“Rain?” Her mother’s voice floated down the stairs.
It’s private, okay? She thought about what Dr. Mallory had said about secrets. Good ones. What did she call them? Benign ones. And harmful ones. Ones kept for the right reasons and ones kept for the wrong reasons. She wondered what kind her brother had.
“Rain?” her mother called again.
She thought of a game she and Lucy used to play when they were much younger. They would close their eyes and pretend to be invisible. She wished she could be invisible now. Just disappear. For the first time in days, she thought about the razor taped to the bottom of her bureau drawer. She climbed the stairs, stopping at the top to look back one last time at her brother’s locked door.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I did not hesitate.
It was as if I had been sleepwalking all summer and now had been shocked awake. My mind was clear, clearer than it had been in months with no doubt or indecision. Looking back now from this distance it seems like insanity, and I suppose in a way it was, but that day it seemed reasoned. I never thought of the consequences as I walked to the shed and retrieved the gun. Soon one year would have passed since the day Lucy left the house for school never to come home, leaving a hole that couldn’t be filled. The abyss. Like a vital organ that had been removed from the center of my being—a crater occupying the center and one, I knew, that would soon grow larger. The weapon was where I had hidden it in the paint can in the shed.
There was a line at the takeout window at the creamery. Even now, and in spite of all that was to come, I remember that clearly. The line at the window that snaked along the front of the building. Off to the side of the lot, families gathered at the several picnic benches placed on the grass: a family of five; a mother with a double-wide stroller that held twins; a father wiping melted ice cream from his young daughter’s chin. Families, I thought. The word was a bitterness on my tongue, as was the knowledge that my family was forever gone, taken from me in one evil act. I shut off the engine and waited, watched and waited. I didn’t allow myself to think. To think of Sophie at that moment, of the days we had just spent, that last night of love, would weaken me. And to consider the future, the consequences of what I had to do didn’t bear thinking of. There was only the present. Only what I had to do. Minutes passed. An hour. Cars came and went around me. Finally the door opened, and the boy in yellow high-tops walked out. I rolled down the window and called.
He turned, came toward my car. “Hi, Mr. Light.”
“Hi, Duane.” Purple-tinged shadows rimmed his eyes, as if he had not slept. Or was ill. “Hop in.”
Duane set his hand on the passenger-side handle, hesitated only a minute. Had Lucy hesitated that final day? Had she sensed anything wrong?
“Come on. Hop in. I’ll give you a ride.”
He opened the door. So unsuspecting. Trusting. Just as Lucy had trusted.
I drove down Main Street, along the way to the harbor and my studio, Duane slouched in the seat beside me. “Where are we heading?” he asked as I drove past the studio barn.
I didn’t answer. I drove on, on to Dogtown, to the woods where my daughter had been killed, her body left to decay. Murder is rage turned outward, Sophie had said over the weekend. Just one day ago. Another lifetime ago. When I had still believed it was possible to go on. I was relieved to see there were no other cars in the parking lot, an unpaved square carpeted with pine needles. I switched off the engine.
“So I understand you told the police that Lucy gave you her Yoda,” I said. The boy shot me a look, and I saw the guilt in his eyes and any last doubt disappeared. “I was wondering why she would do that. Why would she do that, Duane?”
“I don’t know.”
“She loved it. Her mother gave it to her. Did she tell you that?” In the distance a dog barked. I wondered if someone else was in the woods. I remembered that it had been a person walking his dog who had found Lucy. “So I’m just wondering why she would give it to you.”
The boy stared down at his sneakers. The top of one was smudged with chocolate. “For strength,” he said after a minute. “She said it would give me strength.”
The sun had disappeared behind a cloud, and the smell of peat, of decay floated through the car window. The last earthly odor Lucy would have smelled. “Why? I need to know why.”
“Why she thought I needed strength?”
“Yes.” The gun was heavy in my pocket. I was calmer than you would ever imagine you could be, the calmness born of certainty of what I must do. What are we capable of? I had wondered that back in the spring when I’d first looked at the paintings of the saints in Father Gervase’s book. What, I had mused, if tested, what would I be capable of?
“I just want to know what Lucy ever did to you?”
“Did to me? Nothing. Nothing. I swear.”
It was satisfying to hear the fear in the boy’s voice.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Everyone has secrets.
Rain collapsed on her bed and tried to figure out what to do. She’d made a promise to Lucy she wouldn’t tell anyone that she had gone for a ride with Jared Phillips. It had seemed harmless enough when she made the promise. (They had been in her bedroom, sprawled on the bed and idly making plans for the weekend with no idea of what that weekend would hold.) After Lucy was killed, she’d continued to keep the secret because she didn’t want to upset Mr. and Mrs. Light any more by letting them know Lucy had ridden in Jared’s car when she wasn’t supposed to. Now it didn’t seem so clear. She didn’t think it was really important. It wasn’t like Jared had anything to do with Lucy’s disappearance any more than Duane did. He was vice president of the student council for God’s sake, and wasn’t that a sign he had totally changed from the reckless boy who had been responsible for the deadly accident? But still the burden of the secret was heavy. Maybe if she told now, there would be one less secret to weigh on her and, it occurred to her, it would also deflect some of the attention from Duane. Rain fastened her eyes on the stain in the ceiling as if the answer could be found there. Won’t you let me try to help? Dr. Mallory’s words echoed, but Rain didn’t see how she could help. She traced the brown sprawl of stain that ran from the corner above the window in toward the light fixture, the result of an ice dam over the winter. The icicles hanging from the gutter had seemed harmless (like secrets) until water leaked through her ceiling. Won’t you let me try to help? It took a minute to find the card, and she let another few minutes pass before she keyed the number on her cell.
“Hello?”
“Dr. Mallory?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Rain.”
“Hello, Rain.”
“I was wondering if—”