Reunion at Red Paint Bay

When Simon pulled into his customary parking space at the side of the Register Building facing the red brick wall, he didn’t turn off the engine immediately. He sat for a moment tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, contemplating the circumstances he suddenly found himself in. He was an unrepentant rapist, according to Amy. He was the reason a woman committed suicide, according to Paul Walker. And, quite likely, he had taken another man’s life, according to his own observation. Some problems had conceivable solutions. These problems seemed locked in place around him, no resolution possible. You couldn’t change death back to life. Perhaps you could escape, though. He could back out of the parking space and drive out of Red Paint, out of Maine, out of his life, at least for a while. Amy would probably appreciate some time off from him. The Register—it could go on without him. He imagined the headline—Editor Seen Leaving Town. Not Fleeing, a concession to the fact that he did still own the paper.

The newsroom was unusually alive with activity when he finally entered the front door. Leaving town sounded adventurous, but he wasn’t the type to run away. He turned toward his desk and Joe Armin materialized in front of him as he often did, as if transmitted from some other place and re-forming himself in the air. “Hey boss, big news,” he said. “I heard it on the scanner—the police are over at the bay looking for a missing person.”

Simon continued to his desk with deliberate speed, dropped his briefcase on the floor and picked through the mail neatly piled for him, as he would normally do. “Who’s missing?”

“Some guy who was staying at the inn. They think he may have fallen into the bay and drowned.”

Fallen into the bay, not pushed or punched. Simon slid his finger under the flap of an envelope and opened it. “Why do the police think somebody fell into the bay?”

“Yesterday afternoon the guy made a seven o’clock dinner reservation and said he was going down to the bay. But he didn’t show up. They didn’t think much of it except that this morning Ken McBride, he’s the—”

“I know Ken, Joe.”

“Oh yeah, right, well he found the guy’s shoes and socks on the dock, so they figure maybe he was walking along there barefoot and fell in. I guess he was known for being kind of dizzy. I was going to head over there, check it out. That okay?”

It had to be okay. A reporter would naturally follow up on the possibility of a man staying at the Bayswater Inn disappearing, perhaps drowning. “Of course,” Simon said. “Go get the story.”



He assumed the body would be found. Red Paint Bay was no more than ten feet deep at the end of the dock, and the current there was weak. A person falling in wouldn’t drift far away. As he sipped his morning coffee and scanned the out-of-town dailies, Simon tried to work out the likely sequence of events. A body would be found and identified by Ken McBride as Paul Chambers, a guest at Bayswater Inn. The evidence would point to the simple drowning of a clumsy man (the impact of small trauma to the chin would go unnoticed). An investigation would be launched into who exactly Paul Chambers was and why he was in Red Paint. The Register would run his picture with the caption Do You Know This Man? Someone, a former classmate or close friend, if he had any, would probably recognize him despite his changed appearance. They would say that he was Paul Walker. People would remember his being at the reunion and wonder why, since he was the year behind. Amy, feeling freed from privacy laws by her patient’s death, would perhaps come forward to state that she had seen him professionally several times. It was unclear to Simon whether she would say more.



He decided to eat at Red’s, his usual Friday routine, and sit at his customary spot, the red-cushioned stool at the far end of the counter. It was late for lunch in Red Paint, past one, so there were only a few customers sprinkled throughout the L-shaped diner. The waitress, Red’s wife, had plenty of time to lean back against the frappé machine and catch Simon up on local gossip. “Old man Rhodes,” she said, “he’s on his last breaths. Doris said they’ll probably put him out of his misery this weekend. It’s their seventieth anniversary on Saturday. She’s had her mind set on them reaching that for years, like it’s some kind of record.” Simon considered sending Ron over for an anniversary picture, but what would it show—a feeble old man wearing an oxygen mask and his equally old wife goading him to stay alive a little longer? People didn’t want to see that. “Lenore Jenks,” Red’s wife said as she picked up the glass salt and pepper shakers in front of him to inspect their levels, “did you hear about her?”

“Can’t say as I have.” Simon scanned the menu, three pages full of fried clams and calamari, mushroom caps and mushroom burgers, pastas, curries, soups, beef and chops. Red was a versatile cook. But he couldn’t spell. Simon found new mistakes every meal—the spacy chicken salad, the mazzarella sticks, and eggplant parmagiana.

