The House on Fripp Island

by Rebecca Kauffman

  Roxie was still nude in her bed, wet dog at her side, when a sudden panic jolted her upright as she happened to glance at the clock on the wall of their bedroom. It was 4:45.

  The run . . . Poppy . . .

  Roxie had promised to meet Poppy outside her house at the same time this morning, which was around 5:30. Dare she not go? No, unexpectedly breaking plans with Poppy could eventually cast suspicion in her direction. In fact, it occurred to Roxie, showing up was the only way to definitively exonerate herself if anything should happen to put her in the purview of the police. If she upheld her plan to meet up with Poppy, both she and Keats, still on his house call, would have perfect alibis.

  Poppy was wearing a green baseball cap and doing a deep quad stretch against the mailbox when Roxie approached. A misty rain swirled around them. No actual drops, although there had been some on Roxie’s way over. Roxie was wearing a hat as well; she had blow-dried her hair before leaving the house, to avoid the appearance of having recently showered or been in the water, but had done so in a rush, and her hair was not entirely dry.

  Roxie offered a meek wave and said, “Hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”

  “Nup,” Poppy said. She smelled of coffee, and her eyes in the shadow of the hat were haggard and red. “I’m quite hung over,” Poppy confessed immediately.

  Roxie said, “No pressure to join. I’ll be fine on my own if you wanna crawl back into bed.”

  Poppy said, “I think I can make it to the magnolias again. I’ll probably just walk the whole way back.”

  The run was a blur. Roxie’s mind cycled wildly over images and terrors, dream-like and indistinct. She did her best to respond appropriately as Poppy chattered on about how much fun last night had been. Pictionary, movies, frozen cocktails . . .

  They parted ways at the magnolia grove.

  Roxie felt ill. Her heart was a hummingbird thrashing against her ribs.

  She said, “I’ll be back at work tomorrow, stop in for breakfast if you want. Tomorrow’s your last morning here, right?”

  Poppy nodded. “I just may,” she said. “Drag the whole crew down to Gram’s, I think that’d be nice. So, this isn’t goodbye.”

  “Exactly,” Roxie said. “See you tomorrow, then.”

  When Poppy had made it nearly back to the house, she was surprised to see Lisa out front on the porch in her pink silk pajamas, her chin high in the air and wagging up and down the street. Poppy waved at her, impressed that Lisa had also gotten up so early after their late and boozy night.

  Lisa returned Poppy’s wave, but it was a mad and panicked gesture. Both arms.

  Then, behind Lisa, the front door opened and Scott came out onto the porch. He was followed by Alex and John, then Kimmy and Ryan.

  When Poppy got close, she felt a sudden, nameless dread settle over her. She said, “What’s up, guys?”

  Scott said in a voice that was tight and stricken, “She’s not with you?”

  Alex said, “Mommy, we hoped she was with you.”

  Poppy said, “Who?”

  Lisa’s face was stretched long, white, and corpse-like. She said, “Rae is gone.”

  23

  UNABLE TO SLEEP, Lisa had gotten out of bed for an early morning cup of tea. This was when she noticed that both the door to Rae’s bedroom and the front door of the house were slightly ajar.

  Rae’s body was found by surfers around seven thirty that morning. She was still wearing her yellow pajamas.

  A homicide investigation was launched, but it was soon abandoned when tests indicated a high level of alcohol in Rae’s blood, coinciding with the empty glass in her room. No signs pointed to forced entry or a struggle. The early-morning rain had erased any potential trace of footprints, but no physical evidence either in their home or on Rae’s body suggested foul play. No sexual assault. No blunt force trauma. And there was that powerful riptide to consider.

  In a fit of desperation, Lisa offered up the name of Keats Firestone to investigators, pointing out that he was a local sexual offender and explaining that they’d had several encounters with him, including one between him and Rae. But the investigators quickly confirmed his alibi: Keats had been working on a hot tub on the far side of the island from midnight until eight o’clock the next morning. The houseguests with the hot tub were there the whole time.

