The Last September: A Novel

“After you,” I said.

AS I TRAVELED IN the dark behind Eli, it was impossible to imagine the sun would ever rise. Words from his stream floated back to me in a paranoid staccato. Lightfoot trotted along cheerfully, overjoyed by the midnight outing and the reunion. Out here on the rocks, under the sky that hung low around us, we were surrounded by the detritus of animals that had met timely or untimely ends. Withering skates, and the abandoned husks of horseshoe crabs. Tiny snails crunching beneath our feet as we stepped, and for a moment the oppressive scent of a seal carcass, battered by the tide and sun, now seeping into the air. Eli didn’t seem to register any of it. He kept his shoulders hunched, his voice low and persistent. I had the feeling I could take him by the shoulders and point him in any direction, and he would just maintain this posture, muttering and walking forward like a windup toy.

All I held as fact were the sand and rocks and debris beneath my feet. The sky above my head, and the ocean traveling its way all those thousands of miles east. A million worlds surrounded me, and the only one I cared to know occurred weeks ago, less than a mile in the direction we now headed. What happened? Maybe if I listened hard enough, the answers would spill out from Eli. Maybe they already had, in some nonsequential order, and I’d missed them.

By now, we’d crossed over the rocks and alighted on a clear stretch of sand. Eli stopped—not just moving but talking. It startled me, the sudden cessation of that voice. He turned toward the water, staring out toward the tide, and I stopped walking, too.

“Brett?” he called in a long and questioning syllable. As if he couldn’t see me through what little darkness stood between us.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m right here.”

And then the words started spilling out again. Words that peppered and repeated. Important words like Charlie and blood, and my own name, jumbled together with enough other words that I couldn’t begin to put them all together.

“Eli.” I walked forward, right next to him, and put my hand on his shoulder. He jerked his head sideways, toward me, and shrugged my hand away.

“Brett,” he said, his voice newly sharp and clear.

Just behind him I could see the roof of his house rising above the bluff. I stepped back to give him room. This would happen sometimes. A break in the stream. Moments of conversation, like logic had broken through the flood. It wouldn’t last long. Above us, the slightest shift in the dark sky, the fading of stars, a hint toward gathering light. I needed to get him inside before morning.

“Why did you kill Charlie?” Eli asked.

“Me?” I pointed to my chest, feeling a flood of relief. Finally someone was accusing me of the thing I had done. And here we stood, out on the beach alone, nobody in the world even knowing enough to look for us or to worry about me. Sarah lay sleeping, safe upstairs, far down the beach. Would Daniel keep her if I never came home?

“Eli,” I said. “Let’s go up to the house.” And then, thinking he must have some sense of being pursued to have remained undiscovered so long, I added, “We can hide there.”

He nodded and ducked his head, then brushed past me. I followed him up the stairs and across the lawn. He marched straight to the deck, bypassing the low stairs to step directly onto it, then put his hands on his hips, surveying. I stopped on the lawn. In the days since I’d last been there, someone had started to rebuild the deck. To the north lay a pile of the discarded boards, dark gray, replaced by fresh slats, their pale brown color visible even in the darkness, the scent of fresh wood settling around us. Eli stopped at the precise spot Charlie had fallen. He knelt and pressed his hand to the boards.