The Bay at Midnight

“Do you know that my Ethan and your Julie are meeting for lunch today?” Ross asked.

“What?” I’d been about to take a sip of my water and nearly dropped the glass. “Why on earth?” As far as I knew, Julie and Ethan Chapman had had no contact since 1962.

Ross shrugged. “Ethan just said he was thinking about her and felt like getting together. They planned to meet in Spring Lake.”

“Well,” I said, recovering from the shock. “Good for them. They were friends when they were little.”

“Anyhow,” Ross said, “when Ethan told me he was going to see Julie, it started me thinking about you…about your family. About how I…” He set his glass down on the coaster and looked directly into my eyes. “I mishandled things, Maria. In every which way. I—”

“Water under the bridge, Ross,” I said. “It’s not necessary to rehash it.”

“But I think it is,” he said. I recognized his earnest look as one he’d employed when running for governor. It was a look that made you want to trust him.

“I’m old and tired,” he said. “I really doubt I’ll live much longer and I just want to make amends to any people I might have hurt during my lifetime.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked him. I wondered if he had cancer. He was so thin. “Are you sick?”

He shook his head, brushing my question away with his hand. “I lost Joan last year,” he said, then looked away from me, toward the pictures on the mantel. “And Ned…Ned died just a few weeks ago.”

“Oh,” I said. I understood then how his world had been altered. Ned must have been close to sixty, but that didn’t matter when it came to burying your child. “I’m sorry, Ross.”

“It gave me a new understanding of how you felt when Isabel died.”

“Yes,” I said.

“So, I wanted to talk to you about…I just wanted to apologize.”

“And now you have and that’s fine and enough,” I said. I didn’t like the sympathy I felt for this old man. He was a politician, first and foremost, capable of talking out of both sides of his mouth.

He looked at me so long and hard that I had to look away. I knew he wanted to say more, but whatever it was, I didn’t want to hear it. So I stood up.

“Come on,” I said, holding my hand out to help him from the chair. He’d hardly touched his water, but he had not come here for the refreshments.

He clutched my hand hard as he struggled to his feet. I let him hold on to my arm as I walked with him back down the front steps and out to his car. Neither of us spoke, although I knew there was a lot we could have said if we’d had the courage. I opened the driver’s-side door of his car for him. It made me nervous to think of someone in his condition driving. I had not even asked him where he lived, how far he had to drive.

“What did Ned die from?” I asked, before closing the car door.

“Drinking,” Ross said. “Drowning his sorrows. I don’t think he ever got over losing Isabel.”

I winced at that, then closed the door. I watched him drive away before returning to my seat in the garden. I pulled on my gloves and drew the trowel through the soil, barely able to see what I was doing for the tears. I don’t think he ever got over losing Isabel.

“Neither have I, Ross,” I said out loud. “Neither have I.”

CHAPTER 9

Lucy

Shannon spent most of the afternoon with me as we talked about her dilemma. It was a strange experience for me, watching her shift between tears of anxiety and worry and joy over the new love in her life. She had always been a very grounded, sane person, even as a young child, but listening to her talk about Tanner, I had the odd feeling that she had been taken away by some cult group, brainwashed and returned to us a different person. It was the same Shannon sitting there in my living room, the same beautiful girl who’d brought such joy into her family, but words were coming out of her mouth that were decidedly un-Shannon-like. I felt as though we needed a deprogrammer.

She left about four, saying she had a cello lesson to give at the music store, and she’d been gone no more than fifteen minutes when Julie showed up at my door. I’d tried to reach her on her cell phone to see how the lunch with Ethan had gone, but was only able to get her voice mail, so I’d pulled out my violin, planning to practice for an upcoming ZydaChicks concert.

“I’m interrupting your practice,” Julie said, glancing at the violin in my hand. There was a damp flush to her cheeks that made her look pretty, if uncomfortably warm. I knew she was grappling with hot flashes, something that was still in my future.