“She says she knows what happened to that missing man out on the bay.”

He kept his eyes on the menu, reading the nonsensical entrees, just casually interested in Lenore and what she saw. “What does she think happened?”

“She says he didn’t just fall in on his own, he was pushed.”

Simon thought it an appropriate time to look up, show a bit of journalistic curiosity. “How would she know that?”

“She was out walking her dog just down from the pier and she heard two men arguing, then one pushed the other. That’s what she says.”

Two men, that’s all she apparently saw, too far away to be identified by an old woman with undoubtedly bad eyesight. All just her wild speculation. “I assume she went to the police.”

“Oh sure, but she’s always going over there with something she’s seen, like that UFO she said was hovering over the bay last month. Like nobody else would notice a flying saucer as big as a football field.”

“That is crazy,” Simon said.

“Lenore’s batty as hell, that’s why nobody believes her. I go visit with her twice a week, and the stories she tells. That woman could drive a saint to drink listening to her. Red says it’s my penance.”

“Your penance?”

“We all need to take on our fair share of suffering, and if it doesn’t come to you, you need to seek it out.”

“That’s an interesting philosophy,” Simon said, and it surprised him, coming from Red’s wife. He wondered what he may have missed over the years only half-listening to her over lunch.

“It’s not a philosophy,” she said, “it’s religion. I wouldn’t do it if it were just philosophy.” She reached down the counter for a water pitcher and filled his glass. “I better stop chatting before Red chews my head off. Know what you want?”

What did he want? To reclaim his life from a month ago when he was just a small-town editor of a weekly newspaper in a corner of the country most people had never visited and didn’t care to. When he had a trusting wife who was smarter than he was, nicer than he was, and more honest, too. They had a high-energy boy who taxed their patience at every turn but whom they wouldn’t trade for a more compliant sort. A time when no one could think of him as a rapist or killer. Unfortunately, turning back the clock was not on the vast menu at Red’s Diner.

“The chowder’s just made,” Red’s wife said, trying to prod him along. “You always like the chowder, Simon.”

He didn’t feel like the milky peppery soup today. He didn’t really have the stomach for eating at all. But he knew it would be a mistake to start missing meals. He needed fuel to keep his mind sharp. He closed his eyes as he turned the page and when he opened them the first thing he saw was Mandarin Orange Salad. He closed the menu.

“Number twelve.”

“The mandarin salad it is,” she said, “but we’re substituting apples today. The oranges spoiled. Nobody eats them.”

“Fine, I’ll have the mandarin apple salad then.”

She retreated through the kitchen door, and Simon’s gaze drifted toward the side window as a car pulled in, a cruiser. He turned back to the counter and cradled his water glass. He wished he had something else to do with his hands, breadsticks to eat, rolls to butter. He felt like he was in some old movie, a man on the run caught in a diner, the cops circling the place, guns drawn. It was a frightening feeling, being pursued, even if it was just a figment of his imagination. The door opened, jangling the bells, and he felt a brief rush of air sweep down the diner. His face flushed, the blood rushing to his brain, preparing him to be on guard.

“Simon, how’s it going?”

He looked up into the big smiling face of Tom Garrity, Red Paint’s longtime police chief. Tom always smiled, so a smile meant nothing. His blue uniform seemed crumpled, as if he routinely slept in it. The badge on his chest was abnormally shiny, like a child’s toy.

“Hey, Tom, grab a seat.”

Garrity slid his bulky leg over the adjoining stool and shifted until he was steady, his weight evenly distributed.

“I didn’t know you dined at Red’s,” Simon said, a little joke. Nobody dined at Red’s.

“I stop in everywhere, you know. Can’t play favorites.” He waved at Red’s wife and made a pouring motion.

She came down the aisle grabbing a pot of coffee and cup. “Can I get you some pie with this, Tommy?” Red’s wife was familiar with everyone. “Blueberry today.”

“No thanks,” he said, patting his belly, “Peg’s got me on a diet.”

He adjusted the gun on his hip, a purposeful move, Simon thought, but for what—to assert authority? He was probably just stopping in for coffee. Cops did that all the time. “So,” Garrity said, “how’s the news game?”

