Denica waits in Dylan’s room, wandering through the wide world contained in this narrow space. Books, computers, access to outside. There’s a notebook on the desk that stands out from the rest, a spiral bound with a blue-green striped cover, stuffed with scraps of paper and held together with a rubber band. Denica helps herself. She sinks onto the bed, starts to read the poetry Dylan has collected (the scraps) and written (the bound pages).
Dylan is in my room, pulling on a short-legged wetsuit so he and Denica can surf again. It’s still warm enough for trunks, but the suit is like a second skin. Denica came dressed, drawstring shorts and a one-piece. Ian dropped her off and picked up Marina, even though everyone but Dylan can drive. Is licensed, I mean. It was more practical that way. Fatherly of Ian to do it. I appreciate it.
Denica pages carefully through the notebook, skimming, pausing here and there, stopping at one titled “Mother.”
Now we abandoned boats tilt in crusty sand
Punished
Guilty of needing the sea
Dylan comes in a few minutes later, all zipped up. He sees the invasion.
“What the heck?” he says. He tears the book out of her hands. A few slips—ideas, couplets—fall to the floor.
“I didn’t know you wrote poems,” she says. Her eyes are wet, but he doesn’t see. He’s turned his back, closed the book, snapped the rubber band. He’s looking for a place to put it, secret, but she’s sitting right there.
“They’re good,” she says. “The one about your mom—”
“You shouldn’t do that,” he bites.
“I didn’t think anyone else knew what it’s like. Not even Gabe.”
Dylan hears the snag in her voice. He turns around, notebook in hand, still angry. But a little less.
“He says I shouldn’t be mad at her,” Denica says. “It’s not her fault she’s gone.”
Dylan has no idea what to say. Denica’s mom didn’t pretend to kill herself. Her dad isn’t lying around in a coma.
“But it doesn’t change anything. She’s still gone whether I’m mad or not,” Denica says.
She’s wearing a perfume that he likes. Something like oranges. He wishes she wouldn’t have done that. He wishes she wasn’t older than he and didn’t like surfing and didn’t understand his poetry.
He wishes she might know what it was like to have a mother come back.
He goes downstairs to fetch the boards.
The heat of August keeps patrons away from Sara’s Sins, that and the midweek slump. Already tourists are thinking of home, of school about to start. Vacation budgets are blown and the kids need school supplies, backpacks. A happy group of retired ladies comes through after lunch down the street. They pick up a few indulgences to go. Peppermint creams in milk chocolate for the grandkids. Chocolate peanuts for the book club. No caramels that will stick to dental work. No daring chili spices for delicate digestions.
After Sara serves them and the bell over the door chimes their good-byes, she ducks into the kitchen to retrieve the photo book from her purse, the one with the snapshots of her one night with my kids. Then she returns to the corner of the room, the cozy nook where she and Dylan had their first conversation. The space is the same but it seems colder today. Marina sits where her brother did, but forward on the edge of the voluminous sofa. Deputy Wasson sits back, sunken in, more at ease than anyone else. She’s trying to make this friendly. Ian takes the matching overstuffed chair, both hands out on the arms like Lincoln in his memorial. He keeps pained eyes on Sara. Sara sits back down in a wooden chair borrowed from one of the tables. The hot seat.
“These are the pictures I mentioned.” Sara hands the book to Marina.
Marina opens the book. She sees herself, her bedhead curls piled up on one side of her smiling preschool face.
She turns the pages slowly. Dylan in his carrier. Marina standing in front of the Allegro Christmas window.
“Marina, I’m sorry I lied to you.”
My daughter lets her curtain of dark hair fall forward over her expression.
“I was trying to protect your dad. The affair was . . . accidental. I guess most of them are. I didn’t want you to think he was at fault in what happened to your mom. He loved her so much.”
Marina is deaf to Sara’s apology.
“It’s okay to blame me. I just want to help. You and Dylan are in a bad spot.”
“Do you have any idea how Dylan is going to take this?” Marina asks. She turns to another picture.
Sara folds her hands as if to hold herself together. She looks at Ian, remembering his warning.
Deputy Wasson says, “So Mr. Becker dropped them off around two in the morning. Did he tell you when he’d be back, or where he was going?”