“Haven’t even started,” I said, taking her hand with my free one and pulling her into my apartment. “So, how did it go?” I asked, as I put my violin back in its case.

“Not bad.” Julie flopped down on my sofa. The two empty glasses of lemonade were still on the coffee table and I scooped them up and carried them into the kitchen before she could ask who had been there, but she didn’t even seem to notice them.

I glanced at her when I returned to the room. “Are you okay?”

She pressed her hands to her cheeks, which were nearly the color of her red shirt. “I’m just…” She smiled a sort of goofy grin. “Just freaking out, I think,” she said.

“Hot flash?” I asked, although by now I’d guessed it was more than that. She’d just had a conversation about Isabel’s murder. That alone would have been enough to freak her out.

“What?” she said. “Oh, maybe. I don’t even know.” She slipped off her sandals and stretched her legs out on the couch. “I convinced Ethan to take the letter to the police,” she said.

“Oh, that’s excellent.” I felt relieved. I sat down in my armchair again, drawing my legs onto the seat cushion, covering them with my skirt. “Did he take a lot of convincing?”

She nodded. “It took a lot of discussing,” she said. “It was hard and I felt sorry for him.” Julie watched her feet as she flexed them up and down. Then she looked at me. “He just can’t handle the fact that his brother could be guilty after all these years.”

“Of course he can’t,” I said. “What do you think the cops will do with the letter?”

“That’s the scary part,” Julie said. “Ethan has a friend in the police department and he sort of ran it by this guy—in a hypothetical way—to get a sense of what would happen. His friend said they’ll probably start fresh, which I figured they would do. But that means interviewing everyone involved again. I’m guessing that would be me, which is fine, of course. Maybe Ethan and Ned and Izzy’s friends. Mr. Chapman, which worries Ethan.” She bit her lip and looked at me squarely. “And possibly Mom.”

“Ugh,” I said.

“Right. I hope it doesn’t come to that. I’d love to keep her from knowing this is even going on. I could see them badgering her with questions and then she has a heart attack or a stroke or—”

“Julie.” I laughed. One reason my sister could write gripping page-turners was her skill at imagining the worst possible outcome in any situation. I dreaded the scenarios she would be able to create once she learned that Shannon was pregnant. Her ability to turn an event into a catastrophe in her mind had been one of Glen’s many complaints about her. She always worries about everything, he’d whined to me. She never lets herself have any fun. Although there was some truth to the statement, it still infuriated me that he’d made it, that he never took the time to understand the origin of those worries.

“If Mom has to be interviewed, she’ll be fine,” I said. “She would want the truth to come out.” My voice sounded strong, but I too hoped our mother wouldn’t need to be involved in a new investigation.

“I just don’t want her to be hurt any more than she already has been,” Julie said. She pulled a tissue from the pocket of her cropped black slacks, then took off her glasses and began cleaning them.

“She’ll be okay,” I said. “Do you think they’d want to interview me?”

“I doubt it,” she said. “What do you remember about that whole situation?” She held her glasses up to the light, then slipped them on her face again.

I shook my head. “Almost nothing,” I said. “I barely remember anything about the shore at all. You know what I was like—always cowering in the background while everyone else swam or went out in the boat or whatever.” It was as though I hadn’t truly been there. I supposed that I’d repressed most of the memories from the worst summer my family had ever endured. “The other day, though, I remembered when you caught that giant eel and Ethan wanted its guts,” I said.

Julie laughed, and the high flush came to her cheeks again. It made me suspicious. Maybe I wouldn’t have recognized the subtle look of infatuation in her face if I had not just witnessed the same expression in her daughter’s.

“So, what is he like these days?” I probed. “As geeky as he was back then?”

She looked away from me. “He was nice,” she said, and I thought she was trying not to break into a smile. “He…he looked good. I didn’t recognize him at first. He’s a carpenter and he has this amazing body.”

“You’re kidding.” I tried to picture the skinny, gawky kid of my memory with an amazing body.

