“Fine,” she answers. After a moment she relents, likely because otherwise the conversation will go back to Ian and his whereabouts. “He scolded me about not locking my door. Who does he think he is?”
“The chief of police,” I say with a smile.
“Always.” She bows her head toward the glass.
I want to ask what she thinks about their marriage—if Jack is going to come home, if she wants him to come home—but she’ll cut me off with a quick word. I know things about Jack, and Caroline could ask me, but she won’t. In a place like Great Rock, it’s not difficult to find gossip if you’re looking for it. Caroline won’t go looking, and she refuses to admit she’s curious.
I know, for example, that Jack is eating most of his meals at the Salty Whale. I know he’s been getting to the station early and staying late, and that he’s been buying British mysteries and history books from the local bookstore, probably because he doesn’t want to get them from the library where Caroline works. I know that Cyrus went over for drinks a few weeks ago and the place looked barely lived in, not a dish in the sink, not an article of clothing misplaced. I know that Deanna has been pulling out all the stops, wearing low-cut tops to work and skirts that are far too short for both her chubby legs and her professional position. But Caroline doesn’t want to hear these things. If she did, she’d ask.
“How’s Connor?” It’s a blatant attempt to change the subject, but we’re running out of topics. Pretty soon we’ll be talking about the weather.
“Okay.” Caroline takes a sip of wine. “I don’t know really. He’s doesn’t come around much, and he hardly ever answers his phone. What is it with guys and phones? What’s the point of having one if you’re not going to even answer it?”
I force a laugh. “Ian’s terrible. Half the time his phone is on silent and he doesn’t even realize it. Or so he claims.”
“Has Daisy seen much of Connor?” Caroline asks.
“I’m not sure. She’s so busy with school and work that I hardly see her myself.”
“Yeah, Connor’s busy too, I guess,” Caroline says. She meets my eyes then looks back down at her lap.
I sense there is something more, but she won’t say it. Keith Dunphey, Connor’s current roommate, is a small-time drug dealer on the island. I know this from Cyrus, and I suspect that Caroline knows it too, or maybe she really doesn’t. Jack has always protected her from things like this, and despite how long Caroline has lived here, there are things about the island that she still doesn’t understand. The Dunpheys are an island family with a long history of trouble. Their last name appears frequently in the police blotter, and the cycle of abuse and neglect, poverty and survival, has been going on for years. Caroline comes from a place where people don’t dismiss you just because of your last name, but on Great Rock, you can utter the words, “He’s a Dunphey, a Seymour, a Kelly,” and people will raise their eyebrows and say, “Oh,” the names carrying the weight of history and understanding.
I’m not sure what it means that Connor is now living with Keith, but it doesn’t take much to recognize that no good will come of it.
“All of his friends are gone,” Caroline continues. “All those guys he went to high school with. They’re at college now. They’ll be graduating soon. The only one of his old friends he still sees is Daisy.”
I try to catch her eye, but she’s focused on the fringe of the blanket, her fingers working furiously to undo a knot. It scares me that Daisy is the only one left from Connor’s old life. I wouldn’t want Daisy hanging out with his new crowd.
“Want to watch something on TV?” I ask.
“Sure.” She drops the fringe and pulls the blanket to cover her own lap.
Caroline is my best friend, but there are things she won’t ask and things I won’t tell. Easier to sit together and watch TV, drink a glass of wine, and gather comfort from each other’s presence rather than strip away the layers of protection we’ve built over the years.
There are lies we need to tell ourselves in order to survive.
3
Daisy
It’s been three days since I’ve seen Connor, and he’s not answering my calls or returning my texts. It’s unusual for us to go more than a few hours without exchanging at least a text. He’s my best friend and my boyfriend all rolled into one dysfunctional relationship.
Today I swing by his apartment and, after some persuading, his roommate Keith lets me into his room. The place smells of weed and dirty laundry. The spindly wooden chair in the corner is piled high with clothes. The rosemary plant I gave him for his birthday last summer is on the windowsill, miraculously still alive despite living in this fog of smoke and sweat. Connor’s guitar is propped in the corner of the room; I can’t remember the last time I heard him play. The bed is unmade and I lie down in the twist of sheets and blankets. The pillow smells of him, a musky boy smell that I could fall into. I lie there for a moment, my arms crossed over my chest, breathing him in. Then I force myself out of his room, closing the door behind me.
Keith is standing in the tiny kitchen with a sandwich.
“You don’t know where he is?” I ask. The hair salon below the apartment is in charge of the thermostat, and the room is too hot. I unzip my coat, but I don’t take it off. Keith is in just a tee shirt and shorts. The chemical smell of hair straightener is faint in the air. I don’t know how it doesn’t give them headaches.
“I’m not his mother,” Keith says through a mouthful of roast beef. I look away so as not to see the brown mush.
“Do you know when he’s working this week?” I’m grateful when he swallows before speaking.
“I don’t keep track of his schedule.” Kevin thrusts his hand into a bag of chips and shovels a handful into his mouth. “What are you worried about anyway? That dead girl on the beach?”
“What?” I’ve been focusing on the crunch of potato chips. “What girl?”