  Scott offered up the names of the guys from Newark; they knew where he was staying, he said, and he didn’t get a good vibe. But investigators were able to confirm that these guys had left the island around three o’clock yesterday afternoon. There was video surveillance of all of them in a car passing a toll bridge into New Jersey that night, many hours before Rae disappeared.

  The most likely scenario, the investigators concluded and gently explained to her parents, was that the girl had left the house in the early-morning hours in a highly intoxicated state, made her way down to the water, gone for a swim, been overtaken and dragged out to sea by an undercurrent, lost control, and drowned. Scott and Lisa conceded that she was not a strong swimmer.

  When they asked Lisa if her daughter was emotionally unstable or upset about something, if there was anything that had occurred that same night that might have set her off, Lisa did not allow her face to convey the horror that chilled her body to ice.

  There was, of course, the possibility that Rae had witnessed Lisa and Ryan together outside, and that this was what had propelled her to flee the house in such a state. But Lisa wouldn’t say this aloud. Not to the investigator, not to her husband, not to Poppy, with whom she shared nearly everything.

  No, Lisa determined, the secret of what she had done that night, and the possibility that Rae could have seen it, could never, ever be made known. She would have to hope that Ryan would reach the same conclusion—she couldn’t risk communicating with him to confirm this—that he would have the good sense to let his own memory of that night die within him as well. After all, he’d been the one to say it: It was just a dream.

  When the autopsy results came in, the coroner listed the cause of death as asphyxia due to aspiration of air passages and hemoconcentration. In other words, accidental drowning.

  Lisa moved through the days following Rae’s death in a shell-shocked state, as delicate and easily confused as a patient just released after decades in a psychiatric ward. She forgot the word for “cup” and “door.” She allowed herself to be led by Scott and Poppy, who were both constant and loving, through offices and interviews and the attention brought by the local press covering the tragic drowning of a young vacationer, and then back home to Warrenton. Scott and Poppy helped her through phone calls with family, through conversations about the preferred casket and the benefits of different methods of embalming, and through Kimmy’s questions: Why didn’t she change into her swimsuit if she was going to go out for a swim?, Kimmy wondered. Did she know she was drowning while she was drowning?

  24

  RYAN DISMANTLED THE hydroponic setup in his bedroom as soon as his family returned to Wheeling. He cleaned out his cartons of materials and flushed the last of his weed down the toilet. He gave Ham his cut of the Fripp Island deal and told him he was out of the game. He was sickened and confused by thoughts of the Daly family and everything associated with the vacation, including the cash that had gone missing from his stash beneath the sink. He remained deeply unsettled by this, and by the idea of adding to the lies and secrets that were already sewn inside himself.

  Poppy traveled back and forth between Wheeling and Warrenton to care for Lisa’s family following Rae’s death. John had to return to work immediately upon their return, so Ryan spent lots of time with Alex in the days and weeks following their time on the island. He took her fishing and biking, to the Blockbuster to check out movies, and to the post office to buy stamps, so that she could send letters to Kimmy. Lots of hotdogs. Lots of TV. Alex was very somber. She didn’t ask questions. She seemed to have little desire to know anything beyond the very basics of what had happened to Rae.

  Ryan ha
d great difficulty sleeping. Thoughts of his moment of intimacy with Lisa became the most vivid after dark, when the memories wrapped themselves around his mind like hard rope, and all night long they squeezed. Nothing brought relief except the first blue whispers of morning, which did nothing to diminish his guilt but simply assured him that even if there was little hope that it would be any better, each day was something new, and perhaps the newness of a day—if nothing else—could make it worth living.

  When Poppy returned from her final extended trip to Warrenton, she provided positive updates on how Scott and Lisa and Kimmy were doing. She kept Ryan and Alex busy around the house with tasks and fun plans, and she stuffed them full of comfort food. She scheduled visits for both of them to see a counselor, but Ryan begged out of it, and when Alex realized this was an option, she did the same.

