Chapter 22
On the way home from Green Point, Alice and I speculate about Lucy. Peggy said she was Esther’s daughter, yet Esther was not in the picture. Why? Where was she? And what did Peggy mean when she said they “lost” the girl, that she was “stolen from us”?
“Do you think she meant that literally? As in, she was actually kidnapped?” Alice asks. “We could find out. There would be a newspaper article about that, if it happened.”
“I’m not sure we can trust what she said,” I note. “But she did say ‘he took her’ a bunch of times. Could the he in this case be God? And ‘he took her’ means she died?”
“That could be.” Alice shakes her head. “I hope neither of us is right.”
When we return to the farmhouse, Alice heads inside while I offer to bring in the mail. My conversation with Brady this morning, the tension between us during class, has been eating at me. I want a few minutes alone to think.
In Alice’s mailbox, there’s a catalog and credit card offer, plus a flyer from a new restaurant opening in St. John’s Ferry.
But the stark-white envelope from First Country Bank the blend of tall grasses and dirt turns rockier underfoot. We’re close to the edge of a bluff, I realize.
Brady stops suddenly, just before two large evergreen trees intertwine their needles, making it unclear where one begins and the other ends.
“I probably should have asked you this before we walked all the way out here,” he says.