In summertime, Harry and his father tended to spend more time in Sanford, Maine, than they did in New York. It was Bill’s hometown; his sister and her family, plus a cousin he was close to, still lived there. On those trips, Bill began to scout locations for a second rare-books store, one along the coast. They rented a cottage on Kennewick Beach so that Bill could spend more time looking at properties. That was how he’d met Alice Moss, who was working as an agent at Coast Home Realty. They became engaged during Harry’s senior year of high school, and when Harry went off to college, his father had made the permanent move to Maine, marrying Alice and buying the Victorian fixer-upper that he’d named Grey Lady. His business partner, Ron Krakowski, kept the New York store running, and Bill and Alice opened a second store in Kennewick Village, walking distance to the house.
The summer after freshman year was the only full summer that Harry spent in Maine with his father and his new wife. Alice, who had never married and was childless, had been ecstatic, transforming one of the guest bedrooms into what must have been her notion of a young man’s room. She’d painted the walls a dark maroon—“hunting-coat red,” she called it—and bought furniture from L.L.Bean that looked like it belonged in a fishing lodge. She’d even framed an original poster of The Great Escape, because Harry had once told her that it was his favorite film. He’d been grateful for the room, but slightly uncomfortable in it. His father, as he’d always done, traveled the country scouting books at estate sales and flea markets. Harry was left alone with Alice, who worked hard at being a replacement for his mother, constantly making him food, cleaning his room, meticulously folding his clothes. She was thirteen years younger than his father, which made her exactly thirteen years older than Harry, although she looked young for her age. Despite living on the coast of Maine her entire life, she avoided the sun because of her pale complexion, and her skin was unlined, almost lucid. Her only exercise was swimming, either at the community pool or in the ocean when it was warm enough. She ate ravenously, drank glasses of whole milk like she was a teenager, and was neither thin nor overweight, just curvaceous, with wide hips, and a narrow waist, and long legs that tapered to childlike ankles.
It had been hot and humid that summer, and there was no central air-conditioning in the house. Alice had spent all of July and August in cutoff jeans and a pale green bikini top, unaware of the effect she was having on her teenage stepson. She was a strange kind of beautiful, her eyes set too far apart, her skin so pale that you could always make out the blue veins right near the surface. She reminded Harry of one of those hot alien races from Star Trek, a beautiful female who just happened to have green skin, say, or ridges on her forehead. She was otherworldly. Harry found himself in a state of constant, confused sexual turmoil, guiltily obsessing over Alice. And the way she mothered him—making sure he had enough to eat, making sure that he was comfortable—made the attraction all the more distressing.
After that first and only summer in Kennewick, Harry had arranged to spend his college breaks either staying with friends or remaining in New Chester, doing research for one of his professors. He saw his father fairly often, because of how much time he still spent in New York, meeting with Ron Krakowski, negotiating purchases and sales. New Chester was less than two hours away from the city by train.
“You should come to Maine more often,” his father had told him recently. They’d been browsing through some of the recent arrivals at the Housing Works Bookstore in Soho. “Alice would like it.”
Bill rarely mentioned her name, as though doing so somehow tainted the memory of Harry’s deceased mother.
“I’ll come this summer,” Harry said. “How is she?”
“The same,” his father said. “Too young for me, probably.” He paused, then added: “She’s a loyal woman. I’ve been lucky, twice, you know.”
The room—Harry’s room—was nearly the same as it had been when Alice had first decorated it, three years earlier. The major difference being that the empty bookcase she’d originally provided—“You can leave some of your favorite books here, Harry”—had been filled with a number of his father’s first edition crime paperbacks, and the top of the bookcase had been covered with framed photographs, probably selected by Alice. Most were of Harry and his father, but one was a picture of his parents that he’d never seen before, back when they’d first met, sometime in the early 1980s, sitting together on a balcony, each with a cigarette perched between their fingers. They were roughly the age Harry was now, and yet they looked older somehow, more sophisticated. Harry felt like he’d just barely left adolescence and knew that he looked that way as well. He was tall and very thin, with dark, thick hair that flopped over his forehead. Kim had affectionately called him “beanpole.” At parties, random girls sometimes told him how much they envied his cheekbones and eyelashes.
“Harry.” It was Alice, just outside the door. She had whispered his name and he jumped a little at the sound. “Sorry. I didn’t know if you’d want tea or coffee so I brought both.” She stepped into the room, a mug in each hand. “They each have milk and sugar. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Thank you, Alice. It is.” He took the coffee, not planning on drinking much, since what he really wanted to do was sleep. Being at the house had already exhausted him. “Is it okay if I take a nap? I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“Of course it is,” Alice said, backing away. “Sleep as long as you want.”
After shutting the door, he took a sip of the coffee, then removed his shoes and belt and slid under the plaid comforter, his mind filling with unwanted images of his father in his final moments. Had he died instantly without any knowledge of what was happening? Maybe he’d had a heart attack or a stroke, and that had caused him to fall?
Harry opened his eyes, giving up on the possibility of sleep. He could not bear to think of his father any longer and thought instead of college, the immersive reality of his last four years, and how it had suddenly ended. A surreal emotion came over him, the way you sometimes feel when you return from two weeks abroad, and the trip immediately seems like a mirage, as though it barely happened. That was how he felt now, thinking back on four years of college. Those years, his small group of friends, Kim Petersen, the professors he’d bonded with, were scattered now, permanently, like an ornate vase that shatters into a thousand pieces. His father was gone as well, leaving him with no family but Alice, and cousins he loved but with whom he had very little in common.
He stood by his bed, not knowing what to do next. Alice was vacuuming; he could hear the familiar hum from somewhere in the immense house.
His phone rang. Paul Roman, his best friend from college. He’d call him back; the last thing he wanted to do right now was talk. Instead, he walked to the window, cracked it slightly to let in some air. He looked out over the tops of the bright green trees. The steeple of the congregational church was visible, as was the shingled roof of the Village Inn and, in the distance, a snippet of the Atlantic Ocean, grey beneath a hazy sky. A young woman with dark hair held back in a headband walked slowly up the street. Harry watched as she noticeably slowed while passing the Victorian, glancing up at the windows. He instinctually stepped back into the bedroom. In the small, gossipy village of Kennewick, word must have gotten out.
His phone rang again. It was Gisela, another friend from college. Clearly, word had also gotten out among his friends at school. His father’s death had actually happened. He held the phone, knowing that he needed to call one of his friends back, but unable to get his fingers to move. The sounds of the vacuum were closer now. He sat down on the hardwood floor and leaned against the wall, rocking back and forth, still not crying.
Chapter 2
Then
Alice Moss was fourteen when she moved to Kennewick, Maine.
Her mother, Edith Moss, having finally received her check from the Saltonstall Mill settlement, took herself and her daughter from a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Biddeford to a single-family house in Kennewick Village. Her mother told Alice that now that they had money, and a house to call their own in a nice town, Alice would have to start acting like a little lady. Alice was just happy to be near the ocean. She claimed she had never seen it before even though Biddeford, less than twenty miles north of Kennewick, also bordered the shore.