“Actually it’s been pretty slow this summer, Tom. We could use a hot story.”

“Maybe I have one for you. You know we’re looking for a man from over at the inn who seems to be missing.”

“Yeah, I sent Joe Armin over to cover it. We’ll play the story up on page one if that helps, let people know to keep a lookout for him.”

The chief sipped his coffee. “The man’s name is Paul Chambers. Know him by any chance?”

“Chambers? I don’t recognize the name.”

“No?”

Simon didn’t like the pointed follow-up, as if the chief was offering him a second chance at telling the truth. What was he supposed to say, You know, there was a guy I knocked into the water at the dock—I wonder if it could be this Chambers fellow you’re looking for? “Why are you asking, Tom?”

“He left a note in his room.” The chief patted his jacket where the paper apparently resided. “Mentions your name.”

“Really? Can I take a look?” Simon put out his hand.

Garrity looked at it. “Sorry.”

Red’s wife arrived with the mandarin salad, a huge plate of greens, nuts, and apple. “Anything else I can bring you?”

“This is plenty.”

Garrity waited till she was out of earshot. The chief was always discreet. “Were you planning to meet anyone yesterday afternoon, Si?”

He speared a piece of apple. “I meet a lot of people every day.”

“How about this guy?” The chief pulled a picture from the same pocket that he had patted before. Simon wondered what other evidence might be hidden there. “The one in the middle,” Tom said, “with the mustache. That’s Paul Chambers.” There was Paul Walker, standing under the TWENTY-FIFTH REUNION banner, along with a half-dozen others, arms linked, like silly old friends. He was the only one not smiling.

“If he was at the reunion I guess I saw him, that’s why he seems kind of familiar. But he’s not from our class, unless he’s really changed a lot, including his name.”

“So you don’t recognize him?”

Simon tilted the chief’s hand up a little to catch a better light on the picture. His brain sped through the options, running down side streets into dead ends, doubling back, trying to find the right way forward. It would be easier if he could figure out how much Garrity already knew. That would take some probing while still being evasive, what any journalist could do. “I don’t understand why you’re asking all these questions, Tom. What’s going on?”

The chief pushed away his coffee, the cup still almost full. “We’re trying to piece together what this fellow was doing in Red Paint and where he is now. It would be a great help if you could tell us anything you know.”

“Like I said, he looks familiar, but with that mustache and the way his hair is, I’m not sure.”

“I’ve got kind of a puzzle here,” Garrity said. “The note he left in his room, that’s about the only lead we’ve got.”

No mention of Lenore Jenks, Simon noted. Was the chief withholding that information? “I’d like to help, Tom. Maybe if you told me what the note says …”

The chief thought a moment. “It says, ‘Simon Howe knows the truth.’ ”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“Huh,” Simon said, “that’s pretty bizarre.” But not totally incriminating, if that really was all that Paul had written. Suggestive, certainly, hinting at a connection, but perhaps all just in his mind, a fantasy.

“He left money in the envelope to pay for what he still owed for his stay,” the chief said, “so it seems he wasn’t planning to come back to the inn.”

Simon picked through the thicket of greens to find more pieces of apple. It was the type of thing one did to appear unfazed during the course of a conversation, act interested in something else. “You figure he was planning to commit suicide?” A comment from the side of his mouth, chewing on the apple.

“That’s one possibility. But his clothes are gone from his room. And we can’t locate his car.”

“That is a puzzle,” Simon said, and he meant it. Why had Paul cleaned out his room and moved his car prior to coming to the dock?

“So, any idea why he mentions you in the note?”

“No,” Simon said, and he wondered how one should say that word, with what speed and sureness, what steadiness of gaze, how often to blink, the total expression that would make a lawman believe you. He would like to try again, with more confidence in his voice this time, no thinking necessary. “I guess the guy could have read my name on my column in the Register. I get crazy letters sometimes. But maybe you should talk to Amy. I didn’t want to mention this, for confidentiality reasons, you know, so I can’t really say that he was a patient of hers, but you should talk to her.”

“He was a patient?”

The tenses again, always revealing, always dangerous. “He is missing, right, and Amy said—” Here he hesitated, as if struggling with the ethics of the situation. “—I really shouldn’t be talking about him at all, you know. You’ve got me in a difficult position, Tom. All I can say is that Amy had a patient who gave her some trouble, on Monday I think it was. Said she called 911, so it should be in your log.”

