The Last September: A Novel

Sarah’s hand traveled from the glass to rest on the top of Lightfoot’s tiny black head. My fingertips lingered on the frame. This house, without insulation, was meant for summer habitation, the walls and floorboards mere partitions. Sound carried so easily. I could hear Daniel talking on the phone in his study.

“It’s preposterous,” he said now. “We’re talking about one man, who can’t string a coherent sentence together. How can it be that he’s still at large?”

A moment later, Daniel called to me from his study. I walked down the hall. The door was open, and he sat at his desk. “Come in,” he said, gesturing at the chair opposite him as if I’d arrived for a business meeting. Sitting down, I noticed another framed picture of Sylvia, perched on the desk.

“I’m going into Boston,” Daniel said, “to meet with a private investigator. The police obviously aren’t accomplishing anything. This guy will look for Eli full-time. Then you can get on with your life.”

I nodded, wondering what that would entail. Returning to Amherst and finishing my dissertation? Applying for teaching jobs? Or staying here, with Daniel? I pictured an eternity within these walls, on this beach, traveling back and forth between the two houses, never venturing beyond appointed ground.

“I’m going to spend the night there,” Daniel said, “and take care of some business I’ve been neglecting. Mrs. Duffy can stay here at the house if you’re not comfortable being alone. Or Ladd can.”

Was it my imagination, or was this last offer a test, some faint challenge in the moment before he blinked? “No,” I said. “We’ll be fine.” And then, picturing the empty house, just me and Sarah, I amended. “Maybe, if Mrs. Duffy doesn’t mind staying, that would be better.”

It didn’t occur to me until after he’d driven away that I should have thanked him. In these last, long days I’d come to accept everything he did for me as a matter of course.

SARAH AND I WERE downstairs watching Blue’s Clues when I heard a car pull into the driveway. Sarah sat on my lap, damp blonde curls tickling my chin, her hands resting on mine as she stared intently at the TV. The door banged open awkwardly, and in walked Ladd carrying a large cardboard box. He dropped it in the doorway between the foyer and the living room. The top flaps yawned open, revealing a mound of clothes, and instantly I recognized the collar of a white linen shirt. I put Sarah on the couch beside me, then got up and walked toward the box and knelt beside it, opened the flaps still wider.

“Daniel said you wanted his clothes,” Ladd said. “I figured I better go by there and get them before they start clearing the place out.”

I didn’t think to ask how he got in. The clothes, such basic day-to-day items only a few weeks ago, felt like remnants from a long lost time. They weren’t carefully folded or neatly stacked. Instead they lay in a tumble, as if they’d been grabbed from drawers and off of hangers, and thrown in carelessly. The way Charlie himself would have packed them.

Charlie! A scent that had been lost to me these many days rose from the box: of sandalwood and garlic and rosemary and sawdust. I plunged my arms into the box, cradling the garments, each sleeve and pant leg and button delivering a particular image, a particular day. There were the scrubs they’d given him at the hospital when Sarah was born. His Aran sweater, the one my mother sent him, itchy and damp with lanolin, his face across the table, ladling out Portuguese fish stew. For the first time, I realized that I didn’t have his wedding ring, which was also my father’s wedding ring.

Sarah slid off the couch and walked over to inspect the box herself. She pulled out an old Herring Run T-shirt worn to silken thinness, with a fine line of holes stretching from one shoulder blade to the other. She examined it for a moment, then pressed it to her cheek like a security blanket. I heard Ladd retreat, closing the door behind him. I kept my face buried in the clothing and didn’t picture Ladd walking across the lawn, to the path between the scrub oaks, back to his cottage.