“And he must have had laser eye surgery, because he wasn’t wearing glasses. His eyes are really blue.”

“Hey,” I said, turning in the chair and putting my feet on the floor. “Are you attracted to him or what?” Julie had shown no interest whatsoever in men since the divorce.

She laughed, shaking her head. “He just looked better than I’d expected, that’s all.”

“If you say so,” I said with a smile. I liked seeing the life and color in her face. It may have been a difficult conversation, but all in all, I thought seeing Ethan Chapman had done her good. Seeing her daughter would be something different altogether, and for the remainder of our conversation, I couldn’t get Shannon out of my mind. I sat there with my sister, knowing a secret that was going to rock her world. It was like looking at someone’s smiling picture on the obituary page. You wanted to warn them: You don’t know it, but you’re going to walk in front of a truck on March 3, 2003. I listened to my sister talk, and I hated having that secret inside me. I needed Shannon to tell Julie soon, for my sake if not for hers.

CHAPTER 10

Julie

Shannon moved to Glen’s on Tuesday. She was only two miles away; I reminded myself. Two miles. I could walk it, although I wouldn’t. She’d moved out to taste her freedom. To get away from my tight reins. What I needed to do was to back off. Sometimes I felt as though the only way I could keep her safe was to be sure she stayed in my line of sight. I wished that children came with guarantees that they would stay healthy, that they would outlive their parents.

I’d walked into her room as she was packing this morning.

“Do you need any help?” I’d asked.

She’d smiled at me, but it wasn’t her real smile. “I’m fine,” she said. She had taken apart her computer setup, the components on her bed, and she was wrapping towels around them.

I pointed to the only free corner of the full-size bed.“May I sit?”

She shrugged. “Sure.”

I watched her carefully wrap a towel around her printer. I was in need of something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I wondered if all parents felt that way when their children were leaving. It seemed monumental. A time for a good talk. To say all the things we thought about but never said to one another. I gave it a try.

“I’ll miss you,” I said.

“I’ll still be around, Mom.” She had finished with the computer and now was working on the middle drawer of her dresser. “I’m just taking one suitcase and my CDs and computer and my cello. It’s not like I’m going off to school already.”

“There’s something I have to ask you,” I said.

She didn’t respond. She folded a pair of shorts, smoothing them into her suitcase, running her hands over them as though it was important to get out every invisible crease. Her long hair swung forward, cutting me off from her face.

“We’ve never really talked about this,” I said, readying myself for a conversation two years overdue. “But I need to know. Do you blame me for the divorce?”

She glanced up at me then, stepping back from her suitcase before reaching into her dresser again, this time for a stack of T-shirts. “Of course not,” she said, dumping the shirts on her bed.

“Do you blame your dad then?”

“I think it was a mutual thing.”

“What do you think happened?” I often wondered if she knew, if she had somehow put two and two together and guessed about Glen’s affair.

She shrugged. “I figured it wasn’t any of my business,” she said.

“Honey, I just want to make sure you…you know, that you don’t think it had anything to do with you. That it was your fault in any way.”

“I know that,” she said, some irritation creeping into her voice. “I think Dad just pissed you off and you pissed him off, that’s all.”

That puzzled me, because I didn’t think I’d ever complained about her father to her.

“What do you think he did that upset me?” I asked.

She put her hands on her hips and looked at me in genuine annoyance. “Mom, I’m trying to pack,” she said. “I have to take my stuff over to Dad’s and be ready to work at the day-care center by noon.”

“I’d like to understand, though,” I persisted. I couldn’t seem to shut up. “I want to make sure that—”

“I think Dad was a slob and that got to you,” she said. “And I think you’re afraid of…the world and that got to him.”

“I’m not afraid of the world,” I said, wounded.

“Mother, you’re a hermit,” she said, grabbing one of the T-shirts and stuffing it unfolded into the suitcase. “Face it. You sit in your little cubbyhole of an office all day long, hanging around with people who don’t exist.”

