Chapter 7
It was hard to believe that just that morning, Kate had found her sister’s body.
Every minute that ticked by took her farther away from Beth yet made the realization she was gone even more horrifying.
Flying to Maine and back, trying to find anything halfway comforting to say to Sam, had filled the hours with heartbreak.
The terrible day had turned to night. Late-afternoon summer light had blazed through skylights and tall windows, and now there was darkness.
The Thames River with all its boat traffic flowed by.
Train tracks ran along the riverbank. Two Orient Point ferries passed each other near the New London Harbor Light, exchanging short horn blasts—everything reminding Kate that time was passing, more time without Beth.
Telling Sam about Beth had been unthinkable, a nightmare; Sam was still in shock.
Now it was time to tell Lulu. The four of them—Kate and Lulu, Beth and Scotty—had been best friends forever, and Kate owed it to Lulu to make sure she heard it from her—no one else.
But all her calls went straight to voice mail.
Scotty had not simply called but had been waiting at the airport when Kate had landed after getting Sam: a tearful, grieving welcoming committee of one.
Kate hung back while Scotty went straight to Sam.
She embraced her tightly—the way Beth would have.
Sam actually put her head on Scotty’s shoulder for a minute—after all, Scotty’s daughter Isabel was Sam’s best friend, and Scotty was practically a second mother to Sam.
“Have you talked to Lulu?” Kate had asked Scotty when they’d met at the airport.
“I can’t reach her,” Scotty had said. “It’s weird and so not Lulu. She always answers her phone.”
Now Kate could barely breathe. Lulu didn’t inspire worry. She was the most independent woman Kate knew, other than herself. But her skin felt charged with the knowledge that the worst could happen, as it had to Beth. She needed Lulu to call so she could know Lulu was okay.
She leaned against the kitchen counter for a minute, pulling herself together, then loaded a tray with the teapot, cups, and a plate of oatmeal cookies.
“Tea,” Kate said, setting the tray on a low table in front of Sam. Popcorn lay on the floor at her feet, tongue out and eyes friendly. His tail thumped.
“Look, it’s our house,” Sam said, gesturing at the TV. “There you are, Popcorn.” The screen showed the dog on a red leash, a police officer leading him into the back of a patrol car. Popcorn had been at the Black Hall station until Kate and Sam had picked him up on the way home.
“Turn it off,” Kate said.
“They keep showing pictures of us,” Sam said. “Me, Mom, and Dad. Mostly Mom. Where did they even get those pictures?”
“Not from me,” Kate said.
“Some rancid so-called friend probably sold them. Now, look, here comes the body bag again. That’s the other thing they keep running, the medical examiners carrying her out of the house.”
“Why are you watching that?”
“Because I want to know and see everything that happened to her,” Sam said.
Kate tried to grab the remote, but Sam held it out of reach.
At least she’d muted the sound. Kate poured two cups of tea.
Sam was sixteen, long legged, and beautiful, a brilliant student getting ready to look at colleges.
But right then, curled up on the sofa, she seemed like a tiny girl.
Her lower lip wobbled, but she didn’t cry.
She had always been stoic. Kate took her bike riding one time when she was six.
She skidded on sand and fell off, scraping her elbows.
I’m brave, Sam had said. Shake it off, don’t cry.
And she hadn’t until they’d returned home, and the minute she had seen Beth, she’d thrown herself into her arms, sobbing.
Only with her mother could she let her feelings out.
Kate’s phone buzzed, and she glanced at the screen. The state police had flown Pete back to Connecticut from the Vineyard, and he had just been to the morgue. Now he wanted to pick up Sam.
“It’s your dad,” she said, showing her the message.
“I just want to stay here,” Sam said. “I can’t talk to him yet.”
Kate stared at her niece. She could think of many reasons why Sam might be mad at her father; she just wasn’t sure how much Sam knew about the issues between him and Beth.
“Can you tell me why?” Kate asked.
“It’s too hard,” Sam said.
“I know, honey. We’re all so sad. But he’s your dad. You need to see each other.”
“Not yet,” Sam said.
“Sam, you’re each other’s family.”
“Stop!” Sam said, her voice rising.
“Listen, Sam. You need each other.”
“You’re the one who’s not listening. I don’t want to talk about it anymore!”
Kate felt shocked by Sam’s fury.
“Okay,” she said, trying to sound calm.
Sam took a deep breath. She gave Kate a quick glance.
“Thanks,” Sam said, holding Kate’s gaze for a few seconds. Kate felt her wanting to say more, but then Sam looked away.
