever led up to that moment when . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence. “Do you think about it?”

  “Of course,” Lulu said, staring into space. “All the time.” Her mouth and jaw were tense, set, as if holding back words.

  “What is it?” Kate asked.

  “Look, there’s the locksmith,” Lulu said.

  Their feet crunched over white gravel and crushed clamshells as they approached the maroon van. It was painted with a gold lock and key. The locksmith was young and lanky, with a long dark ponytail covered by a red bandana. Kate showed him the doors with locks she wanted changed. Seven altogether, all around the first floor of the big house. When he was done, he wanted payment in cash. Kate had gone to the ATM and was prepared.

  She and Lulu went into the kitchen and grabbed big black plastic garbage bags. Going through the bedrooms, they filled them with Pete’s and Nicola’s things. Kate stared at Tyler’s toys and clothes and couldn’t bring herself to touch them.