“I’ll check that,” the chief said as he turned his coffee mug halfway around. “And you’re saying you don’t know anything yourself about this guy?”

Simon gave a little shake of his head, perhaps a no, perhaps just not answering. “Talk to Amy, Tom. Maybe she can help you.” Garrity stood up, took a couple of dollars from his pocket, and lay them on the counter. “You want me to run that picture for you next edition?” Simon said. “We can blow up his face, put it on page one.”

Garrity hitched up his holster, which had slid below his belly. “I don’t figure that will help right now.”

Why would he say that? Publicity always helped in missing person cases, unless the person wasn’t able to be found. Simon put out his hand. “Never know.”

“That’s true, I guess.” The chief dropped the photo on the counter, face up.



When Simon stepped outside into the parking lot at Red’s, the sun was shining brightly, as the morning weather forecast had promised, but with a few clouds hanging in the eastern sky, drifting inland, an uncommon direction for this time of year. The clouds were light on top and dark across the bottom, giving them the illusion of a solid object. He wondered if it was true what he had read, that a cumulous cloud could weigh as much as one hundred elephants. It was hard to look at clouds the same, knowing that one fact about them.

He flipped open his cell phone and dialed Amy. The call immediately kicked over to her message, as usual. He could count on it, and he often did when he didn’t want to deal with her questions. “Hey Amy, it’s me. Listen, I was just talking to Tom Garrity about the guy missing at the lake. It seems like it might be that client of yours you were telling me about. Tom’s going to get in touch with you, I think, since I hinted that you were seeing the guy. I know you can’t really say anything for privacy reasons, right? I told Tom that. But he’ll probably still try to coax something out of you. He wants to find out where the guy is, and you don’t know that, so you can’t really help anyway. Okay, this is kind of a long message. Call me if we need to talk.”

When he clicked off he wondered if he had been clear enough—don’t tell the police anything.



Joe Armin reported in by phone. “They’re getting divers out to search the bay,” he said. “Apparently they’re checking on a report of someone falling off the dock Monday afternoon.”

Falling off—still the phrasing of an accident. Apparently Lenore was not being believed.

“Yeah,” Joe said in the excited tone of a young reporter on the scene, “a counselor over at the Boy Scout camp spotted him.”

Simon’s hand stiffened on the phone. It amazed him, how hearing something threatening could instantly manifest in a physical reaction, the tightening of muscles. “How could he do that, Joe? You can’t see across the bay.”

“They were doing bird watching over there looking through binoculars, so he had a good view. I think I should go talk to him.”

What were the chances that a Boy Scout counselor, an unimpeachable observer, would be looking out into the bay for birds and see a man fall in the water? What else had he seen through his binoculars? And why hadn’t Garrity mentioned such a credible eyewitness?

“Sure, Joe, go interview him and find out exactly what he saw.”



She said, “Why did you send Tom Garrity to me?”

He was kneeling in the garden, yanking handfuls of weeds from around the spindly tomato plants, barely two feet high in July, and with only a few yellow flowers on them promising fruit. It would be another lousy year for tomatoes. He had thought that leaving work early to do something outside with his hands would help him forget for a while the predicament he was in. But there was Amy standing over him, demanding an answer.

“Hello to you, too,” he said sitting back on his heels. “I suggest next year we just throw some wildflower seeds in the garden and forget trying to grow tomatoes and cucumbers. It’s wasted effort.”

“You do the weeding, so plant what you want.” She moved away a step, letting the late afternoon sun hit his face. “Could you tell me why you sent the police chief to me?”

Simon yanked more weeds, spraying her shoes with dirt. She brushed off her shoes, lifting one foot up at a time to do it. Bits of dirt still stuck to her tan shoes like purposeful specks of contrasting color. He thought they looked interesting that way. “I saw him at Red’s at lunch,” Simon said, “and he started asking all these questions about the missing guy, Paul. Since you saw him a couple of times …”

“You’re counting on me not saying anything, aren’t you?”

“I know you’re not supposed to talk about people you see. But I didn’t think I should hold back that he was your patient since he’s missing and may have committed suicide. I didn’t actually say you were seeing him anyway. I implied it. I figured you’d sort things out with Tom.”

