CHAPTER 18
Julie
I lay in the double bed in the guest room in Ethan’s house. The room was dark, but I remembered my impressions from when I walked into it for the first time that afternoon to deposit my overnight bag on the handsome wood chair in the corner. The walls were a spectacular blue—robin’s-egg, only richer and deeper. The curtains fluttering against the open window were a bold white-and-blue stripe. The painting on the wall looked like something my mother might have created: an impressionistic view of what could either have been a body of water or a green field, depending on how you wanted to look at it. I wondered if the simple yet dramatic decor was Ethan’s doing or that of his ex-wife. I didn’t need to wonder who was responsible for the stunning carved headboard or the dresser. By the time I’d made it to the guest room, I already knew that Ethan was no ordinary carpenter.
Many things had changed in Bay Head Shores since 1962. As I drove through the area before heading to Ethan’s house, I tried to remain in control and dispassionate, as if I were a scientist making observations instead of a woman visiting a place that haunted her. The little corner store where my sisters and I used to buy penny candy had been turned into a tiny antique shop, and now it was tucked beneath the overpass leading to the large bridge that had replaced the old Lovelandtown Bridge. There were many more houses, and the area had the feeling of a resort as opposed to the simple bayside neighborhood it once had been. The sun was brilliant against the architecturally varied houses. The yards were manicured with pebbles or sand and salttolerant landscaping. I drove the curved road leading to our little beach—the Baby Beach—with a tight knot in my throat.
Okay, I said to myself as the beach came into view. Be objective. There’s the little playground. Could those swings possibly be the same ones Daddy used to push us on? I didn’t think so. There’s the lifeguard stand. And loads of people. Brightly colored beach umbrellas. The shallow area’s still roped off for the kids. But… My eyes searched the water beyond the shallow area. No platform. I was glad to find it missing. I’d dreaded seeing it. I had seen quite enough.
Shore Boulevard, my old street, had changed more than I could have imagined. To begin with, it was no longer a dirt road. Houses sat nearly on top of one another, filling both sides of the street. The woods were gone. Two houses stood in the lot where the blueberry bushes had once flourished. I was surprised that it didn’t sadden me to see how built-up it had become. Instead, it relieved me that it didn’t feel like the same street at all.
I nearly stumbled upon our old bungalow. Everything seemed so different that I hadn’t expected the house to suddenly appear on my right. I stopped the car abruptly, lurching forward, glad there was no one behind me on the quiet street. The house looked lovely and well cared for. It had been a grayish blue when I was growing up, with black shutters. Now it was a sunny pale yellow trimmed with white. An old anchor leaned against the tree in the front yard. The obviously custommade mailbox at the edge of the road was painted to resemble the ocean, and a model sailboat rested on top of it. Someone cared about the house my grandfather had built, and I felt gratitude to them, whoever they were.
Between the bungalow and the newer house to the right of it, I could clearly see the canal. The water had an instantaneous, visceral pull on me. The current was swift, the water that deep greenish-brown I remembered so well. I rolled down my window and let the humid air wash over me. Here’s the only thing that hasn’t changed in this little corner of the world, I thought, as I watched the canal race toward the bay. The water, with its shifting current and its salty, weedy scent. I stared at it, going numb, a defense against feeling anything that could shake my fragile hold on the here and now. I was amazed that, so far at least, I seemed to be surviving this homecoming.
I turned into the Chapmans’ driveway, parking behind a pickup truck I guessed belonged to Ethan, and got out of my car.
“You made it!” Ethan walked from his house and across the sand to where I was standing. His feet were bare and he was wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt. His smile was filled with an ease I did not feel and he surprised me with a hug.
“Quite a trip,” I said, trying to return the smile.
“Traffic?” he asked.
“No. Just…I drove around.”
“Ah.” He seemed to understand. “Changed a bit in forty years, hasn’t it?”
The screen door opened again and it was a moment before I recognized the woman who emerged from the house as his daughter, Abby. She was carrying a sleeping infant, six months old at the most, in her arms.
“Hi, Julie,” she said, walking toward us. She had a baseball cap on her short blond hair and a blue quilted diaper bag over her arm.
“Hello, Abby,” I said, and I leaned down to try to get a look at her baby. The child’s head rested against Abby’s shoulder. It had to be a girl. Her eyes were closed, but her lashes lay long and curled on her pudgy cheeks. “And who’s this?” I asked.
“My granddaughter, Clare,” Ethan said. He reached up and rubbed his hand softly over the little girl’s back.
