The Last September: A Novel

“Leave her alone,” Daniel said. By now I was in the upstairs hall, but his voice was sharp enough that I could hear it. “You can’t know what she’s going through.”


I closed the door behind me, wishing it had a lock. Ladd was going through something, too. I’d seen it on his face, beyond what had happened, beyond concern for me. Regret, washing over his every movement. But I couldn’t worry about that, only about what had happened, and who remained out there, in the world, waiting to be caught.

CHARLIE WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN working on the back deck anymore when Eli arrived. Probably he was in the kitchen, stirring. He had this ability to stand over the stove, endlessly tending, steam rising up around him. It might have been where he felt happiest. What did he think about, staring into the pot? Lost in dreams of spices and temperature? Or was the concentration less complete than it sometimes seemed? Was there room, perhaps, for thoughts of me?

Eli will be here any minute. Maybe when Eli showed up, Charlie was upstairs, composing his email. Maybe he meant to write more but heard Eli’s tires in the driveway and hastily typed Love, Charlie. Then walked downstairs to tell Eli he had to leave in the morning.

Once at a dinner party I heard Charlie trying to explain unmedicated Eli to a friend. “It’s not that the logic doesn’t add up,” Charlie said. “It’s that logic doesn’t exist at all. Two plus two doesn’t equal five. Two plus two equals motorcycle.”

If I pictured anybody else killing Charlie, the thought seemed crazy. But I was familiar enough with crazy to go ahead and think it anyway.

THE DAY AFTER MY birthday, I let myself into the Moss house. A home that’s been uninhabited for days and then weeks: the silence piles up on itself from one hour to the next.

“Eli?” I called, and then stopped to listen for footsteps, or a returning voice. I stepped as quietly as I could through the rooms, peering under every bed, looking in every closet.

Downstairs in the living room, photo albums jammed the bottom shelf of the bookcase. I pulled out the fattest one and leafed through it, the plastic covers on each page curling, the sticky backings striped an ancient umber. When Charlie’s mother was dying, he and I had sat together on this very couch, him pointing out his favorites, like the one of two wiry blond boys, one with curls, both with round blue eyes and smiles that twitched the right side of their mouths, before expanding, brightening their entire faces. After that night on the roof, I never saw Eli smile like this again. But Charlie—thousands of times, maybe even millions.