“He didn’t say anything, just ‘I need your help,’ and something like ‘It’s Misty.’ I didn’t even know the two of them were in town. We hadn’t talked since before Dylan was born.”
“What time did Mr. Becker return to pick up the kids?” Wasson asks.
“It was the afternoon.” She lifts her eyes to the ceiling, thinking. “Uh, around three. It should be in there.” She points to the folder on the deputy’s lap. “They asked me all these questions then.”
“And Mr. Becker didn’t say anything when he fetched the kids?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Sara licks her lips. “He was so distraught. He said he couldn’t find her. And I felt—responsible. Like if we hadn’t had the affair Misty would have been okay. I pieced it together afterward. The investigation, newspaper reports.” Sara clears her throat. “My family had plenty to say.”
“Let me give you a quick time line.” Wasson opens the folder on her lap. “Monday, December 15. Mr. Becker takes the children to the beach house because he has a job scheduled there and is worried about his wife’s mental state. At their home in Marina del Rey Mrs. Becker burns the family photographs and sends you a hostile letter. Both actions support Mr. Becker’s concerns. Then she follows her husband to the beach house. She arrives around 9:00 p.m. There is a confrontation of a physical nature”—her eyes dart up to Sara, but Sara is looking at her hands and doesn’t react to this information—“but Mr. Becker calms his wife without intervention. They go to bed. At 1:00 a.m., December 16, Mr. Becker is awakened by his son’s cries. He’s trying to get his son onto formula so that Mrs. Becker can resume her medications, so he quickly takes the child outside for a bottle while Mrs. Becker sleeps. Afterward the baby won’t settle, so he packs both children into the car for a ride until the baby falls asleep. When he returns to the house, Mrs. Becker is gone. Mr. Becker takes the children to you and then goes on a search for his wife.”
Sara is nodding.
“When interviewed, he said he thought his wife might have gone to her parents’ home in Monterey.”
“They were a tight-knit family.”
“But Mr. Becker drove to Marina del Rey.”
“If Misty went to her parents’ house, they’d take care of her,” Sara suggested. “There wasn’t any family in Marina del Rey. That’s where her business was. Her dance studio.”
Wasson nods. “He searched at the house, called her parents several times, called her friends, went to the studio. He was there until”—she consults the report—“10:30 a.m., after the studio opened. Then he drove back to the Rincon. Called us when he returned at noon and she was still missing.”
I’m watching this café conversation with an odd discomfort in my belly. I wish I could see that trip, the drive to Marina del Rey, because I don’t remember it. Why can’t I remember it?
Shock is a rational thing with irrational effects.
Marina has paused in the photo book. She puts her finger under something in one picture and holds it up to Sara. “What’s this?”
Sara leans in. It’s the red satin box with a little bear and a peppermint cane sticking out one corner. A chocolate-faced Marina is holding it in her right hand. Her left hand is linked with Sara’s. Both of them are grinning. Dylan is still strapped onto Sara, leaking a little around the leg.
“There was a Christmas ornament in the box, a glass globe, a really pretty handblown thing. We were selling them, you liked it . . .” Sara shrugs and looks away. She seems embarrassed.
Marina closes the book. She can’t look at any more. “Has anyone ever told me the truth about anything?”
No one responds.
I’m sorry, my beautiful girl. I’m sorry I said that was from your mother. I wanted you to have something from her besides a legacy of pain. I thought for so long I could undo my sins.
The deputy says to Sara, “And you were at the chocolate shop the whole time, with the children?”
“No. We left there at four. Five? I don’t remember exactly.”
“And after you left the shop?”
“We went to the beach house. Garrett had forgotten to pack the kids a change of clothes.”
“You had the gate code to get in?”
Sara’s eyes dart to Marina. “Yes. I’d been there for dinner with the family a couple of times.”
“When you were questioned you didn’t mention visiting the house.”
Sara blinks, shakes her head. She presses her lips into a thin line for a moment. Wasson waits with disciplined patience. “I don’t know about that,” she finally says. “I hardly remember the questions.”
“So you went to the beach house, picked up some clothes, and then what?”
“We went back to my apartment.”
“Is that all you did?”
“Yes.”
“At the beach house.”
“Yes.”
“You drove in, picked up some clothes, drove back out.”
