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