Last Day

by Luanne Rice

  He realized, as he often did, that if anyone saw his wall, they’d say he was obsessed. He always told himself that his fixation on the Woodward sisters, particularly Kate, was chivalrous, stemming from a desire to avenge what had been done to them as teenagers. But was that so different from what Lulu said Danielle had done, for which she had obtained a restraining order?

  Yes, it was. Night-and-day different. He was positive of that. His confidence was shaken only at night, when he couldn’t sleep, an unending tape of details from Beth’s murder running through his mind, interrupted only by a what-if scenario—him and Kate at the gallery, the kiss that didn’t happen.

  That was the part that veered into the realm of obsession. He had never felt passion for any other subject of an investigation before. The other night he’d woken up sweating, dreaming of Kate. In the morning, he’d felt this ridiculous wave of shame—Why should he? Who could stop a dream?—but it had made him feel like heading to the Y-Knot on Bank Street and getting drunk. He hadn’t sought whiskey or any alcohol as a solution for years, but shame and frustration were powerful motivators.

  He stared at the heart and the small spot in the corner.

  He looked up the address he had for Lulu Granville and headed over to question her about the bloody heart. Maybe she could tell him who the third woman had been, or perhaps it was historical, left by someone long dead.

  And even though Lulu had been cleared of the charge of biting Danielle, Reid couldn’t get the image of those scratches and bite marks on Pete’s back out of his mind. Early on, Pete had said he’d gotten them during sex. It seemed crazy, but could they have come from Lulu? Pretty much the only thing worse than having your husband cheat on you with an employee would be having him be with one of your best friends.

  When he arrived at Lulu’s house, Reid found no cars in the driveway, and no one answered the door.

  49

  It was Beth’s birthday, and the sun had not yet risen when the phone rang and woke Kate.

  “Hey, old sweetheart,” Lulu said. “Let’s go flying. What do you say to a hike on the Block?”

  Block Island. One of Beth’s favorite places in the world, a perfect place to go on her birthday.

  “Yes,” Kate said, already climbing out of bed. “Let’s go.”

  She had to drop Sam off at Isabel’s so she could catch a ride to school. On the way to Black Hall, Sam talked about Beth. She asked Kate to tell her something surprising about Beth, something she’d never heard before.

  “She was a champion tree climber,” Kate said. “Everyone thought of your mother as being quiet, scholarly, completely wrapped up in art. But one of her favorite things to do was to see how high she could go.”

  “Where?” Sam asked.

  “There was a Norway spruce behind our house—not Mathilda’s, but the one where we lived with our parents, in town. It was so tall, Sam, maybe twice or three times as high as our house. The trunk was sturdy and so thick with branches at the bottom, but up toward the top it was scraggly, and the limbs were sparse. Your mom would climb a little higher each time . . .”

  “That sounds more like something you would do.”

  “You’d think so, but I was too scared—I never got more than halfway up. I’d feel the tree swaying, and it would seem like the branches wouldn’t hold me.”

  “What would she do up there?”

  “Peek into birds’ nests on the way up. And then look out—she said she could see across the Sound, even past Plum Island, all the way into Gardiners Bay. When she came down, she’d be covered with sap—all over her hands and legs—and she’d be beaming. She called it ‘visiting the sky.’”

  “Why didn’t I know this?” Sam asked. “She and I could have done it together.”

  “Well, she stopped at some point.”

  “When?”

  “Um, when she was a teenager.”

  “After your mom died?”

  “Yes,” Kate said.

  Sam fell silent, and Kate felt she’d made a mistake by telling that story. It showed how brave and exuberant Beth had been, and how tragedy had killed that part of her. It had taken so much of the fun and the thrill of life out of her.

  “Sam,” Kate said. “She found her passion. Maybe she stopped climbing trees, but she . . .”

  “I know,” Sam said. “Loved art. Loved the gallery.”

  “No. I was going to say loved you. You were everything to her, Sam. You were her sky.”

  Sam didn’t reply, but when they parked outside the Waterstons’ house, she gave Kate a quick and unexpected hug. “Thanks for telling me that about Mom,” she said.

  “Anytime,” Kate said, wanting to hold on to the feeling of closeness with her niece.