“She’s gorgeous,” I said.
“Clare and I are just leaving.” Abby smiled at me. “I’m glad I got to see you, Julie, if only for two seconds,” she said.
“You, too, Abby.”
Ethan put his arm around his daughter. “See you Sunday for dinner,” he said.
“You got it.” Abby stood on tiptoe to kiss her father’s cheek. “I love you,” she said, stepping away. Then she walked toward the white Beetle convertible parked in front of the house.
“Love you, too,” Ethan called after her. He grinned, watching his daughter and granddaughter get settled into the little car. He looked at me. “I am one lucky dude,” he said.
I nodded. “Abby’s really a lovely young woman,” I said, but I was thinking about Shannon, trying to remember the last time she had told me she loved me. I told her all the time. When had she started responding to those words with “okay” or the occasional cherished “you, too”?
“Hand me your bag and we can go in the house,” Ethan said.
I rolled my overnight bag toward him and reached into my pocketbook for my eyeglass case. I traded my prescription sunglasses for my regular glasses, then followed him into the house. Once inside, I realized that I had very little memory of its interior. When Ethan and I had played together indoors as kids—rarely, unless it rained—it had usually been at my house. We’d play cards on the porch or board games on the linoleum living-room floor. What had definitely changed inside the Chapmans’ house, though, was its furniture. The first thing that greeted me in the living room was a striking, floor-to-ceiling entertainment center in a pale wood, the craftsmanship exceptional even to my untrained eye. That was only the first of Ethan’s creations I noticed. Everywhere I turned, I saw evidence of his gift. There were end tables and a coffee table. Beautiful chairs with curved backs and silky smooth arms. The kitchen cabinets were a pale maple, and even the countertops were made of a eye-catching striated wood I couldn’t resist running my hand over.
“Tiger maple,” Ethan said. “I love the stuff. You’ll see it all over the house.”
I felt chastened by reality. I’d viewed his being a carpenter in negative terms. In my mind, I’d labeled him a man who worked with his hands instead of his head. But here were the results of his labor. He’d used not only his hands and head in the creative process, but there was plenty of evidence of his heart as well.
“The humidity here is terrible for the wood,” he said, smoothing his fingers over one of the cabinet doors. “But I don’t see the point of making beautiful things if you aren’t going to use them, so I use them.” Damn, he was cute, and I found myself smiling at him. He radiated a relaxed, soft-voiced, blue-eyed charm. The goofy kid who had begged for fish guts was simply not in evidence, and the attraction I’d felt to him in the Spring Lake restaurant was back in spades.
I looked through the kitchen to a jalousied sunroom.
“You enclosed your porch!” I said. Through the open jalousies, I could see the backyard and canal. “Let’s go out there.” I wasn’t sure if I truly wanted to be in the backyard we’d once shared or if I simply wanted to get it over with.
“Sure,” he said.
As we walked onto the sunporch, I squinted my eyes toward the opposite side of the canal. The weathered wooden bulkhead was gone. In its place was a steel bulkhead the color of rust. “What happened to the bulkhead?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you,” Ethan said. “Come on.” He led me through the porch with its white wicker love seat and chaise longue. Once outside, I saw that our two yards were now separated by a decorative wire fence, nearly the color of the sand.
“Who lives there?” I found myself whispering.
He took my elbow. “Come on,” he said again. “Let’s sit down and I can fill you in on the neighborhood.”
There was a beautiful boat in Ethan’s double-wide dock. I no longer knew a thing about boats, but I could tell this one had power and speed.
Ethan pulled two of the handmade wooden beach chairs closer together and patted the back of one, encouraging me to sit.
I sat on the chair, a few feet behind the chain-link fence that separated us from the water.
“God.” I shook my head. “I can’t tell you how strange this feels to be here. To see this water. I feel like I was here just last week, it’s so familiar to me. And look across the canal.” I pointed to the thick green reeds where George and Wanda and their cousins used to fish. No one was fishing there this afternoon. “It’s still undeveloped,” I said.
“Right,” Ethan said. “One of the few areas on the canal.”
“The Rooster Man’s shack is gone, though,” I said, marveling at the cluster of angular gray buildings that stood where the shack had once been.
“Condos,” Ethan said. “If you’ve got about $ 800,000, you can get one with two bedrooms.”
I looked at him, openmouthed. “Are you kidding?” I asked.
“You don’t want to know how much your old house is worth,” he said.
I winced. “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t.” The current value of the bungalow didn’t matter. My grandparents would have sold it even if they’d had a crystal ball to see the future of real estate in the area.
