As I listened to Becky, Stefan made tea and brought each of us a mug. Becky thanked him and went on.
“Finally, I calmed her down enough to put my arms around her and help her get settled in bed,” Becky said. “I thought, well, here I am, twenty-one years old on New Year’s Eve! The glitter times just never end.” But she was too worn out to even consider any of the invitations to go out dancing that friends had left on her voice mail. In the coach house, Becky took a long bath and made a deep dive under the fat goose-down comforter her grandmother had made for Rebecca’s last birthday. When she woke, it was past midnight.
“I knew something was wrong,” she said, tears filling her eyes as she took a deep draught from her mug of tea.
For just that reason, Rebecca never put her coat or boots away; she kept them next to her bed “like a farmer or a vet” so she could shove her feet and arms into them and run down the stairs and through the passage from the coach house to the main house. The main house was freezing, the front door wide open. When she looked outside, she saw that Alzy’s car was gone, although Becky had parked her own car behind it and had no idea how Alzy had maneuvered her own car around it without being able to make a Volvo station wagon fly.
“I pushed the door closed. Snow was drifted onto the floor. The door had been open for a long time. And I saw how crafty she was. Her keys were gone but so were mine. And her winter boots were missing from the hallway mat.”
Upstairs, she said, Alice’s nightgown lay curled on the floor of her bedroom. Outside, there was not a sound in the neighborhood if you didn’t count the creak of the ice on the lake. She would have to call Governor Hodge or get into a cab herself and start to search. But where first? She felt cold and sleepy.
“And I thought, I just can’t tonight. I have done this so many nights. I just can’t.”
So she went back to her still-warm bed and pulled the covers over her eyes. When she woke again, the sun was up full. It was after eleven, and Becky relaxed when she shrugged into her robe and crossed back into the big kitchen at the main house, to the smell of coffee and the subtle sounds of a morning kitchen.
“Happy New Year,” she called out, but no one answered. Not Alice, but a man was standing hunched at the sink, Alice’s husband. He looked as though he’d been beaten up, his face red and blotchy, his white fisherman-knit sweater covered with black smudges, his pants wet to the knee. He asked Becky to sit down, then gave her a cup of coffee before he recounted what happened.
And after that, Becky just finished her tea without saying a word.
Stefan and I sat there waiting.
“What happened?” Stefan finally asked her. “I know what happened, but now I have to hear the rest, even though I really don’t want to hear...”
Becky interrupted him. She said, “Please give me a minute.” She added, “Some things get easier. This one doesn’t.”
At about eight that morning, police had spotted what appeared to be a red blanket on top of a snowbank a few hundred yards from Mickey’s Fishbowl Tavern. On closer inspection, it was a red wool coat. Alice had probably died a few hours before in cold so extreme that she had all but frozen solid. She almost certainly didn’t suffer at all: She would have been drunk and passed out. As I listened, I thought unavoidably of the lines from Emily Dickinson... As freezing persons recollect the snow, first chill, then stupor, then the letting go. The bartender had called Alzy a cab at closing time and watched her leave. He remembered her saying that, by this time next year, everything would be merry and bright. Those were the words she used. Who knows what happened next? It would not have taken very long for Alzy’s body temperature to plummet. At that point, the brain would no longer care. She would not have been thinking about all she was losing.
“Jesus,” Stefan said. “The words she said make it worse.”
The Hodges family invited Becky to stay on for a while, to ease any of the fallout, she said. They knew how much she loved Alzy, how dedicated she was to her. Their big hearts were cracking too. Eventually Becky found a new job, as a research librarian. A year passed, and then two and then three. Slowly, unable to forgive herself for her role in Alzy’s death, Rebecca began to look for an emotional way forward, a way to pay homage to her friend. She was still living in the carriage house; the main house remained empty. But she was determined not to ask the Hodges for anything more. Then recently, from Merry Betancourt’s newsletter at the Unitarian Church, she learned about Stefan’s Healing Project. And her idea for a way to make amends took form.
She would ask the Hodges if she could convert Alzy’s main house into a residence for women who were profoundly addicted but committed to recovery. She would house and treat ten at a time. She would call it The Alice Hodge Safe Home. For two years, each resident would have to perform every task of their day in partnership with another. Once these teams of two were in place, they could not be changed unless someone left the program. They would have no choice but to support each other. They had to go everywhere together, even to work. They would share cooking, cleaning, doing laundry. The rules would be absolute, a single offense would trigger a ban for both members with no possibility of reinstatement.
Becky would continue to live at the carriage house, in a supportive role, but the women would have to sustain each other—an experiment in healthy codependency. Their motto would be: No One Goes Alone. Rebecca had brought Stefan her plans for a pilot Safe Home program. What she needed was the wherewithal to finance the first two years while she actively sought public and private funding. After she received word of acceptance for her program from The Healing Project, Becky confided her plans to Alice’s family. She didn’t know if they would even approve of the idea. If they did not, she would withdraw her application and never raise the subject again.
They did approve.
“In fact, they gave me both the main house and the carriage house, outright. They even set up a foundation to pay the taxes. At first, I refused to take it. I said it wasn’t right. They said it was. I said it wasn’t. They said it was. Finally, Alma said, it’s the only right thing. I guess that convinced me. And now, I have to live up to it.”
When she stopped talking, Stefan read her letter out loud.
It said in part:
“My remorse is everlasting. When I could have saved Alice Hodge, I let selfishness rule me. I was literally asleep on the job on the night that my employer and my good friend froze to death in the snow. If you give me the chance, my renewal will be to try to help save someone else, someone who is fighting addiction the way that Alice Hodge fought. Although she lost, not everyone loses. Not every bright light has to go dark. I don’t flatter myself that it will be because of me that another bright light continues to shine, but if I can feel responsible for the smallest part of that light, maybe I will not feel so responsible for what happened to Alice.”
And as he read it, pity washed over me. Rebecca didn’t do something terrible. She just didn’t do something, and something terrible happened.
Suddenly I thought of the mysterious caller Esme’s claim, No one can help me. I was fed up with the caller’s games, but what if this person really did have no one else to trust? Rebecca’s project had opened a vein of empathy toward this troubled soul and a renewed wonderment at why the caller reached out to me, rather than to Stefan or to Jill. Even if I didn’t believe what she said, she still seemed tormented by it.
I excused myself for a moment. On the porch, I sent a text from my phone. This is Thea, Esme. Please call me or text. I do want to know what you know.
But I heard nothing from her. And there was nothing I could do.
* * *