All the Beautiful Lies

by Peter Swanson

“I know it was. I think I knew it when I first heard what happened to your father, but I didn’t trust myself.”

  “Do you think she was the only one . . . the only other—”

  “She was the only one I found out about, but I don’t know. I assume she was it. Your father and I had a good marriage, but I think that over time maybe he’d fallen a little bit out of love with me. At least it felt that way; he began treating me more like a friend than a wife.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “You don’t need to be sorry about anything. It wasn’t you. And if it makes you feel better, I can tell you that I think your father only ever loved one woman, and that was your mother, Harry, not me.”

  Harry didn’t say anything right away. He’d never heard Alice talk so openly before. “I think he was in love with you,” he finally said. “He said nice things about you.”

  She half smiled, and something about the expression made her look young and vulnerable. “Thank you, Harry. I appreciate it. Look, I’m exhausted right now. I just want to watch some television for a while. You understand, don’t you?”

  “Of course. I’m sorry.” He got up to leave the room as Alice turned the volume up. He was returning to the kitchen when she said, “You’ll watch with me, won’t you?”

  “Oh. Okay.” Harry got himself a beer, and put a slice of the Mediterranean pizza on a plate and returned to the living room. He almost sat in the leather recliner, but it had been his father’s chair, so instead he sat on the other side of the couch from Alice. Together, they watched the show in silence, Alice’s attention not even wavering during the commercials. As soon as the show ended, another one started up instantly. Same couple, different house. Harry stood, stretched, and asked Alice if it was okay if he took a walk. Without turning away from the screen, she said, “Has it stopped raining?”

  Harry tried to remember if it had rained that day. He hadn’t been out of the house. “I don’t know,” he said. “I need a little fresh air, regardless.”

  “Go, Harry,” she said. “I’ll be fine.” She sounded a little doubtful, though, and for a moment Harry considered just staying with Alice. He felt bad for her, and she seemed to need him. But she had the television, for now at least, and he’d be back soon, he told himself.

  He cleaned his plate, looking out through the window that was over the sink. The sky was filled with dusky light and towers of pink clouds. The window was cracked and the air that was coming through it felt cool, almost cold. He went up the stairs to his room, where he changed into his best jeans and pulled a V-neck sweater over his T-shirt, then left the house, the sound of Alice’s program still coming from the living room.

  Chapter 18

  Then

  When the doorbell to the condo rang, Alice thought it was probably the police. She was prepared. She would tell them how Gina had come to her door the night before, apologizing and wanting to go for a night swim in the ocean, and how Gina had seemed intoxicated.

  But when Alice opened the door, it was Mrs. Bergeron, Gina’s mom, standing on the landing. Alice had never seen her without makeup on before, and she almost didn’t recognize her. Her skin was blotchy, and she had bags under her eyes. “Is she here?” she asked Alice.

  “Who? Gina?”

  “She’s missing, Alice. I went into her room this morning and she hadn’t even slept there.” She was stepping into the house, uninvited, and Alice suddenly panicked that Jake was about to come down the stairs naked.

  “She’s not here, Mrs. Bergeron,” she said, “but she was here last night.”

  “She was? When?”

  “I don’t know exactly. It was late. She knocked on the door, and she seemed really drunk. She apologized about dinner, and asked me if I wanted to go swimming.”

  “Swimming?”

  “That’s what she said. I told her I was tired and going to bed, and she left. That’s all I know.”

  “Why did she want to go swimming? It’s so cold out.”

  “I know. I thought it was strange, too, but she wasn’t herself. I shouldn’t have let her . . . I should have . . .”

  “Jesus, do you think she went swimming by herself? Stupid, stupid girl.” Mrs. Bergeron’s eyes were jittery. “Can I use your phone?”

  “Of course.” Alice led her into the kitchen, and to the wall-mounted phone. Mrs. Bergeron plucked the receiver up, then pulled out a card from the front pocket of her jeans, dialed a number. Alice could see that the card was from the Kennewick Police Department.

  “Is that Michael?” she asked, her voice panicky. Then: “I think she went swimming. In the ocean . . . Last night . . . Okay, yes. Okay.”

  Alice watched the conversation from the doorway, and jumped a little when she realized that Jake was standing right behind her. “What’s going on?” he said.

  “Gina’s missing,” she said, turning. He was dressed but he hadn’t shaved yet. His dark stubble was flecked with grey.

  “Since when?” he asked.

  “She was here last night, after you fell asleep. She was drunk.”

  “Did you—”

  He was interrupted by Mrs. Bergeron hanging up the phone, and racing out of the kitchen. “I have to go, Alice,” she said, moving toward the front door.

  “Can we do anything to help?” Jake asked, but she had already left.

  Alice went to shut the front door, while Jake went into the kitchen.

  “Do you think I should help them look for her?” she asked him as he was pouring coffee into a mug.

  “She’ll turn up,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”

  Later, Alice heard that they found the clothes on the beach first, then found the body later that afternoon, lodged between rocks north of Buxton Point.