  She watched Sam walk up the steps. Scotty greeted her at the door, waved to Kate. It was still so early—Sam and Isabel would hang around for a while, then catch the school bus. Kate picked up Lulu, and they headed for the airport. Just knowing she was about to go up into the air made her feel lighter, took weight off her shoulders. She felt Beth with her. They would visit the sky together.

  Their Piper Saratoga looked lonely and neglected on the side of the tarmac. Dead leaves had skittered around the wheels, caught beneath the chocks. Rainstorms had stuck them to the wings and windshield like brown paper. Kate and Lulu did their best to brush the debris off, knowing the flight would do the rest.

  Lulu was pilot this leg, and Kate would fly home. They took off toward the southwest, Long Island Sound glittering below. One sweeping turn revealed the faded autumn colors of Southeastern Connecticut. The rising sun lit the land, acres of trees dropping their last leaves.

  They banked over Napatree Point. A thousand feet below, the long, narrow sandspit curved outward into Block Island Sound, creating Watch Hill’s sheltered harbor. Nothing could have protected the point from the hurricane of 1938, when the winds blew ninety-eight miles per hour with a gust of one hundred twenty recorded in New London. A fifty-foot storm surge washed away forty houses from Napatree; one hundred people in Westerly were killed. Kate stared down at the sandy spit; she and Beth had walked there every summer. She closed her eyes—everything seemed so vulnerable.

  Tom Francis, a pilot friend, moored his boat in Great Salt Pond during the summer and let his friends borrow the old Jeep he kept at the airport. Kate got the key from Margie at the desk, and they set off for Rodman’s Hollow, 230 acres of pristine open space.

  Kate and Lulu were at their best when they were on the move. They sometimes tried meeting at cafés or restaurants, but sitting still at a table never felt like enough. It didn’t have to be hiking in the Anza-Borrego Desert or kayaking the Colorado River; they loved local expeditions just as much.

  They parked in the lot off Cooneymus Road, grabbed their backpacks, and followed a trail into the glacial hollow. Beyond the tawny fields and coastal scrub, the bright-blue Atlantic glittered. Migratory birds, resting on their journey south from the boreal forest, darted around the thicket. A yellow warbler, perched for ten seconds on the silver-tipped branch of a bayberry bush, looked like pure gold.

  “I have to tell you something,” Lulu said.

  “Do I want to hear it?” Kate asked. “Lately when you say those words to me, we stop speaking.”

  “Well, when you put it like that, I’ve changed my mind.”

  They kept walking. Kate stared at the five massive wind turbines just offshore, tall and white and gawky in the morning light. A red-tailed hawk circled overhead, a black shadow against the blue sky.

  “Go ahead,” Kate said, stopping dead in the middle of the trail.

  “You sure?”

  “Just get it over with,” Kate said. She felt off balance, scared of what she was about to hear. “Whatever it is, you couldn’t have told me before?”

  “I didn’t want to,” Lulu said. “But it’s Beth’s birthday. It has to be now or never.”

  She looked pale as she pulled her phone from her back pocket. Head bent, she scrolled throug
h photos.

  “Let’s see,” she said, her voice shaking slightly. “October, September, August, July . . . okay, here we go.” She glanced into Kate’s eyes. She hesitated, then handed the phone to Kate.

  Kate held it and stared at Beth smiling out of the screen. She felt a shiver of normalcy, as if Beth were still alive, could appear at any moment, could be with them enjoying her birthday. Beth had a sly twinkle in her eyes. She stood in her bedroom. She wore an orange sundress, and from the size of her belly, Kate knew the photo couldn’t have been taken long before she died.

  “Swipe through,” Lulu said. “There are eight photos and a video. I took them all the same afternoon.”

  Next was a shot of a pocketknife in a bone sheath, laid on the bed’s summer-weight white comforter; Beth standing in front of Moonlight on the wall; Moonlight now facedown on the bed, Beth holding the knife like a dagger above it; the painting cut from the frame; the pale-red heart drawn on the back; the canvas yellowed with age, its edges unraveling; a selfie of Beth and Lulu grinning at the camera, each holding up a blood-smeared index finger; then a five-second blurry video.

