Now’s the time. I turn from the window and head upstairs. I’m not proud of what I’m about to do, but I make a deal with myself: I’m only looking for identifying information. I’m not going to read Michael’s personal thoughts.
The stairs creak beneath my weight. Paul hates that the stairs creak and considers it a design flaw. He’s funny, my husband: laid-back in life, slow to act, but a ruthless perfectionist when it comes to his work. Maybe since he’s so tough on himself that way, he’s got to go easy elsewhere in order to stay sane.
It smells like sex in my daughter’s room. The bed is still made, but the comforter is rumpled. Wrinkling my nose, I crank open the casement windows to let in a bit of air. Luckily, the room is on the backside of the house — no one will spot me from the lake. The forest is in the back, thick with pines and hemlocks and birch trees. There’s a walking trail that disappears into the lush greenery. Barely visible is an old shed that was part of the original construction.
Lake Placid and its neighbor, Saranac Lake, were mainly developed as early fashionable resort centers. As Michael mentioned, for the affluent who came to escape the city smog, to draw in the fresh mountain air in the hopes they wouldn’t die of consumption.
Many did. They spent months — years — sitting out on large porches, bundled in blankets, heads covered with knitted winter hats, as they shrank away into death.
But they couldn’t stop the tide of vacationers, attracted by the chance to get back to basics without sacrificing the luxury to which they were accustomed. Men with hunting and fishing skills became guides for the rich, taking the city folk deep into the woods, cooking their trout dinner over an open fire, regaling them with stories of the “north country,” playing the banjo or guitar. People built huge log cabins and decorated them with deer heads and stuffed black bears and colorful, hand-woven Native American rugs. They hung pack baskets and snowshoes and black powder rifles. They called these places “Great Camps.”
When we bought our property, it contained a Great Camp that had fallen into disrepair. Paul estimated the cost of restoring it was greater than razing it and building a new, more modern home. He relished the challenge of designing his own place.
Michael’s duffel bag is on the floor near the bedroom closet. The main zipper is shut, but the side pocket where Joni returned the diary hangs open. I squat down beside the bag and, feeling a bit like a TV detective handling evidence, use the pen I’ve brought to push the fabric farther open. The leather-bound notebook is where it was. The pen won’t help me now. Glancing over my shoulder at the bedroom door, I pull it out, unwind the rope holding the book closed, then open it.
My breath suspended, I check the first couple of pages, catching pieces of sentences, dates. I make an effort to skim these, not to comprehend. Michael deserves privacy, though I can’t help but consider the handwriting — big, blocky, exuberant, really — along with the use of both black and blue ink, even pencil.
I flip to where the text ends, about two-thirds of the way through. It looks like he’s been keeping this journal for just about six months and has written a fair amount in that time. It’s not unheard of for a young man to keep a journal, but it does seem unusual, especially in this day and age.
Occasionally, I have a patient who I think might benefit from journaling and encourage them to do so. But it’s not for everybody. Some struggle mightily to put pen to paper, either because it’s just not natural to them — they’re more mathematical or mechanical than verbal — or because it’s too painful. It calls them to fish the key out of that deep well, to unlock their tucked-away mental room.
Michael’s prose seems to flow. As much as I’m trying to only look for identifying information — numbers, addresses — it’s impossible not to glean a few things . . .
Monday, April 4 — Having a hard time getting going today. Sitting here on the train, watching the commuters — everybody has their face stuck behind either a newspaper, tablet, or phone. Mostly it’s the phones. Even people whom I watched board together and sit down don’t talk, just poke at their phones. Does anyone just stare out the window anymore?
So, he’s a romantic, I think. An idealist, maybe. Not exactly original in his observations. I’m nevertheless charmed. It makes sense my Joni is drawn to a man with the heart of a poet.
I’m about to close the journal — the longer I look, the guiltier I feel — but something stops me.
Sitting here on the train, he writes.
Which train? I flip through the pages, looking for any mention of a place. It takes a few minutes. I’m about to give up, but then:
. . . which is part of what’s so fascinating about this place. It’s part suburb and part city. And how location shapes people. Even after just a couple of generations. Long Island people are practically their own species . . .
I’ve noticed the journal is filled with lots of philosophical observations like this, but this is the first I’ve seen announcing a location. He just now mentioned growing up by the ocean, and I’ll be damned if Long Island doesn’t trigger a memory. A name.
Bleeker.
Arnold Bleeker, I think, and his wife — I forget her first name. But they were the uncle and aunt who took in Tom while his mother awaited trial. And, as far as I know, they kept him afterwards.
I quickly wind the journal’s string, then tuck it back into the duffel, making sure it looks just as it was. What I’ve found is nothing definitive — Long Island is a huge place, its shoreline hundreds of miles long — but another coincidence?
They’re really piling up.
About to leave the room, I stop, hearing music, vibration. The popular song is emanating from Michael’s phone, half-tucked under the pillow. It’s an incoming call, the number displayed on screen. 315. A Central New York number.
I wait, feeling my heart beat a little harder. I chide myself for being foolish.
The ringing stops. I linger just another moment, and the phone buzzes with a text.
Despite the phone being in lock-mode, the text shows up on screen.
Hey. You there yet? How did it go?
Then, a second later:
Did they buy it?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Outside, Paul’s lawnmower has just quit. Is he finished? Returning inside? Leaving the phone, I walk swiftly out of the bedroom and into the master bedroom across the hall. This is where Paul and I sleep, overlooking the lake. I see him down there — he’s removing some clotted grass from beneath the machine.
My gaze seeks Joni and Michael, swimming in the lake, but I can’t find them. Their towels are piled on the dock; they haven’t finished and headed back for the house yet. Then I see it: a ripple of water near the corner of the boathouse, signs of people swimming just out of sight. I breathe a little easier, then trot back into Joni’s bedroom.
I pick up the phone.
Did they buy it?