Girls Like Us(30)

“Did he take anything?”

“He found a phone in her desk. I was surprised. She always took her phone with her. This one didn’t look like hers. I told him that, but he took it anyway.”

I feel my throat tighten. In the background, a child begins to wail.

“Do you remember his name?”

She frowns. She looks up at me then. “You know,” she says, “I think his name was Flynn, same as you.”





9.



My ears buzz. The sound of crying intensifies. Elena stands up. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Isabel needs me.”

I nod, still dazed by her mention of my father. “Of course. Go ahead.”

Elena disappears down the hall. I stand up slowly, feeling light-headed. I need to get home, back to my father’s office. I want to see if I can find Adriana’s phone.

I hesitate outside the door to her bedroom. Should I ask Lee about my father’s visit here after Adriana went missing? I decide against it. He would have mentioned it if he thought it was important. My guess is he doesn’t know about it. But why would my father keep secrets from his partner?

Her room is a small space, just big enough to hold a twin bed and a small desk. Books are stacked in the corner. I tilt my head, read the titles. An anatomy textbook. A Guide to Practical Nutrition. A brochure from the nursing program at St. Joseph’s College. A flyer for an informational session on campus, August 28. She’d circled the date in thick black pen.

There is one window in the room, right above the desk. It looks out at the wall of the neighboring house. Outside, a woman is pulling clothes off a line. The wind has picked up. It ruffles her hair, her skirt. The clothes flap, threatening to fly away. She glances up and makes eye contact with me. She frowns, turns again. She snatches up the last of the laundry and hurries back inside.

I close my eyes and try to picture the window at the Meachem house, the one with the balcony overlooking the dunes. Someone in that house knows something. And Grace Bishop knows more than she was willing to say. If not about the night Adriana was murdered, then about the girls, coming and going. About the parties. About the men who frequent them. About James Meachem himself. Grace is his neighbor, not just here but down in Palm Beach. Neighbors often know more than anyone would suspect. I need to talk to her again. This time, alone.

Through the wall, I can hear Elena singing to Isabel. It’s a melancholic melody, slow and written in a minor key. I recognize it from childhood, though I can’t recall the words. My skin prickles listening to it. I can almost hear my mother’s voice. The crying diminishes and then stops. I picture Isabel clinging to her mother’s torso. I wonder if she did that with Adriana, too. According to Elena, Adriana doted on the girl. Maybe she thought a baby of her own would bring her a fresh start, a new life. Especially if the baby’s father was wealthy, powerful. Instead, it might’ve been the reason she’d been murdered.

Over Adriana’s bed is a corkboard. Tacked to it are photographs, a ticket stub, a few business cards. I stare at the photos. I pick out Adriana instantly. She’s the kind of girl who burns brighter than the others around her. Her smile is wide and well formed; her face, perfectly symmetrical. She’s a more delicate version of her sister. Small-boned, with high, round cheekbones and large, luminous eyes. She glows with youth. Her skin is a rich, smooth hazelnut; her hair is thick and glossy obsidian. She wears it down in most photographs, parted in the middle. When she smiles, her cheeks dimple and that makes her look warm and approachable.

I pause, lean in. One photograph shows Adriana and Elena together on the beach. The water is calm; it looks like the bay and not the ocean. I wonder if it’s Meschutt Beach in Hampton Bays, where my parents used to take me when I was little. I remember the buoys out in the water, marking where it is safe to swim. My father could walk all the way out to them with me on his shoulders. My mother would hang back, watching us and waving, her figure casting long shadows on the sand.

In the photo, the sisters are standing at the water’s edge, their arms linked together. It must be the end of summer. The light is pale and bright. The water gleams with it. Adriana in particular is deeply tanned. Her head is tilted back, her eyes are closed, her lips are parted in laughter. Her hair is pulled back in a braid, with tendrils escaping around her face. She is happy. Happy and alive.

She looks like Elena, I think. She looks like my mother.

An image wells up fresh as a bruise. My mother is holding my hands in hers. We’re at Meschutt Beach. There are shells underfoot; we’ve been collecting them and putting them in a pail with my name painted on it. They make a satisfying clink each time they hit the bottom of the pail. I feel them cutting the soft undersides of my toes.

“Uno,” my mother says, her black eyes finding mine. She had thick, beautiful eyelashes, my mother. When she held me close, I could feel them fluttering against my cheek.

She is trying to be serious now, but it isn’t working. We both are laughing.

“Dos,” I say.

“Tres.” On three, she whirls me around. She is the axis, turning, turning. My body flies horizontal to the earth. Our hands lock tightly; if I let go, I will land hard on the sand and the pebbles and the crushed shells. It will hurt to fall. I don’t let go. She won’t let me.

I whirl around, giddy, hysterical, until her arms give out and she stops. Both of us collapse, laughing on the sand. We roll over then and stare up at the blank sky, her ear next to mine, our chests heaving from exertion and laughter.