“Well, he’s sorting it out. Apparently once I called 911, it became a police matter.”

“You mean you can talk about him?” Simon tried to portray only casual surprise, a kind of ethical inquisitiveness in his voice, but he was sure she could sense something more.

“I can talk about how a man who said his name is Paul Chambers prevented me from leaving my office this week, but I won’t reveal anything he told me during our sessions. That’s what’s important to you, isn’t it, that the police don’t know why he was in Red Paint?”

Simon straightened a limp stalk to its pole and re-fixed the tie holding it. He had little hope a tomato would grow on the plant, but he thought he should give it the opportunity. In his garden, everything had its fair chance. He wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his hand. “It probably would be better if they didn’t know that.”

“They could get a subpoena. Then I’d have to decide what to do.”

“Would you cooperate, if you were subpoenaed?”

“I might,” Amy said, “if they just want information to help find him.” She noticed the dirt still on her shoe and bent down to rub it away, but the dark brown just rubbed deeper into her tan sandals. “You don’t want the police to find him, do you?”

He yanked a dead leaf off the stalk. “Why do you say that? Of course I hope they find him.”

She shifted side to side, blocking the sun and then letting it strike him again, a strobe effect. She said, “Do you know where Paul Chambers—Paul Walker—is?”

He shielded his eyes to see her. “How would I know that?”

“That’s not answering my question. Do you know where he is?”

Simon didn’t, exactly. The last he’d seen the man he was sinking into the dark waters of the bay. Perhaps he climbed out when Simon dove under looking for him. Perhaps he floated away unseen to a different shore. Perhaps he did drown. There were several possibilities at least. Without a body, who could say he was really even dead? “No, I don’t know where he is.”

“Why would it take you so long to answer, Simon? You either do know or you don’t.”

“Like I said, I don’t.”

“Then why take so long to answer?”

“What are you doing, timing my answers to see if I speak fast enough for you to believe me? Is there some two-second rule I don’t know about?”

“The rule is we tell each other the truth.”

“Are we talking about Jean Crane again? Because I explained that to you, I didn’t force her to have sex.”

Amy cocked her head, adjusting to the shift in subject. “This isn’t about Jean Crane. It’s about her husband who came to Red Paint to get revenge on the man he thought raped the woman he married—that’s you, Simon. Now he’s disappeared.”

“And you think I had something to do with that?”

“Did you?”

He stood up to face her, just a few feet between them. It felt good to be so much bigger. “Now you’re avoiding the question,” he said. “Do you think I had something to do with this guy’s disappearance?”

Her eyes narrowed, trying to bore into his soul where surely the truth must lie. Souls should come with protective armor, he thought. They shouldn’t be open for inspection. Four seconds, five, six …

“Why are you taking so long to answer?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, I think you know something about him being missing.”

“I can’t tell you how comforting your faith in me is,” Simon said. “Makes me realize how strong our marriage is after sixteen years.”

“I haven’t been living with a secret. I’m an open book to you. But for our whole married life you hid from me the rather important fact that a girl accused you of raping her.”

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation again. Apparently in your mind I’m Simon the husband who doesn’t tell his wife he’s a rapist. And now you can add to it that I’m Simon the husband who may have done what? Killed a man? Is that what you think?”

“I didn’t say anything about you killing him, Simon.” She squinted at him, as if to see more clearly. “Tell me you didn’t kill him.”

He would have liked to declare that he hadn’t, make her feel bad for even considering the idea. But there was the nagging possibility that he may have caused the death of another human being. Killed him, at least in some sense of the word. With this possibility in mind, he found it incongruous to be outraged at her suspicions, but he felt outraged nevertheless. She had no good reason to think him guilty. It was her inherent distrust of him that brought her to this conclusion. A failing in her. He said, “If I tell you I didn’t kill the guy or do anything else to him, you still won’t believe me, will you?”

“Try me.”

He turned back to the garden and dug his hands into the hard, dry dirt.



He came inside to a familiar scene: Davey sitting on the hot seat, the leather-covered stool in the family room, his feet still unable to reach the floor, with Amy circling him like a cop in an interrogation room. He wasn’t needed for this performance.