“That is really unfair.” I felt both defensive and misunderstood. The only thing I truly feared, other than something terrible happening to someone I love, was water. Not water in my bathtub, or even in a swimming pool. But the thought of swimming in the open water of a bay or the ocean or a lake was enough to start my heart racing. And I had to admit, I hadn’t been in a boat since the night Isabel died. But I was not afraid of the world.

“I fly regularly,” I said to Shannon. “I go on book tours—which are stressful, to say the least—for weeks at a time. I speak in front of huge audiences. I try new foods.” My voice was rising. “I walk through Westfield in the dark. I teach memoir writing at the nursing home. I do volunteer work at the hospital. So please don’t tell me that I’m a hermit and that my fears are keeping me locked up in my office, or whatever it was you said.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry.” Her tone told me she was only saying it to end the conversation.

I ran my hand over the T-shirt on the top of the pile on her bed, recognizing it as one I’d sent her from Seattle when I was touring there. “The only thing I’m really afraid of is losing you,” I said, the words leaving my mouth before I could stop them.

She looked at me, a few bras hanging from her fingers. “Do you know what a burden that is?” she asked. “I feel like every single thing I do, I not only have to take my own well-being into account, but yours, too.”

I stared down at the T-shirt, knowing she was right, maybe fully understanding for the first time how difficult it was to be my daughter. I was uncertain what to say next.

“I’m done packing,” she said, closing the flap on her suitcase and running the zipper around it. “I’m going to carry this stuff down to my car.”

“I’ll help you,” I said, standing up. “But I want to continue this conversation some time. Not now, though. We should probably put it on the shelf for now. I don’t want you to move out with either of us angry at the other.”

“I didn’t want to talk about it in the first place,” she said, lifting her suitcase from the bed to the floor.

“I love you,” I said. “I hope it’s good for you, staying with Dad for the summer.”

I helped her load the computer and suitcase into her little Honda, and once she’d gone, I went into my office. It was true that I usually felt safe and secure in that room with my “people who don’t really exist.” But I hadn’t felt happy in there for the past few days. I still had a blank white computer screen beneath the words Chapter Four, and I had no idea how to fill it. There were times when my characters seemed unimportant and a ridiculous waste of my time. This morning was one of them.

I had written and deleted four paragraphs when the phone rang. It was Ethan.

“I took the letter to the police department yesterday,” he said.

“Oh, that’s good, Ethan.” I got up from my office chair and carried the phone to the love seat where I could get comfortable. I was surprised and pleased that he’d taken care of the matter so quickly. “What did they say?”

“Just what we expected,” he said. “They’re reopening the case. I stopped at the grocery store after I dropped off the letter, and by the time I got home, there was already a message on my voice mail telling me they want to search Ned’s house.”

I felt a flicker of guilt. I’d persuaded Ethan to take the letter to the police and already the Chapmans’ privacy was being invaded, while I sat in a house that would never be encroached on in any way.

“What could they possibly find at Ned’s house forty-some years after the fact?” I asked, although I knew the answer the moment the question left my lips: DNA.

“Who knows?” Ethan said. “A journal, maybe, though I know—or at least, I don’t think—he ever kept one. Letters. Keepsakes. But the truth is, and I told them this, Abby and I already went through everything. We threw out sacks and sacks of stuff that seemed unimportant and it’s too late to recover any of that, I’m sure. We put anything valuable in boxes that I was just going to keep in storage along with his furniture, until I have the time to go through them and see what I want to sell and what I want to hold on to. The boxes are all there at his house, and the cops plan to take them apart and go through everything.”

“I think,” I said carefully, “they’ll probably look for DNA.”

He was quiet. “How would that help them after all this time?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “If they kept anything from the scene, maybe.” I knew that, these days, they bagged victim’s hands, allowing any DNA material that might have belonged to the suspect to fall into the bags, but I didn’t know if that had been done as early as 1962.

