“The memories should be happy, but they’re tainted by all that came after. The breakup of my family, Dan’s death, then Madeleine’s and Howell’s.”
“What happened to Rabble Point?”
“The cottages were always on land the families leased from Howell’s father. He decided not to renew our leases, which meant he had to buy back the cottages at market rates, which he was easily able to do. They were never worth much anyway, because we didn’t own the land. Once he’d bought them all back, he knocked them down and carted away the debris.”
“Why did he do that? Did it have anything to do with Howell and Madeleine’s deaths?”
“Maybe. Probably. It happened right after. Or maybe he wanted to improve his view. I don’t know what was in his mind.”
“But you bought this house from him,” I said.
She didn’t seem surprised I’d figured out her home was once the Lowes’. “Not from him. He died that summer, six months after his son. We bought the property from a trust ten years later. We never dealt with anyone but the lawyers. The house was so neglected. The poor thing was in a losing battle with the Atlantic Ocean.”
I knew what she meant. My mother’s house wasn’t on a point like this one, but even in the more protected harbor, she had one side of it painted every year in a regular rotation, like the Golden Gate Bridge.
“I couldn’t let this house go to ruin. Since I’d been a child, I’d loved its beautiful bones. I think it’s the reason I fell in love with old architecture and became a designer.” She paused, staring into her mug. “And maybe, a part of me was nostalgic for Rabble Point too. Like Caroline.”
“And you didn’t recognize the others that night in the restaurant?”
“I did. Or some of them. Caroline looks exactly the same, doesn’t she? And Sheila. Michael looks older, but he’s still so handsome, with that white mane of hair. It took me a while to recognize Fran and Barry Walker. They’ve both aged so badly, and I didn’t know they were together. Once in a while, I would hear something about the others through mutual friends, but Fran and Barry had fallen off the radar completely.” She shifted on her stool. “Since we were all clearly trapped in your restaurant, the only polite thing to do was to make small talk, but I have to tell you, I never hoped or wanted to see any of those people again.”
“If Caroline wasn’t concerned about your reaction to the photo because of seeing Dan, why didn’t she want you to see it?”
Deborah pointed to herself in the picture. “Do you see me here? I was beautiful. I didn’t appreciate it then, but I knew how others reacted. I had no idea how fleeting it would be.” She swallowed hard, and her eyes glowed with unwept tears. She looked away from me but kept talking. “In 1980, I was in a car accident. I was driving. I had my seat belt on, but it wasn’t latched properly and I was thrown through the windshield, ejected from the car.” She looked back at me. “It’s taken ten excruciating surgeries for me to look as I do now. Have you noticed, there are no old photos in this house, none from before my accident?”
I thought about the tour of the house she’d given me the day before. There were photos everywhere, arranged on tables and bookshelves. But they were almost entirely of her boys, their graduations, their weddings, candid and formal shots of their little children. Nothing old. Certainly nothing from before 1980. And of the portraits Phil Bennett had painted that hung all over the house, not one was of his wife. At any age.
“Everyone is terrified for me to see what I used to look like, to understand what I’ve lost. But I would have lost my looks by now anyway. I’m grateful for the face my surgeons were able to give me. Unlike Dan, Madeleine, and Howell, I got to raise a family, pursue a profession, travel the world, see thousands of beautiful sunrises and thousands of starry nights. Phil and I have had a lucky, lucky life. We really have.”
I could tell she meant what she said. She and Phil did seem to have a lucky life. They’d been blessed with family and buckets of money—and all that it could provide.
Did that make up for the loss of her beauty? Deborah had lived her life as if it did.
We finished our cocoa and she saw me to the door. I was grateful to get out before Phil returned.
Chapter 18
While I was on a roll, I shrugged off Binder’s warning and drove back into town to the Fogged Inn. Caroline and Deborah had confirmed the identities of the people in the photo. There seemed to be no doubt as to who they were. But hearing recollections about the past might help me put the pieces together.
When I rang the bell, the door flew open so quickly, I was sure Sheila must have seen me approaching.
“It’s you,” she said.
“Can I come in?”