“Dad!” Davey said at the sight of Simon and jumped off the stool.

Amy grabbed the boy’s arm at the thin bicep and squeezed.

“That hurts,” he said, twisting out of her grasp.

“Then get back on the stool. We’re not done here.”

Davey climbed back on.

“What’s going on?” Simon said as he pulled off his work gloves.

Amy turned toward him as if addressing a jury. “It seems that your son was playing with knives at his friend Kenny’s house, and according to Dora Reed, who just called, he threw a knife at her son’s forearm and drew blood. She had to rush him to the emergency room for a tetanus shot. It’s just a day full of good news around here.”

Simon glanced at Davey, sitting behind his mother, and the boy spit on his hand and flashed it in the air. The message was clear.

Amy turned her attention back on their son. “So I’m asking you again, did you throw a knife at Kenny?”

“No, Mom, he threw it at his own stupid arm.”

Amy squinted at him. “Why would he do that?”

“He was showing off how close he could get without hitting it but he missed—I mean he didn’t miss, he hit himself and started bleeding. I’m the one who said he had to tell his mother to take him for a shot so he wouldn’t get lockjaw. He was going to just put on his sweatshirt and not tell her. I saved his life, didn’t I?”

She ignored his plea for praise. “Then why did he tell his mother you threw the knife at him?”

“He always says I do stuff that he did so he won’t get in trouble because his father would kill him for something like that.”

“His father isn’t going to kill him.”

“He’ll hit him for sure, he does that all the time for the littlest little things.”

“You’ve seen Mr. Reed hit Kenny?”

“Not exactly, but he yells a lot, I know that ’cause I heard him lots of times.”

“I imagine Kenny deserves to be yelled at, just as you do more times than I can count. The point is that you and Kenny were playing with knives and he got hurt.”

“No, Mom, cross my heart, I wasn’t playing with knives. Dad told me not to touch them because they’re dangerous. It was just Kenny doing it.”

Simon watched his son’s right hand crisscross his chest, the thin index finger extended, a surprisingly delicate gesture. The boy stared up at Amy, his expression unwavering, so innocent, so convincing. Then he looked toward Simon. “You believe me, don’t you, Dad?”

A clever move, trying to lure him into the scene. But Simon wouldn’t let himself get drawn in. He was just an observer to this little courtroom drama where the savvy interrogator went up against the cunning suspect. Whom would the jury believe? “It doesn’t matter what I think,” he said, heading toward the kitchen. “It’s your mother you have to convince.”



That evening, Simon waited till Amy closed herself in their bathroom for a long soak in the tub, carrying a stack of Psychology Todays with her. She’d be an hour at least. He went to Davey’s bedroom, where she had banished their son for the night on the premise that at the very least, he was on site when Kenny knifed himself. Guilt by proximity. The boy was lying on his bed, staring upward, with Casper curled on his chest. Simon turned his head up to see what was so interesting on the ceiling. Nothing. To be eleven, lying on your bed, a cat on your chest, staring at nothing. Was this to be envied or not?

“It isn’t fair,” the boy said, his gaze fixed upward. “Mom grounded me for not doing anything.” He glanced over at Simon with his sad brown eyes and their incredibly long eyelashes. “Can’t you talk to her, Dad?”

“You did do something, remember? You were playing with knives yesterday with Kenny.”

“She doesn’t know that. She shouldn’t punish me for something she doesn’t know I did.”

“She knows, Davey, believe me. She just doesn’t know she knows.”

“What?”

“Never mind. When we made our pact, you didn’t tell me Kenny got hurt with the knife and his mother had to take him to the hospital.”

Davey grasped Casper and then rolled over, pinning the cat on her back. “You didn’t ask, Dad, that’s why I didn’t tell you.”

“Mom asked if you were playing with the knife, and you lied to her.”

The boy held the back of Casper’s neck with one hand and rubbed his belly with the other, a hard massage. “That’s because I didn’t want to get her all upset, you know, because she wouldn’t understand.”

The old cat twisted from side to side, trying to free herself. “Don’t hold Casper that way,” Simon said.

“She likes it. I do it all the time.”

“You don’t know she likes it, so let her go.”

Davey released his grip, and Casper jumped off him and bolted toward the door.

“Why wouldn’t Mom understand?” Simon said.

