I focus my eyes and realize that we’re passing 7 Ocean Drive, the Murder House. The crime-scene tape has been removed, but the Gothic monstrosity has no trouble looking creepy all by itself. It brings back everything in a rush, my meddling at the crime scene, my argument with Lang, resulting in my thirty-day suspension.
We were never the same after he dinged me. I was sent off to the narcotics task force assignment, and I saw him only sparingly after that. I turned down several offers to get together, for dinner or drinks or an afternoon at the beach. I was resentful. I wanted to punish him. And now he’s gone, and I’d do anything to have those weeks back. I’d tell him how much I love him, how he saved my life so many times, in so many different ways.
We arrive at the beach. Chloe lets out a satisfied sigh. Behind her, the beachfront homes stand in marked contrast to the cedar-shingled houses along Ocean Drive. They are gigantic, modern, concrete structures with oversize windows and sharp angles.
“Can I say something to you, sweetheart?”
I take her hand. “Anything.”
The breeze plays with the bangs on Chloe’s forehead. “Have you thought about going back to Manhattan now?”
I squat down, scoop up a handful of sand, weigh it in my hand. There is an inch-long scar on the palm of my hand that I got—according to my mother—trying to chop a tomato when I was a little girl.
Little things like that, small memories that sting the most.
“Lang called me a couple of weeks ago,” she continues. “He said you were having nightmares every night. That you were drinking a lot, too, probably as a coping mechanism.”
I look up at her. “He said that?”
“He did. He was concerned. He was glad to have you close, of course. But he wasn’t sure this was the right thing for you anymore, working here.”
I pick up a shell and send it flying into the ocean. I squint into the wind, the wet mist.
Chloe squats down next to me. “All your life, you’ve taken care of everyone else,” she says. “When your father and Ryan died, your mother … Lydia was devastated. I know you were, too, but it always seemed like you were the one doing the consoling. And you were so young. You were, what, twelve?”
“Yes.” It was less than a month before my thirteenth birthday.
“I remember just a couple of days after they died, you were supposed to be in bed, and Lydia was crying and Lang was holding her. We were all on the couch. And you walked in. You’d been sleeping. Your hair was all matted and your eyes were sleepy and you were in your pajamas. You opened your arms as wide as they could go and you said, ‘Don’t worry, Mommy, I have enough love for all of them.’ Do you remember that?”
I wipe away a tear. I remember. I remember my mother looking like there was nothing left in the world for her.
“Well.” Chloe rubs my arm. “Maybe it’s time you took better care of yourself. Go home, Jenna. Your best friends are there. Matty’s there. What’s left here?”
I stand straight as the wind off the ocean kicks up. I look back at the oceanfront housing, at the endless stretch of beach. This isn’t my home. It never will be. But it holds one thing for me that no other place in the world does.
“This is the only place I can be a cop,” I say.
22
THE ROOM LOOKS more like a maximum-security prison than a court of law. The number of sheriff’s deputies has doubled, virtually lining the walls of the courtroom, beefy security guards with jumpy eyes, armed with handguns and cuffs and Tasers. The tension in the room has raised the temperature to something between stuffy and downright unbearable.
As we wait for the judge, I scroll through photos on my iPhone. Nearly all of the recent ones include Lang: in his ridiculous polka-dot swimsuit at the beach; flipping burgers on his Smokey Joe in his backyard, chomping on a cigar; asleep on his lawn chair, his wife-beater T-shirt creeping up to reveal his added poundage (a photo I often used when arguing about his diet). Silly shots, all of them, but so dear to me now, those little things, those frivolous moments that mean so much in hindsight.
And then, amid these pictures, the one from the lawn on 7 Ocean Drive, that crest with that hook-beaked bird, that insipid creature that has taken up permanent residence in my daily nightmares. What’s with that stupid bird?
We all rise; then a collective hush falls over the room as the Honorable Robert Barnett, a handsome and deadly serious judge, assumes the bench. “We are back on the record in People versus Noah Lee Walker,” he says dryly. “For the record, the court has stood in recess for the last week. Six days ago, the next witness scheduled to testify, Southampton Town Police Department chief Langdon James, was attacked in his home and later died of his injuries. The court granted a recess at the prosecution’s request.”