The Sleepwalker(63)

But mostly that morning I helped the children iron leaves under wax paper. I recalled doing it myself years ago with my mother, just the two of us working one afternoon on the counter of the kitchen island. I was terrified the kids were going to burn themselves because at any given moment I and the teacher—a woman in her late twenties who insisted the kids call her Hailey—had six hot irons going. She may have been no more than seven or eight years older than me, but she knew what she was doing: she had brought in a heavy-duty, six-outlet power strip with a fifteen-foot cord precisely for this project. She had lined up the irons on one long table—the pressing station, she called it—and the night before had shorn hundreds of sheets of wax paper from once-thick rolls. No one got hurt. We were an assembly line.

At one point a tiny girl named Dakota was showing me the fan of neon-yellow ash she had brought in from home, the seven leaves still attached to the thin branch. Most of the other students had maples—so many maples, some sugar, some red, all phosphorescent—so her ash was a lovely change of pace. Together we carefully snipped the leaves where their stems met the branch, dried them, and sealed them in the wax paper. As we were surveying the last one, I sat down. The final step would be trimming the wax paper, shaping it with scissors. Suddenly Dakota climbed into my lap, wrapping one arm around my neck and just plopping her head against my chest.

“I don’t know what I’d do if my mommy died,” she said.

I saw Hailey watching us—watching me—her eyes a little wide with worry. I nodded at her. I was okay. I was grateful for the child’s warmth.

“You would do just what you’re doing this second,” I told the girl. “You’d hug people. And you’d be really happy when people hugged you.”



The sky was perfectly clear that night, a Friday, and so after dinner Gavin and I walked from the restaurant to the Burlington waterfront. I buttoned up my jean jacket and tightened the scarf around my neck, and was comfortably warm. He took my hand as we walked and only released it when we stood by the railing not far from where the ferries docked. We looked at the sickle moon over the Adirondacks.

“I wish I had understood my parents’ marriage better,” I told him.

He shrugged. “I know your mom loved your dad and I know your dad is an amazing person. Really loving. And really patient.”

“But you guys were looking at him again as a suspect.”

“You have to be thorough.”

“How did he do it if he was in Iowa?”

“Strangers on a train. Paid hit man. Who knows? It’s why we nose around. But he was never a serious suspect in my mind. He’s not now.”

“Is he a serious suspect in anyone’s mind?”

“Maybe.”

“Some days, I think he’s just so clueless. Such a total basket case. And then other days, I wonder if he’s sleeping with one of his students. Some wannabe poet my age. And then I’m furious with him.”

“Cut him some slack.”

“I do. I guess mostly I just worry about him.”

“I heard him speak in the church. He’ll be okay.”

I watched the way Gavin laced his fingers together on the railing. “If my mom’s death had something to do with sleep sex, was she out looking for someone? Someone in particular?”

“You mean, she wasn’t just sleepwalking? It’s possible. Obviously I’ve gotten out of bed any number of times and looked for…someone. But never someone in particular.”

“Did it scare her?”

“The sleep sex? A little. She knew what she was capable of. But mostly it embarrassed her. It shamed her. It shames us all.”

We gazed for a long moment at the lights from a passenger jet as the plane began its final descent over the water and toward the Burlington airport.

“So who killed her?” I asked.

“If she was murdered,” he corrected me.

I acquiesced. “If.”

“I don’t know.”

“Broadly speaking. What sort of person?”

“Use that cultural implant of yours,” he said. “Why do people ever kill people? Anger. Jealousy. Money. Love. And then, of course, there are the psychopaths: the serial killers.”

“And in Vermont?”

“Domestic violence. That’s our dark and dirty little secret. The majority of our homicides are women in very bad relationships. The rest? Drugs.”

“So, my mom was the exception.”

“Yes.”

“No one seems to think my dad or Paige or I are in danger.”

“Why would you be?”

“I don’t know. Maybe someone has something against my family.”

He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me into him. “No one has a vendetta against your family.”

“Okay…”

“You don’t sound convinced. You should be.”

“I guess I am.”

“Good.”

“Can I ask you one more thing about my dad? I don’t know where it fits in, but I keep thinking it does…somewhere.”

“You can ask me anything you like. No guarantees I can or will answer it.”

“Okay. What do you make of my dad e-mailing my mom articles about miscarriages as recently as this past summer?”