  Ryan started college in the fall, and he lived on campus but came home nearly every weekend. Poppy and John worried about him. It seemed strange that Rae’s death had had such a profound impact. Of course it did on all of them, but Ryan seemed the least engaged with the Daly family of any of them, so they were confused by the darkness that seemed to consume him even months later. Sensitive kid. Poppy was relieved when eventually Ryan’s trips home became less frequent, and still more relieved when he introduced them to several new friends from school.

  After Rae’s death, Poppy’s nightly negotiations with Death ended. Life was cruel and death certain, and there was nothing to do but accept it; she hadn’t had any say in the matter of her own existence, so what use was there to question or rage against any of the rest of it? On the other hand, it was this same rude bastard of a universe that had brought John into Luigi’s to work on renovations to the patio all those years ago, when the owner of the place easily could have gone with any other construction company and Poppy might have never once in her life laid eyes on the man she was to marry. If there was anything in this lifetime as certain as death, it was Poppy’s love for John. It was maddening, how it gave and took. With a universe like this, how the hell was a reasonable person supposed to believe, or not believe, anything?

  John’s back slowly improved with more intensive physical therapy after the trip, and eventually he weaned himself off the pain medication altogether and there was no need for a second surgery. Yet Poppy’s fear of losing him did not diminish. Over time, she accepted the fact that the price for this great love was this great fear. Love’s unfortunate alter ego.

  Fear, she came to realize, was utterly enamored with love. Obsessed with it. Vying for its attention, modulating its own particularities to suit love. And love was equally accommodating to fear: creating space, ushering it in, giving it a home, the two of them operating in comparative measure and perfect synchrony, clinging to each other like warm bodies in the night.

  25

  FOR LISA, SCOTT, AND KIMMY, the weeks and months following Rae’s death were like being pressed slowly through a sausage grinder. Mangled. All three came out different.

  Scott quit drinking and gambling, cold turkey. Instead, he shopped for groceries and cooked simple meals and took care of logistics around the house. He politely turned away well-intentioned visitors when he could tell Lisa was not up for it. He scheduled appointments for therapy for all three of them. He brought home books and movies on coping with loss and trauma.

  Scott stopped attending mass after Rae’s death. Her funeral was the last time he ever set foot in a church, and on the way home from her service, he ripped the crucifix from his neck, breaking the 14-carat gold chain, and threw it out the window. In the back seat, Kimmy watched him with huge eyes and a low jaw, but she didn’t say a word.

  When they were back home and Kimmy was out of earshot, Lisa said, “I wish you wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Who cares? I’ll be glad if I never have to say any of those stupid prayers or see any of those stupid people ever again. Won’t you?”

  Lisa was quiet for a bit, then she said, “I was actually thinking of going to mass tomorrow morning.”

  Scott stared at her. “I thought you hated going. Spent the last twenty years complaining about it.”

  “Today, what Father Patrick was saying about hope and the afterlife . . . it made me feel a little better.”

  “That’s interesting,” Scott said, “because it made me want to puke.”

  “I think you should keep that to yourself,” Lisa said. “It’ll confuse Kimmy. And throwing your crucifix out the window? Seems disrespectful.”

  “Disrespectful? To who, exactly?”

  “I don’t know. To God.”

  Scott barked out a single guffaw. “So after twenty years of naysaying, you suddenly want to will Him into existence now to make yourself feel better? By all means, you go right ahead. Enjoy the fantasy.”

  Lisa blinked. “You don’t mean that. You’ve believed in God your whole life.”

  “Well, not anymore,” Scott said harshly. “And on the off-chance that I’m wrong and He does exist, well . . . good riddance.”

  Scott grew quiet, and he watched his wife as she stared out the window, white sun on her cheeks, her posture low and weary, arms of cement.