Ethan told me about the old wooden bulkhead succumbing to erosion and being replaced by the rust-colored steel walls years earlier. He told me about the changes on our street, how quickly the houses had gone up during the seventies. We watched as a massive yacht, crowded with well-heeled revelers, sailed by in front of us, and I realized I had not even turned in the direction of my old yard. I sighed.
“It’s easier for me to focus on the bulkhead or the boats—” I nodded toward the yacht “—than over there.” I shifted my gaze to the right, letting myself truly look at the yard for the first time since my arrival at Ethan’s.
“I know,” Ethan said. “I figured you’d get around to it when you were ready.”
The old painted Adirondack chairs were gone and in their place, sleek metal patio furniture sat on the sand. More of the wire fencing surrounded the dock, and nearby was a large tree, barely recognizable as the tree I used to lean my crab net against. The screened porch that had seemed so big in my childhood still ran the length of the house, but it was not nearly as deep as I remembered it. A circular, above-ground swimming pool sat in the shade of the tree, and I could see the top of a motorboat in the dock.
“Who lives there?” I asked again.
“A young couple,” Ethan said. “The Kleins. Very nice. They moved in about four years ago and they have a boy about seven years old.”
“Ah,” I said. Now I understood the need for all the fencing. It gave them the illusion of safety. I said a little prayer that the boy would grow up to be a strong, healthy adult.
“I told them that you—someone who used to live in the house—was coming to visit me,” Ethan said, “and they said you’re welcome to come over and see how the house has changed, if you like.”
“No,” I said quickly. I didn’t want to set foot in that house of memories. “Do they know…you know…what happened?”
“No.” Ethan smiled, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “Julie, you have to realize that that house has probably had—” He looked out at the water for a moment, thinking. “I don’t remember, exactly. Probably eight or nine owners in the last forty-one years.”
I chuckled at my foolishness. To me, what happened in that house seemed like only yesterday. I wanted to ask Ethan if he missed being able to sit out on the wooden bulkhead; the steel one offered no place to sit. I wanted to ask him if he missed the blueberry bushes and the woods we used to play in and the clanging sound of the old bridge when it swung open to let the boats through. But I realized those changes, like the eight or nine owners of our house and the Rooster Man’s shack being taken over by condos, were ancient history to him. In Bay Head Shores, he lived in the present, while I was still stuck in the past.
“This is hard for you, isn’t it?” he asked. “Being here?”
I nodded, staring at the water. “A tragedy occurs,” I mused. “Then you move on, or at least you try to move on, and you go through the motions of living your life, but you never quite forget it. It’s always there under the perfectly calm surface. And then…wham.” I pounded my fist on my thigh. “Something happens—like Ned’s letter—and you’re forced to deal with it all over again.”
“You’re the one who wanted me to take it to the police,”he said.
I looked at him sharply. “It’s not your taking it that shook things up,” I said. “The letter existed, whether you took it or not.”
He reached over to squeeze my shoulder. “You’re right,” he said. “And I didn’t mean to sound glib or like I’m blaming you. It was the right thing to do to take it to the cops, and they got on my case for not bringing it sooner.” He stared at his hands, rubbed them together, turned them palm side up, and I saw the signs of his work on his fingers. The skin looked rough and callused.
I wanted to take one of his hands in mine. I felt bad for snapping at him. This was no easier for him than it was for me. “I think they suspect that I wanted the time to clean out Ned’s house,” Ethan said. “You know, to make sure they wouldn’t be able to find anything incriminating.”
“I assume they didn’t find anything?” I asked.
“No, and I hadn’t found anything when I went through his stuff, either. No secret journals. No letters of confession. My friend who works at the department, though, told me they were able to find enough hairs and…whatever at his house to use for DNA matching.”
“Well, that’s good,” I said, although I didn’t know exactly how Ned’s DNA could be used at that point. “What did they ask when they interviewed you? What are they going to ask me tomorrow?”
He sat back in his chair, hands flat now on his denim-covered thighs. “They wanted me to give them the names of everyone Ned knows. Knew,” he corrected himself. “His drinking buddies. Women he dated. College friends. People he might have confided in. I couldn’t come up with many. Ned kept to himself. He wasn’t a social drinker. He drank to get drunk. Solo. Period.”
“What sort of relationship did you have with him?” I asked.
“Very difficult,” Ethan said. “He didn’t want to be around me because I was always badgering him about his drinking. About getting help. He didn’t want to hear it. He rarely saw Dad, either, which I know just killed my father. He still feels as though he failed Ned, that he should have been able to do something to help him.”
