The Sleepwalker(75)

“Because I’m not staying long?” he asked.

“Because I haven’t vacuumed today, and your shoes don’t look all that messy.”

“The house looks nice. It was so crowded the last time I was here, it was hard to see how well designed all the spaces are—how light and open it is, especially for an old Victorian in Vermont.”

“My mom was an architect, remember?” I got a vase from the dining room sideboard and a pair of scissors from a kitchen drawer. I remembered how my mother always snipped the stems of cut flowers before placing them in water. He’d put his sunglasses down on the kitchen island exactly where I wanted to arrange the lilies and irises and daisies. I pushed them against the wooden knife block. “What would you have done if my father was home? You know I didn’t want him to know about us. I wasn’t even sure you wanted him to know about us.” I hadn’t snarled, but neither had I hid my disgust.

“His car was gone. And—oh, by the way—he teaches Friday morning.”

“Is there nothing you haven’t researched about my family? Do you have any idea how creepy you just sounded?” I asked, irked by his knowledge of the Ahlbergs and our routines.

“A: there is plenty I don’t know about you. And B: at different times in different conversations, both you and your father have told me that he has a class on Friday mornings. Contemporary American Poetry. It didn’t take a stalker to figure that one out.”

“And that ethical line?”

He shrugged. “A gray area. I know cops who’ve done much worse.”

I shook my head. “You know, I used to be afraid that you and my mom were lovers. Now I wonder if you killed her. I really do, you know.” I had said it facetiously, but a part of me still doubted him.

“And yet you let me into the house.”

I motioned at the knife block and arched my eyebrows. I squeezed the scissors twice so they made a loud snipping sound.

“Why do you keep wanting to view this story as a late-night crime drama?” he asked me. “Why can’t this be a romance?”

“I used to think it might be. I told myself that very thing in the car when we were driving to Montreal.”

“And wasn’t that a great day? A great evening?” He spread out his arms and grinned almost impishly. “Why can’t I be your Mr. Darcy? Or, given my age, your Colonel Brandon?”

“Have you actually read Jane Austen?”

“Not a single word. But I have a sister.”

“Well, this isn’t a Jane Austen novel.”

“Fair enough. But we’re not talking Hitchcock, either, Lianna,” he said softly. “Your mother’s story is a tragedy; it’s horrible. It’s devastating. But it’s not your story. It’s not our story—at least it doesn’t have to be.”

“Someone killed her.”

“Stop thinking like that.”

“Stop thinking like that? How can you say that?”

“Because I can.”

“Because you and the rest of the police can’t solve the crime. Because none of you really know anything,” I snapped at him, frustrated. “It’s not your mother who was murdered.”

“We don’t know your mother was murdered!”

“Of course she was.”

“No. We don’t know that. You don’t know that. We know she had a head injury. We know she wound up in the river. That’s all we know.”

“Then what? Name one thing that could have happened to her. She sure as heck didn’t just walk into the river where we found that piece of her nightgown.”

“Must we do this?”

“Yes!”

He folded his arms across his chest and leaned against a pantry door. I waited. “Fine. She didn’t walk into the river. She jumped off the bridge and hit her head on a rock.”

“She would have drowned, you know that.”

“She jumped off the bridge and hit her head on a rock but made it back to the surface. She hung on to the rock. Or maybe she dog-paddled to the shore but couldn’t climb out. She was too weak and injured. She died there and slipped back into the current.”

For a long moment I stood there, picturing this. I had thought about this possibility, but only in the abstract. I had never envisioned the specifics: my mother awakened by the cool river water and the blow to the back of her head, clinging to a rock as she bled out before, finally, losing consciousness. Or making it to the riverbank and trying to climb from the Gale, but too injured or frail, and so there she hangs on until, finally, she slides back in. In both scenarios, I heard her crying out for help. But maybe she didn’t. Maybe she was disoriented. Or she was incapable. Either way, she dies alone on the surface or the side of the river.

I sat down—collapsed, really—onto one of the barstools around the kitchen island. I felt a little dizzy, as if I had bent over and stood up too quickly. I rested my head on the palm of my hand. Gavin remained where he was, staring straight at me. Gone was any hint of levity from his expression. “God…” I murmured.

“Remember, your mother was my friend, too. If there was a killer out there, don’t you think I would be pretty damn invested in finding out who that person was? Don’t you?”

“So you think she went back to the bridge.”