The Last September: A Novel

Daniel didn’t seem to mind the lack of clarity. He just said, “Thank you.”


“And now,” I said. “Don’t you have to go back? To Boston, and your job?”

I had no idea what he did for work. Something to do with banks. All the men’s work in Ladd’s family had something to do with banks. Probably one day soon, after he was finished with English degrees and travels, Ladd would give up and go to work in a bank. I wondered where he was now, what he was having for dinner. If he was angry with me for showing up here, when I had told him so firmly to stay away.

“I can work from here,” Daniel said. “Often I stay late into the fall, through the end of October.”

I knew from what Mrs. Duffy had said this wasn’t true, but I didn’t say anything. Maybe he was doing this for Charlie and, by association, Sylvia. Maybe he was doing it for Ladd. It didn’t matter, I just clung to the offered harbor, calculating in my mind the time this would buy me, if Daniel let me stay. Time to do what, I still wasn’t sure. Figure out what to do next. Go back to Amherst? I couldn’t see how I could possibly leave before Eli was found. Charlie wouldn’t have left before Eli was found.

“It’s the best time here,” Daniel said. “The fall.”

“That’s what Charlie always says. Said.”

Daniel nodded. For a moment I waited for tears to come to my eyes. It would be a good time, here in the safety of Daniel’s gaze, with such a sympathetic audience. A torrent of tears, a good session of sobbing. The way I had in this very house when my mother died. The way I had when I thought my marriage was over. The way Deirdre had been crying at the funeral and—from the looks of her—for days before. A few years ago, here in Saturday Cove, Charlie and I had visited an old friend of his after her sister had died unexpectedly in a boating accident. Keening, that would have been the only way to describe how his friend had wept, bereft and shaking. The way I should have been, this past week, more than a week now, since I found Charlie. I should have been shaking and sobbing and keening to the rafters. But so far, I only moved in circles. Expecting tears was like expecting Charlie to walk through the door. It always seemed like it might happen at any moment, but it never did.

OUR ROOM WAS JUST above Daniel’s. When I lay down, stroking Sarah’s curly head, I could hear him through the old floorboards, moving around, water turning on and off, drawers opening and closing. He sounded fastidious and graceful, a routine that had been performed a thousand times in exactly the same order. Lying awake, staring at the beams above the bed, I listened to Sarah’s soft breath, my hand resting on the rise and fall of her chest. And I imagined I could hear Daniel’s breath, too, from the room below.