Alice’s gaze settled on the bay windows. “It’s staying light for so long these days,” she said. “Go for your walk.”
Outside, Harry exited the driveway and turned left onto York Street, walking down toward the few businesses that comprised Kennewick Village. His father’s store was flanked by a florist and an ice cream shop; all three shared a single-story brick building that had once been a lumber mill. Harry looked through the tinted plate-glass window stenciled with the words ackerson’s rare books. It was dark inside—no John Richards, his father’s elderly assistant—but there was enough light to see that the interior was cluttered with too much stock, stacks of books lining the edges of filled shelves. A flicker of movement made Harry jump. It was Lew, a Maine coon that lived in the store. Lew leapt onto the window’s display case, dipping his head and rubbing his tufted ears against a first edition of Peyton Place. Harry hoped the cat hadn’t been entirely forgotten since his father’s death. He’d ask Alice about it later.
Harry walked east, passing in front of the Cumberland Farms convenience store, then took the Old Post Road toward Kennewick Beach. He knew he was walking along the same route his father had most likely taken to get down to the cliff walk, but it was the direction he felt compelled to go, toward the ocean. He hadn’t yet decided whether he wanted to walk along the footpath and see if there was any sign of where his father had fallen. For now, he just wanted to move his legs, and be away from the house.
The Old Post Road took Harry to Sohier Road. Kennewick comprised four distinct sections. There was Kennewick Center, now mainly dispersed along Route 1A; Kennewick Village, with the town’s oldest buildings; Kennewick Beach, with its affordable rentals and campsite; and Kennewick Harbor, the most exclusive section of Kennewick, studded with weathered mansions and the two biggest resort hotels.
Harry stayed on Sohier Road and reached the three-quarter-mile beach, flanked by Micmac Road, metered parking along the narrow strip of sidewalk. The beach itself was half sandy and half rock strewn, expansive at low tide, but reduced to a sliver when the tide was high. He walked along the sidewalk and found the grey-shingled rental that his father and he had rented for an entire month the summer his father decided to open up another store in Maine. It looked empty now, but it was early in the season. Only some of the rentals had cars in front of them, and the beach was almost abandoned. There was one walker, a woman in a hoodie striding along the sidewalk that lined the beach, and one rock collector, idling along the tide line, occasionally crouching to pick up a find. It was a slack tide, the water as still and glassy as Harry had ever seen it. A truck rumbled by, its inhabitant glancing at Harry from underneath a sun-bleached Sea Dogs cap.
He decided he’d walk all the way up to the Buxton Point Lighthouse. He kept thinking about that summer with his father, how he’d spent so much time with Alice Moss, the Realtor showing him commercial properties in the area. Harry had liked the idea of his father opening a new store, of taking the chance to leave New York City and settle closer to where he’d grown up. And he’d liked Alice. She was low-key for a Realtor, not flashy or loud. She might have been blond and leggy, but she didn’t wear too much makeup, she didn’t drive a white Lexus, and her fingernails were unvarnished and cut short. These weren’t necessarily attributes that Harry had noticed, but his father had, and he’d mentioned them on a number of occasions. In retrospect, it was clear that his father had already fallen hard for Alice Moss and was testing the waters with his son, nervous that Harry might not approve. It was only at the end of the summer, after they had packed up and were driving back to New York City so that Harry could start his senior year of high school, that Bill confessed his relationship with Alice had become romantic.
“I’m happy for you, Dad. I like Alice.”
His father’s relief was palpable. His shoulders relaxed, and he began to talk about Alice, how much they had in common, having both lost parents when they were young, and how they both felt left behind in this new, modern world.
Harry really did feel okay about his father seeing Alice, but in October, she came down to New York to visit, and her presence in their apartment, the apartment that was still filled with so many of his mother’s things, unnerved him. Alice was giddy, expressing to Harry several times how much it meant to her that he had given his blessing. The first time she said it, she followed up by hugging Harry, even kissing him on his cheek, and whispering “My darling boy” in his ear. The kiss, and the feel of her breath in his ear, caused Harry to involuntarily shudder and tense, and Alice broke the hug, clearly embarrassed. Harry retreated to his bedroom, and tried to forget the awkward moment, but it wasn’t easy. He could feel the softness of her waist in his hands, and the lingering sound of her voice in his ear. It had been nice but awkward at the same time. Down deep, he felt a revulsion that he was sexually attracted to a woman that his father was also attracted to. It felt unnatural, but the more he tried to push the images from his mind, the more they held strong.
Harry was suddenly out on Buxton Point, on the outskirts of the parking lot that surrounded the white lighthouse topped with red, now a historic landmark and Kennewick’s only major tourist attraction. He circled, going around the keeper’s house, and started back toward Kennewick Beach. He’d been walking for well over an hour, the sun now low enough in the sky that it was casting long shadows along the beach. Even so, he made the sudden decision to walk all the way to Kennewick Harbor along the cliff walk. He would have to do it sooner or later, and he needed to see if there was any sign of his father, and what had happened to him, along the path.
Harry stayed on Micmac Road, heading south. Once he’d cleared the beach, Micmac began to curve and twist, with sporadic views out over the bluff toward the ocean. The house lots were wider, the houses bigger, most of them old, but there were new mansions here and there, including one monstrosity that looked more like a hotel than a house.
He had to double back but Harry found the path through the scrubby pine that led to the northern start of the cliff walk. It seemed narrower than he remembered, rose hip and winterberry bushes scraping at his legs, and he wondered if anyone used it anymore. Maybe the path was on private land now, the owners hoping it would be forgotten. Still, it took him out to the cliff walk, with its view along the rocky shore to the half-moon beach of the harbor. This was his father’s usual walk, and the one he ended his life on. Harry walked a quarter mile, slowly, scanning for any sign of where, exactly, his father had fallen. He wondered if there might be police tape at the scene, then dismissed the idea. It wasn’t a crime scene. It had been an accident. He took a break and sat on one of the wooden benches along the path. There was a small metal plaque on the bench saying that it was given in memory of Blanche Audet, who had died in 1981. Harry stared out toward the ocean, and thought of how many times his father must have taken this very walk, and wondered if he’d ever sat on this bench. The view was beautiful, but there was something bleak about staring out to the ocean, as well. All that crushing, grey water that had never changed and never would. Except for the new resort hotel on the far edge of Kennewick Harbor Beach, this view must have looked the same to Blanche Audet, and whoever was here before Blanche, and whoever was here long before this path was carved out of the rock.