The Bay at Midnight

I wiped my face with the back of my hand as we walked across the porch. Grandpop opened the screen door and I nearly tripped down the two steps to the yard, my legs felt so wobbly. My father and the policemen looked up as the screen door slammed closed behind us. I recognized one of the policemen as Officer Davis, who had lauded me when I’d found the little boy. I felt humiliated now, the fallen heroine.

Ned and his father were there as well. All at once, I realized what a fool I’d been: Ned was a man, standing there with four other men. I was a skinny-legged idiot for thinking he could ever be romantically interested in me. I’d been playing a twelve-year-old’s game with grown-up consequences.

My father limped forward to hug me, and the gesture caught me off guard. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt her,” he said into my ear, his voice cracking on the last word. I would never forget the gift he gave me with those words. He pulled away from me, turning back to the police.

“And you were supposed to meet her last night?” Officer Davis was asking Ned.

Ned looked as though he was already tired of answering questions. “Originally,” he said. “But I couldn’t…” He glanced at his father, and I remembered the argument that had led to him telling me he could not see Isabel last night. “I wasn’t allowed to go out last night. So, I asked Julie if she’d give Izzy that message.”

“Why weren’t you allowed to go out?” the other office asked.

“He hasn’t been helping out much around the house this summer,” Mr. Chapman said. “Always on the go. My wife and I decided he needed to stay in for a change. Help the family out.”

“And did you?” Officer Davis asked. “Did you help the family out last night?”

Ned nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. The word came out in two syllables.

“What exactly did you do?”

“I didn’t kill her,” he said. “Why aren’t you talking to Bruno Walker?”

“I’m not saying you did kill her, and we’re in the process of looking for Mr. Walker,” Officer Davis said. “Right now, I’m trying to put together a complete picture of last night. What did you do around the house?”

“I swept the whole house,” Ned said. “I washed the dishes. My brother dried. I folded laundry. I fixed a radio. Is that enough?”

“Shh, Ned,” Mr. Chapman said. “That attitude isn’t going to help.”

“And where were you around midnight last night?” Officer Davis asked.

“I thought you weren’t looking at him as a suspect,” Mr. Chapman said. “He’s not answering any more questions until we contact his lawyer.” I remembered suddenly that Mr. Chapman was a lawyer himself, as well as chief justice on the New Jersey Supreme Court. He would know how to advise his son and I was relieved. I didn’t like how Ned was being questioned. Officer Davis had been so nice to me when I found Donnie Jakes. This was a different, no-nonsense side of him.

“Answer the question, Ned,” my father said. “Where were you last night?” I noticed the other cop had his hand around my father’s arm as if holding him back from punching Ned in the face, and I wondered what had transpired before Grandpop and I had gotten out there. I could imagine how Daddy’d reacted to the news that Ned and Isabel met on the platform nearly every night.

“He worked like a dog around the house,” Mr. Chapman said. “I was proud of him for finally helping out. So then he and I sat out in the yard for an hour or so looking for shooting stars. The meteor shower.” He looked at Ned. “We were eating bowls of ice cream. I think it was about twelve-thirty when we went inside. Wouldn’t you say it was about twelve-thirty?” He asked his son, who dropped his eyes under his father’s steady regard.

“I didn’t look at the clock,” Ned said.

“All right.” Officer Davis flipped his notepad closed, then nodded in my direction. “I’d like some time with Julie, here,” he said, then looked at Ned and his father. “You two can go. We’ll be in touch.”

Ned walked ahead of his father toward their house, and Daddy led me over to the double Adirondack chair. I sat down next to him and my grandfather took a seat near us, while Officer Davis and the other policeman leaned against the chain-link fence.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning, Julie,” Officer Davis said to me, kindly.

I told him everything and I tried not to cry so that I would be a good witness. I told him how I’d set up the meeting between Bruno and my sister when I was fishing with Wanda.

“I told you not to go over there,” my father said, as if fishing with the Lewis family was the cause of all that had happened.

I admitted that I used to sneak out in my boat to watch Ned and Isabel on the platform. “This whole thing is my fault,” I said. My voice had grown hoarse and it came out in a whisper. “I was jealous of her. I didn’t want her to have Ned. I didn’t mean for her to get killed, though.” I felt my father’s hand on my back and I wasn’t sure if he meant the touch as a comfort or if he was telling me to stop talking, that I was saying too much.

I was sorry when the policemen left, because I was suddenly alone with my family again and I no longer knew how I fit in. There was an air of helplessness in the bungalow. My mother and grandmother worked in the kitchen, their silence broken by sudden bouts of sobbing. My grandfather and father sat on the glider near the bed on the porch, deep in conversation. Lucy was curled up at one end of the couch in the living room, her eyes closed, thumb in her mouth, her nose still red from crying. I did not know where to go. I thought of reading, but felt sick again when I thought of the childish, made-up mysteries in my Nancy Drew books.

I sat on the couch with Lucy for a while, staring into space, wishing she would wake up and talk to me, but she slept as though she’d been drugged. Maybe she had been. Maybe someone had given her something to let her sleep through the grief.

Finally I got up and walked into the kitchen.

“Can I help?” I asked, my voice small as I tried to tiptoe my way back into my family.

My mother looked at me, surprise on her face as though she’d forgotten I existed. She turned back to the frying pan where she was searing a roast.

“I’m sorry I hit you, Julie,” she said, her attention on the roast instead of on me.

“That’s okay,” I said.

“Here.” My grandmother handed me the potato peeler and pointed to the pile of potatoes on the counter. “You can peel.”

We worked in a silence that was rare in my family, but I welcomed it because the only things that could be said would be full of pain and anger. I peeled every potato perfectly, leaving no hint of skin and carving out every eye. I wanted the task to last all afternoon because I wasn’t sure what I would do once I had finished.

The phone rang, and my mother jumped but made no move to walk into the living room to answer it. She stood at the sink, a half-washed spatula frozen in her hand, as we listened to my father’s footsteps in the other room, then his Hello? into the receiver. The three of us listened hard, but could not hear much of his conversation. Finally he walked into the kitchen.

He stood in the doorway, the color of his face so ashen I felt afraid for him. He might die, I thought. This might kill him. I would be responsible for both their deaths.

“She wasn’t…there was no rape,” he said. “Thank God for that.”

“What do they think happened?” I had never heard my mother sound so tentative and weak, as if she was afraid of the answer.

“They said she drowned, but that she’d been…manhandled first. She had a bruise on her shoulder and her arm and a lump on her head. They guess she fought the Walker boy off and then fell or maybe jumped into the water and hit her head on the edge of the platform.”

My mother suddenly threw the spatula against the wall, then buried her face in her hands. My father was quickly next to her, pulling her into his arms. My grandmother moved to them, wrapping her arms around them both. I stood alone in the middle of the kitchen floor, the peeler in my hand, tears no one noticed running down my cheeks.

Officer Davis returned to our house just as we were sitting down to a dinner we had no interest in eating. My father answered the door, then walked with him back to the porch.

“Sorry to disturb you folks,” Officer Davis said, “but I need to talk with Julie again.”

My father nodded to me without saying a word.

I stood up, scraping my chair away from the table, then walked outside with my father and the policeman. Daddy and I sat on the double Adirondack chair again, and this time, Officer Davis took a seat as well. He pulled his chair in front of me and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together loosely in front of him.

“We found Bruno Walker,” he said.

I was filled with hatred for Bruno. I remembered how he’d looked toward the bridge the day before, how I’d hoped my sister could be drawn in by his lovely eyes.

“Where’d you find him?” my father asked.

“In Ortley Beach,” the officer said.

“Did he confess?”

The officer shook his head. “He said he was with some friends at one of their rental cottages and that he left them around one in the morning and went home to bed. We talked with several of his friends separately, and they all confirmed his story.”

“What crap,” my father said.

Officer Davis locked his eyes onto mine. “Tell me again about informing Bruno that your sister would be on the platform at midnight,” he said. “Where were you when you told him?”

“The other side of the canal,” I said.

“With your friend.” The officer nodded. “What’s her name?” he asked.

“Wanda Lewis.”

“They’re not really friends,” my father said, and I knew it was not the time to argue with him.

“Who else was there?” the officer asked. “Was there anyone else who might have heard your conversation with Mr. Walker?”

You up to no good, girl.

“George was there,” I said. “Wanda’s brother. Her other relatives were there, too, but they were down—” I pointed across the canal to the area where Salena and the men had been fishing. “They weren’t close enough to hear.”

“But this George was,” the officer said.

I nodded. Suddenly I realized where this was going.

“George wouldn’t hurt anybody,” I said.

“Why are you asking her about this…George?” My father said his name as though he was talking about an object and not a person.

“Mr. Walker claims that Mr. Lewis looked very interested when he heard Julie say that Isabel would be alone on the platform.”

“Bruno’s just trying to pin the blame on someone else,” I said, but I could feel my heart sinking. I remembered George’s occasional appreciative comments about my sister and the scary way he’d cut his eyes at my father the day he came over to drag me home.

“Well, that may be so,” Officer Davis said. “Just the same, we need to talk to Mr. Lewis. Do you know how we can reach him?”

I shook my head. “I don’t have a phone number or address or anything,” I said. “But I think they live on South Street. And they’ll be back across the canal in the morning, probably, if it’s a nice day. But I know he didn’t do it.”

“You don’t know that, Julie,” my father scoffed. “You don’t really know those people. You don’t know what that boy’s capable of doing.”

“He’s nice to me,” I said, but that only enraged my father more.

“This is what happens when you disobey me,” he said, and I supposed he was right.

I couldn’t sleep at all that night. I went up to the attic early with Lucy, who was weepy and withdrawn, and I didn’t bother going down again. I kept crying—we all did. I would think I was okay, that I’d gotten a grip on my emotions, and then all of a sudden, I’d be sobbing again.

I replayed the night before in my mind over and over again, examining my actions to see if I could have done something different and thus prevented my sister’s death. I remembered looking out the attic window at the dark canal. If only I’d left the house earlier. Would that have made a difference? And what if I’d gone through with my idea of getting Ned to go with me? Then we would have been in his boat and been able to reach the platform safely, although we might have been too late.

Suddenly, I sat bolt upright in my bed. I remembered running over to the Chapmans’ house, getting ready to knock on the screen door only to realize their entire house was dark. I remembered looking toward the canal and seeing the empty Adirondack chairs. And then I remembered the policemen questioning Ned that afternoon, and the way he had looked down at the sand when his father said they’d been watching a meteor shower together in the backyard. Had Mr. Chapman fabricated an alibi to save his son?

I pressed my hand to my mouth, a shiver running through my body.

Oh, Ned, I thought to myself. Why?

CHAPTER 39

Julie

1962

I awakened the next morning with new resolve and a plan: I needed to do my own investigation. The facts I knew did not fit together. I would tell the police my suspicions about Ned, but not until I’d seen what other evidence I could gather. As heartsick as I was at the thought of George being my sister’s killer, I was triply distressed to think it might have been Ned. I would be objective, though, as detached as I could possibly be from the outcome as I gathered my clues.

I was relieved to have something to do that would both ease my sense of helplessness and also allow me to avoid my family. I left the house early and started walking toward the beach. What made no sense, I thought as I walked, was that Ned had told me to tell Isabel he couldn’t meet her that night. Then why would he have thought he could find her on the platform? My question was answered only minutes later.

I was nearly to Mitzi’s house when I noticed she was in her front yard washing her parents’ car. She tried to hide from me on the other side of the car, but she knew I’d already seen her. I saw her shoulders sag with resignation as she watched me approach.

“Hi, Mitzi,” I said, walking up her short driveway.

“Hi, Julie.” She stopped scrubbing the car with her soapy sponge. I almost felt sorry for her, she looked so uncomfortable. “Are you all right?” she asked. “How’s your mother and grandmother?”

“Messed up,” I said. “Did the police talk to you?”

“They called, but they just asked me what time Izzy left my house the night…the other night.”

“What time did she leave?”

“Eleven-thirty.” She wrung suds out of the sponge onto the driveway. Her hands were pudgy, like the rest of her. “She was going to…I know you know she always met Ned at midnight.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“He was so peeved at you for not giving Izzy that message that he couldn’t come. Even though he could. Although he actually couldn’t.” She laughed, then sobered, remembering the seriousness of the conversation.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “What do you mean that he could, but then he couldn’t?”

“He called her here at my house to tell her he might be able to meet her after all,” Mitzi said. “That’s when he found out you hadn’t told her he couldn’t. Izzy was peeved at you, too. Anyway, he said he might be able to, but he wasn’t sure, but he’d try. He couldn’t get away, though. Isn’t it unreal? The one night he couldn’t get out that colored boy was there? What crappy luck. You must just be—” She shook her head. “I bet you could just kill that guy if you could get your hands on him.”

“Right,” I said. It was easiest to agree with her, but my head was spinning. I had to think through all of this new information.

“They caught him, though,” she said. “Well, I guess you know that.”

“Caught who? George?”

“The colored boy. Right. I heard it on the radio before I came outside.”

“What did they say?” I asked.

“Just that they found him and he says he’s not guilty,” Mitzi said.

“Maybe he’s not,” I said.

“Who else could have done it?” She tried to smooth her frizzy dark hair away from her face, but it sprang back again into a curly mess. I felt sorry for her having to deal with hair like that. “What I can’t get over is that I was the third to the last person to see Izzy alive,” she said, as though she had practiced the statement.

“What do you mean, the third to the last?” I asked.

“The…you know, the person who did it was number one,” she said. “And Pam. Pam left here with her, like she always did, so she was number two.”

Pam’s house was between Mitzi’s and the beach. That made sense.

“Ned’ll probably start going with Pam now,” Mitzi said.

It was years before I realized how tactless Mitzi Caruso had been with that statement. The boorishness of her words went right over my head. At that moment, I was only thinking about their content.

I left Mitzi’s and continued walking to the beach, cataloging the clues I had so far in my mind. First, Ned’s alibi appeared to be a lie, since I had not seen him with his father in their backyard. Second, Ned had told Isabel he might be able to meet her after all—something he had not mentioned to the police, as far as I knew. Third, his motive might have had something to do with his interest in Pam, but murdering Izzy to get her out of the way seemed extreme.

I walked past Pam Durant’s house on the lagoon, thinking I would talk with her after I explored the beach. She would be less suspicious of me than she would be the police, so maybe she would open up to me more than she would to them.

The beach was completely empty. I thought there might still be policemen in the area, but maybe they had finished searching for clues. Most likely, they thought they had their killer now. I was growing more certain by the minute that they were wrong.

I headed for the patch of sea grass where my sister had been found. I looked for things washed onto the shore by the small, gentle waves. I found a Popsicle stick and a plastic cup, but I seemed to have lost interest in collecting any old thing I came across, and I didn’t bother to pick them up.

Tears welled up in my eyes as I walked through the creepy tangles of seaweed. I sat down in the place where Isabel had been found, letting the water wash over my legs. I ran my hands through the tendrils of eel grass. There was nothing here. What had I been expecting?