“Oh!” I said. “I forgot to tell you something.”
He looked at me, waiting.
“Did you know your father went to see my mother?”
His eyes grew wide. “What?”
“He did,” I said. “He showed up at her house the same day you and I met in Spring Lake.”
He looked as though I’d imagined it. “Why would he do that?” he asked.
“I don’t know, and she wasn’t very forthcoming,” I said. “She said he was thinking about us and decided to visit her. Does he know about the letter?”
Ethan shook his head. “He couldn’t possibly,” he said. “And I’ve talked to him since you and I met and he never said a thing about visiting your mother. Did he drive all the way up to Westfield to see her?”
“Yes. At least, he came to her house. I assume he drove.”
“Oh, brother,” Ethan said. “He scares me when he drives around the corner, much less to Westfield. I’ll have to talk to him about it. I don’t know how long I can let him live independently. He’s…” He shook his head. “Now, this is where Ned and I communicated,” he said. “We could talk about Dad—what should be done as far as taking care of him and that sort of the thing. I’m on my own with it now.”
I thought of Lucy, how glad I was to have her as my sister. How much I treasured her.
Ethan rested his head against the seat back, and a faraway look came into his eyes. “I just want…” he began. “I wish there was something I could do to keep the police from talking to my father,” he said. “I know they plan to, and probably soon, since he’s the only one who can support Ned’s alibi. I’m afraid they’re going to badger him because they probably think he used his influence to get Ned off.” He shook his head. “I dread telling him about that letter.”
“I know,” I said. “I can’t imagine telling my mother about it.”
“You might have to, Julie.” He looked at me, the blue in his eyes so clear I felt like diving into them.
“I know,” I said again, but I was thinking, Not if I can help it.
“Well,” Ethan said, “here’s what I think you and I can do that might help the investigation,” he said. “We should try to remember Ned and Isabel’s friends from 1962 and anything important about them. The police might want to talk to them.”
I leaned my head back against the wood of the chair. I thought about Isabel’s old crowd that used to hang out on the beach. “Why can’t they find Bruno?” I asked.
“He’s left the area, his parents are dead, and his real name—Bruce Walker—is pretty common,” Ethan said. “But my friend assures me they’re looking for him.”
“Isabel had two best girlfriends here,” I said. “Pamela Durant and—”
“Oh, yeah,” Ethan said, a little of the lecher in his voice. “Hard to forget her. She never came back to the shore, though, after that summer, but I still remember her.”
“Down, boy.” I smiled. “I didn’t know you had any interest in the opposite sex back then, except as something to study under a microscope.”
He returned the smile. “The geeky thing was just a facade,” he said.
I laughed.
“Who was the other girl Isabel hung around with?” he asked.
“Mitzi Caruso,” I said. “She lived on the corner. Right down there.” I pointed in the general direction of the Carusos’ house.
“I vaguely remember her,” Ethan said. “I think she came back a few more summers, but I couldn’t really say for sure. There were a couple other guys Ned hung around with, but I’m completely blank on their names. Summer kids. Do you remember any of them?”
I shook my head. The rest of those teenagers from Izzy and Ned’s crowd were as faceless to me as they were nameless.
Ethan looked at his watch, then stood up.
“Listen,” he said, “it’s a gorgeous evening. Let’s go out in the boat, and then we can make dinner—I picked up some flounder—and talk some more.”
I glanced toward his dock. “I don’t do boats these days,” I said.
“Really?” He looked puzzled. “When I picture you, it’s in that little runabout of yours. Out there by yourself on the canal, twelve years old, zipping around like you owned the water.”
It was hard to believe I’d ever been that child. “I haven’t been on a boat since that summer,” I said.
“Come on.” He held out his hand to me. “Let’s go. We can head toward the river if the bay upsets you.”
He didn’t understand. There would be no pleasure in it for me, only a sort of panic. “I don’t want to, Ethan,” I said.
He saw that I was serious and gave up. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll skip the boat ride and go right to dinner, then. Are you hungry?”
I helped him cook, although he was at ease in the kitchen. Watching him, I realized he was a man at ease, period. And lying here now in his handmade guest-room bed, it occurred to me that he had always been that way. Even when he was a nerdy little kid, he hadn’t cared what others thought of him. He’d been comfortable in his own skin. I hadn’t expected to find myself admiring him any more than I’d expected to find myself attracted to him. And yet I was both.