“You didn’t hear?” Keith grins, pleased to be the bearer of bad news. “They found some girl on the town beach yesterday morning. She was murdered. Strangled.” His hand comes up to his own neck and he sticks out his tongue and makes a choking sound. “She was over for the festival. You haven’t heard about this?”
“I worked all day yesterday.” An ashtray sits on the kitchen table, just inches from the food Keith inhales, and there is the sweet reek of garbage coming from the overflowing bin.
When Connor told me he’d gotten an apartment with Keith Dunphey, I tried to talk him out of it. Keith is bad news. A loser who dropped out of high school our junior year and has been working at the gas station ever since. Likely will be working there his whole life, if he doesn’t get fired for showing up to work drunk or high. Connor was desperate to get his own place, and I guess he figured the price was worth it. I wonder if he still thinks so now.
“Heard they brought Ian into the station yesterday too.” Keith sucks salt from his fingers, sticks his grimy hand back into the bag for more.
“Ian? Why?” The skin on the back of my neck prickles.
He shrugs, clearly enjoying all of this. “He talked to the girl at Moby Dick’s that night. I saw them together.” He cracks open a can of Coke and takes a noisy slug.
“You were there too?”
Keith nods. “Everyone was there. Connor too.”
I pretend the news about Ian doesn’t rattle me, because I don’t want to give Keith the satisfaction. But it does. I am rattled. I wonder what my mother knows.
I zip up my coat. “If you see Connor, tell him to call me.”
Keith cocks an eyebrow. “Relax, I’m sure he had nothing to do with it.”
I’m not sure which “he” Keith means, Ian or Connor. Or how it’s possible I could doubt them both so quickly.
4
Caroline
I’m grateful when Monday arrives. Sunday used to be my favorite day; the chores done, the Boston Globe spread across the table, the house warm with a full pot of coffee. Nothing to do but lie on the
couch and read—a librarian’s dream, as Jack would say.
These days I’m glad of the routine of work and the structure of having a place to go each morning, returning home tired and ready for bed. Sundays now loom emptily, and I fill the day with chores so as not to face free time alone. Grocery shopping, cleaning, walking Champ. When Monday rolls around again, it’s a relief to plunge head first into the mundane tasks at work that need attention.
Though the library doesn’t open till nine, I get there at eight. The air is freezing as I cut across the parking lot, a sharp wind making the bare branches sway. I enter through the back door and spend a few minutes turning on lights. I start up the computers and photocopier, and crank up the heat until the building comes to life after the quiet of the weekend. I unpack the morning newspapers and unroll them to hang on the wooden racks. By nine-fifteen there will be a small group of retired men reading the papers, thermal mugs of coffee on the tables that I’ll politely ignore, despite the no food or drink sign at the entrance.
The Great Rock Gazette comes out on Mondays, and the story is on the front page. “Body Found on Osprey Beach. Police Investigate Murder.” Below the headline is a photo of several officers huddled on the shores of the town beach. Jack is at the center of the group.
I pause to scan the article and takes in the basics. Layla Dresser was twenty-two, originally from Tampa, Florida. She’d spent the previous summer waitressing on the island and was now living in Boston, working at a bar. She’d come to Great Rock for the festival and had been spotted at several of the bars in Osprey over the course of the night. Just as Jack told me, a dog walker found her body early Sunday morning. “Police are asking that anyone who spoke with or saw Ms. Dresser on Saturday night come forward,” the article closes. There is no mention of any possible suspects.
“Caroline? Should I open up?” Marina, the children’s librarian, is standing above me, keys in hand. I glance at the clock and see it’s already five past nine. The retired contingent is likely already at the door, mugs in hand. I’m surprised they haven’t started banging on the glass yet.
“Yeah, sorry.” I fold the paper back in place and hang it up on the news rack with the others.
Marina tilts her head at the paper. “I heard about that. Terrible.”
“It is.” I wait for the question about what Jack knows.
“They’ll catch him,” is all Marina says, and then walks toward the door, keys dangling from her hand, ready to begin the day.
Later, when the rest of the staff and volunteers have arrived to man the desks and re-shelve books, I go into the children’s room. It’s the hour in between the morning mothers that come with their toddlers and the older children who will arrive after school. Marina has only worked here for a year, but she’s transformed this area of the library. Each week there’s a new theme and display coupled with reading suggestions, crafts, and an event.
This week the theme is fairy tales, a common and overdone genre, but Marina has selected modernized versions of the classics. The teen group that meets each week has created a display of papier-mâché heroines. There is Cinderella in plastic-wrap shoes, Little Red Riding Hood in a velvet cape, and the Little Mermaid lying on a rock, her iridescent tail glinting under the fluorescent lights.
Marina is propping up DVDs to go with the display, and I pause to glance at her choices. I know she will have selected more interesting titles than just Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. I pick up a Polish animation of Peter and the Wolf. The background is a close-up of a wolf’s face, his blue eyes icy and empty. In front of the wolf is a drawing of a boy, arms and legs splayed out in a posture of self-defense. At the bottom is the caption, “Boys like Peter are not afraid of wolves.”
