only confirmed what I’d thought—that something strange surrounded my mother’s death. What did it mean that my mom had died of a head injury? Did that necessarily mean that someone had purposefully hurt her? I had asked Della those questions before I bolted, but she had shrugged. “There were lots of stories about what happened, but mostly people said it was an accident,” she’d said. “No one really knows.”
But someone knew. The person who’d sent the letter knew. Or at least they thought they did.
The sound of a vacuum downstairs made me realize I was standing in the middle of the room, motionless. I’d had so much momentum all day. What to do now? Though the room was cozy, a huge step up from the impersonal hotel where I’d stayed in Chicago, I wished for my own apartment right then, for my comfy sweatpants and the taupe chenille blanket my father had given me. Under different circumstances, I would have loved to curl up on the canopy bed here with a book, but I couldn’t just sit around. Not now. I couldn’t stand the thought of being in Woodland Dunes and not be moving, remembering, doing. I wasn’t here for a weekend getaway. I was here for my mother.
The thought drew me to the French doors, but for a moment, I didn’t open them. I stared out at the wide beach, the gray-blue water licking the sand. As I watched the rush and recede of the water, I remembered the feel of my small hand in my father’s as he led me down the unfinished wood pathway to the lake. I must have been about six or seven years old. He had come home to Woodland Dunes that day, a treat for the middle of the week.
“Where’s Mom?” he’d said when he was inside the front door. He crouched down and held open his arms. “Is she taking her walk on the beach?”
I nodded and charged into him, wrapping myself around his neck, breathing in the slightly stale scent of the city he always brought with him.
“Let’s find her,” he said.
We walked the two blocks to the lakefront and then down the wood sidewalk to the sand. We pulled off our shoes, my dad rolling up the bottoms of his suit pants.
“Which way?” he said, his voice playful. “You pick.”
I bounced on my toes with excitement. I looked both ways down the beach. The sun was growing gold and heavy, but it wasn’t dark yet. To my right, the houses were grand, some of them as big as hotels. To the left, they grew smaller and friendlier, and there were usually more kids that way, so I raised my left arm and pointed.
“You got it, Hailey-girl,” my dad said.
We walked along the water where it was packed wet and hard, looking for beach glass, the colored shards of glass, rounded and smoothed by years spent in the water.
“Here’s a great one,” my dad said, bending down to lift a green piece the size of a quarter.
I held out my hand, but just then I saw a flash of pink farther down the beach. I looked closer, and I could see my mother’s pink T-shirt, the length of her sandy blond hair.
“Mom!” I called.
My father stood in one quick motion, the glass falling from his hand. I knelt to pick it up. When I stood again, I saw my mother hadn’t heard me. She was standing a few hundred yards away, her back to us, and she was talking to someone.
“Let’s go see Mom,” I said, tugging my father’s hand, but he refused to move. He was frozen, it seemed, with his pants rolled up, his suit coat over his arm, staring at his wife.
I looked at my mom again, too. I couldn’t see who she was talking to, but I could tell it was a man, someone a little taller than her, and for a second, I saw the man reach out and put a hand on my mom’s shoulder.
“Let’s go.” My dad pulled my hand so hard I almost cried out. He marched me back the way we came, pulling me down the beach. In my other hand, I gripped tight to the beach glass, trying not to drop it. When I looked up, my father’s jaw was hard, his eyes narrow. A few times, I almost stumbled as he propelled us over the sand.
When we reached the wood walk that would take us back to the street, he slowed so we could sit and pull on our shoes.
“Did I do something wrong?” I asked.
He looked at me as if I’d said a terrible thing, then he pulled me to him, hugging me so close it was difficult to breathe.
“Everything’s all right.” He released me, but I thought for a moment he might cry because of the way his eyes were pulled down, the way his mouth seemed ready to tremble. “Let’s go home.”
We walked back quickly, not strolling as we had on the way to the beach. When we reached the house, he said he loved me very much but he’d forgotten something at the office. He needed to go back that night.
I sat on the window bench in my room, watching him pull out of the driveway. The bench reminded me of the larger one in my parents’ room where my mother often rested and wrote in her journals. Usually, when I sat on my own bench, it made me feel a little like my mom, and that made me happy. That night, though, staring out at the now dark lawn, I didn’t want to be my mother. She’d made my dad leave, and I only wanted him to come back.
When my mother came in the room, I was still there. “You made him go away,” I said.
“What?” My mother raised a hand and smoothed the pink cotton front of her T-shirt.
“Dad was here. We saw you on the beach, and he left.”
My forehead was touching the glass of the French doors. Still, I peered at the beach, thinking over this new memory the way I studied a witness’s testimony after a deposition.
I’d always assumed my parents were happy together, from the devastation my father experienced after she passed away. But was my mother involved with someone else? I knew my father had been upset with her that day, but I’d been too young to draw any conclusions. Now it seemed possible my mother was having an affair.
I opened the French doors and went onto the balcony. The spring air was balmy and light. I leaned on the painted white railing and gazed at the beach, trying to bring back more of the memory, the parts that had happened before and later, but nothing else came.
Just a few blocks to my left was where my father and I had taken our walk, where my mother had stood with the man. Just because he was a man, though, didn’t mean my mother was involved with him. Why was I so quick to jump to the conclusion that my mother had been unfaithful? The hand on my mother’s shoulder, the way she’d smoothed down her pink shirt when she’d come to my room, that was why.
I sank down on the Adirondack chair, painted white to match the railing. The hand had reminded me of the vision I’d had on the stairs today, of the hand that I had seen steady my mother at the door. The lawyer in me confronted myself. How can you assume it was the same person? And even if it were true, who was he? Did it matter? He might not have anything to do with her death.
I ran a hand through my hair. I was going in circles. This happened to me sometimes during a big case. My mind wound around too many details, unable to see the important things.
I threw on a pair of khaki shorts, a long-sleeved shirt and sandals. Once down on the beach, I walked to the left, the way my mother had headed that day, the way I’d followed with my father. A soft breeze blew, playing