I left the beach empty-handed and empty hearted and walked along the road leading to Pam’s house. A dog barked when I knocked on the Durants’ door. I could see through their house to the lagoon behind, just as I could see through my house to the canal.

Pam herself answered the door, her Doberman pinscher, the only dog I’ve ever been afraid of, at her side.

“Oh, Julie!” she said, pushing open the door. “I’m so sorry. Come in.” She hugged me, but I felt stiff inside and I kept one eye on her dog.

“I just wanted to talk to you,” I said. The dog sniffed at the back of my hand.

Pam drew away from me, studying my face, but I studied hers harder. The whites of her eyes had the bluish tint of skim milk. No trace of red. No trace of tears.

“Let’s go out back,” she said.

“Are your parents here?” I asked, as we walked through the small living room.

“No one’s here except me,” she said.

She stopped at the door to the kitchen. “Can I get you some soda?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“I almost died myself when I heard,” she said, pushing open the screen door and stepping into her yard, which was covered with smooth, blond stones. I was glad she left the dog in the house. “I was the last person to see her alive,” she said. At least Mitzi had been modest enough to say she was third to the last. Pam put herself right at the top.

We sat on the bulkhead, our feet dangling above the still lagoon water. Pam was so pretty. Her nearly white ponytail fell in a long spiral over her shoulder.

“I just can’t believe she’s gone,” she said. “I’ve never known anyone who died before. It’s so tragic.”

“Do you know where Ned was the night Isabel was killed?” I asked, point-blank.

“He was home,” she said, as though she knew this for a fact.

“He says he was watching a meteor shower with his father in their backyard,” I said.

“That’s probably what he was doing, then.” Pam shrugged. “He wasn’t allowed out, right? And you were supposed to tell that to Izzy, but you didn’t.”

“But then he called her at Mitzi’s to say he could.”

“He said he might be able to. Not that he could for sure.” She tilted her head to look at me. “You know Ned would never hurt Isabel, don’t you?”

“I’m just trying to figure some things out,” I said.

“He was over here yesterday.” Pam straightened her legs to look at her painted toes. “He’s all torn up,” she said. “He was really scared the cops thought it was him.”

And you comforted him, I guess, I wanted to say. “Maybe it was,” I said, instead.

“What?” She lowered her legs again, frowning at me. “Oh Julie, don’t be crazy,” she said. “Ned was a lifesaver. He would never kill anyone.”

I wasn’t sure what else to ask. I was doing a poor job of keeping my misgivings about Ned to myself; Nancy Drew would have been far more clever at questioning Pam than I was being. We talked a while longer, and then I left her house with nothing to prove my hunch other than my own suspicions.

There was one more person that I needed to interview, and I was quite sure where I could find him. I walked to the shallows at the end of Shore Boulevard and along the path cut through the tall grass.

“Who’s there?” Ethan asked as I rustled through the cattails. I heard the anxiety in his voice. I guessed we were all a little on edge.

“Me,” I said.

I found him sitting at the water’s edge, where he had set up a little marine research laboratory, complete with a small fish net and microscope and a booklet on sea creatures.

“What do you want?” he asked.

I sat down next to him, the damp sand cool beneath my thighs.

“Was Ned really home all night the night Isabel was killed?” I asked.

“How would I know?” He shook his head at me. “You really think you’re Nancy Drew, don’t you?”

“And you really think you’re some sort of scientist.” I reached out and knocked over his microscope with my hand and then felt instantly remorseful. With the exception of Lucy, he was the only person in the world weaker than me, and I guessed I just needed to take out my frustration on someone.

“Hey!” He lifted the microscope from the wet sand. “This is a precision instrument,” he said, cradling it in his hands. “You might have ruined it. What’s the matter with you?”

“I think your brother might have killed my sister,” I said.

“You’re full of soup,” he said, pushing his glasses higher up his nose. I hated when he did that. “The police already got that—” he nodded in the general direction of the opposite side of the canal “—that colored boy. If anybody’s responsible for killing your sister, it’s you, for letting him know Isabel was going to be alone on the beach that night.”

“I didn’t kill her,” I said, my eyes burning.

“Well, my brother sure didn’t, either. He was grounded.”

“Ned probably just snuck out anyhow,” I said. “That’s what he usually did.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” With tender care, Ethan set the microscope upright in the sand again. “How do you know what my brother usually does?”

“I know plenty,” I said.

“If Ned did it, why would he be such a wreck right now? He’s sitting around crying about your sister.”

“Yeah, well, maybe he’s crying ’cause he killed her and he—”

“Shut up!” In a flash, Ethan was on top of me, his skinny arms pinning mine above my head in the sand. His knee dug into my belly, making me gasp for air. I mustered up all my strength and pushed him off me, rolling him over until I was on top of him. I punched his cheek as hard as I could. He yelped and I saw a little blood coming from his nose. I didn’t care. I punched him one more time. His head was in a few inches of water, and I could easily have turned his face until the water covered his nose and mouth. The realization that I could have such a thought shocked the sense back into me. I let go of him and scrambled to my feet, choking on my own sobs. I ran back through the tall grass, blinded by tears and confused by a rush of emotions. My heart was in a vise; my hands formed fists so tight I would later find blood on my palms from my fingernails. I wanted to kill someone. I just didn’t know who it was that I should want to kill.

I called the police myself. My parents and I were not talking easily with one another and I could hardly ask them to do it for me. I told Officer Davis my suspicions. He listened carefully. Then he told me that George Lewis had no verifiable alibi. George had told the police he’d been on the Seaside Heights boardwalk waiting for some friends who never showed up. He had scratches on his face and arms, and said that he’d gotten into a fight on the beach that night with a white boy he’d never seen before, but the police had been unable to find any witnesses to a fight. At the Lewises’ house, they found George’s wet trunks, and—most incriminating—a towel belonging to Isabel.

“But I took that towel across the canal and accidentally left it there!” I said, almost shouting into the phone.

“There was blood on it, Julie,” Officer Davis said. “Mr. Lewis claims he used the towel after the fight he was in, and both he and your sister have the same blood type, so it’s not possible to know if it was his or hers, but it’s clear he was in an altercation.”

“The chairs in the Chapmans’ backyard were empty that night,” I said, repeating a fact I’d already told him.

“We’ll reinterview them about that,” Officer Davis said. “I know you’re troubled and need to feel sure we have the right suspect in custody, and I’m grateful that you called. But you let us do our job now, all right?”

When they were questioned again, Ned and Mr. Chapman said that they’d been lying on a blanket in their backyard the night Isabel was killed and that’s why I didn’t notice them when I ran to their house. I still thought I would have seen them, and it seemed odd that they didn’t notice me running through their yard, even though I’d been a distance behind them. Surely they’d heard me get into the runabout, but no one else seemed troubled by their story.

Bruno’s father hired a lawyer—the same one who had gotten him off on the previous year’s rape charge. George didn’t even know who his father was, much less have the money for a lawyer. He was charged and eventually convicted of voluntary manslaughter.

Ned was not even considered a suspect. The son of the chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court was presumed innocent—by everyone except me.

CHAPTER 40

Julie

1962

Within a matter of days, we had packed our belongings and left the bungalow for the last time, and that put an end to my sleuthing. Isabel’s funeral took place the day after we returned to Westfield. I didn’t go because I woke up that morning with what, in retrospect, was surely a psychosomatic stomachache. Simply lifting my head from the pillow caused the room to spin and my stomach to churn. Lucy was sent to a neighbor’s house, while I stayed home alone with my aching belly and my troubled conscience. I wondered if I had cancer. I was terribly afraid of dying with such an enormous mortal sin on my soul.

The following Saturday, I waited for my turn in the confessional. I sat between my mother and Lucy in the pew at Holy Trinity, trying to figure out what I would say to the priest. I was always so mechanical in the confessional with my carefully rehearsed list of sins. This sin did not fit neatly into my usual categories, and although I’d tried to think of a way to confess many times since it had happened, I still walked into the tiny dark cubicle with no idea how to begin.

It didn’t matter. The second the priest drew back his little window, I started to cry. I recognized my confessor as Father Fagan, the oldest priest in our parish. He was white haired and walked with a limp, like my father, and he had big hands that had rested gently on my head more than once over the years. I let out huge, gulping sobs that could probably have been heard throughout the church. I thought my mother might open the door to the confessional to see that I was all right. Maybe she would hold me as she had not held me since Isabel’s death, but that didn’t happen.

Father Fagan managed to find a break in my weeping to say, “Tell me what’s troubling you, my child.”

“I…” I gulped down a fresh set of tears. “I did something that got my sister killed,” I said.

“Ah,” he said. His voice was very calm, not at all incensed or shocked, and I wondered if he knew about Isabel’s death and my role in it. I would later learn that he had been the priest at her funeral. “I think it would be good if you and I met together in the rectory tomorrow after church,” he said. “Could you do that?”

I was surprised. I couldn’t imagine confessing my sins face-to-face with a priest, but I knew I could not decline the invitation.

“Yes, Father,” I said.

“Good. Come see me at one o’clock and we’ll chat.”

I started to stand up, but dropped to my knees again. “What if I die between now and then?” I asked. “I have a mortal sin on my soul.”

“You’re forgiven that sin, child.”

“But…I haven’t even told you what I did. It’s…I think it’s unforgivable.”

“Nothing’s unforgivable, Julie,” he said, stunning me by using my name. “Right now, go to the altar and say three Hail Marys and make a good act of contrition. And then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay,” I said, standing up again. But I didn’t feel forgiven. I felt as though he didn’t quite understand how terrible I’d been.

The next day, my father took me to the rectory and waited in the parlor while I spoke with Father Fagan. We sat in a small room furnished with fancy chairs and a chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling. I told him everything I’d done, and he listened, nodding slightly every once in a while.

“Your sin was envy.” He sat in a large chair that made me think of something a king might sit in. He held the fingertips of his hands together as though he might start to pray at any moment. “And lust for your sister’s boyfriend,” he continued. “And lying to your parents, as well as to a number of other people. And also, disobedience.”

I nodded as he catalogued all the things I’d done wrong.

“But,” he said, “your sin is not murder.”

“It wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t—”

“You did not mean for her to die.”

I lowered my head and watched as a tear fell from my eyelashes to form a dark stain on my blue skirt. “No,” I said.

“You did not mean for her to die,” he repeated, as if he wanted me to truly believe it.

I shook my head. “I loved her,” I said.

He nodded. “I know,” he said. Then the tone of his voice changed, and I knew we were coming to the end of our session together. That disappointed me. I could talk about everything here. I couldn’t talk about any of it at home. “Julie,” he said, in his new voice. “I want you to feel you can come to me any time you need to. Any time. You can call me in the middle of the night if you need to. The Lord and I will always be here for you. Now, let us pray for your sister’s soul.”

That’s what we did. For a few minutes, I sat with my head bowed as he asked God to watch over Isabel. I felt the tiniest molecule of peace work its way into my heart as he spoke.

When we had finished praying and I was on my way out of the office, it suddenly occurred to me that he had not given me a real penance. The Hail Marys from the day before surely didn’t count; they were far less than I would have received from the priest in Point Pleasant for one single impure thought.

“You forgot to give me my penance,” I said, my hand on the doorknob.

“You need no penance from me,” Father Fagan said. “Your true penance is that you will have to live with what you did for the rest of your life,” he said.

He could not have been more right.

My grandparents put our bungalow on the market, and it sold quickly. That, too, was my fault. The house had meant so much to all of us and had been part of my family’s history for nearly forty years. We would never again go down the shore in the summer. That chapter of our lives was over.

No one ever said, Julie, you are to blame for this, you are a horrible person, but no one needed to. Everyone knew that was the truth. It was weeks before my mother could talk to me without asking me, “Why? Why? Why?” For a while, I felt cut off from the warm family life I had always known. That improved over time, although except for my father’s initial compassionate response to me, no one ever said, It’s all right, Julie. We know you didn’t mean for Isabel to die. Only Father Fagan provided that sort of comfort in the weeks and months that followed Izzy’s death, but I really needed to hear those words from someone in my family. And I never did.

CHAPTER 41

Lucy

“Do you recognize that little building?” Julie asked me, as we turned the corner into Bay Head Shores. She pointed to our left, where a tiny antique shop was tucked beneath the on-ramp of the Lovelandtown Bridge.

I shook my head. “Not even a little bit,” I said.

“Well, it looks completely different, of course,” Julie said. “And the big bridge was just a little one back then, but the antique store used to be the corner store. Or at least that’s what we used to call it.You loved the penny candy.”

“I remember the penny candy,” I said, picturing long strips of colorful candy buttons.

“One time we rode our bikes here and got sprayed by the mosquito truck on the way home,” Julie said.

“I remember that, too,” I said. “I fell off my bike and cut my arm.” I looked at my arm as though expecting to see a scar, but I wasn’t even sure which arm I’d injured. “We’ll probably die premature deaths because of that DDT or whatever it was,” I added.

Julie turned the next corner. “Do you want to drive by the bay and our old beach before we go to Ethan’s?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Later,” I said. I had a urinary-tract infection, which seemed terribly unjust since I hadn’t had sex in months. At that moment, all I could think about was using the bathroom at Ethan’s house.

It was early on Friday afternoon and Ethan had invited Julie, Shannon, Tanner and me to his house for the weekend. Shannon and Tanner had begged out, but I’d accepted. Something was pulling me down to the shore. I wanted to see what I remembered.

For a number of reasons, I wished that Shannon and Tanner were with us. I wanted my niece to see an important part of her mother’s childhood, but more than that, I thought that both Julie and I needed more time with Shannon and Tanner. I liked the little I knew of Tanner. I’d only gotten to spend time with him at the barbecue, but he’d impressed me and I thought Shannon could do far worse than a bright, socially conscious—not to mention handsome—young man. Not nearly young enough; I agreed with Julie on that point. Still, that was not our choice to make. The thing that wrenched my heart and that I knew was killing Julie, was that Shannon wanted to move so far away from us. I remembered what it was like to be young and in love and yearning for my independence, and visiting home had been one of the last things on my mind.

“You know,” I said now to Julie, “we’ll just have to go to Colorado ourselves a couple of times a year. We’ll take Mom with us.”

“What?” She glanced at me in confusion, then laughed. “Oh, you’re back on that topic again.” We’d talked about Shannon and Tanner for most of the ride down the shore, but I could see that Julie had now shifted gears to our old neighborhood and Ethan. “I don’t plan to go to Colorado a couple of times a year,” she said, “because I don’t intend to let Shannon go.”

“She’s pregnant,” I said. “She can become legally emancipated and do whatever she likes if she wants to.”

“Can we talk about this later?” she asked, as we turned yet another corner.

“Sure,” I said. We’d recently gotten into this dance of Julie denying the reality of Shannon’s leaving and me trying to force it down her throat. “Sorry to be a pain,” I added.

To our right, between some houses, I saw the canal.