When Connor was in first grade, I took him to see the show in Boston. It was a high-end production with a large orchestra and elaborate puppets. At the intermission I bought him a pack of Twizzlers, which he ate quietly, tracking the other members of the audience with his eyes. By the end of the show, I was already thinking ahead to where we’d have lunch and how much traffic we’d hit on the way back to the Cape, but when I turned to take Connor’s hand, there were tears in his eyes.
“Honey, what’s wrong? Are you okay?” I crouched down beside him. A single tear had spilled over his lashes and was sliding down his cheek. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.
“He ate the duck?” Connor asked. It took me a moment to understand his question. I’d forgotten all about the duck still quacking in the wolf’s belly. I nodded. “Will he die? Is he dead already?” Connor’s face was wrinkled in worry.
“I guess he is.” Around us other parents were ushering children toward the exits, but Connor and I hovered above our seats.
“But that’s so sad.” Another tear fell.
“It is sad, sweetheart. You’re right.” I reached out and held his hand and we stood like that for another moment. At lunch, I let him order a soda with his meal because I felt so bad about the duck, quacking and flying around inside the wolf’s belly until its slow and inevitable death.
As a child he’d been so sensitive. The kind of kid who would cry on Halloween when he saw himself in the mirror dressed like a lion. It could be exasperating at times, the way he’d fall apart with a stern glance or harsh word from Jack. Yet watching him harden was even worse. One day when Connor was in middle school, I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him cry. By then it had been years.
These days, the face that Connor shows Jack and me is a mask. A stony mask or a painted smile. For a long time, the face he showed Daisy was the most real thing in the world, but I suspect these days she doesn’t get much more than us.
I put the movie back down on the display. I feel Marina watching me as I hurry toward the bathroom. In the privacy of the stall, I close my eyes and breathe slowly to keep control. The last thing I need is to return to the children’s section with my face all swollen and blotchy from crying. Who knows who I might run into? And what am I crying about really? Connor’s tender heart that calcified over time, till he’s just another boy unafraid of wolves.
I have a hair appointment scheduled for the afternoon. My hair is straight and light brown, though I’ve been coloring it for the past few years to hide the strands of gray. Usually I let it air-dry or wear it in a ponytail. It isn’t something I think about often.
Until this afternoon at work, when Deanna comes in to pick up a book she has on hold. She sees me standing behind the counter, and for a moment I think she’s going to turn around and walk out. But she’s already been spotted and knows it. She comes up to the desk with a fake smile. Sympathy, guilt, embarrassment—there’s so much that could be hiding behind her tight lips.
“Caroline, hi,” Deanna says, drawing out the words. She’s wearing a tight pink sweater that shows off the perky breasts of a cheerleader. Her blond hair clearly comes from a bottle, but her skin is smooth and unlined, her smile easy and bright. She must be at least ten years younger than me.
“Hi, Deanna,” I say, an equally fake smile on my face.
“I think I have something on hold.” Her words rise up like a question at the end.
“Okay.” I look behind me at the row of books on the hold shelf. “What is it?”
Her face turns pink. “Um.” She lets out a nervous laugh. She leans in a little closer and then lowers her voice, naming a trashy bestseller known for its graphic sex scenes.
I open my mouth slightly and then swallow down any comment. “Do you have your card?” is all I ask, waiting for the disclaimer. Everyone seems to need a disclaimer when ordering this book. This isn’t the type of book you order through the library system and pick up from your local librarian, I want to tell her. Especially when people are whispering that you’re sleeping with the librarian’s husband. Order it on Amazon, for God’s sake, if only to spare us all the embarrassment of this interaction. Then again, Deanna probably isn’t the type to actually spend money on books.
She fumbles
in her purse and hands the card across the desk, and I scan it. “One of my girlfriends really wants to see the movie, but she says I need to read it first.” I nod politely. “Have you read it?” When I shake my head, Deanna looks dismayed.
I hand back her card. “You’re all set.”
“Thanks.” She scoops up the book and slips it into her bag. “I’ll tell you how it is,” she says, and I want to throw something at her, a heavy encyclopedia or the DVD box set of Game of Thrones.
After work I head to Waves, the salon below Connor’s apartment. Main Street is empty, save for a few cars parked in front of the grocery store, people stopping on their way home from work to pick up items for dinner. I hate this time of year, when the sun sets by five, most of the island business is closed for the season, and the gray hours of daylight are lost to the workday. The lights in Connor’s apartment are off, but I’m not here to see him anyway. In Waves, Leslie, the hairstylist I’ve had forever, drapes a plastic smock across my body.
“So,” Leslie says after she’s washed my hair. “Clean it up a little? How many inches?”
“Actually…” I reach up and wind a wet lock around my finger. “I was thinking of something different. Maybe a few more inches.”
“Great. Just below your shoulders?”
“No.” I withdraw the folded picture I tore from a magazine this afternoon at work. “Chin-length. Layered in the back.”
“Seriously?” Leslie asks in excitement. “You’ve never done this before.”
“Why? Do you think it will look bad?” I ask.
“No, it will look great. You’ve just never gone so short.” Leslie picks up a section and runs the comb through it. “You’re going to love it.”
Everybody Lies Page 3