  “Lisa,” Scott said. He released a long exhale. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be difficult. It’s not you I’m mad at.”

  “I know.”

  Scott crossed the room to hug her. She rested her head against his.

  Scott said, “You do whatever you need. That means going to mass, that’s fine and I’ll shut up about it. Whatever you need.”

  Lisa nodded and caught delicate tears with the back of her index finger. “Same goes for you,” she said. “Whatever you need.”

  Later that day, they asked Kimmy if she wanted to go to mass the next morning with her mother or stay home and cook breakfast with her father. Having never before been presented with this choice, she did not take it lightly. After mulling it over she decided that she would prefer to stay home.

  So Lisa went to mass by herself, and she faithfully kept going by herself every single Sunday, not just to the service but to Sunday school as well, and she began to attend Wednesday-evening mass too. She never pressured Scott to join her, and he did not mock her newfound faith again.

  Carol insisted on going down to Warrenton for an extended stay, despite the fact that it meant her own treatments would be interrupted, since her health insurance wouldn’t apply out of state. Her oncologist in Wheeling disapproved, but recent scans hadn’t shown promise anyway; it was unclear if the treatments, which made for fevered, nauseous days and sleepless nights, were having any effect. Lisa lacked the will to fight her mother on this, though she disliked the idea for various reasons. Carol arranged her own travel, and arrived with many frozen casseroles stacked in a cooler, books and candies for Kimmy, and some thoughtful cards from family friends in Wheeling.

  The moment Lisa set eyes on her mother, something that had been rock hard inside her for decades suddenly buckled and gave way and was gone. Carol’s face was grayish and wan beneath a knitted cap. Lisa ran to her mother and wept into her warm neck, which smelled different than it ever had before, yet so much like home that every cell in Lisa’s body responded with recognition.

  Carol stayed for over a month, finding herself energized by the ways she discovered she could make herself useful. She finally learned her way around their kitchen, mustering the courage to use their fancy appliances. She woke when she heard Lisa make her way into Rae’s room in the middle of the night; she joined her there and they cried together. She helped with laundry, sorted the abundance of cards that arrived in the mail, brewed fresh coffee for visitors. She hadn’t felt so healthy or industrious since long before her diagnosis.

  Carol decided it was time to go back to Wheeling when she retrieved the messages from her answering machine at home indicating that she was delinquent on her utility bills and in danger of being disconnected. She also listened to multiple concerned voicemails from her oncologist, neighbors, and friends from church. Li
sa was saddened to see her mother go. They had shared so much in these weeks. Lisa felt she had been stripped down to muscle and bone and little more that resembled humanity; no hope, no dignity, no will to carry on. She was a raw body housing a broken heart, and nothing more. Carol saw it all and she didn’t flinch.

  A few months after Rae’s death, Scott left Raslowe & Associates, taking a major pay cut to work in the legal department of a nonprofit in D.C. that provided counseling resources to families who couldn’t afford health insurance.

  Lisa and Scott clung to one another desperately and hard; it seemed like a powerful gravitational field had attached them. They reached for each other involuntarily. They watched for glitches in one another’s daily consciousness and gently corrected them: a shirt put on backwards or mismatched socks, an extra packed lunch, dinner reservations made for four instead of three. They finished each other’s sentences when a train of thought became unclear, interrupted by something dark and deep within. Shock waves of grief kept them wary and turbulent, dubious of the world and nearly everything in it. But for one another, they were soft and steady and certain.

  Kimmy and Alex spoke on the phone often—in fact, it seemed Alex was the only person Kimmy had much interest in talking to at all. The two of them also kept in close touch through letters written in a secret code they developed. At the girls’ request, Lisa and Poppy planned a weekend in October when they could meet up at a cabin in Shenandoah National Park. Poppy wondered if they should bring the husbands, and Ryan if he had any interest, and Lisa quickly responded that she thought just the girls would be best.