“But Isabel was in the—” He stopped himself, I knew, for my benefit.

“In the water,” I finished the sentence for him. “I know. I don’t really know how that would affect the collection of evidence.” I didn’t want to talk about this, more for his sake than my own.

“Are you upset?” I asked.

“Not with you,” he said. “I know you and I are hoping for different outcomes, though, and I guess I’m…I’m just worried.”

“That they’ll learn it was Ned?”

“No, because I know it couldn’t have been,” he said, a stubborn edge to his soft voice. “I’m worried they might somehow put evidence together that would come—incorrectly—to that conclusion, though. I mean, I don’t understand how they’d collect the suspect’s DNA from your sister after all this time, but she was always with Ned, so it’s certainly possible they’d find his DNA on her.”

Or in her, I thought but did not say.

“And as I mentioned before, I’m worried about my father having to be dragged into this.”

“I know,” I said, “and I’m sorry this is so hard. But let’s not borrow trouble. One step at a time.”

“Right,” he said. “You know one good thing that has come out of this?”

“What’s that?”

“I enjoyed seeing you again, Julie,” he said. “Even though it wasn’t an easy conversation, it was a treat having lunch with you.”

I smiled, feeling an unexpected rush of excitement run through my body. “It was,” I agreed.

“I was remembering things about you,” he said. “Are you still a terrific swimmer?”

“Actually, I don’t swim at all anymore,” I said. “I lost interest after that summer.”

“Really?” he asked. “You were so good. I was remembering the time you and I raced across the canal,” he said. I laughed. I’d forgotten. We’d only been about ten the last summer we were truly friends. We’d known enough to wait for the slack tide and we were both strong swimmers for kids our age, but we got in a lot of trouble.

“I wasn’t allowed near the water for a week,” I said.

“I had to vacuum the entire house,” Ethan said.

“I don’t think I ever swam in the canal again,” I said. “I swam in our dock all the time when the boat wasn’t in it, but not the canal.”

“Ah, that’s not true,” Ethan said.

“What do you mean?”

“I remember watching you float down the canal in an inner tube.”

It took me a moment to place the memory, but then it came into my mind all at once. “I’d forgotten,” I said, laughing, although the memory carried with it both joy and sadness since Isabel had been so much a part of it, and though Ethan and I reminisced about several other shared experiences before getting off the phone, it was that memory which stayed with me for the rest of the day.

CHAPTER 11

Julie 1962

It was a weekday in Bay Head Shores, which meant that our father was home in Westfield. We had finished eating breakfast and Grandpop was already out in the garage working on some project, while Grandma was starting to clear the table in spite of our mother’s admonishment to relax a while. I started to stand up to help Grandma, but Mom told me to stay where I was and I sat down again. She shook a cigarette from her pack of Kents and lit it, blowing a puff of smoke into the air above the cluttered table.

“I have an idea for something we could do today, girls,” she said to the three of us.

“What?” Lucy sounded suspicious. Whatever it was, I could tell she was prepared to say she didn’t want to do it.

“Look at the current,” Mom said, and I turned my head to peer through the screen at the canal. The current was moving slowly in the direction of the bay.

“What about it?” Isabel asked. She was holding a lock of her hair in front of her face, probably scrutinizing it for split ends.

“Well,” Mom said, “after we’ve digested our breakfast a bit, how about we take the big inner tubes and ride the current all the way from our house to the bay.”

“Keen!” I said. It was an extraordinary idea.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Isabel said, but I knew she was intrigued. It was hard to get Isabel interested in any sort of family activity, and I was impressed that my mother had managed to come up with something exciting enough to draw in her oldest daughter.

Grandma laughed, sitting down at the table again, her chores forgotten. “I remember when you and Ross used to do that,” she said to my mother. She rolled the r in “Ross” in a way that made the name sound very pretty. I was surprised by what she’d said, though. So was Isabel.

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