Brad said nothing, but I heard him moving around, and then he was back in the doorway, the flashlight splashing the hallway, and in his hands were pieces of colored fabric, mostly very pale—cream and ivory and satiny silver—and other bits of navy and pink and black, some trimmed with lace, some no more than thongs . . .
It was underwear. Gretchen’s, presumably. I frowned, baffled, and then I saw. Brad held a sample out in one hand and fixed them in the beam of the flashlight in his other hand so that everything else seemed to dissolve into blackness and there were only Gretchen’s ravaged panties, every pair cut to ribbons.
“We have to search the house,” said Marcus.
We were all downstairs now. Brad had roused Melissa and Simon from the master suite on the other side of the house, and they had joined us, bleary eyed, caught between bafflement, irritation, and alarm. The last of those quickly won out. Simon put the generator back on, and the rest of us buzzed around Gretchen like bees jarred from their hive and unable to settle.
“The doors are all locked,” said Simon. “I checked.”
“So he’s still inside,” said Marcus, as if that proved his point.
Simon looked away. He glanced at Melissa and something passed between them. I caught her puzzled frown and the minute shake of her head.
“What?” Marcus demanded. He was as close to losing it as I had ever seen him.
“No one could get in,” Simon muttered, shaking his head and still not meeting his eyes, as if he didn’t want to talk about it.
“Meaning what?” said Marcus.
“Nothing,” said Simon, his voice low, his gaze wandering to Gretchen.
“You think she did it herself?” said Marcus, incredulous.
“That, or one of us did it,” said Brad, as close to nonchalant as he could get. Kristen had gathered Gretchen onto the couch, and Brad had flopped heavily into an armchair, his watchful face unreadable. The rest of us were still standing awkwardly, not knowing what to do or say.
“Is that what you think?” asked Marcus, fixing Simon with a defiant stare. “That it was one of us?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, Marcus,” Simon shot back, his voice rising. “I don’t know. You have a problem with that?”
“You two want to save the pissing contest for another time?” said Melissa.
“All I’m saying is that we should look around,” said Marcus, “rather than, you know, assuming one of us is a colossal asshole.”
“Or a liar,” said Brad.
I stared at him. His gaze was on Gretchen, but it was impossible not to feel like he was talking about me.
“Gretchen, hon,” said Kristen, and it struck me that Marcus was right. Her British accent vanished when she wasn’t thinking about it. “Tell us exactly what happened.”
Gretchen groaned and turned her face into Kristen’s shoulder like a weary toddler.
“Come on,” Kristen coaxed. “It will help to get it all out, and then we can get it all sorted.”
Gretchen gazed at her, her watery eyes huge, then moistened her lips.
“I took a shower before bed,” she said. “You all crashed, but I was still awake, so I took a shower. Then I thought I would choose my clothes for tomorrow, you know? Lay them out. Something cute, and . . . anyway, I opened my suitcase. And there it was.”
She dissolved into tears.
So I hadn’t been asleep, or not for long, when it happened. I frowned, trying to get my head round it. I felt dazed, half-asleep, and almost as taken aback by the idea of someone laying out her clothes for the morning as I was by what had been done to those clothes.
“So it happened while she was in the shower?” said Marcus. “Gretchen, when did you last look in your case? When was the last time you saw that everything was . . . OK?”
Gretchen shrugged and shook her head wearily.
“This morning, I guess,” she said. “When I got up.”
“So it could have happened anytime today,” Marcus concluded.
“Why would anyone do this?” she said. “What did I do to them?”
As she said it, her gaze strobed across the room, found me, and lingered. I stared at her. For a second I tried to ignore it, but as she continued to stare, the silence became awkward, accusatory.
“Wait,” I said. “You think that I . . . ?”
“Did you?” she said, and suddenly she was quite together, quite calm, and both her wet eyes and her cracked voice had a touch of steel.
“No!” I said. “Why the hell would I do that?”
“I think you know why,” said Gretchen.
Everyone was looking at me. What had been a dull, smoldering anxiety in my head had suddenly roared into bright, hot flame.
This can’t be happening.
“What?” I said. “You can’t be serious!”
“You’re jealous of Marcus and me,” she said.
I was so stunned that for a second I just gaped at her. No one else spoke.
“What?” I demanded.
“You know,” she said, snakeskin quiet.
“Marcus,” I said. “Tell her!”
“Tell her what?” he said. He was quiet and still. Wary. His manner gave nothing away, and his uncertainty turned my smoldering anxiety to anger. It flared white hot in my chest.
“Tell her I wouldn’t do that!” I shouted. “You know I wouldn’t. Marcus, you can’t think . . . I didn’t. I wouldn’t! Why would I . . . ?”
“You didn’t like me near him,” said Gretchen. “I could tell. Everyone could tell.”
I felt the sudden embarrassment in the room and knew she was right, they had all thought it, discussed it . . .
“No,” I said. “You’re wrong.”
“Jan,” said Melissa. “I get it, but this is really not the way . . .”
“Shut up!” I shouted. “All of you. I said I didn’t do it, OK?”
“Now, Jan.” Simon this time, also still and quiet but deliberate, like some guy in a movie defusing a bomb. “This isn’t the time for one of your stories.”
I stare at him, breathless, tears starting in my eyes, and then I look to Marcus, who had said they didn’t know about me, not really. He looks down, ashamed, though whether that’s about me or him, I can’t tell.
“I didn’t,” I manage, crying openly now. “I would never . . .”
And I mean it. I didn’t do it. I swear to God, I didn’t.
“We can fix this,” said Melissa, turning between Gretchen and me and smiling. “Tomorrow we can head into town, buy you some new things, Gretchen, and then we’ll have a little chat, just us girls, maybe a few drinks, and then—”
“No,” said Gretchen. “I need to call the airline. I’m leaving.”
Melissa protested, of course, said it would all be better in the morning, but Gretchen stuck to her guns, watching me from under her bangs as if I might attack at any moment, and at last the call was made on the ancient rotary phone in the foyer. Kristen sat with her on the tower stairs as Gretchen talked, but she met my eyes and shrugged with noncommittal exhaustion.
So the jury is still out on me.
Simon and Melissa huddled in the stairwell to their room, then went through the motions of searching the house for intruders while I stood at the bottom and stared, unseeing, at the large tapestry that hung in the foyer, all faded birds in threadbare green and gold. Having found nothing, Brad, who had gone with them, armed with a knife from the kitchen, went back to bed—something of a relief to Kristen, I think, since his patience was already worn thin—and Marcus drifted apart like a satellite in high orbit, just barely connected to what was going on. Once I caught his eye and took a step toward him, but he shook his head minutely and I stopped, trying to decide if he wanted to keep whatever conversation we might have for a more private moment, or if he was just done talking to me.