“She’s a girl. Girls don’t play with knives.”

Girls don’t play with knives, girls don’t shoot off guns in the street, girls don’t rape, girls don’t murder. It seemed like a simple life to Simon, being female. He almost wished he could try it for a while. “You still shouldn’t lie to her.”

Davey leaned back on the bed again, his hands behind his head. “You lied to her.”

It took a moment for Simon to process the full meaning of the words—You, my father, the one who is supposed to teach me to be honest, lied to her. “What do you mean?”

“When you came home all wet. You didn’t really spill a soda on yourself because you’d never get that wet. You don’t know how to lie, Dad. You try to sound like you’re really really telling the truth. If you want people to believe you, you got to act like you don’t care if they do.”

“Seems like you’ve thought this out.”

Davey nodded. “Yeah, lying takes some thinking ahead of time. Then you just do it.”

“You sure you want to be telling me this? I am your father.”

“That’s okay because you lie, too. You didn’t want Mom to know how you really got wet, right?”

“I didn’t want her to know because—”

“It doesn’t matter why, Dad,” Davey said. “You lied, just like me.”

It was true. He was a liar, the same as his son, and worse because his own lies were about life and death. “Listen to me, Davey, lying doesn’t solve things. It just makes them worse.”

“Not if they don’t catch you.”

“It’s not about being caught. It’s what people believe. Mom doesn’t believe me. She knows I lied to her.”

“You lied to me, too, right?”

“Yes.”

“How come, Dad? I don’t care if you did something wrong.”

Simon sat on the bed, his hand inches from his son’s. He felt like picking it up, stroking the palm as he had done when Davey was a baby, loving the way the small fist closed over his index finger as if it would never let go. I don’t care if you did something wrong. Not forgiveness for whatever was done, just unquestioned acceptance no matter what. One liar to another.

“You’re right,” Simon said, “I shouldn’t have lied to you or Mom. I’m going to change that starting right now, no more lying.”

Davey shifted on his side and propped his head up with one arm. “So how’d you get wet?”

“There’s a man, his name is Paul, he’s been sending me postcards for the last month.”

“The ones on the refrigerator?”

“You know about them?”

“Yeah, since we’re telling the truth, I kind of knocked the fish magnet off when I shut the door too hard and it broke on the floor. You can take it out of my allowance, if you want to.” He batted his eyelashes, a feminine trait, but apparently natural in his son.

“What did you do with the postcards?”

“They’re probably still on the floor next to the refrigerator.”

Such a simple explanation for the disappearance of the first two cards. Nothing mysterious, nothing sinister. “The reason I lied to you about getting wet is that I was out on the dock at Bayswater Inn that afternoon with the man sending the postcards and I got into an argument with him. I thought he’d hurt Mom, and I was very upset, so I hit him and he fell into the water.”

Davey rose up on the bed. “Wow, you mean that guy who’s missing, you knocked him into the water?”

“That’s the one. I jumped in to look for him, but I couldn’t find him.”

“So like he drowned?”

“I don’t know for sure what happened. They haven’t found him.”

“Wow, Dad,” Davey said again with what sounded more like excitement than worry. “They’re not going to arrest you or anything, are they, because you just hit him, you didn’t drown him. You even jumped in to save him, right?”

He had jumped in, dove to the bottom several times, the water so thick that he had to feel around in search of a body. Would that make a difference, his attempt at saving his victim, even if it came late?

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, kiddo. It’ll be up to the police when I tell them what I did. But people will know about it, I’m sure, and some kids might say things to you.”

“Like what?”

“Things about me.”

Davey balled up his small fists. “They better not or I’ll punch them.”

“No!” Simon said more loudly than he intended. “Aren’t you listening to me? That’s how I got into this trouble, punching someone. You have to be smarter than me.”

“You want me to turn the other cheek?” Davey said with disdain in his voice.

That was what Simon had meant, but he realized it was useless to phrase his advice that way. “I want you to be strong enough to walk away if kids hassle you, that’s what I’m telling you. Can you do that?”

“What if they keep walking after me and saying stuff about you, then can I punch them?”

“Under no circumstances are you to get into a fight over this, understand?”

“It’s awful hard not punching someone who deserves it.”

“I know,” Simon said, “believe me.”