“Oh!” I said. “Is this our old street?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Wow. I’d never recognize it,” I said. Then I asked rhetorically, “Where did all these houses come from?”

Julie stopped the car in front of a sunny yellow-and-white Cape Cod.

“Do you recognize this one?” she asked.

I didn’t. “Is that ours?” The house meant nothing to me.

She nodded.

I looked at the mailbox, painted to resemble the sea and topped by a sailboat. “Somebody loves this house,” I said.

“And this is Ethan’s house,” Julie said as she pulled into the next-door driveway. She opened the car door before even turning off the ignition. The recent change in her was dramatic. I knew she was upset about Shannon, and I knew the past was weighing heavily on her in a way it had not for many years, but there was also a joy in her I couldn’t remember ever seeing before, not even when she was falling in love with Glen as a young woman. And the cause of that joy walked out the front door of his house and over to us, giving Julie an embrace that lasted several seconds as he planted a kiss on her neck. The scene made me smile.

“Welcome, Lucy!” he said to me, giving me the much shorter and more perfunctory version of the hug he’d laid on my sister.

“Hi, Ethan,” I said. “I’m desperate for a bathroom.”

He laughed, pointing behind him to the house. “Halfway down the hall on the right,” he said. “We’ll meet you in the yard.”

When I left Ethan’s bathroom, I headed for the back of his house. Through the open jalousies on the sun porch, I could see the canal clearly and suddenly everything seemed familiar. I walked outside to where he and Julie were leaning against the chain-link fence watching the beginning-of-the-weekend array of boats on the water. I felt almost dizzy with déjà vu. The current was so fast, and I remembered my fear of it. I’d have nightmares of falling into the canal and being swept away by the water as I struggled unsuccessfully to swim into one of the docks.

I shivered as I leaned against the fence next to my sister.

“Whew,” I said. “I remember how scared I was of the water.”

Julie put her arm around me. “You were,” she said. “Poor little kid.” She nodded in the direction of the yard next door. I had not even thought to look over there. “Do you remember it?” she asked.

I looked across a short metal fence to see a little boy playing in a swimming pool. He was riding—and falling off—a huge plastic alligator, while a heavyset, dark-haired woman relaxed with a book on a lounge chair nearby. I could see the top of a boat in the fenced-in dock, but the long, dark, deep-green screened porch was the most familiar part of the scene to me.

“I’d love to see the house inside,” I said. “See how it’s changed.”

“It’s totally different,” Ethan said. “I’ll give them a call later and we can go over.” He glanced at Julie. “You don’t have to go with us, if you don’t want to.”

Julie bit her lip. “I think I can do it,” she said. It was clear they’d had a conversation about this before.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on Ethan’s boat on the canal and the river. It was my first voyage ever in those waters, since I’d been too chicken to go out on our boat when I was a kid. I loved it now, but what was most amazing to me—thrilling to me—was seeing Julie in a boat again. She laughed when the wake of a much larger boat sent a wall of water crashing over us, making us look like two women in a middle-age wet T-shirt contest. She was not only finding love in Ethan, I thought, but also a rekindling of the courage and vitality she’d lost many years ago. Watching her laugh put a lump in my throat.

After dinner, as the sky turned fuchsia from the setting sun, we strolled barefoot across our old front yard and knocked on the frame of the screen door. The young dark-haired woman I’d seen in the backyard pushed the door open for us.

“Hello!” she said, as we entered. “I’m Ruth Klein. And you guys must be the former residents of our house.”

“Hi, Ruth,” Ethan said to her. “This is Julie Sellers.” He rested his hand on Julie’s back. “And her sister, Lucy Bauer.” We stood packed into the hallway near the front door.

“When did you live here?” Ruth asked. She was beautiful in spite of the fact that she was quite overweight. Her pink skin was flawless, her blue eyes a vibrant contrast to her dark hair.

“Our grandfather built the house in 1926,” Julie said. “Lucy and I lived here during the summer in the fifties and early sixties.”

“Oh, wow,” said Ruth. “I bet it’s totally different by now. Where do you want to start your tour?”

“Well,” Julie looked at the partly open door on our left. “This used to be our grandparents’ room.”

“Go ahead in.” Ruth leaned forward to push the door open. It was a small room with a queen-size platform bed and sleeklined dresser and armoire. “This is the master bedroom, as you can probably tell,” she said.

Julie nodded. “And across the hall was the bathroom.”

“Still is,” Ruth said, and we followed her across the hall, taking turns peering into the tiny bathroom. The toilet and pedestal sink looked new. In the corner was a small triangular tub.

“We just had a shower there,” Julie said.

“I think the people before us put the tub in,” Ruth said.

We walked a short distance down the hall. “Here’s our son’s room.” Ruth pointed to her left. Inside, the room was just barely wide enough to fit a twin bed and a tiny dresser.

“This was Mom and Dad’s room, right?” I looked to Julie for confirmation.

“Yes.” She smiled. “They didn’t have much space, did they?”

Across the hall was the kitchen, and it was unrecognizable as any room we’d ever lived in, with white glass-fronted cabinetry and granite countertops. Julie laughed.

“Well,” she said, running her hand across the blue-gray granite. “I can tell you our kitchen looked nothing like this. This is beautiful.”

“This—and being on the water, of course—were what sold us on the house,” Ruth said.

We walked the last few steps of the hallway into the living room, which was painted a soft yellow and furnished with chairs and love seats upholstered in a variety of blue-and-yellow prints. Gauzy white curtains hung at the windows.

“This room seems much more open than it did before,” I said.

“You’re right,” Julie said. “I think it was a darker color or something. I love it like this.”

“We used to play Uncle Wiggly in here,” Ethan said.

“I beg your pardon?” Ruth asked with a laugh.

“It was a board game,” Julie explained.

I looked down at the oak-colored laminate beneath my bare feet. “This used to be linoleum,” I said. Then my eyes were drawn to the staircase at the side of the room. “Look!” I said. “Real stairs!”

Julie laughed. “We had pull-down stairs when we were kids,” she said. “Lucy was terrified of them.”

“Would you like to see up there?” Ruth asked.

“Would you mind?” Julie lifted her hair off her neck, as she often did when she was having a hot flash. “It was an open attic when we were kids,” she continued. “Just a bunch of beds divided by curtains.”

“Like a dormitory?” Ruth asked.

“Sort of.”

The three of us followed Ruth up the stairs, where we discovered the attic had been completely transformed. Now it contained an office with three skylights, a large playroom, two small bedrooms and a bathroom with a shower. Everything looked scrubbed and neat and well loved. You would have to work really hard to feel any bad memories in this house, I thought. There was nothing from the past left to trigger them.

I thought of asking to use the bathroom. I was okay for the moment, but I knew that my infected urinary tract could and would act up at any minute. Julie, Ruth and Ethan, though, were already heading back toward the stairs. I could wait.

Once we were downstairs again, Julie turned to Ruth. “It makes me happy to see how nice the whole house looks,” she said, touching our hostess’s arm. “I can tell you love living here.”

“We do,” she said, guiding us through the open French doors onto the porch. “Was the porch screened when you lived here?” she asked.

“Uh-huh,” Julie said, looking from one end of the porch to the other. “This is where we spent most of our time.”

I remembered the porch. Of all the house, it had changed the least, perhaps because the view was still of the small sandy backyard and the water. A long farm table and six ladder-back chairs stood where our old table used to be, and white faux wicker rockers and love seats and coffee tables filled the rest of the space.

The little boy I’d seen in the pool was sitting in the backyard, sharing a lounge chair with a man who appeared to be reading to him in the fading light. Nothing made me happier than seeing a parent sharing a book with a child.

Ruth must have seen me watching them. “Come meet my family,” she said.

We walked outside. The sand in the backyard was already cooling down, and it felt good beneath my feet. The man spotted us and he and the boy stood up.

“Hi, Ethan,” the man said. “And these must be the former owners.”

Ethan introduced us to Ruth’s husband, Jim, and their seven-year-old son, Carter. We chatted about the house and the area for a few minutes, swatting mosquitoes as darkness began to close in on us.

Julie’s gaze shifted to the part of the yard nearest the corner of the house. “When I was a kid,” she said, pointing, “I buried a box of treasures right over there.”

“A treasure box?” Carter asked, looking interested in our conversation for the first time.

Julie nodded.

“Could it still be there?” Ruth asked.

Julie shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe someone found it during the last forty years, or they had some work done to the house foundation and it got disturbed.”

“Or maybe it is still there,” Ethan said. He nudged Julie. “Do you want to see?”

Julie looked at our hosts. “It wasn’t buried very deep,” she said, and I knew she was reassuring them that we wouldn’t be digging up their entire yard. “Just a few inches, really.”

Ruth looked at her husband, whose expression said, Why the heck not? “I’ll get a shovel and flashlight,” he said, and he headed toward the garage.

Carter looked up at Julie. Even in the dim light, I could see he had his mother’s pretty blue eyes. “What did you put in the box?” he asked.

“Things I found,” she said, as we started walking toward the corner of the house. “Just silly things.”

Jim returned with a garden shovel and a strong halogen lantern.

“You know,” Ruth said, looking at the small shovel her husband had provided, “people have brought in fresh sand over the years. We had a couple of truckloads come in when we moved here. It might be down pretty far by now, if it’s still there at all.”

Julie took the shovel and knelt in the sand, glancing at the corner of the house, taking some measurement with her eyes. I could tell that, even after all this time, she knew exactly where the box should be. With the shovel, she smoothed away a couple of inches of sand from the surface of the ground. Then she set the blade of the shovel into the sand at a ninety-degree angle, and we heard it hit something solid.

“Oh, my God,” Julie said. “It’s still here.”

We all sat down on the ground, and Carter and I helped sweep the sand away with our hands, while Julie worked with the shovel and Jim held the lantern balanced on his knee. Soon the top of the box was completely exposed, and Julie dug her fingers around the lid on one side while I did the same on the other.

Julie looked at me across the box. “One, two, three,” she said, and we lifted the lid together, sending a fine dusting of sand onto the objects below.

Carter reached into the bread box, and I wanted to stop him. This was Julie’s box of treasures. I wanted her to be able to do this herself.

Ruth seemed to read my mind. “Wait, Carter,” she said. “Let Julie do it, since it’s really her box. Then maybe she’ll let you use it for some of your own toys and things in the future.”

Julie nodded her thanks to Ruth. “Of course, I’ll let you use it,” she said to Carter. “After tonight, it will be yours.”

“Oh, good!” Carter folded his hands in his lap. What a nice kid.

I could see how hungry Julie was to dig through the old remnants of her life, but I had to go to the bathroom and that was all I could think about. I wished the antibiotics would kick in and knock the infection on its rear. I was about to tell everyone I needed to leave, when Julie suddenly let out a squeal. She reached into the box and pulled out a tiny leather baby shoe. It had probably been white at one time; in the lantern light it took on a yellowish-orange glow.

“Omigosh,” Julie said. “I found this in the shallow water where Grandpop used to keep his killie trap.” She looked across the open box at Ethan and smiled. “And where Ethan kept his marine laboratory.”

Ethan laughed. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I forgot about that.”

“Did your microscope still work after I…you know?” she asked him, and I could tell the question had an esoteric meaning known only to the two of them.

“It was fine,” Ethan said.

Julie reached into the box again. “And look at this!” she said, pulling out an old record, a forty-five. She held it under the splash of light from the lantern and laughed. “Neil Sedaka. ‘Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen,’” she said. “I don’t know where I picked that up.”

I had to interrupt. “I’m afraid I need to use the bathroom,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’ll go over to Ethan’s and be back in a min—”

“Use ours,” Ruth said, nodding toward the house. “Go ahead.”

“Thanks,” I said. I walked up the two steps to the porch, pushed open the screen door, then raced down the hallway toward the bathroom, leaving my sister’s yelps of discovery behind me.

CHAPTER 42

Julie

Sifting through that box was the strangest thing. I was glad for the poor lighting in the backyard, because my eyes were misty and I didn’t want anyone to notice. I felt sympathy for the lonely girl who’d tucked meaningless objects away, longing for a mystery to solve. She’d never imagined the real, unwanted mystery that would await her midway through that summer. Picking out the scraps of old cloth, the dented Ping-Pong ball, the baby shoe, I became aware as never before that I had indeed been a mere child, a twelve-year-old with little concept of real danger. The only scary things I’d known about were from my Nancy Drew books, where the heroine always prevailed in the end.

Something caught my eye in the bottom corner of the bread box, tucked beneath another record and a piece of cloth. It couldn’t possibly be what I thought it was.

“Could you move the lantern a little closer, please, Jim?” I asked.

The circle of light fell into the box, and there it was. Red and purple, as I remembered it. I reached into the corner and pulled out the small plastic giraffe.

“I never put this in here,” I said, quite certain that was the truth.

“What is it?” Ethan asked, leaning closer. I could feel his breath against my bare shoulder.

“A toy,” I said. “A giraffe. Isabel and Ned used to—”

“That was Ned’s,” Ethan interrupted me. “Our uncle gave it to him. He gave us both one. Mine was an elephant. It’s a puzzle.” He reached for it.

“A puzzle?” I was confused. “I thought it was just a token they used to pass between each other.”

“Who did?” Ethan examined the giraffe. “Ned and your sister?”

I nodded.

“I’m not sure how this one works,” he said. He was manipulating the giraffe’s tail and neck; I had never even realized the toy had moving parts. Suddenly the red and purple halves of the giraffe sprung apart, and I laughed out loud.

“They must have sent notes to each other in the giraffe!” I said. “I never guessed.”

Ethan held the halves of the giraffe beneath the lamplight.

“It looks like there’s a note in here right now,” he said.

CHAPTER 43

Lucy

I finished in the bathroom and walked into the dimly lit hallway. I was standing next to the screened front door when I heard laughter out on the road. I turned to look, but it had grown so dark that I could barely make out the group of small, giggling children as they ran down the street. I couldn’t have said how many there were or if they were boys or girls, but watching them, I began once again to remember the night Isabel died, and for a moment, Julie and her Nancy Drew box were forgotten.

I remembered waking up alone in the attic that night, determined not to scream. I remembered my frantic race down the pull-down stairs and the way they’d shivered under my light weight. But I had not gone immediately to my parents’ room and then to the couch to sleep, as I’d previously recalled. First, I’d gone to the back porch to find Julie. I’d looked in the direction of the bed at the end of the long porch, but it had been too dark to see if anyone was there.

“Julie?” I’d called.

There’d been no answer and the darkness had felt suffocating to me. I could hear the water lapping against the bulkhead, and the croaking of a frog joined the nighttime music of the crickets. I was aware of the woods outside the screens to my right, but I couldn’t see the trees for the darkness, and the thought of what might be lurking out there made me turn and run back into the living room and then down the hall.

