“Yes, I do.”
Without a word she got in, started the engine and after letting it warm up for barely a minute, backed out of the slot and drove away. He’d catch up to her, she had no doubt. He knew where she lived anyway.
The lights of a bigger vehicle appeared almost immediately in her rearview mirror. All she could tell was that it was an SUV, big and dark.
The drive took nearly forty-five minutes. She lived in Edmonds, an attractive town built on land sloping down to Puget Sound. There was a ferry terminal there. Once upon a time, she’d enjoyed her view from the dining nook of the water and the arriving and departing green-and-white ferries. Now, every time she saw one, she imagined her sister standing at the railing on the car deck, looking at the churning water and choosing to climb over and cast herself into it.
That was what Beth thought had happened. She didn’t believe Rachel had fallen accidentally. The barbiturate level in her bloodstream wasn’t that high, for one thing. And it wasn’t as if you could fall over the substantial railing. Only at the open front and back of the car deck would it be possible to stumble and tip in, and even then Rachel would have had to step over the chain the ferry workers always fastened in lieu of a railing. And there were usually ferry workers hanging around the front and back of the boat.
No, in her heart she believed her sister had committed suicide. Beth wasn’t sure why she was so certain, given that she didn’t really know Rachel anymore.
Sicily had, only once, asked, “Do you think Mom really fell in by accident?”
Beth had had to swallow a lump in her throat. Now she cringed at the memory of what she’d said. “I don’t know.”
I really don’t know, she thought. I didn’t know my own sister. My niece. She hadn’t wanted to know them. She didn’t even want to know herself, not well enough to recognize the sometimes turbulent undercurrents of emotion she was determined to ignore.
She used the automatic garage-door opener and drove into her garage. She pushed the button again so that the door rolled down behind her, cutting off the SUV that had pulled into the driveway, leaving her momentarily alone.
Not for long. She wondered whether he would go away at all tonight. He’d have to, wouldn’t he? Probably he had a wife and kids waiting at home for him.
Please. Please leave me alone.
* * *
THE HOUSE WASN’T WHAT MIKE HAD expected. As cool as Ms. Beth Greenway was, he’d expected her to live in a stylish town house or condo with white carpet and ultramodern furnishings.
Her home was an older rambler, dating from the 1950s or 60s, at a guess. With night having fallen, as he approached the front door he couldn’t even see what color the clapboard siding was painted or how the yard was landscaped.
She didn’t so much as say, “Come in” when she opened the front door to him. Instead, she’d stepped back wordlessly, letting him past.
The interior surprised him. An eclectic collection of richly colored rugs were scattered on hardwood floors. Some of the rugs looked like antiques, the wear obvious; others appeared hand-hooked. He knew because his mother had experimented with the craft before moving on to tatting or God knows what. Her hobbies came and went like Seattle rainfall.
Ms. Greenway had bought or inherited antique furniture. Nice stuff, not real elaborate, not pretentious. Not heavy and dark—they were warm woods finished with sheen. The colors of the walls, upholstered furniture and blinds were all warm, too. Buttery-yellow, peach, touches of deep red and rust.
The house, Mike thought, was a startling contrast to the brittle, unfeeling—or emotionally repressed—woman who owned it. He could speculate all night on the psychology behind her choice to create this haven.
Ms. Greenway asked if he would like coffee.
What he’d really like was a meal. Breakfast was a long-ago memory, since he’d skipped both lunch and dinner. Just as, he realized, she had. What’s more, she’d emptied the meager contents of her stomach.
“Sure,” he said. “Ms. Greenway, you need to have a bite to eat. Why don’t we go in the kitchen and talk while you’re heating some soup. Something that’ll go down easy.”
She looked perplexed. “I’m not hungry.”
“You’re in shock,” he said gently. “Your body needs fuel.”
She gazed at him with the expression of someone translating laboriously from a foreign language. Sounding out each word, pondering it for meaning. At last her teeth closed on her lower lip and she nodded.
He ignored a jolt of lust and followed her through the living room into a kitchen that was open to a dining room. Again, he was struck by the hominess of cabinets painted a soft cream, walls a pale shade caught between peach and rust—maybe the color of clay pots that had aged outside. A glossy red ceramic bowl held fruit on the counter. A copper teakettle was on the stove. In the middle of the table, a cream-colored pitcher was filled with tulips, mostly striped in interesting patterns. A few petals had fallen onto the shining wood surface of the table.
