“It’s five o’clock.” She still couldn’t move. He seemed to understand, then, how much he was scaring her, and walked over, squeezing through a rolled-back panel in the fencing, where she immediately hugged him hard around the waist. “What were you doing out there?”
“Looking around.” He kissed the top of her head. She caught a hearty whiff of him: spearmint gum, fresh sweat, and booze, but not recent—hopefully none since this morning, Irish in his coffee while she was out of the room. “Hey, I got something for you.”
“It’s not a golf ball, is it?”
“Hey. You used to love that when you were little.” He took something from his pocket and pressed it into her palm.
She opened her fingers and saw a tiger-striped sea scallop shell, perfectly intact. “You found this out there?”
“Thought you’d want it for your collection.” The gesture almost made her forget that he hadn’t answered her question. “How was work?”
Memories of Tristan flickered by. “Typical. Doing stuff for rich people.”
“Sounds like we had the same day. How about I grill tonight? Got some burger half off at Godfrey’s.”
“Sure. But the grill needs gas.” He swore. “I can fry it up on the stovetop instead. Make pasta salad?” She was rewarded with a nod, half a smile. “Race you back.”
Dad made for the zero-turn. She ran to the Gator, already rolling before he even had the mower started. She kept him in her side-view mirror the whole way. Better to focus on that than on how her stomach had plummeted at the sight of him on that ledge, how everything she’d become so afraid of seemed encapsulated in that moment. Better than asking him the hard questions, the ones that really needed answering: When are you going to be okay? Were you thinking about them?
Dad’s Beetle Cat sailboat sat on the boat trailer in the front yard with a spray-painted For Sale sign leaning against it: $3,500 OBO. The original prices of $4,500, then $4,000, were blacked out. Dad stood with his back to it, hosing road dust off his battered pickup, the first Bud Light of the evening in his free hand.
It was the final ass-kicker in the whole ordeal, selling the boat. Dad had owned it since before she was born. When Pearl was a kid, sometimes they’d drop a line in the harbor on a Sunday—never with Mom, that wasn’t her thing. Her parents had so little in common it was amazing that she’d ever been conceived. So, it was Pearl and Dad, fishing buddies; poker buddies; throwing the ball around on warm evenings and tinkering with projects in the shed. Mom used to complain about feeling left out of their little club of two, but whenever she and Pearl tried mother-daughter stuff, it always ended in a fight; they just didn’t seem to speak the same language. When the divorce finally happened, Pearl was thirteen, and the judge had let her decide for herself who she wanted to live with. She was surprised he’d even had to ask. And Mom never forgave her. Why else would she have taken that job down in Kittery, almost a four-hour drive away?
Now a sedan drove down Abbott Street and slowed, checking out the Cat. Pearl sat up in her lawn chair. After a second, the driver accelerated again. Relaxing, Pearl pulled her feet back up to sit cross-legged and continued reading Sense and Sensibility on her tablet.
“Maybe I should knock the price back.” Dad popped the tab on Bud Light #2.
“It’s too low already.”
“Not if we want to unload the damn thing.” Dad’s profile was stony as he sprayed the mud flaps.
They didn’t want to, but they were drowning. The mailbox was crammed with notices from collection agencies; snail mail was the only way they could reach the Haskins household now that Dad had canceled his phone service, both to save money and escape the reporters begging for comment, to find out what he’d seen that night. Dad’s caretaking business, which kept them afloat during the off-season at the club, was bust. All because of the Garrisons, and what everyone in town was saying: it was Win Haskins’s fault. A few tips of the flask, and he’d let the wolf in the door.
The image brought back the memory of Tristan today, sitting close enough for her to add his brand of aftershave to her cache of Garrison knowledge. Pearl slouched down, closed out of her social media accounts—Mom was always trolling, hoping to catch her online; after their latest fight, it probably seemed the safest way to communicate—pulled up Google, and entered the familiar search criteria David Garrison family deaths with the sound of Mom’s old wind chimes pinging off each other in the background, miniature anchors.
Pearl had reread those first Mount Desert Islander and Ellsworth American articles countless times. She knew the photographs they’d run to the smallest detail, starting with the full-color spread of the Garrison house with a scorched hole in the roof, the blackened clapboards, the second-story east window a gaping hole into what had been the master bedroom. Firefighters were roaming around the front yard, their gear smudged with soot. The American headline read “Multimillionaire David Garrison, Three Family Members Killed in Tenney’s Harbor Blaze.”
The fire—cause undetermined at that time—had originated in David and Sloane’s bedroom, spreading down the second-floor hallway to where Cassidy and Joseph slept, and up through the ceiling to the attic level, which had been converted into a loft for Tristan when they bought the house three years ago. On the morning of December 24, David’s, Sloane’s, Cassidy’s, and Joseph’s bodies had all been transported to the county morgue; Tristan was unaccounted for.
Pearl straightened her spine. She’d woken up to an empty house that morning, and a message on her phone from Dad, received at three a.m. Something came up, be home as soon as I can. Turned out he’d been calling from the hospital ER, where he was receiving treatment for second-degree burns on his hands and lacerations from punching through window glass. She could still see the Christmas tree tinsel swaying with the throb of the furnace as she’d eaten breakfast, facing the front window so she could watch the street for him. Then Dad had called back, with the rest of the story.
“Garrison Blaze Ruled Arson, Multiple Homicide.” The next article was the first to use that family portrait, the one that would haunt the case to its current state of open, unsolved. Taken maybe two years ago, the photo showed the whole family wearing various ensembles of navy and white. The photographer must’ve told them not to smile.
Pearl’s phone went off and she jumped, answering without taking her eyes off Tristan’s face. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. It’s just that we’ve got way too much cake over here.” Reese chewed as he spoke.
She’d hoped he’d call; he always kept her in suspense until dusk. “Cake sounds good.” She watched Dad, now sitting on the front steps. She’d lost count of the Buds. “You could bring it over here.”
“Yeah, but then I’d have to move.” He waited. “Pe-arl, come on. I’m going to watch Evil Dead 2.”
Now that was fighting dirty. “Text you in a sec.” She hung up, turning the phone over in her hands.
“Reese?” Dad watched the sunset above the roofs of neighboring houses.
“Yeah. But I think I’ll stay in. The dishes—”
“I’ll do them. If you want to see your boyfriend, go ahead.”
“He’s not—”
“Whatever you call him. I can hold down the fort.”
But chances were, he couldn’t. Chances were, Dad would get to thinking, and there’d be nothing on TV, nothing to keep the walls from closing in, so he’d decide to drive down to the Tavern for a few. And she’d lose another little piece of him.
A text popped up from Reese: chain-saw hand just sayin
“I won’t be late. Promise.” Dad waved her off as she jogged up the steps past him. In the bathroom, she combed her hair (no visible change) and spritzed on the tiniest bit of Chantilly from the sample bottle Mom had forgotten in the medicine cabinet. Reese would laugh his ass off if he could see her.