Family of Liars(68)

I stare at him and try not to move my face.

Can he possibly know I took them? Did he count how many he had in the bottle?

He continues. “I ran out of sleeping pills, and before your mother got me some more, I had a few sleepless nights. Do you see where I am going?”

I shake my head.

“Well. One night, I found myself awake around two a.m. I couldn’t get back to sleep. I tossed and turned for a good long while, read my book and so on, but then I gave up. I thought I’d heat some warm milk, maybe make some cocoa to help me sleep.”

He stops talking and lights a cigarette, leaning back in his chair. “I looked in on you girls,” he continues. “I do that when I can’t sleep. I have, ever since you were babies. I like knowing you’re all safe and sound in your beds. Now, sometimes this summer you all have been out late, over at Goose with the boys. I get it. I don’t worry about you. But at this point, it’s about two-thirty in the morning and I’m expecting you’re asleep. But you are not. Not you, not Bess, not Penny. Hm. I begin to be a little concerned. So I go downstairs, pour myself a glass of bourbon, and step onto the porch.”

My hands feel cold. My throat is closed.

He takes a drag on his cigarette and ashes it carefully into an ivory dish. “I gave up on the hot cocoa, you see, because I was curious. I walked out of the yard, and when I passed the turnoff to the dock, there was movement on the water. What do you think I saw?”

“I don’t know.”

“Guzzler, rowing out to sea. You and Penny at the oars. Bess hanging over the edge with her fingers in the water. I watched until the boat was out of sight. And I thought, Why are they rowing? I didn’t put it past you silly things to take the boat out in the middle of the night. I was a boy, once. But just the three of you? Without Major, George, or Lor? And why not use the motor? What could be such a secret that you’d row that far out? It’s not easy work.”

He taps his fingers on the wood of his desk, looks out the window and then at me. “So I went back to the house,” he continues. “I got one of the heavy flashlights we keep in the mudroom and I went down to the dock to see what you had been doing. The dogs came with me.” Another drag on the cigarette. “And a funny thing, Carrie. Right away, we all four noticed a strong smell at the end of the dock. Dogs were sniffing around. And do you know what the smell was?”

“No.”

“Bleach. How is that? I wondered. What are my girls doing with bleach in the middle of the night?”

My hands will not stop shaking. I twist my fingers together and breathe slowly.

“The dock looked wet, I noticed,” Harris goes on. “And when I looked around a little further, I noticed that board. You know, the warped one I pulled up?”

I do not answer.

He speaks very, very slowly. “Do you know the board I’m talking about, Carrie?”

“Yes, I do.”

“All right, then. That board smelled of bleach even more than the rest of the dock did. I picked it up and it was soaking wet. I shone my flashlight on the length of it. And then I shone my flashlight on the nails. And do you know what?”

“What?”

“The nails were sticky.”





79.


I FEEL LIKE all the blood has left my head. I might faint. “You took the board,” I say. “That’s why it went missing.”

“I took the board,” he says. “I brought it up to the house and I scrubbed it over the sink. Then I went to the attic and stashed it behind a pile of boxes. I didn’t know why I was doing it. I didn’t know why my daughters had gone rowing in the motorboat in the dark of night, leaving the dock stinking of bleach, and a heavy board they had tried—and failed—to properly clean lying there with some hellish sticky substance on it—but I sure as sure was going to protect them, no matter what was going on.”

He loves me, I realize.

He treats me like I am his flesh and blood. He cares what happens to me, no matter what I’ve done.

For the first time since I learned about my parentage, I feel myself completely part of my father’s family. I belong.

Harris goes on. “In the morning, I learn that the boy seems to have been the victim of a shark attack. The three of you are screaming and carrying on like hysterics, but I put two and two together. I’m damned glad I had the sense to move that board before the police arrived, I tell you.”

He stops. Leans forward in his chair. Stares at me.

I stare back.

I will not tell him what happened.

I cannot tell him. About not being loved enough, about Pfeff, about Penny, about what I did and why. Even though he knows someone did something and we covered it up, he cannot know the full ugly truth of the matter.

“Do you have anything to add?” he asks finally.

“No.”

“All right, then.” He leans back. I know he is curious, but silence on difficult topics will always earn his respect. “So we got through it, and we got through it,” he continues, “and when things were settled down, I told your mother it was time for Bonfire Night.” He gestures toward the beach. “Now that board is nothing but ash and smoke.”

“You had the dock rebuilt.”

“Well, we can’t have anyone wondering where that one board went. Or noticing that lingering smell of bleach.” He smiles with tight lips. “Tipper wanted a new dock anyway, so she’s happy.”