That’s when I stood outside my parents’ door, listening to my mother’s breathing. I’d thought of pulling the cushions from the sofa, setting them on the floor outside her room to sleep there, as close as I could get to her. But before I could act on that idea, I realized I needed to use the bathroom. I walked quietly down the short hallway, comforted by the sound of my grandfather’s snoring from the front bedroom he shared with Grandma. The screen door leading to the front yard was in front of me, the main door held open by a heavy iron doorstop shaped like a Scottie dog. It was as dark on the other side of that door as it was in the hallway. I hated that we never locked the doors at night. Oh, the screen door was secured by one of those flimsy hook-and-eye locks, but that had offered me little peace of mind once I realized how easily it could be foiled.

I turned on the light in the small bathroom, glad to finally be able to see everything. I urinated, not bothering to flush because I didn’t want to awaken anyone and have to explain what I was doing downstairs at that hour. I turned off the light and quietly left the room. To my right, the hallway leading back to the living room looked dark and foreboding, so I stood by the screen door as I waited for my eyes to adjust again to the darkness.

Outside, I saw a flicker of light through the woods, somewhere near the road. I thought at first it was a firefly, but the tiny light burned bright orange and I quickly realized it was a cigarette. I watched the light arc and sway as the shadowy person carrying the cigarette walked along the dirt road in the direction of our house. I smiled in relief. Isabel. She was probably walking home from Pam’s or Mitzi’s, enjoying one last smoke before she had to come in. But how did she expect to get in with the lock on the door? I thought it was her good fortune that I happened to be there.

I lifted the lock with my finger and was about to push the door open when the shadowy image and its cigarette continued down the road, past our sidewalk, past our driveway. I slipped the lock back into the eye. It was not Isabel after all. I lost sight of the person, but the light of the cigarette continued to burn, making a sharp angle in the air as the smoker turned to walk up the Chapmans’ driveway.

CHAPTER 44

Julie

“It’s too dark to read it out here,” I said, carefully unfolding the small sheet of paper I’d removed from the front half of the giraffe. “I’m not even certain there’s any writing on it.”

Jim moved the lantern closer to my hands, but Ethan touched my shoulder.

“Let’s take it back to my house,” he said. “We’ve taken up enough of the Kleins’ time.”

I sensed his concern. He knew that a note written by my dead sister or his dead brother was sure to elicit emotions he didn’t want to share with his neighbors.

“Oh, but this is fun,” Ruth said, obviously curious about what we’d found.

“Probably just a love note from my brother to Julie’s sister,” Ethan said. “Not fit for the PG-13 crowd.” He got to his feet.

I tucked the paper back into the giraffe, holding the red and purple halves of the toy together as Ethan helped me up. Jim and Ruth stood, as well, but Carter remained seated next to the buried bread box, still peering inside it, although without the lantern light I was certain he could see little. I guessed he was thinking about the wonderful treasures he could bury there himself.

The screen door squeaked open as Lucy left the porch and rejoined us in the yard.

“Thank you so much for the tour,” I said to the Kleins. “And Carter, the treasure box is all yours now.”

“Awesome!” he said, getting to his feet.

“Thank Julie,” Ruth instructed him.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re very welcome.” I looked at Ruth and Jim. “And thanks for letting us dig up your yard.”

“Sure.” Jim grinned, his face ghostly in the lantern light.

“Please feel free to come over anytime,” Ruth said.

We walked between the two houses to get to Ethan’s front yard. I held on to Lucy’s arm.

“We found this old plastic giraffe in the Nancy Drew box,” I told her. “There’s a piece of paper in it. Ned and Isabel used to use it to send notes to each other. But the weird thing is, I am ninety-nine point nine-percent sure I never put it in the box.”

Lucy was quiet. As Ethan pushed open his front door, she whispered in my ear, “I remembered something about the night Isabel was killed,” she said.

“What?” I whispered back, uncertain why we were being stealthy.

She didn’t answer me.

“What?” I asked again, and she shook her head quickly.

“Later,” she whispered, and I knew better than to push her; she must have had her reasons for keeping her memory from Ethan.

We followed Ethan out to his porch, where he turned on the floor lamp, flooding the table with light.

“Let’s take a look at that paper,” he said, as the three of us sat down.

I opened the giraffe and the folded piece of paper fell out. Carefully I flattened it on the tabletop. It was a note, written on what looked to be half a sheet of pale pink stationery, its one edge ragged, torn on an angle. The writing had faded to a bleached bluish purple, but I recognized it instantly.

“It’s Izzy’s writing,” I said. Isabel had had a distinctive, rounded handwriting that had gotten her into trouble with the nuns in catechism class.

I read the note aloud.

“You are a decietful pig and I hate you,” I read. “I can’t wait to tell my father everything. He adores me and you can bet he will kill you.”

The three of us were quiet, letting the words sink in.

Ethan was first to speak, his voice a tired whisper. “Damn,” he said. “She and Ned must have been on the outs.”

I thought of telling him my suspicion about Ned’s involvement with Pam, but before I could speak, I realized that Lucy was crying.

“Oh, honey.” I put my arm around her, guessing that she was moved and shaken by seeing a note from our sister. But that was not it.

“I remembered something,” she said, to both of us now.

Ethan pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her, and she pressed it to her eyes.

“The night Isabel died,” she said, “I woke up alone in the attic. I was afraid and came downstairs, looking for you—” she spoke to me “—but of course, I couldn’t find you, since you’d gone out in the boat. I went to the bathroom, and when I came out, I happened to look toward the road and I saw someone out there. I saw the burning tip of a cigarette. I thought it was Isabel at first, walking home from one of her girlfriends’ houses. But then the person walked right past our house and up your driveway.” She looked at Ethan.

Ethan closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. We were all quiet for a moment.

“I feel sick,” he said finally.

“Did Ned smoke?” Lucy asked.

Ethan nodded without opening his eyes. “Like a chimney.”

“I’m sorry, Ethan,” I said.

“It still doesn’t make sense, though.” Ethan opened his eyes and looked at the note again as if he might be able to read between the lines. “What does this mean? How did he deceive her?” He shook his head with a stubborn resolve. “I still refuse to think that Ned was capable of killing anyone.”

“I think he was seeing Pam Durant on the side,” I said.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

I told him the reasons for my suspicions—George possibly spotting Ned and Pam together on the boat, Mitzi’s suggestion that they would start dating after Isabel’s death, and how Ned had turned to Pam for comfort.

“Isabel probably found out,” I suggested. “She wrote him this note. He met her on the platform at the bay and they argued and he…”

“Maybe it was an accident,” Lucy said kindly. “He didn’t mean to kill her.”

“Things don’t add up,” Ethan said. “I mean, to begin with, Ned told you to tell Isabel he couldn’t meet her that night.”

“But remember, he called her at Mitzi’s to say he might be able to.”

Ethan looked surprised. “I don’t think I ever knew that,” he said.

“How did the note end up in your Nancy Drew box, of all places?” Lucy asked.

“I have no idea,” I said. “They used me as a messenger, giving me the giraffe to pass between them, but I never realized it was a puzzle. Something they could hide notes in. And maybe I…I have no memory of this at all…but maybe I did stick it in the box and don’t remember doing it.”

“Or maybe Ned put it in there thinking you’d find it and realize what had happened and turn him in,” Lucy said. “Maybe he felt guilty but couldn’t bring himself to admit what he’d done.”

“Wait a minute,” Ethan said. “He had an alibi. He was in our yard with my father.”

“Ethan.” I rested my hand on his forearm. “Did it ever occur to you that your father was just trying to protect him? That he made up the alibi for him?”

Ethan shook his head. “He wouldn’t do that,” he said, but I thought he was only saying what he longed to believe.

I don’t think any of us slept that night. Next to me, Ethan tossed and turned. I was haunted, not so much by what Isabel had written or by the realization that Ned was probably responsible for her death, because this was not a surprise to me, but by seeing Izzy’s handwriting. By seeing that part of her, still so alive all these years later. Seeing the rounded a’s and the misspelling of deceitful. The misspelling made me want to cry. It humanized my big sister and made her seem so young and guileless.

Over breakfast the next morning, Lucy suggested we leave the shore early, drive home and pay a visit to our mother to tell her about the note before giving it to the police.

“I don’t think we need to tell her,” I argued. “You know she hasn’t been herself lately, and this would only upset her more.” I knew I was protecting myself, as well. I didn’t want to talk to my mother about Isabel any more than I had to.

“I know it’ll upset her,” Lucy said, “but that’s inevitable, and I want to keep her abreast of things. The less she learns from the police instead of from us, the better.”

“I think Lucy’s right,” Ethan said. “And as soon as the cops see this note, they’re going to want to talk to my father again. I can’t believe, though, that he would have lied about where Ned was that night.”

“Maybe he wasn’t lying,” Lucy offered. “Maybe he was just off on his timing. Give him a chance to explain.”

Ethan looked toward the canal and the heavy Saturday-morning boat traffic. “Damn,” he said, more to himself than to us. “I wish Ned were here to tell us what really happened.”

“Me, too,” I said.

I dropped Lucy off at her house in Plainfield, and we agreed to meet at Mom’s that afternoon when she got home from McDonald’s. By the time I turned onto my street in Westfield, I felt a mixture of deep sorrow and vindication. I had been right about Ned all this time. I wished George Lewis were alive. I wished I could hug him, tell him how sorry I was that I had not been more capable of proving Ned’s guilt when I was twelve years old.

I slowed down as I neared my house, surprised to see cars crowding my driveway, spilling out into the street. One of them was Shannon’s car. The rest were unfamiliar to me, and with a sense of betrayal and disappointment, I realized that Shannon had taken advantage of my weekend away to use the house for a party, one that had apparently continued overnight and late into the next morning. Perhaps she planned for it to run the entire weekend.

I had to park in front of my neighbors’ house, since there was no room in front of my own. I walked into the house, greeted by the overwhelming stench of stale beer and possibly marijuana, although that might have been my imagination. Teenagers were sleeping on my living room furniture as well as on the floor. One girl lifted her head from the sofa when I walked in.

“Where’s Shannon?” I asked, barely able to control my anger. I could feel my face and neck redden with it.

“Shannon who?” the girl asked. “Oh, the girl who lives here?”

“Yes,” I said through my gritted teeth.

“I think she’s upstairs.”

I marched upstairs and into Shannon’s room, where I found two blond girls sleeping together, one of them nude, their arms wrapped around each other. My fury mounted as I walked toward my own bedroom. I threw open the door to find my daughter and Tanner in my bed. Tanner was asleep, but the noise of my entry apparently awakened Shannon. She sat up quickly, pulling the sheet against her chest, her long hair tangled over her bare shoulders.

“Mom!” she said.

I threw my pocketbook down on my dresser. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” she said, clutching the sheet tighter to her chest. She was speaking softly, as though she didn’t want to disturb Tanner. “People just kept showing up,” she said. “I’m really sorry. We were going to clean everything up before you got home. Change the sheets and everything. And vacuum.”

I stared at her. Who was this child?

“I feel like I don’t know you,” I said. “What happened to the responsible girl I raised?”

“I am responsible,” she argued. “I planned to tell you what happened. About the party and everything. I didn’t expect you to come home yet.”

“That’s obvious,” I said. “You know what, Shannon? You are absolutely not moving to Colorado. I’m still your mother and I’m not going to let you live like this.” I waved my hand in Tanner’s direction. “And what kind of a man would sleep with you in your mother’s bed?” I asked. I couldn’t believe Tanner was actually sleeping through my tirade. He was probably awake and listening, but had decided it was best if he pretended otherwise.

“I am too going,” Shannon said.

“No, you’re not.”

She shook her head, an ugly expression on her otherwise beautiful face. “Sometimes I really hate you,” she said. I hadn’t heard those words from her since she was a four-year-old begging in vain for candy in the grocery store, but I didn’t flinch.

“I don’t care,” I said. “I’ll lock you in your room if I have to. I have to protect you.”

My voice broke on the word protect, and I began to cry. I sank onto the chair in front of my vanity dresser, burying my face in my hands. I could hear her getting out of my bed, pulling on her clothes, but all I could think about was Isabel’s angry note hidden in the giraffe. Her fury in that note had not been directed at our mother, but it often had been in those days. I could remember her telling Mom that she hated her, and I wondered if my mother had felt as hurt and helpless as I did right now.

Shannon came to my side, wrapping her arms around me, and I leaned against her, aware—so aware—of her swollen belly beneath my cheek.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” she said. “I know I screwed up.”

I couldn’t speak. I sat there with Shannon’s arms around me. I remembered how hard my mother had tried to rein Isabel in and how spectacularly she’d failed. She must have been so scared to see her daughter slipping out of her control. Just as I was scared now.

CHAPTER 45

Maria

Julie and Lucy were waiting for me in my living room when I got home from Micky D’s. I’d planned to change my clothes and head to the hospital to do my volunteer work, but they said they needed to talk to me and I knew by their serious faces that I’d better cancel my plans.

“What’s wrong?” I asked them. There was way too much going on in my family for my comfort level. My best guess was that the police were finally ready to question me about Isabel and that made me nervous, but I tried not to let it show.

“We just want to talk to you,” Julie said.

Bullfeathers, I thought, but I didn’t push her for the truth. I would find out soon enough.

Lucy called the volunteer coordinator at the hospital to cancel my shift, while I changed out of my uniform in my bedroom. When I returned to the living room, the two of them were sitting in the armchairs near the sofa looking so grim that my heart began to pound. I sat down on the sofa, folding my hands in my lap.

“Now,” I began, “what is going on?”

“We need to talk to you about Isabel’s death,” Lucy said.

“Are the police ready to interview me?” I asked.

“No,” Julie said, “but Lucy and I made a discovery we thought you should know about. We wanted you to hear about it from us first, rather than from the police.”

I was quiet and calm on the outside, but my hands began working at one another in my lap.

Julie reached into her pocketbook and pulled out some kind of toy.

“What’s that?” I leaned forward, and Julie held the toy in the air so I could see it better. “Is it a giraffe?” I asked.

“Yes.” Julie lowered the red and purple toy to her knees. “Lucy and I stayed at Ethan’s house last night, and we talked to the people who now live in our bungalow.”

I felt a sharp blow to my solar plexus at the mention of our old summer home.

“Do you remember my Nancy Drew box?” Julie asked. “The bread box where I used to put any clues I found?”

Bread box? I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“I remember you used to collect clues,” I said. “You did that when we lived here in Westfield. Did you collect them down the shore, too?”

“Yes,” Julie said. “Grandpop found an old bread box for me to keep the clues in, and he buried it for me in the yard.”

“I don’t remember that,” I said.

“Well, it was something I kept secret,” Julie said. “But anyway, when we visited the people who live in the house now, I asked if I could dig up the bread box. When I did, we found this giraffe inside it. But I don’t think I ever put it there myself.”

I felt as though I was struggling to make sense of a riddle. “So?” I asked.

“Well, this comes apart.” Julie did something with the giraffe’s tail and the toy broke into two pieces. “Ned and Isabel used to pass it back and forth, with notes inside it.”