  “Proof of love,” Beth said steadily. She reached out to Lulu. The camera shook as Lulu accepted the knife, and the clip stopped.

  “What did you do?” Kate asked now, trembling as she looked into Lulu’s eyes.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Lulu asked.

  “No,” Kate said.

  “She hated him,” Lulu said. “Pete. He’d lied to her for so long, took so much of who she was. She had to show him. That painting was hers. The empty frame was a symbol—that’s all he was, an empty space, and that was all she was leaving him. She wanted him to know there was someone else. The heart was her proof of love—for herself, for Sam, for the baby, for Jed, for us, her blood sisters.”

  “Okay,” Kate said, her voice breaking. “Then . . . ?”

  “I put the knife into my pocket,” Lulu said. “Rolled up the painting and hid it in Beth’s briefcase. Then Beth took a nap. But God, Kate, I did it to her. I caused her death.”

  Kate’s mind slipped out of gear, a car rolling backward down a hill. She pictured the knife. It couldn’t be; she couldn’t bear the thoughts and images racing through her mind.

  “You’re telling me she died that day?” Kate asked, her voice barely a croak. She took a step closer to Lulu.

  “No,” Lulu said. “Not that day.”

  “But you were there when she died?” Kate asked.

  “What?” Lulu asked. “Are you kidding?”

  “Whoever took the painting killed her,” Kate said.

  “She stole it herself!” Lulu said. “I just told you—it was a message to Pete. Jesus, Kate! He killed her the day he left to go sailing.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He had to—it’s the only way it fits. You know it too.”

  “Then what did you mean by what you said—that you did it?”

  “I meant that I helped her cut the painting from the frame—she asked me to—and seeing the painting gone must have set him off,” Lulu said. “He got Beth’s message, figured out she was going to leave him. He couldn’t have missed it. He’d never be able to stand Beth having the upper hand, making a fool of him. She was laughing when she took it; the idea of it made her feel strong, so happy. If I hadn’t supported her, even egged her on, she might not have done it. It was just a symbol. We never imagined the consequences.”

  “Why didn’t she ask me to help her?” Kate asked, feeling so helpless about the distance between them; it seemed that every day she was learning of more and more ways Beth had evaded her.

  “You didn’t even know about Jed, or that she was leaving,” Lulu said quietly, almost as if apologizing for the fact.

  That statement smashed into Kate, a baseball in the chest. It came down, again, to the fact Kate didn’t understand love, or being in love, could never appreciate a romantic or vengeful gesture, because she’d never had a relationship that would require it. Her sister had known she wouldn’t understand. She walked away from Lulu. She began to run toward the ocean, but she heard footsteps crunching fallen leaves behind her, Lulu keeping pace.

  Old stone walls marked the end of the trail. A hard left led onto a coast path, hugging the top of the clay bluffs above the Atlantic. The sea was dark blue. The gigantic white windmills turned relentlessly.

  The hawk had caught a rabbit in the open field. At Mathilda’s when Kate was young, she would hear owls grab them at night, and they would scream as they died, but this rabbit was alive, stock still in fright as the hawk perched on its back, talons dug in. The hawk flapped its wings, lifting the rabbit five feet into the air.

  “Stop!” Kate yelled, tearing through the tall grass, waving her arms. The raptor wheeled, lost its grip. The rabbit fell to the ground.

  Kate approached slowly. It lay still on its side. Deep red, raw claw marks scored the gray-brown fur along both sides of its spine. At first, she thought it was dead, but there was life in the glossy black eyes, watching her as she leaned over.

  “Oh,” she said, kneeling beside it. “Oh . . .”

  “Poor thing,” Lulu said. “Didn’t have a chance against a red-tail.”

  Kate bent her head so she could look directly into the cottontail’s eyes. They stared straight at her. Not a whisker twitched, the stillness of shock. Blood oozed from the tracks left by the hawk’s talons. She placed her palm on the rabbit’s side, felt the light, panicked flutter of its heart. The vulnerability of small creatures, the ones who couldn’t be saved. The phrase came to her mind and filled her eyes with tears. In that moment, all she could see was Beth.

  She felt Lulu’s hand on her shoulder.

