to work at the day-care center by noon.”
“I’d like to understand, though,” I persisted. I couldn’t seem to shut up. “I want to make sure that—”
“I think Dad was a slob and that got to you,” she said. “And I think you’re afraid of…the world and that got to him.”
“I’m not afraid of the world,” I said, wounded.
“Mother, you’re a hermit,” she said, grabbing one of the T-shirts and stuffing it unfolded into the suitcase. “Face it. You sit in your little cubbyhole of an office all day long, hanging around with people who don’t exist.”
“That is really unfair.” I felt both defensive and misunderstood. The only thing I truly feared, other than something terrible happening to someone I love, was water. Not water in my bathtub, or even in a swimming pool. But the thought of swimming in the open water of a bay or the ocean or a lake was enough to start my heart racing. And I had to admit, I hadn’t been in a boat since the night Isabel died. But I was not afraid of the world.
“I fly regularly,” I said to Shannon. “I go on book tours—which are stressful, to say the least—for weeks at a time. I speak in front of huge audiences. I try new foods.” My voice was rising. “I walk through Westfield in the dark. I teach memoir writing at the nursing home. I do volunteer work at the hospital. So please don’t tell me that I’m a hermit and that my fears are keeping me locked up in my office, or whatever it was you said.”
“You’re right, I’m sorry.” Her tone told me she was only saying it to end the conversation.
I ran my hand over the T-shirt on the top of the pile on her bed, recognizing it as one I’d sent her from Seattle when I was touring there. “The only thing I’m really afraid of is losing you,” I said, the words leaving my mouth before I could stop them.
She looked at me, a few bras hanging from her fingers. “Do you know what a burden that is?” she asked. “I feel like every single thing I do, I not only have to take my own well-being into account, but yours, too.”
I stared down at the T-shirt, knowing she was right, maybe fully understanding for the first time how difficult it was to be my daughter. I was uncertain what to say next.
“I’m done packing,” she said, closing the flap on her suitcase and running the zipper around it. “I’m going to carry this stuff down to my car.”
“I’ll help you,” I said, standing up. “But I want to continue this conversation some time. Not now, though. We should probably put it on the shelf for now. I don’t want you to move out with either of us angry at the other.”
“I didn’t want to talk about it in the first place,” she said, lifting her suitcase from the bed to the floor.
“I love you,” I said. “I hope it’s good for you, staying with Dad for the summer.”
I helped her load the computer and suitcase into her little Honda, and once she’d gone, I went into my office. It was true that I usually felt safe and secure in that room with my “people who don’t really exist.” But I hadn’t felt happy in there for the past few days. I still had a blank white computer screen beneath the words Chapter Four, and I had no idea how to fill it. There were times when my characters seemed unimportant and a ridiculous waste of my time. This morning was one of them.
I had written and deleted four paragraphs when the phone rang. It was Ethan.
“I took the letter to the police department yesterday,” he said.
“Oh, that’s good, Ethan.” I got up from my office chair and carried the phone to the love seat where I could get comfortable. I was surprised and pleased that he’d taken care of the matter so quickly. “What did they say?”
“Just what we expected,” he said. “They’re reopening the case. I stopped at the grocery store after I dropped off the letter, and by the time I got home, there was already a message on my voice mail telling me they want to search Ned’s house.”
I felt a flicker of guilt. I’d persuaded Ethan to take the letter to the police and already the Chapmans’ privacy was being invaded, while I sat in a house that would never be encroached on in any way.
“What could they possibly find at Ned’s house forty-some years after the fact?” I asked, although I knew the answer the moment the question left my lips: DNA.
“Who knows?” Ethan said. “A journal, maybe, though I know—or at least, I don’t think—he ever kept one. Letters. Keepsakes. But the truth is, and I told them this, Abby and I already went through everything. We threw out sacks and sacks of stuff that seemed unimportant and it’s too late to recover any of that, I’m sure. We put anything valuable in boxes that I was just going to keep in storage along with his furniture, until I have the time to go through them and see what I want to sell and what I want to hold on to. The boxes are all there at his house, and the cops plan to take them apart and go through everything.”
“I think,” I said carefully, “they’ll probably look for DNA.”
He was quiet. “How would that help them after all this time?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “If they kept anything from the scene, maybe.” I knew that, these days, they bagged victim’s hands, allowing any DNA material that might have belonged to the suspect to fall into the bags, but I didn’t know if that had been done as early as 1962.
“But Isabel was in the—” He stopped himself, I knew, for my benefit.
“In the water,” I finished the sentence for him. “I know. I don’t really know how that would affect the collection of evidence.” I didn’t want to talk about this, more for his sake than my own.
“Are you upset?” I asked.
“Not with you,” he said. “I know you and I are hoping for different outcomes, though, and I guess I’m…I’m just worried.”
“That they’ll learn it was Ned?”
“No, because I know it couldn’t have been,” he said, a stubborn edge to his soft voice. “I’m worried they might somehow put evidence together that would come—incorrectly—to that conclusion, though. I mean, I don’t understand how they’d collect the suspect’s DNA from your sister after all this time, but she was always with Ned, so it’s certainly possible they’d find his DNA on her.”
Or in her, I thought but did not say.
“And as I mentioned before, I’m worried about my father having to be dragged into this.”
“I know,” I said, “and I’m sorry this is so hard. But let’s not borrow trouble. One step at a time.”
“Right,” he said. “You know one good thing that has come out of this?”
“What’s that?”
“I enjoyed seeing you again, Julie,” he said. “Even though it wasn’t an easy conversation, it was a treat having lunch with you.”
I smiled, feeling an unexpected rush of excitement run through my body. “It was,” I agreed.
“I was remembering things about you,” he said. “Are you still a terrific swimmer?”
“Actually, I don’t swim at all anymore,” I said. “I lost interest after that summer.”
“Really?” he asked. “You were so good. I was remembering the time you and I raced across the canal,” he said. I laughed. I’d forgotten. We’d only been about ten the last summer we were truly friends. We’d known enough to wait for the slack tide and we were both strong swimmers for kids our age, but we got in a lot of trouble.
“I wasn’t allowed near the water for a week,” I said.
“I had to vacuum the entire house,” Ethan said.