“Oh,” I said, more to myself than to them. I had tried so hard to keep those two children apart, and until the very end, I’d thought I’d succeeded.

“We found a note inside it,” Julie said. She removed a folded piece of paper from inside the back end of the giraffe. “Should I read it to you or do you want to see it for yourself?” she asked me.

I reached out a hand. “I want to see it,” I said.

She looked reluctant to turn the piece of paper over to me, but after a moment’s hesitation, she stood up and dropped it into my hand. I unfolded it and flattened it on my lap, adjusting my glasses so that I could read the faded writing.

“Oh,” I said again, this time with some distress as I saw Isabel’s girlish handwriting. Then I read the words and was filled with horror. Oh, my God.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Julie said. “I know it’s painful to read.”

“Our best guess is that this was Isabel’s last note to Ned,” Lucy said. “Maybe Ned put the note in Julie’s Nancy Drew box, expecting her to look in there before we left the shore. He had to know she’d take it to the police, who would then realize that Isabel had been angry at him, and that he probably did meet her on the—”

“Hush,” I said, shutting my eyes.

The room grew so still I could hear my own breathing.

“Would you rather not talk about this, Mom?” Julie asked softly. Neither she nor Lucy could possibly understand the reason for my distress. I was going to have to tell them things I’d never wanted known.

I opened my eyes again and looked first at Julie, then Lucy.

“I am as certain as I can be that this note was not meant for Ned Chapman,” I said.

“Oh, Mom,” Julie said, “I’m sure it was. I’m sure—”

I held up my hand to stop her. “I have to tell you girls something. It’s…I’d hoped I’d never have to tell anyone about it. It’s something I regret. But it needs to come out.You need to know.”

“What are you talking about?” Lucy asked.

I looked down at the note in my lap, touching the paper my Isabel had once touched, and I knew my eyes were glassy when I raised my eyes to my daughters again.

“I wasn’t just friends with Mr…with Ross Chapman when we were kids,” I said. “We dated as teenagers, as well.”

“You did?” Julie asked.

“We did,” I said. “But his family didn’t approve of me because I was half Italian, so we had to see each other on the sly for years.”

“Like Ned and Isabel,” Lucy said.

“Were you in love with him?” Julie asked.

I nodded. “For a while, yes. And I was always…I was attracted to him.” I felt uncomfortable. I’d never talked to Julie or Lucy about this sort of thing before. “But I knew he was shallow because he let his parents dictate who he could or could not see,” I said. For a moment, I got lost in my memory, and the girls were patient as they waited for me to come back.

“I married your father in 1944,” I said, “but that summer, I…I had relations with Ross.”

“Oh, Mom,” Lucy said, and I heard sympathy rather than condemnation in her voice.

“It might have been what they call date rape today,” I said. “Like what happened to Ethan’s daughter. I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I went along with him at first and then realized what I was doing…what we were doing…and told him to stop, but he didn’t. I’m so ashamed to tell you this,” I said, unable to look either of them in the eye.

“Oh, Mommy.” Julie moved to the sofa, sitting close to me, and I was touched that she had called me “mommy,” that the endearment just spilled out of her that way. She rested her hand on my shoulder, a little awkwardly, but I loved the touch. “You were young,” she said. “Things like that happen. Don’t be ashamed.”

“I am, though,” I said. “The terrible thing is that, a few months later, when I realized I was pregnant, I wasn’t sure if the baby was your father’s or Ross’s.”

I saw my daughters look at each other as the meaning of my words dawned on them.

“Isabel might have been Mr. Chapman’s daughter?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I never knew for sure. Your father and I…well, we made love nearly every weekend during that time and I’d only been with Ross once, but I still was never sure whose child I was carrying.”

Isabel had been born in April. She’d been fair, like Ross, but Charles had thought nothing of it. To him, she was his little angel, while I feared she was proof of my sin. When we took her to Bay Head Shores in late June, Ross took one look at her, did a little math in his head and figured she was his. I could see it in his eyes.

“Her hair was light when she was born,” I continued, “but you know how dark it got as she grew older, and she had your father’s straight nose. Still, I was never completely certain.”

“No wonder you wanted to keep Ned and Izzy apart!” Julie exclaimed. “You poor thing. That must have been terrible for you.” Her hand was on my shoulder again, this time rubbing me gently through the sleeve of my jersey. It felt so comforting.

“Could you talk to anyone about it, Mom?” Lucy asked. “Any of your girlfriends?”

I shook my head. I knew Lucy would find such a lack of confidantes unbearable. She had to talk to people about whatever was going on with her. If she got a pimple, she would find herself a pimple support group. But all I cared about back then was not talking about it. I desperately needed to keep my indiscretion to myself.

Lucy moved to the couch, sitting next to me on the opposite side from Julie. “I’m so glad you’re telling us now,” she said.

I could smell each of them—Lucy and her lemony shampoo, Julie and her subtle floral cologne. I had never before felt the way I did at that moment—comforted, supported and understood by my daughters. I knew they were shocked by what I had told them, but I felt no blame from them. I loved my girls.

I took one of their hands in each of mine and raised them both to my lips.

“Thank you, dears,” I said. “But there’s more you need to know.”

1962

The summer Isabel died was, for obvious reasons, the worst summer of my life. Even before her death, though, I was deeply troubled. Isabel had grown difficult over the previous year. It was normal adolescent behavior, I knew, but still challenging to deal with and I was not good at it. I was so worried about her that I clamped down too hard and she fought back like a caged animal. I was particularly concerned that she was getting too close to Ned. I prayed every night that they were not brother and sister, and in my heart of hearts, I felt certain they were not. Yet I knew the chance existed and felt it was my duty to keep them apart. The more I tried, though, the more Izzy fought me.

The evening before Isabel’s death, my parents took Julie and Lucy to the boardwalk and Charles had already left for Westfield. I thought I heard a knock on the screen door of the porch. I was washing dishes in the kitchen, and I turned off the tap to listen.

“Maria?”

I knew the voice. I only heard it those days when Ross was in his yard with his sons or his wife, but I knew it all the same.

I dried my hands on a dish towel, then walked through the living room to the porch. Ross stood outside, his face close to the screen, his hand over his forehead so that he could see into our bungalow.

“Hello, Ross,” I said, standing a distance from the door.

“Can I come in?” he asked. “I need to talk to you.”

I pushed the screen door open, and he stepped onto the porch. In retrospect, I should have gone into the yard with him. Everything might have turned out differently, if only I’d not let him in.

Ross looked nervous, or at least as nervous as a State Supreme Court chief justice was capable of looking.

“I saw your parents leave with the girls,” he said.

“They’ve gone to the boardwalk.”

“Did Isabel go with them?” He looked behind me as if he might see her standing there.

“No,” I said. “She’s out with her girlfriends.”

He looked relieved. “Good. I need to talk to you.”

“Yes, you mentioned that.” I was standing with my arms folded across my chest, conveying, I was certain, a tired sort of impatience.

He glanced toward the end of the porch that faced his bungalow. “Can we go inside?” he asked quietly.

I followed his gaze in the direction of his house. I could see no movement on his back porch, but it was apparent that whatever Ross wanted to say to me, he wanted to say in private. I gave in.

“Come into the living room,” I said.

He followed me inside the house, then sat down on the wicker rocker and rubbed his chin. I leaned against the side of one of the upholstered chairs rather than sit down myself. I didn’t want this conversation to be long.

“Listen,” he said. “I’m certain that Ned and Isabel are involved…romantically.”

Did he mean they were having sex? “I don’t think so,” I said.

“You’ve got your head in the sand,” he said. “She and Ned are together more than you know. More than I knew. Ethan told me they sneak around to be together.”

My heart gave a great thump. “Maybe Ethan is trying to get his big brother in trouble,” I suggested. “I always know where she’s going and who she’s with and she’s good about keeping to her curfew.” That was nonsense, but I wasn’t going to let him know I’d lost control of my daughter.

Ross smiled at me. “Your parents and mine would have said the same thing about us when we were Isabel and Ned’s ages, don’t you think?”

I looked away from him. He was right.

“Humor me for a moment,” he said. “Pretend that I’m right about Isabel and Ned being involved. Then you and I would need to find a way to put an end to their relationship, wouldn’t you agree?”

I had spent the early part of the summer making sure Izzy and Ned were not involved, and until this discussion, I’d thought I had succeeded. But now I was faced with a different problem: I was unwilling to admit to Ross that Isabel actually might be his. I was ninety-percent certain she was Charles’s child, but that ten percent haunted me.

“I do agree,” I said, “because of the very, very slight possibility that…you know. But it’s moot, because I’m certain she’s not seeing him. I would know. I would—”

“Would you wake up, Maria?” He stood up, his voice loud, his hands moving through the air. “She doesn’t look a thing like Charles.”

“She doesn’t look like you, either,” I said. “She looks like me.”

“She has my mother’s chin and cheekbones,” Ross said.

“Oh, stop it.” I covered my uneasiness with a laugh. “Why don’t you go home and—”

“I am not allowing my son to screw his sister!” he shouted, his face red.

I was furious. “Get out,” I said. I walked across the porch toward the door. “Get out right now.”

He stared at me a moment, then walked past me onto the porch. “You better hope she doesn’t turn up pregnant,” he said.

Once he was gone, I let out my breath and was rubbing my hands over my eyes when I suddenly heard a sound coming from the attic. I froze. Footsteps skittered across the attic floor and I turned to see Isabel on the stairs. They swayed and creaked beneath her as she rushed to get down them, and I pressed my hand to my mouth.

“What were you talking about?” she shouted as she jumped the last few steps to the floor.

“Izzy,” I said, struggling to make my voice light, as if anything she’d overheard could be explained away with a chuckle. “I thought you were out with Mitzi and Pam.”

“I had a headache, not that it’s any of your business,” she said. There was fire in her dark eyes. She looked nothing like Ross. Nothing. “What did Mr. Chapman mean about me being Ned’s sister?” she asked.

I tried to look surprised. “What?” I said. “I think you must have misunderstood him, honey.”

“How could I possibly be his sister?” she asked.

I couldn’t find my voice. Isabel shook her head at me as understanding dawned on her. “You tramp,” she said. “You were married to Daddy and you slept with Mr. Chapman?” She put her hand over her own mouth as though she might get sick. “Oh, God,” she said. “You’re disgusting.”

I had no words left in me to deny it or explain it. “I made a mistake, Isabel,” I said. “But I am as certain as I can be that you are Daddy’s child.You don’t need to worry about that.”

“Is this why you’ve tried so hard to keep Ned and me apart?” Her eyes were brimming with tears now. I wanted to hold her, but I knew she would never allow it.

“You and Ned are too young to get serious with anyone,” I said.

She looked at me with something like hatred in her eyes. “I cannot wait to tell Daddy about this,” she said. “You’re nothing but a slut, Mother. And you give me all these rules I’m supposed to obey. What a joke you are.” She turned and ran down the hallway toward the front door and out of the house.

I stood still in the electrified silence, pressing my hands together in front of me. It would destroy Charles if she told him, and in turn, it would destroy me. Charles would never divorce me, but our marriage would be ruined forever. I had to put those thoughts aside, though. Right now, my main concern had to be the emotional state of my child.

I went outside and spotted Isabel across the street sitting among the blueberry bushes, not far from the very place she might have been conceived. She was crying her heart out. I walked across the street and sat down next to her, trying to pull her into my arms, but she stiffened at my touch.

“Tell me it’s not true,” she pleaded. “Tell me Ned’s not my brother.”

“I don’t think he is,” I said. “But it is true that he could be.”

“Oh, God.” She stood up, her body heaving with her sobs. Then she leaned over, picked up a fistful of sand, and threw it directly into my face. I blinked quickly. The sand seared my eyes and I covered them with my hands, trying not to cry out from the pain.

“I mean it, Mother,” she said, her voice somewhere above me. “When Daddy comes this weekend, I’m going to tell him every single thing. I’m going to tell him he has a whore for a wife. I can’t wait. I hope he divorces you.”

It was minutes before I could open my eyes well enough to make my way back to the bungalow and I spent half an hour in the bathroom trying to wash out the sand. I knew I would have to tell Charles the truth before Isabel was able to, but as it turned out, neither of us ever got the chance.

“Izzy wrote that note to Mr. Chapman,” Julie said, when I’d finished my story.

I nodded. “That makes the most sense,” I said. “I don’t know how or why it ended up in your…your bread box, but this—” I lifted the piece of paper. “I’m sure this note was meant for Ross.”

CHAPTER 46

Julie

I waited for Ethan in the parking lot of his father’s independent-living residence in Lakewood. I’d arrived as the sun was setting and I lowered my windows, letting a light, hot breeze fill my car. I kept my eyes trained on the entrance to the lot as I watched for Ethan’s truck.

It had been a long and difficult day, starting with my discovery of the remnants of Shannon’s party in my house. While I was at my mother’s, Shannon and Tanner worked like dogs to clean everything up. Tanner had been contrite, but my opinion of him had taken a nosedive from which he would have a hard time recovering.

When I got home from Mom’s, the house was immaculate and Shannon and Tanner were out. I was glad of that, because I was still reeling from my mother’s revelation about her relationship with Ross Chapman. I wasn’t sure who had killed my sister, but I knew now that I’d had little, if anything, to do with it. Listening to my mother speak had lifted forty-one years’ worth of guilt from my shoulders. Isabel had not died because of me. I had been little more than a blind alley in a complex maze of a story. My guilt was replaced by a deep sympathy for my mother, who had lived with her own demons for most of her life.

I’d sat in my spotless living room, the phone in my lap, for many minutes before getting the courage to call Ethan. Once I did, I told him about our conversation with my mother, being careful how I couched it. I made her one-time, extramarital lovemaking with Ross Chapman sound consensual. Maybe it was. Who knew what sort of twist my mother had given the event in the past sixty years to ease her conscience? I didn’t want to hurt Ethan more than I had to.

He grew so quiet on the phone, I thought he’d hung up.

“My parents had such a good marriage, though,” he said finally.

“That’s probably true,” I reassured him. I hated that I was shaking his world. “So did my parents. What happened between your father and my mother was very early in both their marriages. They were young and…maybe they were still adjusting to being married.”

“So,” Ethan said slowly, “if the note was written to my father, that still doesn’t explain how it got in your bread box.”

“I know,” Julie said.

“Are you thinking he…that he was the one who…” He couldn’t seem to finish the sentence.

“I don’t know, Ethan,” I said. “I don’t know what to think.”

“I need to talk to him,” he said. “In person. How do you feel about going with me?”

I thought of how I had Lucy to share the burden of the past with me. Ethan had no one. I didn’t want him to go through this alone. “Of course I’ll go with you,” I said.

So here I sat, while my mixed-up daughter was out somewhere with her baby’s father and Lucy comforted our distraught mother.

I saw Ethan’s truck turn into the lot, and I got out of my car as he pulled up next to me.

Once out of his truck, he drew me into a hug. “Thanks for agreeing to meet me here,” he said into my ear. He held on to me for a minute and I pressed my palms flat against his back.

