“We should go,” Alice said. “She’s waiting for us.”
Randy put the car in drive and we headed out of the lot, down a narrow road piled high with snow. Mary Rae’s house was a white Cape with a detached garage. The picture window in front was lit by a lamp, and as we pulled into the driveway a woman rose from a couch and her shadow moved toward the front door. In each of the house’s windows was a candle with an electric bulb flame, a bit of holly wrapped around the brass holder.
“In colonial times they used to put candles in the windows when a family member was away,” I said.
“That’s so sad,” Alice said.
We were drunk and stoned, and climbing out of the car Alice slipped on the ice and fell, with a loud whoop, into a snowbank. By the time we got her up, Mrs. Swindal was at the storm door, her face in its makeup like a mask.
“Are you all right?” she called out.
Randy was stumbling up the path, and Del and I had Alice under both arms, all of us trying not to laugh. Mrs. Swindal held the door open and we stepped into her warm house, into the living-room lamplight, our footsteps muffled by beige carpet.
“Take your shoes off,” Mrs. Swindal said, sounding resigned.
How irresponsible we were being—showing up at this woman’s door smelling of brandy and pot, our boots bringing ice and snow into her clean house. I looked up at her to apologize and saw how much she resembled Mary Rae—her eyes, her hair, the shape of her mouth—all of it surprised me, as if Mary Rae had opened the door herself.
“What is it?” she asked me, concerned. She reached a hand out to touch my arm.
I shrugged off my coat.
Alice was crying now, wiping her eyes with her mittens, and Mrs. Swindal shifted her attention to her and asked us all to give her our coats.
“We’re drunk,” Alice said. “We’re sorry.”
Mrs. Swindal patted Alice’s head and offered us coffee.
We sat in the living room, Alice and I perched awkwardly on the Swindals’ reproduction Louis XIV armchairs, Del and Randy on a deacon’s bench. The house was filled with reproduction antiques—fussy things that seemed easily breakable, the windows hung with sheers and heavy drapes. Mrs. Swindal brought in the coffee and sugar and cream.
“Mary Rae used to decorate the house at Christmas,” she said to us, as if she felt the need to explain the absence of a tree, of windup decorative Santas and ceramic snowman figurines.
She told us to take our time and offered us food—there was so much food, she said, distractedly. Then whenever we were ready we could go up to Mary Rae’s room and have a look at the clothes.
“I’ve already taken what I want,” she said. “Her old Raggedy Ann doll. And her report cards. That sort of thing.”
She eyed Alice and then looked down at her hands. “She’s got shoe boxes of stuff—notes to friends—from high school, you know. I read it all last winter, thinking I could find some clues about where she might be. I gave it all to the detectives, but they brought it back, said it wasn’t any use to them, they already talked to everyone.”
Alice stared at Mrs. Swindal, wondering, maybe, what the woman had read, whether Mary Rae had written about the abortion the Milton girls had mentioned that day at Anne’s, or other things that might have shocked Mrs. Swindal about her daughter, about all of them. But the woman seemed calm. Medicated.
“I’m just going to go lie down,” she said now. “I get so tired lately.” She stood, and told us to let ourselves out after. Then she disappeared through a doorway, and we all eyed one another.
Del stood first. “Well, where’s her room?” she asked Alice.
Alice seemed unsure, her eyes filling with unshed tears, her nose red. “What are we doing?” she hissed. “This isn’t right.”
Randy had kicked his legs out in front of him and closed his eyes. He’d taken off his cowboy boots, and his sock was misshapen where his toes should have been.
“I like her idea of a nap,” he said, softly.
I sensed then that this visit was about something more than picking through Mary Rae’s hand-me-downs. “What is going on, Del?” I said.
She stood on the stairs, clinging to the banister. “We’re going to figure out what happened to her,” she said. “Alice says she kept journals. They’re hidden somewhere in her room.”
Alice’s face seemed drawn; she looked as exhausted as Mrs. Swindal. “I’m not sure about this,” she said.
“Alice said she was seeing someone,” Del said. “She wouldn’t tell anyone who it was.”
I rose from my chair. “Did you tell Officer Paul?”
Alice shook her head no. “Anne told us not to,” she said.