Chapter 12 #2
“I forgot to wish you a happy Thanksgiving,” she says sleepily.
“You got up in the middle of the night to wish me a happy Thanksgiving?”
“I was already up to go pee.” She yawns into the phone. “So how’s Thanksgiving with the Practically Perfect Peabodys?”
“It’s all right. I hardly know anybody.”
Maman yawns again. “I wish you’d reconsider coming home for Christmas.”
“Maman, this is our home. For now.”
“A temporary house is not a home. And you’ll be all alone. Everybody will have gone back to the mainland by then.”
“Not everybody. Plenty of people stay year-round. I realize they’re all invisible to you, but they’re pretty nice when you get to know them.”
“Are you calling me a snob?”
“Look. I know this is splintering your mind into tiny pieces, but I’m kind of looking forward to a nice peaceful Christmas for a change. No planes, trains, and automobiles. It’ll be great.”
“It’s money, isn’t it? Let me buy you the tickets. My treat. Early Christmas present.”
“Maman, seriously. I’m a grown woman. It’s all good, trust me. We’ll wear Santa hats and FaceTime you after we empty our stockings.”
She sighs loudly. “You’re such a stubborn child, Lucy. You take these unnecessary moral stands and then dig your heels in. It’s unattractive.”
Another shriek from the darkened beach.
To my right, Ben uncrosses his arms and saunters forward down the steps to the sand.
I lower the phone from my ear and listen to the noise from the darkness.
Another shriek, a higher key. Longer. Cut off.
Punkin.
“Maman, I have to go.”
“Darling—”
I swipe her away and tap on the flashlight. Already I’m leaping down the steps to the beach. Warm coffee splashes over my hand. I fling away the cup. My boots wallow in the sand with their three-inch heels.
“Punkin!” I scream, into the dark. “Where are you, honey?”
The sand turns hard and wet. I swoop the flashlight around me, trying to find the center of the childish screams around me, everyone echoing each other, caught up in the drama.
It’s nothing, I think. Calm down. She’s fine. Just kid stuff. You’re overreacting.
What’s the word? Triggered.
A kid runs by. Maybe seven years old? I snag his arm.
“Hey! What’s going on?”
“The new girl drowned!” he says, like it’s Christmas come early.
“What? What? WHERE?”
He points to the water.
I fly down the sand, splash into the wave that curls up the beach, swing my light in front of me, scour the phosphorescent whorls of foam. Any piece of her. Any patch of skin.
Not again. Not her too. I can’t breathe, I can’t see. Cannot penetrate this thick, chaotic night around me.
I don’t see the giant figure that looms out of the shadows until I hear my name, Mama!
I spin toward her voice.
Ben holds her out to me. Cold face crusted with sand and tears. Long tangles of wet hair. Her sangfroid shattered into a thousand sobbing pieces. Her small arms outstretched. I sweep her against my chest, sobbing too, sobbing her name.
A warm hand on my shoulder. “She’s okay. Just some little dick being a dick.”
Now my breath chokes in my throat. I can’t speak any more—just press my face against her wet head and listen to her breathing—no cough—sobs settling. We stand there surrounded by awed children.
“You’re all right, sweetie. Everything’s fine.
” I stroke her hair while the waves swirl above my ankles and up my calves.
The cold brine soaks the burgundy suede.
I turn and start toward the house, holding her cheek against my thundering heart.
Murmuring the same words—You’re all right, sweetie, you’re all right. Everything’s fine.
When I reach the terrace steps, Lola finds me.
“Oh my Lord, what happened? Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. She needs a towel. A blanket. Ben—”
Where’s Ben?
I set one foot on the second step and turn back to the beach.
My phone is still miraculously tucked inside my right palm, but I can’t shine the flashlight anywhere because I’m holding Punkin.
The other kids trail in, faces guilty in the glow from the house, as if they know they’ve played a part in something unsavory.
Punkin lifts her head from my shoulder. “Ben,” she says.
“Honey?” I peer in her eyes. Brush away some sand. “Can you tell me what happened?”
Someone lays a blanket over her. Lola. Secures it over my shoulders. Punkin’s begun to shiver—not violently, just a shudder or two. She snuggles deeper into my middle.
“Here you go, sweetie,” says Lola.
“Thanks.” I speak low. “Hey, do you see Ben anywhere?”
“Ben? What’s going on with Ben?”
As she speaks, a commotion starts up at the far end of the beach, where the sand gives way to a small, marshy inlet. Everyone turns—the stupefied adults on the terrace, the kids slinking to the house. I squint to make out the movement in the shadows. Punkin heavy in my arms.
Some kid yells a blue streak. A low adult voice growls back. In the next instant, Ben materializes from the black night like a phantom. Hauling a kid under his arm.
“What the fuck!” A man’s voice bursts to my left. “You take your hands off my son right now!”
Ben continues to march up the sand to the terrace. His face is like the face under the helmet, the face in the video—cold, perfect rage.
“I said take your goddamn hands off my son!” yells the dad.
Ben doesn’t say a word. He carries the kid under one arm like a five-pound sack of flour, like he doesn’t even notice the way the kid thrashes and throws his fist at Ben’s middle.
“Oh shit,” whispers Lola. “It’s Tanner. Harry’s kid.”
“I swear to God, I’m calling the police!” yells Harry Peabody.
He starts forward and meets Ben at the top of the terrace steps. Ben swings the kid down to his feet.
“You do that,” Ben says. “He just tried to drown Elise Cooper. Held her head down in the water.”
“What?” I shriek.
“For fuck’s sake! They were just messing around!” yells Harry.
Tanner—a big kid, covered with wet sand—throws his arms around his father’s waist. “He was gonna kill me!” he sobs.
“I saw him do it, Harry. She’s a seven-year-old girl and he held her head down in the water. Ran off when I came up. I’ll leave it up to you how to deal with him. You’re his father. That’s your job.”
Ben delivers this speech in low, calm tones, while the rest of us stand there, too stunned to squeak. Then he walks toward me, at the top of the steps, Punkin dead weight in my arms.
“You see? You see what he did?” says Harry. “I knew it. He’s a fucking maniac.”
“Don’t be an asshole, Harry,” says Lola.
“He’s the killer. What’s he even doing here? After what he did to Sedge all those years ago. Now he’s sitting down at our fucking Thanksgiving table?”
“Just shut up. Sedge invited him.”
“So what? He should be in jail. Fucking Sedge.”
“Hey,” Ben says to me. “She okay?”
“I think so.”
“Let’s get her inside and wash off the sand.”
Punkin looks up from her blanket and starts to cry. “Ben,” she says.
She holds out her arms. Ben looks at her and at me.
I notice the wind blowing cold from the water.
My numb feet inside my boots. The adrenaline draining from my arms and legs, leaving them weightless and intolerably heavy at the same time.
Ben untangles my daughter from my grasp.
She puts her arms around his neck and clings to him like film.
“In we go, kiddo,” he says.