“You okay?” I whispered.

He let go of me. “Not really,” he said. I could see the frown lines between his eyebrows and the tight set of his jaw.

“Does he know we’re coming?” I asked.

He nodded, taking my hand as we walked toward the entrance to the large brick building. “I called him and ended up telling him nearly everything because he kept asking questions. I said that your mother told you about her relationship with him and the possibility that he had been Isabel’s father,” he said. “And I told him about the note in the giraffe.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing for a minute. Then I could hear him crying.” Ethan shuddered, squeezing my hand tightly. “I’ve never seen my father cry,” he said. “I’ve never even seen him near tears, not when my mother or Ned died. He couldn’t speak, and I told him that I was coming over and not to worry. That we’d work everything out.” We were in the lobby now and Ethan pushed the button for the elevator. “He said ‘all right.’ I swear, Julie, he sounded like a scared little kid.”

A couple of the residents—two elderly women using walkers—got on the elevator with us, so we said nothing as we rode to the fifth floor. We got off the elevator, and Ethan led me down the hall at a quick pace. He knocked on a door bearing a small, faux-ivy wreath. We could hear noise inside. A thud. A squeak. But no one answered Ethan’s knock.

Ethan leaned close to the door. “Dad?” he called. Still no response.

He looked down at his key chain and sorted through the keys until he found the right one. Slipping it into the lock, he pushed open the door.

We were in a small, neat living/dining room combination, with heavy, dark cherry furniture and rich leather wingback chairs befitting a former chief justice.

“Dad?” Ethan called toward what must have been the bedroom. He took a step in that direction, but froze at the sound of a scream coming from somewhere outside the building. We looked toward the living-room windows. One of them was open, the screen missing.

“God, no!” Ethan rushed toward the window.

I followed him and rested my hand on his back as he leaned out the window to look at the ground below.

“No,” he wailed. “Oh, my God, Dad! No.”

Now there was a chorus of screams coming from the ground far below us and I started to tremble. I did not want to see what he was seeing. Ethan pulled away from the window and dropped to the floor, his hands covering his face. I sat down next to him and wrapped my arms around him, and I rocked him, as we waited for the sound of sirens.

Mr. Chapman had used the second bedroom in his apartment as an office, and it was there, on an otherwise empty desktop, that one of the police officers found the letter addressed to Ethan.

Dearest Son,On August 5, 1962, Isabel Bauer approached me in our backyard and slipped a note to me. That was the note you found, in which she threatened to tell her father about my indiscretion with her mother. I suppose all these years later, it’s hard for you to understand how threatening that was to me. Charles Bauer could do irreparable damage to my career. He had power and plenty of friends in high places. He could easily have ruined me and my political aspirations.I knew that Ned was in the habit of meeting Isabel on the beach at midnight. I forbade him to meet her that night, but I overheard him talking to her on the phone, telling her he might be able to sneak out after all. I saw that as my opportunity to talk to her alone. I lit into Ned, telling him he could not go out. Then I went to meet her myself. Please understand, I had no intention of killing Isabel. I merely wanted to talk to her in private so that I could dissuade her from speaking to her father about me. I found her on the platform. It was dark and I think as I swam out to her, she may have thought I was Ned. She was furious when she discovered I had come to speak with her. She tried to jump in the water to get away from me, but I grabbed her arm and we struggled. I guess that’s when her sister heard her scream and yell for help, although I don’t remember everything that happened. All I know is we argued and she fell into the water. I did not push her. I had no idea that she’d hit her head or that she’d drowned. I thought she was simply swimming underwater to get away from me. I didn’t know she’d died until the next morning. I told the police I’d spent the night stargazing with Ned in our yard, knowing that Ned would think my lie was meant to protect him, but it had really been to protect myself and my career.I’ve struggled with my guilt all these years, not only over Isabel Bauer’s death but over Ned’s descent into depression and alcoholism as well. I am quite certain that Ned found the note from Isabel, as it disappeared from the cigarette box in which I’d placed it, though he never said a word to me about it. I’m sure that he put two and two together and realized my role in Isabel’s death. I feel as though I killed them both.Don’t grieve for me, Ethan. I’ve had far more joy in my life than I’ve deserved and much of that has come from watching you become the skilled carpenter, wonderful father and honorable man you are today. I love you.Dad

CHAPTER 47

Maria

Lucy left about eight last night, once I’d convinced her I was fine—which I most certainly was not. Then Julie called at ten-thirty, just to check up on me, she said, but her voice was strange. A little too falsely chipper. She told me she wouldn’t make it to church this morning, but she asked me to come over to her house after mass for brunch with her and Lucy and Ethan. I accepted the invitation. I kept trying to still my mind, telling myself the truth would come out in time and that I couldn’t change it by thinking about it, but despite my efforts, my thoughts raced and I barely slept a wink all night long. I knew something was up. I was not an idiot. I suspected Julie was going to tell me what I’d already guessed: Ross Chapman murdered my child.

The sermon at church this morning was about repentance. Aha, I thought, this sermon is custom designed for me. I was prepared to give the priest all my attention, and yet my mind still wandered. I was glad when mass was over, and I actually ran a yellow light in my rush to get to Julie’s.

I arrived before Lucy and Ethan and let myself in the front door. I heard shouting coming from the kitchen. Shannon’s voice, then Julie’s. I was about to walk into the middle of an argument. Shannon screamed an expletive at her mother, and I cringed. Not an argument, I thought. A down-and-dirty fight.

Julie was yelling about cutting Shannon off from her health insurance if she moved to Colorado with her young man.

“And forget about me paying for college if you ever decide to go,” she yelled. Julie was not a yeller, and I knew she had reached the point of desperation with my granddaughter. “Forget about any monetary support from me, period!” she shouted.

Shannon gave as good as she got, calling her mother manipulative, conniving and cruel before I’d even taken six steps across the living-room floor. She was crying, though. I could hear the tears in her voice. I walked toward the kitchen and quietly observed from the doorway. Julie was at the granite counter using a melon baller on a ripe cantaloupe, going at it as though she was cutting out her daughter’s heart. Shannon paced around the island punching numbers into her cell phone as she hollered ugly words at her mother. I watched the two of them perform the dance I remembered all too well.

Shannon was first to notice me. She closed her phone, dropped her gaze to the floor, then walked past me out of the room.

“Bye, Nana,” she muttered beneath her breath, and I heard the front door open, then slam shut.

Julie set down the melon baller and raised her hand to her forehead. Her eyes were closed and she looked as if she had a headache. I wasn’t sure what to say. What words would have helped me when I was in her position? What words would have gotten through my thick skull?

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Julie wiped her hands on a paper towel, then leaned against the counter, arms folded across her chest. “She insists she’s leaving in a week with Tanner,” she said. “They had a big party here while I was out of town, Mom. Dozens of kids. Alcohol and who knows what else. She and Tanner slept in my bed.”

Petty little things in the big picture, I thought. I felt tired. I thought of Isabel on the bay at midnight with Ned. Of me out in the blueberry lot with Ross. “It’s a never-ending circle,” I said, “and Shannon is doomed to face it with her own child in another seventeen years or so.”

Julie looked at me as though she didn’t understand a word I’d spoken.

We heard the front door open, and in a moment, Lucy and Ethan came into the kitchen. Ethan didn’t even acknowledge me as he walked over to Julie for an embrace. Julie shut her eyes tightly as she held him. Then she backed away, her hands on either side of his face.

“How are you?” She looked into his eyes, and I knew there was something strong growing between the two of them. I’d suspected it at the barbecue, but now I knew it for sure.

Lucy put her arm around my waist. “Did you tell her?” she asked Julie, who shook her head.

“Tell me what?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

Ethan looked at me. “My father killed himself last night,” he said.

My God. I wasn’t sure if I’d said those words out loud or to myself. That was not what I’d expected to hear. I felt light-headed, and Ethan grabbed a chair from beneath the kitchen table and slipped it under me. I held his arm as I sat down, then I looked into his red-rimmed eyes. “I’m so sorry, Ethan,” I said.

He nodded.

“You sit, too,” Julie said to him, and he didn’t argue as she led him to a chair. He looked as numb as I felt.

“He confessed, Mom,” Julie said. “You were right. Isabel had written that note to him. After he read it, he told Ned not to meet her on the platform that night so that he could meet her himself to try to convince her not to tell Daddy about…about you and Mr. Chapman. He said it was an accident, that Izzy lost her balance and he tried to grab her arm to keep her from falling. He didn’t realize that she’d hit her head. He didn’t know until the next day that she drowned.”

“At least that’s what he claimed,” Ethan said, rubbing his eyes.

“Poor old soul,” I said. If I’d agreed to see Ross, might I have prevented his suicide? That was something I could never know. I looked at Ethan. I wanted to lift a bit of his sorrow. “Your father was as flawed as any human that ever walked the earth,” I said, “but I believe him. I don’t think he was capable of premeditated murder, especially not of a girl he believed was his daughter.” The thought of Isabel’s last minutes came to me again, as it did too often, and I brushed it away. I would deal with that later. Not here. Not now. “The person I feel the worst about is poor George Lewis,” I added.

Julie suddenly started to cry. Ethan got to his feet and pulled her gently into his arms again, and I felt grateful to him for coming back into her life the way he had. Despite my earlier misgivings about the two of them getting together, I liked seeing the comfortable intimacy between them and I was glad something good had come out of this mess. But although Ethan was sweet in his attempt to comfort her, Julie was inconsolable. She couldn’t seem to stop crying. Ethan looked past her at me. “She’s always felt as though everyone blamed her for Isabel’s death,” he explained.

Oh no, I thought. Was that my fault? I stood up and moved next to the two of them.

“Sweetheart,” I said, rubbing Julie’s back. “I never blamed you.” That wasn’t precisely the truth. In the beginning, I did blame her, but it was a short-lived anger. I knew in my heart she’d never meant to hurt her sister. My anger toward her had evolved into a grief that had consumed me for a long time. It never occurred to me to take back the cruel things I’d said to Julie in the hours and days after we lost Isabel. Julie had seemed fine to my grief-blinded eyes. I saw now how she’d suffered, and I also saw my opportunity to address the mother-daughter strife that seemed to plague our family.

“Julie,” I said, “if anyone besides Ross is to blame for Isabel’s death, it’s me.”

Julie was quick to shake her head. Pulling away from Ethan, she brushed the tears from her face with her hands. “No, Mom,” she said. “Don’t even think that.”

“It’s the truth,” I said. “I pushed Isabel away from me by trying to hold on to her too tightly.” I looked hard into my daughter’s face. “Do you hear me, Julie?” I asked. “Do you? I don’t want to see you make that same mistake with Shannon.”

CHAPTER 48

Julie

I had prepared plenty of food—melon and strawberries, bagels and cream cheese, scrambled eggs and sausage—but none of us ate more than a bite. We sat in the dining room, since it was too hot to eat on the porch. The eggs and sausage grew cold as we talked, as we washed the air clear of things never before said. If I’d only had the courage to talk to my mother decades ago about Isabel, my suffering—and I am sure hers, as well—would have been far less. Instead, I grew into adulthood nursing my guilt, still holding on to a twelve-year-old’s version of all that had happened. Why had we spent forty years tiptoeing around the elephant in the room? Did we think it would go away, that if we starved it by ignoring it, it would shrink until it was skinny enough to slip out the door? I vowed to never again make that mistake. Bringing things out in the open when they happened could be painful, but it was like getting a vaccination: the needle stung, but that was nothing compared to getting the disease.

After brunch, Ethan went upstairs to my room for a nap. His daughter, Abby, and her husband and baby were coming over later and together, we would make the arrangements for Ethan’s father.

Lucy left after helping Mom and me clean up a bit; she had a ZydaChicks rehearsal to go to. My mother stayed with me a while longer, though. Once the kitchen was clean, she sat with me on the sofa in the living room, holding my hand. Or maybe I was holding hers. Either way, I liked the way it felt.

“There’s one other thing we never talk about,” I said to her after we’d sat that way for a few minutes. “Something I never tell you.”

“What’s that, Julie?” she asked.

“How much I love you,” I said. “I always told you that when I was a kid, and then somewhere along the line, I got out of the habit.You’re going to hear it from me a lot from now on.”

“I knew it even when you didn’t say it,” she said. “But it would be wonderful to hear.”

“Also,” I was on a roll, “I think you’re smart and beautiful and vibrant. And I feel lucky to have you as my mother.” I couldn’t believe how good it felt to get those words out! “I hope I’m just like you when I’m your age.”

She chuckled. “I’ll ask Micky D’s to hold a job open for you,” she said, but then she sobered. She gave my hand a squeeze. “I…I made light of what you just said, didn’t I?” she said, shaking her head with a sigh. “That’s what we do in this family. When we get too close to the honest truth, we start squirming and back away.” She turned to face me. “I heard every word you said, Julie, and I’ll treasure them always. I love you, dear.”

We hugged, and I could have sat with her arms around me for hours. I felt blessed, my happiness at that moment marred only by my thoughts about the man sleeping in my bed upstairs. He would never have the chance I was having to heal his own family with truth and forgiveness.

When my mother left, I sat in my office—it seemed like months since I’d actually written in that room—and began making phone calls to funeral homes in the Lakewood area. I wanted to gather information to give Ethan when he woke up. I didn’t really know what I was doing. This was the first time I’d ever been in the position of handling such arrangements. For Ethan, it would be the third time in less than two years.

I was hanging up the phone when I heard Shannon’s car in the driveway. She came into the house through the front door and headed up the stairs, probably to do some more packing.

“Shannon?” I called.

Her footsteps stopped.

“What?”

“Could you come here, please?”

She didn’t budge. I could picture her standing there, debating whether to continue to her room or come to my office. I heard her sigh. In a moment, she was standing in my office doorway. She didn’t look at me directly. I guessed that she expected me to continue our argument from earlier in the day.

“Sit down, honey,” I said, trying with my tone of voice to let her know I had no intention of fighting.

She hesitated, then walked over to the love seat and sat down. I rolled my chair closer to her.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking this morning,” I said. “I love you very much.You know I don’t want you to go to Colorado, but if you want to go, I won’t stand in your way.” The words nearly choked me, but I got them out.

Shannon looked puzzled for a moment, as though she wondered if she’d stumbled into the right house.

“Are you kidding?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I won’t lie to you, Shannon. I’m sick about you leaving. I want to lock you in your room and keep you here. I’ll be so worried about you, because you are the most important thing in the world to me.” My voice broke ever so slightly. I doubted she’d even noticed. “But you can go if that’s what you want,” I said. “Just remember that you’re always—always—welcome to come home, with no recriminations. Okay?”

She’d broken into a slow smile as I spoke. Now she stood up, leaning over to kiss my cheek. “Thanks, Mom,” she said. “That is totally cool.”

She left the room, heading up the stairs again, and I could hear the little beeps as she dialed her cell phone, calling Tanner to tell him the good news.

