SHE IS WEARING leggings and one of my Tshirts. It is much too big for her. Her feet are bare. “I just woke up,” she says. “I wasn’t like, sitting here in the dark for a long time.”
“You scared me, buttercup,” I say.
“Your pajama pants are wet. What are you doing?”
“I’m—” I can’t tell her what I’m doing.
“Why were you swimming in pajamas?” she asks.
“Rosemary.”
“What?”
“Why are you here?”
“I don’t know!” Her face crumples. “I sometimes wake up and come see you, is all. I’ve never come to the basement before.” She looks around. It’s a big room with a low ceiling. Everything is neatly labeled. In the harsh overhead light, it seems bleak. The corners are still dark and the paint on the walls is cracked. “I’m scared.”
I kneel in front of the rocking chair and hold her hands. “It’s just a creepy basement, ’kay? All basements are creepy. If we go upstairs, it’ll seem just like any other night, with Tipper and Harris sleeping at the top of the house and flowers on the kitchen table and good food in the fridge and the moon shining in the windows.”
“But why are you up?” she asks. “Why are you down here? Why are you wet?”
Oh god. I want to console her. I want to help her to feel at peace. But I cannot cuddle in the middle of the night when I am covering up a murder.
“I woke up,” I tell her. “I went down to the water for a bit to think. Then I thought I might—well, I’m not proud of this, but I thought I might drink some wine to help me go back to sleep.”
“Don’t drink wine all by yourself in the middle of the night,” says Rosemary, appalled. “It’s how you get alcoholic. Even I know that.”
“You’re right,” I say. “You’re totally right. Why don’t we go upstairs together, super quiet, and I’ll take a bath and you can—I don’t know. Do you want to read or make another friendship bracelet?”
Rosemary nods.
“Come on, buttercup. Should I pick you up? I’m not sure I still can, but I’ll try.”
She reaches up and I lift her. Her legs wrap around my waist. We shut the basement light and walk slowly, slowly up the stairs to my room on the second floor.
I turn the fan back on, to mask any sounds from the dock area. The curtains are drawn.
I set Rosemary down on my bed and kneel before her. My heart is drumming and my hands are shaking, but I want to make her feel safe and loved, despite what I’m going to do next. “Do you remember when you and Tomkin made the biggest sandcastle? Far up the beach so it wouldn’t get washed away? We ringed it with rocks and decorated it with shells.”
“Um-hm.”
“Mother let you bring cups and mugs down to the water so you could mold lots of different-sized piles. And you were so proud.”
“We have a picture of it,” says Rosemary. “In one of the albums.”
“Yes. That was a good time. Think about that. It was such a good day.”
Rosemary begins to cry softly.
Oh, not now, little one. Don’t need me now. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m not going to make a castle again,” she says. “I’m never going to make another one.”
“Oh, love. We could make one.”
“I’m not going to see Tomkin again, either,” she says. “I saw him for the last time, and I didn’t know it was the last time.”
“You could see him,” I say. I don’t want to tell her Tomkin won’t be coming to the island again.
“No,” she says. “I am just here to visit you. And Mother, but she doesn’t want me.”
“But maybe if you visited him, you’d feel better. Tomkin would play with you. He’s much more into board games than me, and you could teach him to weave the bracelets.”
Rosemary shakes her head. “I only come to this house. And you. I told you that already.” She wipes her nose on the hem of her shirt. “It’s what happens. I’m not the boss of it. I’m just here.”
I snuggle her. Her sobs slow down. She sniffles a few times.
I think of Bess, down on the cold dock with a dead body.
And Penny—where the hell is Penny? Is she back? Did she get what we need?
“I’m going to run my bath,” I tell Rosemary. “And get out of these wet pajama pants.”
She nods. “Okay.”
“Just hang out, and I’ll be back in a little bit. I gotta warm up, and I need the bath to make me sleepy.”
“Um-hm.”
I grab a clean pair of sweatpants and an old pink sweatshirt. I go into the bathroom and shut the door. I run the water, but I don’t put the plug in the tub, and I don’t run it hard, because I don’t want to make any noise that would wake our parents.
I put on the dry clothes, shove my feet back in my sneakers, and ease open the connecting door to Bess’s room. I tiptoe through it and run downstairs. I throw my damp pajamas into the laundry and grab a bottle of whiskey from the basement. Then I run as fast as I can to the family dock, leaving my sad, isolated, needy ten-year-old ghost of a sister waiting for me to come back.
I feel worse about this betrayal than anything else, really.
59.
BESS IS ON the dock. “Where’s Penny?” I whisper when I am close enough for her to hear.
“She never came.”
“Did you look for her?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Why not?”
“You didn’t tell me to.”
“Did you get the boards clean?”
“I went over them twice.”
“What did you do with all the paper towels?”
“They’re in the tote bag.”
“Good. We can burn them later. Stay here.”
“Where are you going?”
“To see what’s keeping Penny.”
“Should I come?”
“I said stay here.”
“I don’t want—I don’t want to.”
“Just stay.”
I leave her and head to Goose Cottage. I am reaching a hand out to the gate when I hear “Carrie.”
Penny is crouched in the bushes, just off the walkway. I kneel down by her. “Are they still awake?”
“They were. They went upstairs finally, and it took forever, but Major’s light is off now.”
“Is George’s off?”
“It was when I checked. His room is around the back of the house.”
“How long does it take people to fall asleep?”
“Not that long, I don’t think. They were drinking beer earlier.”
We walk around to the back of Goose. George’s light is still off, but the bathroom light is on.
“Is someone in there?” whispers Penny. “Or are they just wasting electricity?”
“Probably wasting.”
We go back to where we can see Major’s window. We sit down on the walkway to watch. And Penny, who hasn’t ever really cared how I feel, who thinks only of herself— selfish,
beautiful
Penny—
reaches out to
take my hand
like she did when we were kids.
She used to reach for my hand when Harris was mad at us,
when we had to recite poems for Nana and Grandpa, when Tipper was late to pick us up from dance class, while we sat together on the boat and saw Beechwood Island emerge from the empty expanse of the sea.
We hold hands now, and wait.
There are footsteps on the walkway and Bess comes into view.
“You’re supposed to be with Pfeff,” I whisper.
“You took forever,” she says. “I got worried.”
“It’s okay. The boys weren’t asleep. But I’m pretty sure they are now.”
“If I help, we can get in and out faster,” Bess says. “I’ll go upstairs and do his room.” She tucks her sunny hair behind her ears with resolve. “It’ll be easiest for me.”
That is true. Bess can mess up Pfeff’s room without recalling the smell of Pfeff’s neck, the curve of his cheekbones, the way he looked in that one sweater, the way he dog-eared the pages of books. She won’t care about his Edgartown socks, or the pillow where he laid his head at night.
“Good,” I say. “Penny, you get beach towels and thermoses. I’ll make the coffee.”
And we go.