“There’s one thing we can’t put off,” Kate said. “The detective wants to talk to you too. I spoke to him on the phone, and he’s coming over.”
“I am not ready to talk to anyone,” Sam said.
“I know the feeling,” Kate said. It was 8:00 p.m., barely twelve hours since she had found Beth.
“So don’t let him in.”
“Sam, he has to interview us,” Kate said. “It’s important.”
“Nothing’s important anymore,” Sam said. “Not without Mom.”
Kate closed her eyes. How would a world without Beth make sense for either of them?
“I could have stopped it,” Sam whispered.
“No,” Kate said. “Don’t think that.”
She sat beside Sam on the gray tweed couch.
She thought back to when she and Beth were the girls whose mother had died in an art robbery gone wrong.
The cops had asked them countless questions.
The details of what they’d been through blurred together.
Every time Kate told the story, it seemed a little less real.
The experience began to feel like a dream, something she had made up.
Because how was such a thing possible in life?
To be tied to your mother and sister, the knots so tight you couldn’t slip free?
To have to just sit there, listening to your mother choking and feeling her body going limp and tilting over, unable to move and save her life?
“You couldn’t have stopped anything. It’s not your fault—not one bit,” Kate said to Sam.
“Doesn’t feel that way,” Sam said. “If I hadn’t been at camp . . .”
“Then you might have gotten hurt too.”
Sam tipped her head back, gazing up at Kate. Her eyes were pale blue, like her father’s, and she had Mathilda’s dark hair, like Kate. But she had Beth’s full lips, her heartbreaking smile.
“Killed, you mean,” Sam said.
“Yes,” Kate said.
“You know what I hated?” Sam asked.
“What?”
“Seeing Mrs. Waterston at the airport,” Sam said, her voice breaking. “She was Mom’s best friend. What’s she going to do without her?”
Kate’s heart cracked. She watched tears leaking from Sam’s eyes.
It was as if her niece couldn’t cry for her own pain but only while imagining someone else’s.
And she wasn’t wrong about Scotty: Kate knew something was bothering Scotty, and her only true confidant was Beth.
Scotty had put on weight, and she constantly berated herself for letting herself go.
Sometimes she smelled like wine a little too early in the day.
Whatever Scotty was going through, she could share it with Beth.
The buzzer rang. For a second Kate thought it might be Lulu. After running to the door, Kate checked the image on the video monitor: Conor Reid stood at the entrance to her building. She pushed the intercom button. “Yes?” she asked.
“Hello, Kate,” he said, staring straight into the camera. “May I come up to speak with Samantha?”
She hesitated, glanced over at her disheveled niece, watched Sam slash tears from her eyes.
“It’s the detective. I’m really sorry, Sam. But we need to talk to him,” she said, waiting for a response.
“I’ll do it for Mom,” Sam said finally.
Kate punched in a series of numbers. Because she had once been held against her will, she had bought the best biometric security system available.
The voice-recognition software measured her particular patterns—the velocity of air expelled from her lungs and across her larynx.
She could have said anything, and depending on her mood, her words could get very colorful.
But mindful of Sam on the sofa, she quoted a line from a favorite poem: Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer . . .
The lock tumblers whirred and clicked, and she heard the downstairs door open.
“What’s that you just said?” Sam asked, curious in spite of herself.
“It’s from ‘The Second Coming’ by William Butler Yeats,” she said. “Mathilda taught it to me.”
Sam nodded, and Kate half smiled, glad to provide a momentary distraction. Sam had always been fascinated with her aunt’s ever-changing alarm system, had loved watching Kate offer her left eye to the iris-reading camera or stare at the screen so the software could recognize her face.
Kate opened the loft door, and Popcorn came loping over to stand by her side, tail wagging. They both watched Reid climb the stairs. His blue blazer looked as if it had been balled up in the back seat of his car; it had been a long day.
“Hello, Kate,” he said.
“Hello, Detective Reid,” she said.
“Conor’s fine,” he said.
She nodded. “Thanks,” she said.
“Hello, Popcorn,” he said, petting the dog, whose tail was going faster than ever. “We made friends at the house.”
“Popcorn makes friends with everyone,” Sam said.
Both Kate and the detective turned to look at her. Kate closed the door and watched Conor cross the loft, offer his hand to shake Sam’s.
“Samantha,” he said. “I am very sorry about your mother.”
Sam’s mouth twisted, and her chin wobbled. She looked back at the TV screen.