Sara reaches for the photos. She turns to a page near the back. It’s a shot of the front of the beach house. To the right, the framed dirt that will become our new porch. To the left, the garage door is open and the naked bulb is bright. The landscaping lights are also turned on. The sun has yet to rise. My old pickup, parked inside. Sara’s small Volkswagen bug, outside. Marina crouches in the open bay where Misty’s sedan ought to have been. The red box sitting at her side, on the floor.
“You wanted to share your peppermint with an ant,” Sara said to Marina. “It crawled onto your pajamas. All that chocolate. You screamed!” The picture is a bit grainy. “It was dark outside. Wrong speed film for that.” She turns the page. Marina in mismatched sweater and leggings, socks but no shoes, in the backseat of the bug, holding a Happy Meal box with golden arch handles. “It’s still dark. And I probably lost the receipt with the time on it when I threw away the wrappers. That’s all I’ve got.”
Wasson takes a photo of her own out of the folder and shows it to Sara. “Do you recognize this fork?”
“Yes. It’s from a fondue set I gave Garrett and Misty as a housewarming gift.”
“Was your affair with Mr. Becker going on when you gave the gift?”
“No.”
“And it had ended before December 16?”
“Weeks before.”
“Do you know what happened to the fondue set?”
Sara clears her throat and says, “I took it with me. I have it.”
“You took it from the Becker home the morning of the 16th?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you take it?”
“There was . . . I wanted to . . .” She takes a shuddering breath and looks at Marina. “The house was chaos. The fondue pot had fallen on the kitchen floor. The forks everywhere. A broken glass. And there was”—she swallowed a knot in her throat—“blood on the carpet. In the living room.”
“Why did you take it?” Wasson repeats.
“I thought he might have hurt her,” Sara whispers. “She could be crazy.”
“Liar.” Marina shoots off the sofa, stands, bends over Sara. “Quit lying to me!”
“I’m not lying, I’m telling you what it looked like. If your dad had . . . Oh, Marina! What would have happened to you and Dylan if you’d lost your dad too? If the police thought what I thought? They would have taken you, separated you! I cleaned up the blood. I picked up everything and put it in my car. That’s all. I didn’t count forks. I didn’t know there was one missing.”
“You served us from that pot!” Marina shrieks. “Dylan ate out of it!”
Ian sits forward and touches her wrist, grounding her.
“I thought if you still had the other fork, if you recognized it, maybe you would believe . . .” Sara is pale as cream.
“Did you write this note?” Deputy Wasson lays another photograph atop the one of the fork. The backside of the only picture of Misty, Marina, and Dylan together. I’m so sorry, it says.
Sara takes a sharp breath. “It was on the kitchen counter. I thought Garrett still had that. I left it for Garrett.”
“What were you sorry for?”
“For not stopping the affair before it started. For ruining his family. I was so scared.”
Marina has started to cry. “Did you kill my mom?”
“No!”
“Did you keep on with my dad after she was gone?”
“No!”
Deputy Wasson says, “Did you and Mr. Becker plot to kill his wife?”
“Absolutely not.” Sara becomes the calm in the center of the storm. Has she expected this? Has she seen all the signs pointing to this moment? Because I haven’t. This scenario, this line of questions—it’s as unexpected as snow on the beach. Sara stands so she can look Marina in the eye.
“Your father came to the apartment to pick you up the next day. I asked him what happened. He said, ‘She’s gone.’ I asked him again—what? How? ‘They found her car at Monastery Beach.’ And that was all. That was every word. I know what Monastery Beach is. He didn’t have to explain. Misty and I grew up there.”
The deputy also rises. “Ms. Rochester, you were never fingerprinted.”
She shakes her head.
“I’d like you to come down to the office with me so we can get your fingerprints on file, compare them to what we found at the scene. And on the fork.”
“I can tell you already my prints are probably on the fork, unless Misty ever used it, which she probably didn’t. I used it, washed it, put it away.”
“Maybe you could ride with me.”
“Am I under arrest?”
“Your cooperation would be helpful.”
“All I’ve wanted to do is help,” Sara said.
In the close quarters of the café, the emotional charge turns the heavy scents of chocolate into a stench. This is why I couldn’t ever eat it again. Not after that night.