Golden Girl(52)

Sit with your discomfort, Ed tells himself. The kid has every right to vent his feelings. “I’m not charging you with anything,” the Chief says. “But you’re all I’ve got, and I can’t help thinking that if I can unravel exactly what was going on with you that morning, I can follow that thread to someone else.” The Chief pulls into the small parking lot at the Monomoy public beach. From here, a path leads to the water. It’s crowded only in the early mornings and early evenings when people are heading out in their kayaks. “Before the running shoes turned up, I could maybe have bought the theory that the driver was some summer kid—or, hell, an adult—who hit Ms. Howe, got scared, and hightailed it out of there. But the shoes turning up in your place of employment makes this something else. I know it wasn’t you who hit her, okay? But someone on this island wants us to think it was you.”

“I’m being framed,” Cruz says. “Just like in the movies.”

“Who would do that?” the Chief asks. “Do you know this guy Donald?”

“No,” Cruz says. “I only work days. I know Justin, the daytime custodian. He’s…kind of alternative, but a good enough guy.”

The Chief drives back to the store. “What did you want to talk to Peter Bridgeman about?”

The kid shakes his head.

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll ask Peter.”

Cruz breathes out and his nostrils flare. “He took a picture on Friday at the end of this party at Fortieth Pole and he sent it to me in the middle of the night. When I woke up and saw it, I called him but he didn’t answer, so I drove over to his house.”

“Was he home?”

“I didn’t see his truck but I thought maybe he’d ditched it at Fortieth and gotten a ride home because he’d been drinking. He has his own apartment above his parents’ garage so I went up the outdoor stairs and I knocked a bunch of times and he didn’t answer, so I left. I figured he was either out somewhere or ignoring me.”

“Did anyone see you there?”

“No?” Cruz says. “I don’t know. His parents didn’t come out or anything.”

“So you left the Bridgeman house and drove straight to the Howes’?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Cruz gives the Chief an exasperated look. “Leo is my friend. I wanted to talk to him.”

“Did going over there have anything to do with this picture?”

“Yeah. I could see Leo had gotten the picture from Peter as well, so I wanted to talk to him about it. Plus, we’d had that fight…”

“When he punched you? And gave you the shiner?”

“See? You already know everything.”

“Do you mind my asking what the picture was of?”

“Yes,” Cruz says. “I mind.” They’ve arrived back at the store. “Can I go, please?”

The Chief will talk to the night custodian, Donald. And also to the Bridgeman kid. “Yes,” he says. “You can go.”





Amy




She comes home from work with a bottle of Cliff Lede cabernet, one of JP’s favorite splurge wines, and the bourbon-marinated steak tips from the Nantucket Meat and Fish market. It’s too early for local corn but this is the perfect opportunity for Amy to try a warm potato salad recipe that she found in the New York Times cooking column.

Amy finds JP sitting in their bedroom with the air-conditioning running on high. (Note: If she were in the bedroom alone with the AC running full blast like this, he would turn it down, saying, This thing burns money.)

“Hello?” she says. She’s surprised to see him here. She thought he said he’d be home around eight.

He whips around as though she’s caught him at something. And sure enough, in front of him on the bed is a cardboard box filled with pictures—of Vivi, of him and Vivi together, of the kids when they were little. Amy is so busy scanning the pictures that it takes her a minute to realize that JP is crying.

Amy walks out of the bedroom, closing the door behind her, and goes into the kitchen to compose herself. Wine; she needs wine. The Cliff Lede is too precious to open, but she finds half a bottle of Whispering Angel rosé from the night before. She pours a glass and takes a sip. It wasn’t pornography, she thinks, and she knows plenty of women who surprise their husbands or partners while they’re in the middle of that. But this is maybe even worse—all those pictures of Vivi overlapping one another. It was like something pulled from Amy’s nightmares.

Vivi is dead, Amy reminds herself. She is never coming back, so she is no longer competition. JP can pine for her all he wants. Lorna said, “The man should be allowed to grieve. They were married sixteen years, Pigeon. She’s the mother of his children.”

Does Amy have it in her to be a supportive partner right now? Yes, of course.

Holding the wine, she reenters the bedroom. She places a gentle hand on JP’s back. “How’re you doing?”

He shakes his head. “I can’t believe she’s gone. I just can’t wrap my mind around it.” He holds up a picture of Vivi with a red rose between her teeth. Amy wants to snatch it out of his hand and rip it in half.

Amy will not nurture this jealousy. She will let it go. “She was so pretty,” Amy says. “So…alive.”