“Okay. So what was she acting like when she came here?”
“I couldn’t really understand her. She was slurring her words, and she asked me to go swimming with her, and I said that it was too late, and it was too cold, and that was it.”
The officer turned and looked at Jake for the first time. “Did you see Gina when she came here to the house?” he asked.
“Oh, no. That was long after my bedtime.” He said it with a kind of faux heartiness that Alice had never heard before. He sounds like he’s lying, she thought.
But Officer Wilson didn’t follow up. He turned back to Alice. “Did you think it was unusual that Gina wanted to go swimming?” he asked.
“Um . . . I guess so. It was late at night.”
“Besides it being late at night, did it surprise you in other ways? Is this something she liked to do?”
“Swimming?”
“Yes.”
“I guess so. I don’t really know.”
The officer was writing something. When he didn’t immediately ask another question, Alice said, “We’d gone swimming before, Gina and I. The last time that we spent together. It was nice. I think she wanted to repeat the experience as a way to . . . to get back that feeling. She said that swimming together would be like a fresh start.”
“She said that here, the night she came over.”
“Something like that.”
“Why did you need a fresh start?”
“Just like I said, we’d been close before, and now we weren’t so close. We’d drifted apart.”
“Okay.” The officer nodded fractionally and was quiet again for a moment. Alice didn’t say anything, either, this time.
“One more thing,” he said. “Had Gina ever said anything to you that made you think she might be suicidal?”
“No. Like I said, I barely even—”
“Not just recently, Alice, but when you knew her in high school. Or anytime really.”
“Oh.” Alice pretended to think. “There was this one time, our senior year, when we were talking about our futures, you know. Where we might be in a few years. And she said something like: ‘Alice, you’ll still be here in Kennewick. You’ll probably be married to some perfect man, and have a baby boy and a baby girl, and I’ll still be in New York, and I’ll be a rich model with a major drug habit, and about sixteen boyfriends, and I’ll be so unhappy that I’ll probably kill myself.’ I mean, I didn’t think anything of it at the time.”
“When did she say this?”
“Our senior year. I thought she was just joking.”
“You’ve been really helpful, Alice,” the officer said as he stood. Jake stood as well and walked him to the door. Alice stayed seated, but the officer turned back and thanked her before he left the condo. She felt a sudden emptiness, like she hadn’t been ready for him to leave, that there was more she could have said.
“What do you think that was all about?” Jake asked after shutting the door and turning back into the living room.
“What do you mean?”
“It felt like they were putting you through the third degree.”
“I guess so,” Alice said.
“If it didn’t bother you, it didn’t bother me. I was worried you might be upset.”
“I’m not upset. I’m just tired. I haven’t been sleeping.”
“I’m sure. Go take a nap,” he said, just as Alice knew he would.
She went upstairs and into her old bedroom, and shut the door. It was an unspoken code that was used between her and Jake. When she went to take a nap in the bedroom they shared together, it meant that Jake would join her. When she went into her old bedroom, he wouldn’t. They’d only ever had sex in that room once, right after he’d taken the pictures.
In her bedroom with the door closed, Alice took out the folder that contained all the magazine photos of Gina, the clippings she’d saved from the past few years. She spread them out on the nubby bedspread, finally arranging them in a way she liked, with her favorite picture of Gina in the middle. It was from one of her last published photo shoots, one in which she’d gotten to travel down to Miami. In the picture, she was wearing a yellow one-piece bathing suit and holding a lit cigarette. In the background was a ramshackle beach house, painted in neon colors, and a sexy man asleep in a hammock. Gina was looking directly at the camera, her face almost in a frown. Look at all I have, that face was saying, and look at how miserable I am. Alice ran her finger down the picture, as though she could feel Gina through it. The paper felt cheap. The shot was published in one of the lesser fashion magazines, a magazine that she’d had to pick up in Portland, since Blethen’s didn’t even carry it.
She looked at the other pictures, then gathered them up and put them back in the folder. She stretched out on the bed and looked at the ceiling. She listened to Jake coming quietly up the stairs, then heard him turn around and go back down. He’d seen the shut door of her bedroom. Why had he been so concerned about the policeman’s visit? She hadn’t been bothered by it. They were just trying to decide if it had been a suicide or an accidental death. And it was going to be easy to confirm. Gina was unhappy and on drugs. Why else would she swim out into the cold ocean water? It was so sad, really, when she thought about it. All that youth being swallowed up by all that water. Poor Gina so alone in those final moments. Alice really was a little bit sleepy, and she closed her eyes, then gently massaged her temples, hoping she wouldn’t get one of her headaches.
Before she fell asleep, though, Alice got up and slipped from her bedroom into the master bedroom she shared with Jake. The bed was still unmade. She pulled her clothes off and slid under the warm, familiar sheets. Maybe Jake would come up and check on her again.
Chapter 19
Now
Outside, the air was crisp and smelled of loam. The pink that had just suffused the clouds was now gone, the light draining from the sky. Harry walked through the village, noticing movement behind the big window at the bookstore, the silhouetted figure of John hunched behind the checkout desk. The police would probably be questioning John as well. He’d clearly known Annie when she’d worked at the store. Had he known what was going on with the two of them? He must have had some idea.
Harry almost considered popping in to see him, to ask him directly, but he wanted to see Grace first. He headed up the rise of the Old Post Road, passing the inn, then arriving at the house where Grace had rented the room. It was mostly dark, except for some dim light in one of the second-floor windows. At the front door he rang the bell. There was a chime inside the house. He looked at the door while he waited; ornate wooden scrollwork framed a circular piece of glass. Below it was a visible remnant of what had been a number attached to the door—22—and two nail holes where the numbers had been affixed. Harry looked to the side of the door where 37 Prospect had been stenciled in dark red paint. Either the street number had changed or the door had been moved from another house. He pressed his finger to where the numbers on the door used to be, then pulled his finger back as the door swung inward, Grace looking a little startled, as though she was surprised to see him.
“Sorry,” she said. “I forgot Mrs. Whitcomb isn’t here, so I didn’t immediately get to the door. Come on in.”
Harry followed Grace as she led him up the stairs, carpeted with a threadbare Oriental runner, and to her rented room. It was as large as she’d said it was, the wide double bed looking out of place against the far wall. It was as though the house had once upon a time been split into a two-family, and this had once been the upstairs living room. A couch and two wooden chairs made a semicircle around a fireplace; Grace sat on the couch and Harry took a chair.
“What’s going on?” Grace said, pushing her hair back off her forehead. Her eyes were bright, almost jumpy. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a striped black-and-white shirt. Her feet were bare, her toenails painted green.