  The police, as Alice knew they would, came to the house the following morning. Jake answered the door while Alice was cleaning up the dishes from breakfast. It was just one uniformed police officer, an Officer Wilson, who took his hat off when he entered the living room of the condo. He looked like he was in his early twenties; he had a large balding patch at the back of his head, and he had tried to make up for it by growing a wispy, blond mustache. Alice and Jake sat across from him as he took out a notebook.

  “I’m sure you know why I’m here,” he said, his eyes on Alice.

  “It’s about Gina Bergeron.”

  “Right. Her mother said that she came here yesterday, and you were the one who informed her that Gina had gone swimming on Friday night.”

  Alice nodded.

  “Can you tell me about Friday night? Do you remember what time she was here?”

  Alice told the whole story, omitting the part about Gina and her mother confronting her after dinner at the Bergerons’. And definitely omitting the part about biting Gina on the hand. She just said that she left their house and then later Gina showed up, acting drunk and wanting to go swimming.

  “Was that unusual?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did it surprise you that Gina was drunk, or that she wanted to go swimming? Was this something she typically did?”

  “I don’t really know her that well, to tell the truth,” Alice said, repeating words that she’d said to herself in her own mind many times. “We were close friends in high school, and then she went to New York City, and she changed. I didn’t know her anymore.”

  “You didn’t know her anymore because you didn’t see her, or because she’d changed so much?”

  “Both, I guess. I barely had any contact with her. I saw her mother more, because she comes into the pharmacy where I work, and she was the one who wanted me to come over for dinner when Gina was back in town. I didn’t know why, but I think it had something to do with her being worried about Gina being on drugs, and maybe she hoped I’d be a good influence.”

  “She said all this to you? Gina’s mother?”

  “No. It was just what I thought.”

  “Okay. So what was she acting like when she came here?”

  “I
couldn’t really understand her. She was slurring her words, and she asked me to go swimming with her, and I said that it was too late, and it was too cold, and that was it.”

  The officer turned and looked at Jake for the first time. “Did you see Gina when she came here to the house?” he asked.

  “Oh, no. That was long after my bedtime.” He said it with a kind of faux heartiness that Alice had never heard before. He sounds like he’s lying, she thought.

  But Officer Wilson didn’t follow up. He turned back to Alice. “Did you think it was unusual that Gina wanted to go swimming?” he asked.

  “Um . . . I guess so. It was late at night.”

  “Besides it being late at night, did it surprise you in other ways? Is this something she liked to do?”

  “Swimming?”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess so. I don’t really know.”

  The officer was writing something. When he didn’t immediately ask another question, Alice said, “We’d gone swimming before, Gina and I. The last time that we spent together. It was nice. I think she wanted to repeat the experience as a way to . . . to get back that feeling. She said that swimming together would be like a fresh start.”

  “She said that here, the night she came over.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Why did you need a fresh start?”

  “Just like I said, we’d been close before, and now we weren’t so close. We’d drifted apart.”

  “Okay.” The officer nodded fractionally and was quiet again for a moment. Alice didn’t say anything, either, this time.

  “One more thing,” he said. “Had Gina ever said anything to you that made you think she might be suicidal?”

  “No. Like I said, I barely even—”

  “Not just recently, Alice, but when you knew her in high school. Or anytime really.”

  “Oh.” Alice pretended to think. “There was this one time, our senior year, when we were talking about our futures, you know. Where we might be in a few years. And she said something like: ‘Alice, you’ll still be here in Kennewick. You’ll probably be married to some perfect man, and have a baby boy and a baby girl, and I’ll still be in New York, and I’ll be a rich model with a major drug habit, and about sixteen boyfriends, and I’ll be so unhappy that I’ll probably kill myself.’ I mean, I didn’t think anything of it at the time.”

  “When did she say this?”

  “Our senior year. I thought she was just joking.”

  “You’ve been really helpful, Alice,” the officer said as he stood. Jake stood as well and walked him to the door. Alice stayed seated, but the officer turned back and thanked her before he left the condo. She felt a sudden emptiness, like she hadn’t been ready for him to leave, that there was more she could have said.

  “What do you think that was all about?” Jake asked after shutting the door and turning back into the living room.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It felt like they were putting you through the third degree.”

  “I guess so,” Alice said.

  “If it didn’t bother you, it didn’t bother me. I was worried you might be upset.”

  “I’m not upset. I’m just tired. I haven’t been sleeping.”

  “I’m sure. Go take a nap,” he said, just as Alice knew he would.

  She went upstairs and into her old bedroom, and shut the door. It was an unspoken code that was used between her and Jake. When she went to take a nap in the bedroom they shared together, it meant that Jake would join her. When she went into her old bedroom, he wouldn’t. They’d only ever had sex in that room once, right after he’d taken the pictures.