EPILOGUE

Lucy

“She’s never going to fall,” Ethan said, glancing over his shoulder at Abby, who was balanced on one ski behind the boat. She looked relaxed, almost bored, as she cut across the water, and Ethan might have sounded like he was griping, but he was smiling with pride. He’d told me that he’d taught his daughter to ski when she was ten. Now, at twenty-seven, skiing was as easy to her as walking.

I was holding Abby’s daughter, eighteen-month-old Clare, on my lap. “See Mommy?” I leaned down to say in her ear.

“Mommy ski!” Clare said, pointing at her mother.

“Yes, she sure is,” I said.

“We’ll get her down.” Ethan’s tone was malevolent, and he turned the steering wheel so that Abby would have to cross the wake of a much larger boat. I could hear her laughter over the sound of the motor as she realized what her father was doing.

“Your grandpop’s a meanie,” I said to Clare.

“Pop Pop’s a meanie!” Clare said.

Ethan was anything but mean. He’d been my brother-in-law since January when he and Julie got married, and he was a doll. I was staying with the two of them for a few weeks this summer, and he and Abby and I had gone skiing nearly every day since my arrival.

As for me and men, though, I thought I was finished with them. My life was too full to add a man to the mix. Between my students, the ZydaChicks, my women’s support group and my ever-expanding family, I really had no room for anything or anyone else.

Abby rode the wake of the larger boat like a champion mogul skier, elegantly rising and falling over the rolling water. But then she raised her hand and waved at us, letting us know that she was willing to give Ethan or me a turn.

Ethan slowed the boat and Abby dropped smoothly into the water as we circled around to pick her up. She climbed the ladder into the boat, her body long limbed and tan, and she gently shook her short wet hair in front of Clare’s face, tickling the little girl’s nose and making her giggle.

“You go, Luce,” Ethan said to me.

I handed Clare to her mother, climbed over the side of the boat and jumped into the water. Abby tossed the skis down to me and, as usual, I struggled to put them on. I was pitiful at every aspect of skiing: putting on the skis, getting back into the boat, and most significantly, staying up for longer than a few seconds. All the stops and starts probably drove Ethan and Abby crazy, but they never complained and I loved every minute of the adventure—especially knowing that I was in water that was way over my head, and I was one-hundred-percent certain that I was not going to drown.

Maria

Something I figured out long ago was that life rarely turns out the way you expect it to. How could I have predicted that, at eighty-two years of age, I would find myself planting geraniums in the Chapmans’ window boxes? For that matter, how could I have predicted that my daughter, Julie, would one day be a Chapman?

By the time Julie and Ethan were married, I think we’d all gotten over the astonishing fact that we were embracing the son of Isabel’s killer, and we welcomed him into the family. No one had suffered more than Ethan during the past couple of years. He’d lost his entire nuclear family and learned a terrible truth about the father he’d idolized. I came to admire his life-embracing attitude and his resiliency. He was one of us—a survivor.

Julie and Ethan divided their time between Julie’s house in Westfield and this old bungalow in Bay Head Shores. I hadn’t wanted to come here at first. The thought turned my stomach, but I didn’t keep my discomfort to myself. I’d discovered that you can still learn things when you’re an old lady. Maybe you couldn’t change the core of your personality—that ingrained identity deep inside you—but you could change how you dealt with the world. The way I’d changed was that I didn’t keep things to myself anymore. If I had a gripe or a sorrow or a joy, I would call one of my girls and share it with her. That’s why, when Julie first suggested I spend time with them at Ethan’s house, I told her how hard that would be for me. Julie listened to everything I had to say on the subject and then said they would love to have me, but she understood my concerns and the decision was ultimately mine to make. Given the choice between staying home in Westfield while my family built new summertime traditions without me, or facing my fears and becoming a contributing part of their future, I chose the latter. It hadn’t been as hard as I’d expected. The world looked different from Ethan’s backyard than it did from ours. I spent as much time with them as I could—when I could get away from Micky D’s, of course.

Julie

It was so peaceful on the sunporch. I had my computer on my lap and a cup of coffee on the table next to me. I could hear the snipping of the pruning shears as my mother worked on the window boxes and planters in the front yard. I was writing what I expected to be the last book in the Granny Fran series. Fran Gallagher was eighty-four now, and it was time for her to retire. I planned to leave the impression that she’d be called in occasionally to help her younger, greener colleagues solve their crimes, but really, it was time for her to move to Florida, find a nice old fellow to pal around with and rest on her laurels.

My fans wouldn’t be happy with me for ending my series, but I was ready to move on to something new and different. I longed to write a story with a little more meat on its bones. I wanted to delve into life’s experiences, both the good and the bad. I wanted to write books filled with heartache and love, evil and goodness, death and rebirth—all those highs and lows that made up reality. Some of my readers would follow me along that path; others would mourn the loss of the lighthearted escape reading I’d given them for so many years. But I would be writing what felt right for me now, and I couldn’t wait to get started.

I looked up from my work as I pondered the scene in which Fran realizes she is tired of solving other people’s mysteries. The canal was calm, the tide slack as a sailboat made its quiet way toward the river. Across the water from where I sat, a handful of African-American men were fishing. Were any of them related to the Lewises? I would never know.

I went to see Wanda Lewis in the fall. She was Wanda Jackson now, and she had four sons and countless grandchildren, but no amount of family could make up for the loss of her brother. She had not welcomed me, and I didn’t stay long. I didn’t blame her for the chilly reception, but one thing I’d come to understand was that I couldn’t undo the past. I could only try to learn from it.

The sound of a motor disturbed the quiet morning, and I looked up to see Ethan steering his boat toward the dock from the direction of the bay. Ethan, Lucy, Abby and baby Clare went out nearly every morning while I wrote. Once they came inside, I would put my work away. I was trying to learn to balance my time between work and play. I was not very good at it yet, but I was improving.

Everyone got out of the boat, but only Ethan walked toward the house. Abby and Lucy took Clare into the open side of the dock, holding her hands as they walked with her down the slope into the water that had once held such fear for my younger sister.

Ethan opened the door to the porch and came inside, taking off his sunglasses.

“How’s Granny Fran doing?” he asked. His hair and his bathing suit were wet. I knew he’d had fun this morning.

“She’s on her last legs,” I told him.

He bent over to kiss me and I could smell the saltwater on his skin. “And how’s Granny Julie?” he asked.

As if on cue, Kira Sellers Stroh, who’d been sleeping peacefully in her Portacrib on the other side of the porch, began to whimper.

“Granny Julie couldn’t be any happier,” I said.

This year had certainly been full of surprises. Shannon did go to Colorado with Tanner, but she was there less than twenty-four hours when she called to tell me she was coming home.

“We got to his house and all his friends were there waiting to meet me,” she said, when I picked her up at the airport. “They were really nice, Mom, but the youngest one was twenty-five, and I thought, ‘What am I doing here? What am I doing with this old guy I barely know?’”

Ethan walked over to the Portacrib and lifted Kira into his arms. He kissed her temple and rocked her a little, cooing to her.

“Is Shannon napping?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.” Shannon had been up with the Kira most of the night. The baby had been born at exactly midnight on the twenty-first of December and she’d been a night owl ever since.

I moved my laptop to the floor and Ethan lowered Kira into my arms, then sat down next to me. I snuggled the baby against my chest. I liked it when she was half-awake like this, in that gurgling, not-quite-ready-to-eat state, easily placated by a little cuddling. I pressed my lips to her thick hair and inhaled the scent of baby shampoo. She was a beautiful child, with her mother’s—and her great-aunt Isabel’s—dark eyes, dark hair, and double rows of jet-black eyelashes. She and Shannon lived with us, and although Tanner sent money every month, I contributed as well. Shannon still gave cello lessons at the music store and would be entering the music program at Drew University in the fall, commuting from home. She had a hard road ahead of her. I’d given up analyzing whether I was helping her too much or too little. I was just trying to follow my heart.

Ethan leaned his head against my shoulder, rubbing Kira’s back as we watched Abby, Lucy and Clare splashing and laughing in the dock. Then Lucy hoisted Clare onto her shoulders for the walk up the slope. From upstairs, I could hear the sound of water running and knew that Shannon was up, and the front screen door squeaked open as my mother came inside. In a moment, everyone would be on the porch.

I covered Ethan’s hand where it rested on Kira’s back. “Is this how you thought your life would turn out?” I asked him.

“Are you kidding?” he said. “I couldn’t have dreamed up anything this good.”

I laughed, then returned my attention to the granddaughter in my arms. I wondered what sort of challenge Kira would present to Shannon when she became a teenager. I could imagine Shannon struggling to hold on to her child, trying to rein her in to keep her safe.

And I would be there to help her let go.

QUESTIONS FOR YOUR READING GROUP

Julie carries the responsibility for Isabel’s death throughout her life. How does that impact her and her relationships over the years?

Julie refers to her family’s inability to discuss Isabel as “the elephant in the room.” Do you have experience with “the elephant in the room” in your family or circle of friends? How does that impact your relationships?

Were you more like the adventurous Julie as a child or the fearful Lucy? How did that affect you growing up? How and why did those qualities change in you—if they did?

In part, The Bay at Midnight is about sisters. Discuss Julie and Lucy’s relationship. How do you think Isabel would have fitted in had she lived?

Why do you think Shannon turned to Lucy with her problems instead of to Julie? Is there anything Julie could have done differently to be her daughter’s confidante? Does this situation resonate for you as you think about your own teenage years or your relationships with your own children?

What parallels did you see between the generations: Maria and her parents, Julie, Lucy and Isabel and their parents, Shannon and Julie?

Julie is caught between the teachings of her religion and her own nature. How does this impact her and the choices she makes? Can you relate to her conflict?

Why do you think Ross wanted to reconnect with Maria?

What do you think motivated Julie to maintain a friendship with Wanda and George in spite of her parents’ objections?

Which character garnered the most sympathy from you and why?

How did your feelings about Julie, Lucy and Maria change throughout the story?

The Bay at Midnight is written in the first person from three points of view—Julie’s, Lucy’s and Maria’s. How might the story have been different if it had been written entirely from Julie’s point of view?

Q&A ON The Bay at Midnight

What inspired you to write this story?

This story actually began with the setting. Until I was eighteen, my family owned a small bungalow on a canal in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. I’ve always felt nostalgic about my longago summer home. Since I knew I would never own it again, I decided the only way to enjoy it would be to write about it.

As always, I wanted to explore the relationships between people, particularly Maria and her two daughters, Julie and Lucy. The murder of the third daughter, Isabel, flowed from my thoughts about the family. The setting, with its early sixties innocence, seemed perfect for a mystery. I had so many real details in my memory from living there—floating on tubes down the canal to the bay, crabbing in our dock, getting caught in the fog from the mosquito truck, and one heartrending disappearance of a child—that the book was both easy and fun to write.

You often write about secrets in your novels. What intrigues you about the dynamics of a relationship in which something is hidden?

Before writing full-time, I was a psychotherapist who frequently worked with families. I became aware of the damage a family’s secrets could do its members. Children and young adults intuitively sense when there’s something “amiss” in their family, and they often act out in response to that discomfiting intuition. In my fiction, I like to explore the ramifications of keeping secrets, both before and after they’re revealed.

The Bay at Midnight shows a single event’s legacy on three generations of women—Maria; her daughters, Julie and Lucy; and her granddaughter, Shannon. What did you want to explore in each of these women’s lives?

I wanted to look at how Isabel’s murder coloured each of their lives as the years passed. It was only as I began writing the story that I saw the link between the three mother-daughter dyads: Maria and her mother, Maria and her daughters, and Julie and Shannon. Each mother tried to protect her daughter from the inevitability of growing up, with all the difficult choices and learning experiences that entails. And each of them failed.

You’ve written many novels. Is there one book in your history as a writer that stands out as a favourite?

Actually, this one. I felt deeply connected to the setting for reasons I’ve already mentioned, but writing in the first person also connected me to the characters in a way I hadn’t previously experienced. I missed the characters once I typed “The End,” so I think that’s a good sign!

WHY I WRITE…

I always wanted to be a writer and wrote many small, terrible books as a pre-teen. But I also had a strong desire to be a social worker, having read a book as a teenager about the different ways social workers could help people. By the time I was ready for college, becoming a successful writer seemed like a pipe dream, so I received both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work. Then a funny thing happened. I was at a doctor’s appointment, and the receptionist told me the doctor was running very late. There were no magazines in the office, but I had a pen and a pad…and I had an idea that had been rolling around in my head for more than a decade. I began writing and couldn’t stop. At first, I thought of my writing as a hobby, but after about four years I had a completed novel. A year later, I had my first contract. I continued working as both a social worker and a writer for several more years until I decided to write full time. I love writing. It’s hard to imagine a better career, and I have plenty more stories to tell.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Once a medical social worker, Diane Chamberlain is the award-winning author of twelve novels that explore the complexities of human relationships—between men and women, brothers and sisters, parents and children. Diane lives in northern Virginia.

Q&A ON WRITING

What do you love the most about being a writer?

It’s so rewarding to be able to touch thousands of people with my stories. I love hearing that a reader lost a night of sleep because she couldn’t put down one of my books! That’s the best compliment I can receive.

Where do you go for inspiration?

When I begin to think about writing a new book, I see story possibilities everywhere. My mind and imagination are suddenly open to all the universe has to offer. I devour newspapers and magazines, watch movies, go to art museums, talk to people and even listen in on conversations in restaurants (not intentionally—I just can’t help myself when I’m in story-gathering mode!). The story that ultimately arises from all of this is a composite of so many different ideas that I can rarely recall the initial inspiration.

What one piece of advice would you give to a writer wanting to start a career?

First, study the craft of writing. I have read many manuscripts in which the idea is brilliant, but the writing is so poor that I know it stands no chance of ever being published, which is heartbreaking. Read as much as you can so that you understand how stories are told. What draws you in? What keeps you interested? Take a class and share your writing with others to get feedback. Finally, get out and live your life so you have experiences to write about. Writers often tend to be introverts who like to closet themselves away, but we really do need the stimulation of being part of the world in order to understand people and the situations they get themselves into.

You have a master’s degree in social work, and worked as a youth counsellor and in the field of medical social work, as well as having a private psychotherapy practice. How does this background inform and influence your work?

My background helps me understand how people “tick.” It also gives me a deep appreciation of the struggle people face as they try to cope with tragedy. I loved being a social worker and love being a writer. I feel lucky to have had two careers that let me touch people in a positive way.

How did you feel when your first book was signed?

It’s impossible to explain the joy I felt that day! It had been a long time coming, and the realisation that my story would finally reach readers was simply amazing and very rewarding. I called my family and my writer friends. It was exciting…However, the book wasn’t actually published for a very long two and a half years!

Where do your characters come from and do they ever surprise you as you write?