Ms. Greenway had stopped in the middle of the kitchen and was standing there as if she had no memory of her original intentions. After a minute he went to her, gripped her shoulders to turn her around and steered her to one of the chairs around the table. When he pushed, she sat, staring up at him in bewilderment.
“You’re in no shape to be doing anything,” he said, more brusquely than he’d intended. He was mad at himself for letting her drive. She’d been a danger to everyone else on the road. “Stay put. I can heat some soup if you have any.”
Of course she tried to pop right back up. Her knees must not have been any too steady, because she fell back when he applied a little pressure. This time she stayed, not so much obediently, he suspected, as because she’d forgotten why she wanted to be on her feet.
He found cans of Campbell’s soup as well as some boxed macaroni and cheese and the like. The usual kid-friendly foods. He chose tomato, and added milk to make it cream of tomato. The milk was two percent, not skim; maybe because she thought her niece needed it? After a minute he decided to feed himself, too. He assembled and grilled two cheese sandwiches with sliced tomatoes, the way his mom had made them, then brought plates and bowls to the table. Instead of making coffee, he poured them both glasses of milk.
Ms. Greenway stared at what he’d put in front of her as if she didn’t know what to do with it.
“You need to eat,” he told her again, and watched as she finally lifted a spoonful of soup to her mouth. “Good.”
He ate hungrily and went back to start coffee in the machine she had on the counter. She was eating way more slowly, but sticking to it with a sort of mechanical efficiency.
It bothered Mike that he couldn’t get a more certain read on her now than when he first set eyes on her. Initially he’d tagged her as a cold bitch. Beautiful, but unlikable. Fully capable of disposing of a kid she didn’t want and lying to cover up her crime. But he’d come to believe her shock was genuine. Unless she was an Oscar-worthy actress, it almost had to be.
But there were people who lied that well. He’d met a few. He couldn’t be sure about her.
And the one didn’t preclude the other. She could have killed the kid. Perhaps in a burst of rage or only irritation—planned the cover-up, and now was suffering a physical reaction to what she’d done. Or she could be frightened, after discovering that everyone didn’t totally buy into her story.
He wished he wasn’t attracted to her. That made him second-guess everything he did and said. Was he being nice because that was a good way to lower her guard, or because she was getting to him? Should he have gotten aggressive, in her face, hours ago?
Mike poured their coffee, put one of the mugs in front of her and took a sip of his own. Then he said, “I’d like to look at Sicily’s bedroom, but first I need to see any photos you have of her.”
Ms. Greenway carefully set down what remained of her sandwich. Her expression was momentarily stricken. She gave a stiff nod and stood. Mike let her go, managing only a few more swallows of coffee before she returned with a framed five-by-seven photograph.
“This is the most recent,” she said. “It was her fourth-grade school picture.”
So, over a year old. Kids changed a whole lot in a year.
He took it, both wanting to see her face and reluctant because now she’d become real to him. An individual.
There she was, a solemn-faced little girl who had apparently refused to smile when the photographer said, “Cheese!”
Sicily had a thin face and blond hair with straight bangs across her forehead, the rest equally bluntly cut above her shoulders. Her eyes were, he thought, hazel. She had her aunt’s cheekbones, which made her almost homely now, before she’d grown into them. No one would call her pretty. Her grave expression was unsettling, probably only because of what he knew about her family, but he couldn’t say she looked sad or turned inward. More as if she were trying to penetrate the photographer’s secrets. This was a child who tried hard to see beneath the surface.
After a moment he nodded. “May I borrow this?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Okay. Her room?”
She didn’t ask why he wanted to see it, which meant she’d guessed that he was suspicious.
“This way,” she said, voice polite but remote.
He was able to glance in rooms to each side as he followed her down the short hallway. The house was a three-bedroom two-bath, although none of the rooms were large. The first seemed to be a home office. Across the hall from it was a bathroom, tiled in white up to waist level and wallpapered above that. Beyond it had to be her bedroom and through it a doorway leading into a second bath. Next to the home office was Sicily’s room.