  In her bedroom with the door closed, Alice took out the folder that contained all the magazine photos of Gina, the clippings she’d saved from the past few years. She spread them out on the nubby bedspread, finally arranging them in a way she liked, with her favorite picture of Gina in the middle. It was from one of her last published photo shoots, one in which she’d gotten to travel down to Miami. In the picture, she was wearing a yellow one-piece bathing suit and holding a lit cigarette. In the background was a ramshackle beach house, painted in neon colors, and a sexy man asleep in a hammock. Gina was looking directly at the camera, her face almost in a frown. Look at all I have, that face was saying, and look at how miserable I am. Alice ran her finger down the picture, as though she could feel Gina through it. The paper felt cheap. The shot was published in one of the lesser fashion magazines, a magazine that she’d had to pick up in Portland, since Blethen’s didn’t even carry it.

  She looked at the other pictures, then gathered them up and put them back in the folder. She stretched out on the bed and looked at the ceiling. She listened to Jake coming quietly up the stairs, then heard him turn around and go back down. He’d seen the shut door of her bedroom. Why had he been so concerned about the policeman’s visit? She hadn’t been bothered by it. They were just trying to decide if it had been a suicide or an accidental death. And it was going to be easy to confirm. Gina was unhappy and on drugs. Why else would she swim out into the cold ocean water? It was so sad, really, when she thought about it. All that youth being swallowed up by all that water. Poor Gina so alone in those final moments. Alice really was a little bit sleepy, and she closed her eyes, then gently massaged her temples, hoping she wouldn’t get one of her headaches.

  Before she fell asleep, though, Alice got up and slipped from her bedroom into the master bedroom she shared with Jake. The bed was still unmade. She pulled her clothes off and slid under the warm, familiar sheets. Maybe Jake would come up and check on her again.

  Chapter 19

  Now

  Outside, the air was crisp and smelled of loam. The pink that had just suffused the clouds was now gone, the light draining from the sky. Harry walked through the village, noticing movement behind the big window at the bookstore, the silhouetted figure of John hunched behind the checkout desk. The police would probably be questioning John as well. He’d clearly known Annie when she’d worked at the store. Had he known what was going on with the two of them? He must have had some idea.

  Harry almost considered popping in to see him, to ask him directly, but he wanted to see Grace first. He headed up the rise of the Old Post Road, passing the inn, then arriving at the house where Grace had rented the room. It was mostly dark, except for some dim light in one of the second-floor windows. At the front door he rang the bell. There was a chime inside the house. He looked at the door while he waited; ornate wooden scrollwork framed a circular piece of glass. Below it was a visible remnant of what had been a number attached to the door—22—and two nail holes where the numbers had been affixed. Harry looked to the side of the door where 37 Prospect had been stenciled in dark red paint. Either the street number had changed or the door had been moved from another house. He pressed his finger to where the numbers on the door used to be, then pulled his finger back as the door swung inward, Grace looking a little startled, as though she was surprised to see him.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I forgot Mrs. Whitcomb isn’t here, so I didn’t immediately get to the door. Come on in.”

  Harry followed Grace as she led him up the stairs, carpeted with a threadbare Oriental runner, and to her rented room. It was as large as she’d said it was, the wide double bed looking out of place against the far wall. It was as though the house had once upon a time been split into a two-family, and this had once been the upstairs living room. A couch and two wooden chairs made a semicircle around a fireplace; Grace sat on the couch and Harry took a chair.

  “What’s going on?” Grace said, pushing her hair back off her forehead. Her eyes were bright, almost jumpy. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a striped black-and-white shirt. Her feet were bare, her toenails painted green.

  Harry opened his mouth to speak, and surprised himself by saying, “I don’t believe that you only knew my father a little.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “We just found out . .
. I just found out that my father hadn’t been faithful to his wife, and, and I wondered what your relationship with him was.”

  As Harry spoke the words, a deep flush of red spread across Grace’s face.

  “What do you mean you just found out?” she asked.

  “I just found out that my father was having an affair with someone here in town.”

  She shook her head rapidly. “He wasn’t.”

  “I think you need to tell me what’s going on.”

  She exhaled, and rubbed at an eye with the heel of her palm. “I was involved with your father. Down in New York. Who told you he was having an affair here?”

  “My stepmother.”

  “Alice?”

  “Right. She said he was involved with a married woman who worked at the store, and she thinks that the woman’s husband might have had something to do with my father’s death.”

  Grace was shaking her head again.

  “Look,” Harry said. “Just tell me what the fuck is going on. Stop shaking your head.”

  Grace lifted her head and met Harry’s eyes. In the lamplight of the room her eyes looked more green than blue.

  “Okay,” she said, and took a breath. “You know how your father used to come down to New York all the time to visit his old store?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I know Ron, the owner of the store. He owns the apartment I rent.”

  Harry was about to tell her he already knew that, but let it go. He wanted to hear the whole story first.

  “I used to help out in the bookstore a little bit. That’s how I met your dad, about two years ago. This was right after Hurricane Sandy, and the store’s basement flooded and wrecked a bunch of books. Your father came down to help out.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Harry said.

  “I was helping out as well, and we spent a lot of time together. Ron was pretty useless—you know Ron—and two of the employees couldn’t even get into Manhattan that week, so it was just us. And, basically, I fell in love with your father.”

  She paused, and Harry said, “Okay.”