A crook.
I’ve waited all my life to meet him. Even while I told myself I didn’t need him, I did. Even while I told myself it didn’t matter what he was or wasn’t, it did.
Why had he come to Beewick Island? I no longer believed he had come there for me. Someone who lied his way through his life had to be lying now. Someone who always had an ulterior motive had to have one now.
I stare out at the highway and listen to the sound of the bus wheels whining on the wet road. It’s raining, a true hard rain, not a Northwest mist. When I lean against my window, my breath fogs the glass. I keep wiping it with my hand. The window fogs and clears, fogs and clears. The road disappears and appears again. All the way back to him.
Nate is waiting in the car at the bus stop. I walk over to the car and get in.
“Have a good time with your friend?”
“Awesome,” I say.
But he knows me now. He gives me a look, as if he knows something is wrong. I look out the window and slump in my seat, teenage body language for “don’t ask.” He doesn’t. He thinks I’m bummed because of a boy. Good.
“You should see what Rachel is cooking for tomorrow,” he says, pulling out into traffic. “It’ll just be the three of us, but she’s making enough for a truck stop.”
I suddenly feel enormously sorry for Rachel. She loves him. She does everything she can to please him. Ask me. I know everything about him. I remember her confidence, the love in her eyes. I’m so furious at him now, I could kick him out the car door into traffic.
“Rachel’s great,” I say. “You’re lucky.”
He gives me another sharp look, because he hears the acid in my tone. He coasts to a stop at a traffic light. He taps my knee. “Don’t sweat it, kiddo. Teenage guys don’t know anything.”
“Oh,” I say, “and when they’re adults, they’re so much smarter?”
“Ouch,” he says. “Good point.”
I watch his hands on the wheel, and I wonder if they could have murdered someone. Could he have hit Hank Hobbs and pushed him off a boat, then stood by and waited until he drowned?
The money.
I suddenly realize where he got the money for the down payment. I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to put it together.
Billy Applegate had gotten secret documents that would expose Monvor. But something happened. They disappeared. Billy believed that someone in the group had stolen them. Someone had sold them out for money.
How much money? Enough for half a down payment on a rundown house?
Why not?
But the question still hammers at me. If all this is true, I still don’t know why Nate would come back to Beewick. If it wasn’t for me, then why? Did he come back to kill Hank Hobbs?
That night, I set my alarm for three A.M. When it goes off, I almost catapult out of bed. My heart slams in my chest, and I have to force myself to calm down.
If I’m going to do this, I have to be careful. At this rate, my heart is hammering so loudly it will wake up the house.
I tiptoe to the stairs and pause on the second-floor landing. I listen carefully, but behind the door of the master bedroom, there is no sound, even of snoring. I keep going downstairs.
I have to move slowly in the unfamiliar house. It’s so dark, and there’s so much furniture. I shuffle my feet along, peering as the shadowy forms turn into end tables and ottomans in the huge living room.
I push open the door to the study. I’m going to have to risk a light. If I get caught, I can say I couldn’t sleep and I came down to surf the Web.
The desk is pretty neat. There are piles of folders on the top. I go through them quickly: the lease on the restaurant space, different kitchen catalogs, permit applications. There’s one file marked ADOPTION. Another says MENU PLANS. Nothing I didn’t know about. No secrets.
But secrets wouldn’t be on top of the desk.
I start going through the drawers. I get out a big checkbook, a binder for the business checks. MILLARD/TOBIN ENTERPRISES. I leaf back through the record and see a check to the landlord made out for six thousand dollars. I flip back to see the running balance in the register. I pull out a bank statement and study that. I’m no accountant, so what do I know? It looks fine to me. But I’m sure Nate never delivered that check.
Then I see some numbers written in a small hand on the first page of the register. I’m guessing, but I bet the numbers are a password.
I boot up the computer. I go to the bank’s Web site. There’s a box for entering a password and one for a user name. Under PASSWORD, I type in the numbers I saw.
USER NAME. I try RACHEL. I can’t get in.
NATE. Still can’t. NATHANIEL.
I try their full names. I try Rachel’s maiden name. Nothing.
I hesitate, then type in SONIA.
I’m in.
I look at the bank balance, then back at the register. There’s a twelve thousand dollar difference.
He’s been writing the checks. He just hasn’t been mailing them.
He was busted by the landlord. But I bet he’s stalling him. I bet he gave him another story, and the landlord is giving him another day or so.
I feel sick, sick at heart. I know what he’s planning now. He’s going to leave her, and soon, before his lies are discovered. How could he be so heartless?
And then I think of Cheryl Ann in Pennsylvania.
The family in Tampa.
Me.
I go through the drawers, but there’s nothing left to find. Rachel has left the business to Nate. She won’t find out until he leaves, when she has to look up her own bank balance and discover the truth.
