Cleaning up took longer than expected. We worked through the night. Jo and Ruby just left. It’s already 6:00 a.m. and not yet light.
I’m freshly showered and dressed in dark jeans and a navy sweater. I sit on the edge of our bed in the near-dark, an ice pack clutched to my eye. I threw back the sheets so the bed would look slept in. I even rolled on my side and punched dents in the pillows.
I look around. This room has the impersonal elegance of a decent hotel, all icy white and dove gray. Stan loved modern decor. He liked the contrast with the house’s rough, ancient exterior. I find it jarring, an old lady made up like a young girl. I reposition the ice pack.
Normally, if I were up this early, I’d be curled in the bay window, waiting for the sunrise. No, I’d be waiting to take photos of the sunrise to post on Instagram, along with some inspiring quote. Every day is a fresh start!
What a fraud.
This thought starts me sobbing. I don’t understand it. I’m not a crier.
Through streaming eyes, I peer out the window. It’s hard to distinguish the sky from the ocean. I look down. Stan’s out there somewhere. On the seabed, dragged this way and that. God, he’d hate that. Going with the flow was not in his nature.
I get off the bed and yank the drapes shut. No, that’s not right. I deserve this. I tug them back open. I must face reality. Stan’s out there, rotting.
I lean against the cold window.
The sky lightens so gradually it hardly seems real. Gray turns to silver. The islands take shape, forever tainted. A blush lights the horizon.
The scene’s prettiness can’t touch me. I wish it would stay night forever.
I turn. Are those sirens? They grow louder, drawing near. Their shriek fills my head. The police are coming for me! Although they can’t be. Not yet. No one knows. Unless Jo told. But she wouldn’t.
The sirens reach a climax and pass. They grow fainter and less piercing. My chest loosens. I bow my head. What have I done? This is my life. The life of an outlaw.
My eye throbs. I shift the ice pack and turn my back on the window.
Instead of standing here weeping, I should be rehearsing my story. Jo made me go over it several times. I can’t fuck it up.
“We argued,” I whisper. “Stan hit me.” My voice shakes. Do I sound melodramatic? Or not distraught enough? I clear my throat. “He hit me. No! He’s never done that before! He’d been drinking . . . He felt terrible! He ran off—to think, I guess.” I add a bewildered head shake. “I don’t know where he went.”
On the bedside table, my phone alarm dings. I’m startled. The sound worsens my headache. I rush to turn it off. It’s time to wake up my children.
The police are one thing, but the kids . . . What should I say? Zoe’s young enough to believe Mommy tripped and slammed her face on a door, but the twins are a different story. Whatever they know or don’t know about last night, I must convince them to keep quiet.
I retreat to the bathroom.
As I scour my face, I picture Jo getting ready in her poky apartment. Poor her. She’s teaching today. I’m not sure how she’ll manage. But Jo’s tough. She often pulled all-nighters back in college. Although that was a while back.
I’m padding down the long hall when the sirens start again, now headed in the opposite direction. Ambulance. And police.
Sirens mean one thing: someone’s in trouble.
Outside Zoe’s door, I pause, then shuffle on. Owen and Chad are across the hall from each other. They’re not identical twins but fraternal. Right from day one, they couldn’t have been less alike: Chad straight off a Pampers ad, Owen scrawny and screaming.
Between their doors I stop, unsure which way to turn. Into Chad’s room, with its smell of mouthwash and its gleaming sports trophies? Or into Owen’s, piled high with musty comics and toys, the curtains always drawn so it feels like the nest of some small woodland creature?
It’s cowardly, but I turn toward Chad’s door. He’s my easier son, for whom things come easily. Not that I don’t worry for him too, fearing cracks beneath the gloss. No one’s life is that perfect. Look at me, for God’s sake.
Chad reminds me of myself at that age: too careful. Sometimes I want to shake him and say, “You’re fifteen. Have some fun. It’s okay to screw up.”
Although I guess he did a bit, with Gemma Costin. The pair of them were suspended only last week. It was actually Jo who caught them cheating on an English exam. We had to troop in to see the principal. Chad was mortified. I know Gemma put him up to it. Stan was livid.
There’s a window at the end of the hall. As I raise a hand to knock on Chad’s door, my ring catches the light. I remember last night in the boat, wanting to toss it. Part of me still wishes I had. I’ll never look at this ring without thinking of Stan. “Diamonds are forever”—the ultimate marketing bullshit, and yet . . . My throat’s tight. Poor Stan.
A memory glitters: Stan teaching me to snowboard, off-piste, in Chamonix. The sky was bright blue, the snow dazzling.
“It’s too steep,” I said, staring down, my gut knotted. “I can’t do it.”
“You can, Dana.” Surrounded by gingery stubble, his smile blazed white. “Just relax. You’re a natural. I’ll stay right beside you. Trust me.”
I did. He was right. Powder sparkled around us. The fear in my belly gave way to wild, swooping excitement. I was a natural. He helped me feel that.
Those early years, we fit together. Him, loud and boisterous. Me, cool and classic. We were yin and yang. So what happened?
Did Owen’s issues get between us? He was diagnosed with a whole rash of things: ADHD, anxiety, OCD. We got pills but no real answers.
Or was it moving here? I thought a small town would help Owen, but Stan was bored here. Despite his outdoorsiness, he was a big-city person.
I’m too tired. My face throbs.
I lower my hand and lean against the wall outside my sleeping son’s door. More light shines in through the window. The diamonds flash as if in warning. I twist the ring so the stones are hidden. I make a fist. The gems jab into my palm. To punish myself, I squeeze them into a blister.