  “Come on,” Lulu said. “Leave her—let nature take its course. You don’t want to watch her die.”

  “She’s not going to die,” Kate said. She took off her soft fleece jacket and placed it in the grass. She closed her hands around the rabbit. Lifting her, she felt surprised by her weight. Laying the rabbit on her jacket, she wrapped her body tight, the way she’d seen Beth swaddle Sam when she was a baby. Her purpose was to immobilize her and prevent further injury. She expected her to thrash against her touch, but the rabbit seemed to snuggle against her right away.

  The rabbit must be so scared, she thought. She had once flown a family and its pet parrot from Westerly to Chicago, and they had kept the cage covered to keep the bird calm. She emptied her backpack, handing Lulu her water bottle, phone, and wallet. Gently, she placed the rabbit inside and closed the zipper.

  The whole way back to the Jeep, and then driving quickly to the plane, the rabbit didn’t move. Although it was Kate’s turn to pilot, and she’d been craving the exhilaration of flying them back to Groton-New London, she took the passenger seat.

  “I’m so sorry, Kate,” Lulu said. “I know you’re really mad. If you want to cancel for later, us all getting together at Mathilda’s, I understand.”

  “We’re not canceling,” Kate said. “It’s Beth’s birthday.”

  Lulu nodded, banking north toward Connecticut. Kate closed her eyes, missing out on the spectacular, endless blue-sea view, and held the backpack against her chest, the warmth radiating through the fabric telling her the rabbit was still alive.

  50

  Kate dropped Lulu off and headed to the veterinarian. They’d barely spoken the whole way from Block Island to the airport, from the airport to Lulu’s cottage, except to agree to meet at Mathilda’s after Sam got out of school at 3:30.

  Dr. Laurie Banks practiced in a barn on the edge of Mile Creek. Kate had been here before, accompanying Beth to take Popcorn for shots. Dr. Banks took one look at the rabbit and shook her head.

  “I’m not licensed to treat wild animals,” she said. “You have to take this one to a wildlife rehab.” She leaned closer, though, examined the hawk’s gouges. “It really doesn’t look good, though. The rehabber will probably euthanize it.”

  Kate stared at the rabbit’s wide dark ey
es and saw life force and knew she wouldn’t let that happen.

  “Can you at least tell me if it’s male or female?”

  Dr. Banks turned the rabbit over carefully and looked beneath the short white tail. “Female,” she said.

  Kate nodded.

  “Here’s the name of the closest rehab,” Dr. Banks said, handing Kate a slip of paper.

  “Thanks,” Kate said.

  “It could be a long shot,” Dr. Banks said. “It’s unlikely she’ll survive. It’s probably kinder to put her out of her misery. The wildlife vet will make that decision.”

  “Okay,” Kate said.

  The vet brought out a cardboard crate for transport and placed the rabbit inside. Kate carried her to the car, set her on the front seat beside her. She started to drive toward Montville, the address Dr. Banks had given her, but instead she stopped at CVS, bought hydrogen peroxide and bacitracin, and headed for home.

  On her couch, she set the cottontail on a towel. The bleeding had stopped. She gently washed the cuts with warm water, then hydrogen peroxide. The gashes were clean. She applied the antibiotic ointment to prevent infection as carefully as she could. The rabbit’s fur felt impossibly soft.

  Popcorn investigated. Kate didn’t want him to scare the rabbit, but Popcorn was so cautious it seemed okay. Kate slung her arm around his neck, burrowed her face in his fur. The dog had been Beth’s. Beth had instinctively known how to care for him, and she’d wanted to. Beth had had a husband and a daughter and a lover and all the people she’d helped at the shelter and the soup kitchen. Kate had kept herself as separate as possible from all creatures.

  “What should we name her?” Kate asked Popcorn.

  He circled, lay at her feet. Kate heard him sigh as he settled. The rabbit was perfectly still, except for her breath. Kate’s hand rested on the sofa beside her, and she felt the warmth of each exhalation. On the coffee table was a blue bowl filled with small oranges. The scent filled the room. It smelled like a citrus grove, both sweet and tangy. Beth had loved oranges. They had been her favorite fruit. And she had been wearing the color in those pictures Lulu had taken.