Big Summer(53)

“Nick, we can’t,” I’d whispered, because there were people out on the deck. I could hear them and could smell their cigars.

“Shh,” he’d whispered, nuzzling the nape of my neck, then kissing his way down my body. “We can if you’re quiet.” I’d set my teeth into the inside of my lip to keep from moaning as he’d licked me, his tongue teasing and flickering, so gently and gradually that I’d wanted to scream. I’d never thought I’d had an exhibitionist streak, but the idea that there were people, right there, with only a few inches of glass between the wedding guests and our naked bodies, had made me wild, and more than happy to return the favor as soon as I trusted my legs to hold me again.

I stretched my arms above my head and gave a happy sigh. God, I’d missed sex! Not just the way it made you feel completely connected to another person, but the way it made you feel completely at home in your own body. And, as good as the sex had been, the best part of the night was the moment when we’d both woken up together, after the second time, before the third. Nick had pressed his forehead to mine, looking right into my eyes.

“Hi,” he whispered, in his low, sleep-scratchy voice.

“Hi,” I whispered back. He’d stroked my cheek with his thumb, looking at me. It hadn’t lasted long, just long enough for me to construct our entire life together in my head, from our marriage (a much-smaller wedding in Cape Cod) to our lives running a charter fishing business/Etsy store. I’d make memory boxes and birdhouses; he’d take families fishing, we’d spend every night together. “You’re such a sweetheart,” Nick had whispered. I’d tilted my head for a kiss, and he’d eased his fingers inside of me. “Is it okay?” he’d asked, seeing my tiny wince.

“I’m fine,” I’d told him. It had hurt, but in a wonderful, sweet way. “Don’t stop.”

I rolled over. The other side of the bed was empty. The pillowcase was smooth, the sheets and comforter pulled tight, as if no one had been there at all.

“Nick?” I called, keeping my voice low. No answer. I got up, wrapping the soft, fringed blanket from the foot of the bed around myself, and peeked into the bathroom. It was empty. There was literally no sign of him—no clothes, no shoes, no wet towels or man-size footprints, not even a condom wrapper by the side of the bed. Maybe last night didn’t happen. Maybe I’d made the whole thing up. Except I could see a purplish-red mark on the top of my breast, and between my legs, and in my lower belly and the insides of my thighs, I felt deliciously sore.

I slid open the glass door and stepped onto the deck, feeling the breeze against my bare shoulders. It was going to be a beautiful day. The sky was already streaked orange and rust, and I realized, with a guilty pang, that we hadn’t turned the hot tub off. Wisps of steam were rising in the air, and I could hear the motor chugging above the sound of the waves.

I looked through the door in the hedge. Something was in the water. A bird, was my first thought as I crossed the deck and got close enough to see.

It wasn’t a bird. It was Drue. She was facedown, in a bikini, with her blond hair tangled around her head, swaying in the water as the jets pumped. I screamed her name and grabbed at her body, and the stiff wrongness of it was immediate, gutting. It felt like I was moving a doll and not a person as I tried to yank her out of the water. “Help!” I screamed, and got her up and out and down to the deck, where I knelt, pressing my ear to her wet chest. No heartbeat. I touched my fingers to her neck. No pulse.

“Drue!”

I pounded her chest, then tilted her head back, opening her mouth, trying to remember the CPR class I’d taken a million years ago. “Help!” I shouted. “Someone help me!” But even as I heard doors open and people pounding across the deck, even as I pressed my lips to hers and started to breathe, I knew that Drue was dead. Everything that had ever been inside her, everything, good and bad, that had made my beautiful, terrible friend who she was, all of it was gone.





Part Two





The Summer Friend





Chapter Ten


“One more time,” he said. The man’s name was Ryan McMichaels, and he was a detective with the Truro Police Department. He was in his fifties, a white man with blue-gray eyes and a jowly face above a blocky body. His hair was iron gray, thick, almost bristly as it stood in spikes over his head. A fat and neatly clipped caterpillar of a mustache sat above his thin lips. His eyebrows were also thick, but unruly, full of wiry hairs poking out in every direction. His reddish skin looked angry at being exposed to the sun, or maybe he’d just given himself an especially aggressive shave before coming to the murder scene. He wore a red tie, knotted tight under his throat, a gold wedding band on his left hand that kept catching the light as he moved his arm around, asking me about this morning, asking me to tell him everything, from start to finish, the whole way through.

It was not quite eight in the morning, not quite three hours after I’d discovered Drue, and I was still shaky and terrified and heartbroken. What had happened? Where was Nick? And why hadn’t I heard anything when my best friend was presumably drowning just outside my door?

The hours after Drue’s death had been a jumbled blur. I’d remembered screaming, and people coming—Minerva, looking ghostly under a glistening layer of face cream, and a guy from the catering crew, with his apron flapping around his waist as he ran. Someone had pulled me away from the hot tub and led me back to my room. At some point, someone else had brought me a cup of hot coffee. I remembered sitting on the bed, my hands wrapped around the mug, shaking like I’d been thrown into a tub of ice. Through the window that faced the water, I saw Drue’s body being loaded onto a stretcher as cops photographed the scene; through the windows that faced the front of the house, I saw the woman with the silvery chignon from the night before help load Mrs. Cavanaugh into the back of an enormous Escalade, then climb in behind her.