They surprise me all the time! I love creating characters and breathing life into them. I want them to be both believable and memorable to my readers, and I spend much of my writing time getting to know them. When I was a clinical social worker, I took a seminar on hypnotherapy. During that training, I not only thought about how useful the techniques I was learning would be for my psychotherapy clients, but how they could help me understand my characters as well. In the beginning, I approached using this new tool in a very formal way. I’d sit in a comfortable chair with a pad and pen, put myself in a light trance, and imagine I was the character. Then I’d start writing about “my” life, in the first person, from the character’s point of view. I didn’t censor myself, but simply let the words flow. As my subconscious took over, I learned things about my character I never would have come up with consciously. It’s an astonishing experience and often full of surprises. If I’m surprised by what happens, I’m quite sure my readers will be as well. Our subconscious minds are amazing things if we just tap into them. Now that the technique is second nature to me, I often use it when I’m feeling perplexed by, or simply out of touch with, a character. I close my eyes and ask her to tell me what’s going on with her, or perhaps how she’s feeling about another character in the story. Sometimes the answers I receive are pure gold.

Which book do you wish you had written?

E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, and not only because I would now be very wealthy! I have always loved that children’s book and it was an early inspiration in my longing to write. It’s a beautifully crafted book and a lovingly told story.

Do you have a favourite character that you’ve created and what is it you like about that character?

I have many favourites, but CeeCee from The Lost Daughter is definitely one of them. I like that she’s a blend of vulnerability and strength. I think many readers can relate to those qualities in her. I also like that, despite the fact that she’s done something very wrong, she’s still a person with high moral standards. It’s that conflict that forces her to make a devastating choice at the end of the book, and it’s that conflict that truly humanises her.

A WRITER’S LIFE

Paper and pen or straight onto the computer?

Both. I often start with paper and pen, and then hit a certain point when ideas are coming too quickly for me to keep up. That’s when I move to the computer.

PC or laptop?

Both. I am more comfortable working on my PC because I love my big monitor and ergonomic keyboard. But I also love working in coffee shops, so my laptop is a must.

Music or silence?

Music, but without lyrics. I listen to particular soundtracks when I write. I like soundtracks with high drama, such as Braveheart, Blood Diamond, and Dances with Wolves. They make me feel very emotional, and that is reflected in what I’m writing.

Morning or night?

I’m a night owl, definitely.

Coffee or tea?

Coffee. Half caffeine, half decaf, with a little milk.

Your guilty reading pleasure?

Hmm…I don’t think I have one. I really must work on that.

The first book you loved?

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White.

A DAY IN THE LIFE

This depends on where I am in the writing process. If it’s early on, you might find me lolling around the house with a faraway look in my eyes as the story begins to take shape in my imagination. If I’m outlining, you’ll find me hunched over my dining-room table, surrounded by note cards, each one containing a scene from the book as I move them around to form a cohesive story. If I’m in the middle of the book, I’ll often start my day at a local coffee shop, going over what I wrote the day before. Then I’ll come home and get to work at the computer. If it’s the last few months before deadline, you’ll find me at the computer bright and early, then all day long, then late into the night. And I’ll have a crazed, frantic look in my eyes!

TOP TEN BOOKS

Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, which was not only a great read, but an eye-opener for me into the twentieth-century history of the Congo.

Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, because of its connection to the sea and beach and because of its exploration of a very real marriage.

White Horses by Alice Hoffman, because it was the first book of hers that I read, and it inspired my early writing. When I reread my first novel, Private Relations, I can recognise the passages that were written during my “Alice Hoffman phase.”

Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy, because it’s beautifully told and a fantastic, gripping story about a wildly dysfunctional family—my favourite kind.

The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, because it’s so inventive and so very touching.

The Colour Purple by Alice Walker, because I started sobbing on page one.

The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh, because it keeps me centred.

I Know this Much is True by Wally Lamb, because it’s an amazing story, wonderfully told. I reread it when I want to write from a male character’s point of view. It helps me understand how a man thinks and feels.

Beloved by Toni Morrison. I didn’t love it until I had to reread it for a book club. Then it suddenly came together for me, and I’ve reread it several times since.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, because it’s about three of my favourite things: food, spirituality, and relationships.

THE LOST DAUGHTER

Don’t miss Diane Chamberlain’s number one bestselling title, The Lost Daughter.

Would you live a lie to keep your child?

In 1977, pregnant Genevieve Russell disappeared. Twenty years later, her remains are discovered and Timothy Gleason is charged with murder. But there is no sign of the unborn child.

CeeCee Wilkes knows how Genevieve died—because she was there. She also knows what happened to the missing infant, because two decades ago CeeCee made the devastating choice to raise the baby as her own.

Now Timothy Gleason is facing the death penalty, and CeeCee has another choice to make. Tell the truth and destroy her family. Or let an innocent man die to protect a lifetime of lies.

Available now from all good booksellers

BEFORE THE STORM

by Diane Chamberlain

Read on for an exclusive look at Chapter One

Coming soon from MIRA Books

Chapter One

Andy

WHEN I WALKED BACK INTO MY FRIEND Emily’s church, I saw the pretty girl right away. She’d smiled and said “hey” to me earlier when we were in the youth building, and I’d been looking for her ever since. Somebody’d pushed all the long church seats out of the way so kids could dance, and the girl was in the middle of the floor dancing fast with my friend Keith, who could dance cooler than anybody. I stared at the girl like nobody else was in the church, even when Emily came up to me and said, “Where were you? This is a lock-in. That means you stay right here all night.” I saw that her eyebrows were shaped like pale check marks. That meant she was mad.

I pointed to the pretty girl. “Who’s that?”

“How should I know?” Emily poked her glasses higher up her nose. “I don’t know every single solitary person here.”

The girl had on a floaty short skirt and she had long legs that flew over the floor when she danced. Her blond hair was in those cool things America-African people wear that I could never remember the name of. Lots of them all over her head in stripes.

I walked past some kids playing cards on the floor and straight over to the girl. I stopped four shoe lengths away, which Mom always said was close enough. I used to get too close to people and made them squirmy. They need their personal space, Mom said. But even standing that far away, I could see her long eyelashes. They made me think of baby bird feathers. I saw a baby bird close once. It fell out of the nest in our yard and Maggie climbed the ladder to put it back. I wanted to reach over and touch the girl’s feather lashes, but knew that was not an appropriate thing.

Keith suddenly stopped dancing with her. He looked right at me. “What d’you want, little rich boy?” he asked.

I looked at the girl. Her eyes were blue beneath the feathers. I felt words come into my mind and then into my throat, and once they got that far, I could never stop them.

“I love you,” I said.

Her eyes opened wide and her lips made a pink O. She laughed. I laughed, too. Sometimes people laugh at me and sometimes they laugh with me, and I hoped this was one of the laughing-with-me times.

The girl didn’t say anything, but Keith put his hands on his hips. “You go find somebody else to love, little rich boy.” I wondered how come he kept calling me little rich boy instead of Andy.

I shook my head. “I love her.”

Keith walked between me and the girl. He was so close to me, I felt the squirmies Mom told me about. I had to look up at him which made my neck hurt. “Don’t you know about personal space?” I asked.

“Look,” he said. “She’s sixteen. You’re a puny fourteen.”

“Fifteen,” I said. “I’m just small for my age.”

“Why’re you acting like you’re fourteen then?” He laughed and his teeth reminded me of the big white gum pieces Maggie liked. I hated them because they burned my tongue when I bit them.

“Leave him alone,” the pretty girl said. “Just ignore him and he’ll go away.”

“Don’t it creep you out?” Keith asked her. “The way he’s staring at you?”

The girl put out an arm and used it like a stick to move Keith away. Then she talked right to me.

“You better go away, honey,” she said. “You don’t want to get hurt.”

How could I get hurt? I wasn’t in a dangerous place or doing a dangerous thing, like rock climbing, which I wanted to do but Mom said no.

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

“Go home to your fancy-ass house on the water,” Keith said.

“If I tell you my name, will you go away?” the girl asked.

“Okay,” I said, because I liked that we were making a deal.

“My name’s Layla,” she said.

Layla. That was a new name. I liked it. “It’s pretty,” I said. “My name’s Andy.”

“Nice to meet you, Andy,” she said. “So, now you know my name and you can go.”

I nodded, because I had to hold up my end of the deal. “Goodbye,” I said as I started to turn around.

“Retard.” Keith almost whispered it, but I had very good hearing and that word pushed my start button.

I turned back to him, my fists already flying. I punched his stomach and I punched his chin, and he must have punched me too because of all the bruises I found later, but I didn’t feel a thing. I kept at him, my head bent low like a bull, forgetting I’m only five feet tall and he was way taller. When I was mad, I got strong like nobody’s business. People yelled and clapped and things, but the noise was a buzz in my head. I couldn’t tell you the words they said. Just bzzzzzzzzz, getting louder the more I punched.

I punched until somebody grabbed my arms from behind, and a man with glasses grabbed Keith and pulled us apart. I kicked my feet trying to get at him. I wasn’t finished.

“What an asshole!” Keith twisted his body away from the man with the glasses, but he didn’t come any closer. His face was red like he had sunburn.

“He doesn’t know any better,” said the man holding me. “You should. Now you get out of here.”

“Why me?” Keith jerked his chin toward me. “He started it! Everybody always cuts him slack.”

The man spoke quietly in my ear. “If I let go of you, are you going to behave?”

I nodded and then realized I was crying and everybody was watching me except for Keith and Layla and the man with glasses, who were walking toward the back of the church. The man let go of my arms and handed me a white piece of cloth from his pocket. I wiped my eyes. I hoped Layla hadn’t seen me crying. The man was in front of me now and I saw that he was old with gray hair in a ponytail. He held my shoulders and looked me over like I was something to buy in a store. “You okay, Andy?”

I didn’t know how he knew my name, but I nodded.

“You go back over there with Emily and let the adults handle Keith.” He turned me in Emily’s direction and made me walk a few steps with his arm around me. “We’ll deal with him, okay?” He let go of my shoulders.

I said “okay” and kept walking toward Emily, who was standing by the baptism pool thing.

“I thought you was gonna kill him!” she said.

Me and Emily were in the same special reading and math classes two days a week. I’d known her almost my whole life, and she was my best friend. People said she was funny looking because she had white hair and one of her eyes didn’t look at you and she had a scar on her lip from an operation when she was a baby, but I thought she was pretty. Mom said I saw the whole world through the eyes of love. Next to Mom and Maggie, I loved Emily best. But she wasn’t my girlfriend. Definitely not.

“What did the girl say?” Emily asked me.

I wiped my eyes again. I didn’t care if Emily knew I was crying. She’d seen me cry plenty of times. When I put the cloth in my pocket, I noticed her red T-shirt was on inside out. She used to always wear her clothes inside out because she couldn’t stand the way the seam part felt on her skin, but she’d gotten better. She also couldn’t stand when people touched her. Our teacher never touched her but once we had a substitute and she put a hand on Emily’s shoulder and Emily went ballistic. She cried so much she barfed on her desk.

“Your shirt’s inside out,” I said.

“I know. What did the girl say?”

“That her name’s Layla.” I looked over at where Layla was still talking to the man with the glasses. Keith was gone, and I stared at Layla. Just looking at her made my body feel funny. It was like the time I had to take medicine for a cold and couldn’t sleep all night long. I felt like bugs were crawling inside my muscles. Mom promised me that was impossible, but it still felt that way.

“Did she say anything else?” Emily asked.

Before I could answer, a really loud, deep, rumbling noise, like thunder, filled my ears. Everyone stopped and looked around like someone had said Freeze! I thought maybe it was a tsunami because we were so close to the beach. I was really afraid of tsunamis. I saw one on TV. They swallowed up people. Sometimes I’d stare out my bedroom window and watch the water in the sound, looking for the big wave that would swallow me up. I wanted to get out of the church and run, but nobody moved.

Like magic, the stained-glass windows lit up. I saw Mary and baby Jesus and angels and a half-bald man in a long dress holding a bird on his hand. The window colors were on every-body’s face and Emily’s hair looked like a rainbow.

“Fire!” someone yelled from the other end of the church, and then a bunch of people started yelling, “Fire! Fire!” Everyone screamed, running past me and Emily, pushing us all over the place.

I didn’t see any fire, so me and Emily just stood there getting pushed around, waiting for an adult to tell us what to do. I was pretty sure then that there wasn’t a tsunami. That made me feel better, even though somebody’s elbow knocked into my side and somebody else stepped on my toes. Emily backed up against the wall so nobody could touch her as they rushed past. I looked where Layla had been talking with the man, but she was gone.

“The doors are blocked by fire!” someone shouted.

I looked at Emily. “Where’s your mom?” I had to yell because it was so noisy. Emily’s mother was one of the adults at the lock-in, which was the only reason Mom let me go.

“I don’t know.” Emily bit the side of her finger the way she did when she was nervous.

“Don’t bite yourself.” I pulled her hand away from her face and she glared at me with her good eye.

All of a sudden I smelled the fire. It crackled like a bonfire on the beach. Emily pointed to the ceiling where curlicues of smoke swirled around the beams.

“We got to hide!” she said.

I shook my head. Mom told me you can’t hide from a fire. You had to escape. I had a special ladder under my bed I could put out the window to climb down, but there were no special ladders in the church that I could see.

Everything was moving very fast. Some boys lifted up one of the long church seats. They counted one two three and ran toward the big window that had the half-bald man on it. The long seat hit the man, breaking the window into a zillion pieces, and then I saw the fire outside. It was a bigger fire than I’d ever seen in my life. Like a monster, it rushed through the window and swallowed the boys and the long seat in one big gulp. The boys screamed, and they ran around with fire coming off them.

I shouted as loud as I could, “Stop! Drop! Roll!”

Emily looked amazed to hear me tell the boys what to do. I didn’t think the boys heard me, but then some of them did stop, drop and roll, so maybe they did. They were still burning, and the air in the church had filled up with so much smoke, I couldn’t see the altar anymore.

Emily started coughing. “Mama!” she croaked.

I was coughing, too, and I knew me and Emily were in trouble. I couldn’t see her mother anywhere, and the other adults were screaming their heads off just like the kids. I was thinking, thinking, thinking. Mom always told me, in an emergency, use your head. This was my first real emergency ever.

Emily suddenly grabbed my arm. “We got to hide!” she said again. She had to be really scared because she’d never touched me before on purpose.

I knew she was wrong about hiding, but now the floor was on fire, the flames coming toward us.

“Think!” I said out loud, though I was only talking to myself. I hit the side of my head with my hand. “Brain, you gotta kick in!”

Emily pressed her face against my shoulder, whimpering like a puppy, and the fire rose around us like a forest of golden trees.

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V./S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

MIRA is a registered trademark of Harlequin Enterprises Limited, used under licence.

Published in Great Britain 2009.

MIRA Books, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road,

Richmond, Surrey, TW9 1SR

© Diane Chamberlain 2005

ISBN 978-1-4089-0730-6

Table of Contents

Cover Page

About the Author

Other Books By

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Epilogue

Extras

Preview

Copyright