What I need to find out is more personal things. If only there were something I could get a reading off of. I usually run away from visions, but now I need one. I need to see the way to the truth.
As a matter of fact, I’m planning a surprise for him for Christmas—a scrapbook.
She has photographs. Old photographs.
If I search Rachel’s office and get caught, what excuse could I give for being there?
I just can’t get caught.
I switch off the lamp in the office and climb the stairs. I listen on the landing. Nothing.
I tiptoe into Rachel’s office. I close the door, glad it doesn’t squeak. I switch on the lamp on her worktable.
Rachel is very organized. There are photos, pieces of nice paper, calligraphic pens, glue sticks, paste-on lettering, different kinds of scissors, those little black corners people put on photographs. There are files labeled HOUSE and VACATIONS and BABY. I look in the baby file. She’s already collecting things to put in the scrapbook—a line drawing of baby shoes. Samples of birth announcements. Pink labels.
I search through the files until I find it. NATE.
I open the accordion file. I thumb through the things that look current—photographs of Nate and Rachel, restaurant menus, ticket stubs. There is a separate envelope inside and I slip it out. It’s full of old photographs.
The first one is of me.
I’m a baby. My mom is holding me in the hospital. A pink balloon rises above her head. Her blond hair is sticking up in a funny way, but who has a good hair day after giving birth? What you really notice is her smile. Her big, generous, goofy smile.
I swallow and blink. It just tears me, how grief never stops. It hits you when you’re not looking, it spins your head around. It makes you gasp with the shock of it.
I put that photograph aside and keep looking.
There is a photograph of Nate as a boy standing in front of a brick house with a porch. He has dark hair and his hands are shoved into the pockets of his jeans. I am shocked to see how much he looks like me.
And then there are the photographs I’m hoping for. Beewick Island. I recognize it immediately. It’s a shot of kids swimming at what the kids on Beewick call Fishstick Cove, since you can see the restaurants across the bay. It’s a popular place to swim in the summertime because the water is fairly warm. I recognize Nate immediately, then Shay. She is dressed in cutoffs and a white T-shirt and is about fifteen pounds thinner. I touch her image, but I don’t get an image from that smiling girl. And then I look at the young man by her side and get a chill, and I know that this is Billy Applegate.
He’s got a cherubic face with round cheeks. Not what I expected. He’s thin and wiry and good-looking. One of his hands rests on Shay’s ankle.
A few days, or weeks, from when this picture is taken, he’ll be murdered.
I don’t even know him, and I feel sorrow for him. Because he died young. Because he didn’t deserve to die.
I push the photograph to one side.
The next photograph is of Nate and Shay and my mother. It takes me a moment to recognize where it was taken. It’s Shay’s house. I recognize the windows of the back room, the mudroom that Diego and Shay turned into a bedroom for me. It’s filled with trash, and two of the windowpanes are cracked. The three of them are holding up cans of soda in a toast and grinning for the camera.
The third photograph is taken from the hallway looking toward the bathroom. On the floor is an awful pinky-orangey shag carpet. Shay hadn’t exaggerated the horror.
Shay and Nate are standing in the bathtub. Shay is holding her nose and making a comical face. Nate is waving a sponge. A mildewy shower curtain is pushed all the way to one side.
I recognize the curtain. Clear, with palm trees on it.
The body through the curtain.
The blood on the plastic.
Someone breathing, hard. Someone trying not to panic.
The last photograph is an old Polaroid, a snapshot. It is of Nate and a man it takes me a long second to realize is Jeff Ferris. They are wearing kerchiefs tied around their heads, and they’ve painted on fake curly mustaches. They’re at a party. People in costume swirl around them, dancing. The women are wearing long dresses, some with aprons, others with big petticoats. Some of them are wearing white wigs with long curls. Some of the men are wearing knickers and white stockings.
This must be the party Nate told me about. The local who had sneaked him in had been Jeff Ferris. That made sense. Jeff was his realtor.
We met at a Bastille Day party at the Beewick Club…
I look at the other faces. I don’t need to see him. I know Hank Hobbs was there.
Which means Nate could have met him.
Which means Nate could have lied.
Then I remember something else. The surf shop he owned in San Diego. Would someone who couldn’t swim run a surf shop? You have to be a pretty good swimmer to surf.
I’m not much of a swimmer. He lied about that, too. Why would someone lie about that if they didn’t have something to hide?
I hear footsteps outside in the hall. They are heavy. It’s Nate.
I lunge for the lamp, almost knock it over. I turn out the light and hold it before it crashes to the floor. Then I quickly stuff the photographs back into the envelope and shove it all back where I found it.
I run to the door and listen.
I hear a toilet flush. Footsteps start back toward the bedroom.
I run back to my room. I hug my knees and wait until first light. Until I can call Shay.