“I shouldn’t be, Justin. I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s a bad time for me, and my mom isn’t doing well, and I should be home now. I should never have let this happen.” It was a trick she sometimes pulled on Gina, suddenly getting emotional to get out of something. She knew that because she was so stoic all the time, when she made herself sound upset, people paid attention. It worked with Gina, and it worked now with Justin. He drove her back to the condo, and dropped her off. She kissed him hard once on the mouth, their tongues touching, then quickly exited the car. The least she could do was let him think it was hard for her to say good-bye.
As soon as she unlocked the front door of the condo and stepped inside, she knew something was wrong. It was quiet—just the sloshing sound of the dishwasher running in the kitchen—but the house had a bad smell. She could see her mother supine on the couch, but the television wasn’t on. She hung the house keys on the hook and walked toward her. The smell got sharper, and as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw that her mother had thrown up. Vomit had pooled on the couch and was streaked down her mother’s cheeks. It had happened before, but always when her mother’s head had been turned to the side. This time her mother’s head was tipped back, crusted lips parted, her eyes partly open.
Alice watched her, frozen for a moment, and then her mother’s chest bucked, and she made a sound like a wet cough. Alice stepped backward, alarmed. Her mother was choking in front of her eyes, probably dying. Alice wondered if all she needed to do was step forward and turn her mother’s head to the side so that she’d be able to breathe again. But Alice just watched instead. She was revolted, not just by the vomit and her mother’s gargling, halted breaths, but disgusted by everything about her mother. She was so incapacitated that all she had to do was turn her head to live, and she couldn’t even do that. It was pathetic. Edith bucked again, but didn’t make the coughing wet sound.
Alice realized she’d been balanced on the pads of her feet, as though she was about to move forward. Instead, she settled slowly back onto her heels. She didn’t want to watch anymore, but she couldn’t take her eyes away. A strange relief spread over her; her mother was being ushered away from her and to a better place. Alice’s body lightened, and her scalp tingled. Her mother had stopped moving and Alice knew she was dead. Still, she watched some more, aware of the blood rushing through her body. She felt dizzy and her chest was cold. A thought went through her: I got my wish. And then another thought: There was nothing I could do.
Something caught at the corner of Alice’s eye and she turned toward the stairwell.
Jake was on the bottom step, his face half shadowed, watching what had just transpired.
Chapter 8
Now
Harry woke, groggy and disoriented, just past eleven, having stayed in his room for the entire evening, dozing on and off, and finally falling into a deep sleep filled with terrible dreams that, now he was awake, were just out of his mind’s reach. He was incredibly hungry for the first time since he’d heard about his father. There was a text on his phone from Kim that had been sent at four in the morning. WHY AREN’T YOU HERE? Five minutes later she’d sent him a photograph of Paul, and Paul’s current boyfriend, Rich, both asleep, fully dressed, on her bed. Then she sent a photo of herself, her lips puckered in a kiss, the makeup around her eyes smudged. He turned his phone off and got out of bed.
Downstairs had been thoroughly cleaned, with no sign left that there had been thirty people here the day before. There was a note from Alice on the island in the kitchen:
Harry,
I’m at Chrissie’s house this morning. Please CALL if you need anything.
Love, A
He felt relief that he had the house to himself for the first time since he’d arrived back. He swung the refrigerator door open; it was packed with leftover food, and Harry made himself a ham and cheese sandwich. There was some of yesterday’s coffee in the pot, not a lot, but he poured it over ice, added milk, and brought his breakfast out onto the front steps of Grey Lady. A cool, gentle rain was just beginning. There was no sound, except for the chatter of birds, and Harry could smell the ocean. That was not always the case in Kennewick Village, far enough inland that, depending on the wind, it didn’t feel any more like a seaside town than New Chester, Connecticut. But when the wind was right, the air had that unmistakable tang of salt water and tidal mud. He’d grown up in Manhattan, but Harry had spent enough summers in Maine to consider it a kind of childhood home.
He finished his coffee and his sandwich, then went back inside. He thought of going into his father’s office but decided against it. He wasn’t prepared for a room so filled with memories of his father. Instead, he wandered into the living room, a room that with its beige color scheme and watercolor seascapes seemed more Alice than Bill. The one indisputable item of Bill’s, besides the dark grey wing-backed chair, was one of his cherished barrister bookcases, each shelf with its own pull-down glass front. Harry looked at its contents, all hardcovers, including a shelf of Agatha Christies. Harry lifted the glass front and pushed it back into its slot so he could look at the books. There was a hardcover copy of After the Funeral next to a hardcover of the same book with its American title, Funerals Are Fatal. Harry, who’d inherited some of his father’s immense love of mystery novels, tended to like American crime writers more than cozy English golden-age mysteries, but he’d gone through a brief Christie phase in middle school after his father had given him Ten Little Indians. He could still hear his father’s voice from then: “Now, if you decide to read all of Agatha Christie, just keep in mind that some of her books have more than one title, so don’t read them twice.” He’d then gone on to catalogue the many different title changes in her publishing history, like another father might tell his son about the year-to-year batting champions in the 1930s and 1940s. Harry, at twelve, had been impressed, but now he wondered if his father had wasted his life in the trivial pursuit of something only he (and a smattering of other misfits) cared about. How many useless facts and complicated plots got wiped out the moment he died?
Harry was looking at a hardcover of Five Little Pigs when the doorbell rang. He slid the book back into its place on the shelf and walked to the front hall. There was a tall figure visible in the frosted glass that ran along the side of the front door, and Harry felt a brief flutter of concern.
He swung the door inward. On the other side of the screen door stood a man in a tan suit. He was holding up a badge.
“I’m Travis Dixon with the Kennewick Police Department,” he said. “I’m looking for Alice Ackerson.”
“She’s not in. Can I help you?”
“Are you Bill Ackerson’s son?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you mind if I come in and ask you some questions? It pertains to your father’s death.”
“Okay,” Harry said, pushing open the screen door so that the detective could enter.
“Thank you—is it Harry?” he said as he stepped into the foyer, ducking his head slightly, and offering a large, knuckly hand. Harry shook it.
“It is,” said Harry. The shoulders of the detective’s light suit were speckled with rain. The sky was darker than it had been earlier that morning.
“Is there some place we can talk?” the detective asked.
Harry led him into the living room, where they sat on opposite-facing sofas. “What’s going on?” Harry asked.
“We got a preliminary report from the crime scene investigators this morning, Harry,” he said, hands on his knees. “And although we are not ruling out an accident, we are presently treating what happened to your father as a suspicious death.”
“Oh?”
“It’s inconclusive right now, but there is a possibility that your father was hit on the head before he fell off the side of the path.”
“You think someone hit him?” Harry said, trying to absorb what he was hearing.
“That’s what we think.”
“What does that . . . ?”