The detective placed a second photograph next to the first one. It was of a tattoo, cursive script across a rib cage: Do you realize we’re floating in space? As quickly as the wave of relief had swept through Caitlin, a wave of icy recognition replaced it. Caitlin looked back at the face, photographed on a neutral background. Yes, it was her twin, her features reduced to their basic nature, a nose, two eyes, a mouth. She hadn’t recognized the face because there was nothing left of Grace in it. But the tattoo, that silly, impulsive tattoo, some line from a song Grace had loved in high school, meant that it was really her sister.
She nodded at the detective, and he produced a piece of paper, proof of identification, for her to sign. She quickly glanced over the sheet, not trusting herself to speak, then signed on the line. The detective put the sheet of paper in a manila folder, and thanked her, then asked if she wanted to be alone for a moment before they talked further. She nodded, and he left, shutting the door behind him. She cried, a hand across her eyes, for several minutes. She’d cried earlier, when she first got the call from her mother that Grace was dead, but this was different. She’d seen the pictures. Grace, unimaginably, was truly gone.
“She was your twin?” the detective asked, after he’d come back, after she’d shown him the e-mail, after she’d asked him repeatedly what had happened, and why.
“Yes.”
“Identical twins?”
“No. Fraternal. But some people thought we were identical because we looked alike. But really, we just looked alike because we were sisters.”
“Were you alike in other ways?”
“Personality, you mean? God, no. Not at all. I was the careful one, and she wasn’t careful at all. As you can tell . . . from the situation, and from the e-mail. She was kind of impulsive and didn’t really know what she wanted. No, that’s not entirely true. She was impulsive, but she always knew what she wanted. It just changed all the time.”
“Like the way she wanted Bill Ackerson.”
“Yes.”
“Were you surprised that she came up here for the funeral?”
“Yes and no. I just found out, when I got the e-mail.”
“Did you know him?”
“No. I’d just heard about him. Not even that much, because Grace knew I disapproved. Then she called at the end of last week to tell me that he’d died.”
“You said your sister was impulsive. Any history of violence, any outbursts, any mental health diagnoses?”
Caitlin shook her head no.
“How intense do you think Grace’s relationship with Bill was?”
“She was in love with him,” Caitlin said.
The detective pushed the box of Kleenex closer to Caitlin. She took a tissue, realizing there were tears on her cheeks. “Can I keep you here just a little bit longer?” the detective continued.
“I guess.”
“I want to ask you some general questions about your family and Grace’s friends. Maybe this had nothing at all to do with Bill Ackerson.”
Caitlin didn’t get back to her room at the Sea Mist Motel until late that afternoon. She sat on top of the shiny bedcover and reread Grace’s last e-mail, then she listened to the three messages she’d gotten from her mother since she’d last checked her phone. She knew she needed to get back to her, to confirm what they’d already known, that the body was indeed Grace’s.
She braced herself and made the call.
“Caitlin?”
“It was her, Mom. It was Gracie.”
They both cried together on the phone, then once Caitlin had confirmed that her mother wasn’t alone—Patrick was there, like he always was, and her mother’s sister, Aunt Nan, was coming over later—Caitlin felt better about beginning the process of ending the phone call.
“Mom,” she asked. “Can you have Patrick call Dad? I don’t think I’m up to it.”
“Yes, of course. Patrick can do it. You’ve done enough, Caitlin. I should have been out there with you.”
“No, there’s no reason for you to be here. I’m fine. Well, I’m not fine, but you know . . .”
“Did the police say anything else? Do they know who did this?”
Caitlin told her what she’d found out, but left out for now that Grace had been up in Maine for close to a week without letting anyone know. She’d already told her mother earlier about Grace’s involvement with Bill Ackerson, a much older married man. Her mother’s response had been expected: “I blame your father.”
They talked some more, Caitlin ensuring her mother that she would find out when the body was going to be released—she’d forgotten to ask—and how to make arrangements to bring Grace back to Ann Arbor.
“I’ll call you later tonight, Mom, okay? I’m exhausted and going to try and get some sleep.”
“Okay. Don’t go out alone. I still wish Dan was up there with you.”
“I’ll be fine. Have Patrick call Dad.”
They said good-bye, then Caitlin lay back on the bed. The air-conditioning unit in the window kicked up a notch, and the sound jolted her. She sat up again. As she always did when she was overwhelmed, she made a quick mental list of what needed to be done and in what order. Find out when they would be done with Grace’s body. Arrange for the body to be transported to McLellan’s Funeral Home in Ann Arbor (she had their number on her phone). Call Maria at work and tell her she’d be away for at least a week. Fly back to Ann Arbor herself.
And once she was there, she could finally tell her mom that Dan and she were no longer together, hadn’t been for about three weeks. Her mom, who loved Dan and referred to him as her daughter’s “fiancé” even though he never was, was going to be crushed. Or maybe it wouldn’t bother her, because of what had happened with Grace. But she didn’t believe that. She knew how her mom’s mind worked, and it was a moment of tragedy, and that meant all hands on deck, and Dan’s not being around was going to be a problem. The other problem, of course, was going to be her father. He would have to go to the funeral, of course, and her mother would just have to ignore him. She just hoped that her father would be decent enough to come to the funeral alone, and not bring his new wife and her three children.
He’d left fourteen years ago, the day after Christmas. Until that moment, Mike and Carol (yep, the parents’ names on The Brady Bunch) had been together since high school, staying faithful all through college, even though Mike had gone to the University of Michigan while Carol went to Barnard in New York City. They got married a week after they had both graduated. They had three children in two years: the twin girls, then Patrick. There were no more children after that, and Grace and Caitlin had often speculated on how their parents had managed to find a Church-approved method of birth control that actually worked.
Then there was that day after Christmas when Mike called the family together, told them that he was leaving to be with Angela Hernandez, a widow who had three children of her own. He left with one bag of clothes, plus his golf clubs. Caitlin and Grace had just turned eleven, and they had opposite reactions to the sudden decampment. Caitlin had made a silent list of what needed to be done, dedicating herself to helping her mother and her siblings get through the ordeal. Grace had gotten mad, at one point sneaking out of their house late at night and bicycling to their dad’s new home to throw rocks through their windows. That was why Carol blamed her ex-husband for all of Grace’s outbursts and bad relationships, in particular any relationship she had with a man older than she was. Truth was, there’d been a few, but Caitlin, as much as she blamed her father for many things, tended to think that Grace’s personality had been formed long before the Christmas when their father had left home.