Nine Lives(63)

“I’m back,” he said.

She came down the stairs and embraced him, saying, “I’m glad,” followed immediately with, “You could’ve called first.”

“I thought I’d surprise you. You seem thin.”

“Oh,” she said, and looked down at herself in the sheer nightgown. “Living on yogurt and fruit, I guess. I really am glad you’re back.”

“Let me unpack and shower and then we can go out for a big meal.”

They went to the Swizzle Inn, Jonathan complaining, as he did every time they’d gone there, that it was now a tourist trap that sold T-shirts and specialty glasses. But still, he had a favorite table that they had managed to get, and he ordered the chowder as an appetizer and then the liver and onions. Alison ordered a salad.

“Tell me about your trip,” she said.

“I’m done with all that, now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Commitments. Money. All that. Tell me about Bermuda. What’s it like without me here?”

Alison took a sip of her rosé, and said, “I thought I’d like it, but I’m not sure I do. Did I ever tell you how I have ESP?”

He lowered his brows. “No, I don’t think so.”

“It’s no big deal but ever since I was girl, I’ve gotten feelings, almost like a cold chill goes through me, whenever bad things are going to happen. Or sometimes when they have happened.”

“Tell me more. I’m interested.”

She told him about how she knew her grandmother was going to die before it happened, and about the time in high school when she’d passed Missy Talbot in the hall on a Friday afternoon and she’d felt as though all the warmth had been sucked from her. Missy died that Saturday night, thrown from a car when her boyfriend careened off Pope Road coming home from Brian Sherzinger’s party. She didn’t tell him that she’d had the same feeling of coldness on the night that Jonathan had asked her if she wanted to get a glass of wine with him after her shift. But she did tell him that after he left Bermuda, and she was alone in his house, she’d been swamped with bad feelings, cold feelings.

“It wasn’t like a premonition, exactly. At first, I thought it might be, but I think it’s maybe the house, that being alone there … maybe I was picking up on some things that happened in the past …”

“You’re preaching to the choir,” Jonathan said, and he took a long sip of his gin martini. “There’s some history there. Not just my family, but probably from before that.”

“Or maybe I was just lonely.”

The waitress came to clear their plates, calling Jonathan “hon.”

“How long have you been coming here?” Caroline asked him after the waitress had left.

“My whole life. Since I was a kid. This is an old restaurant. It’s been here about a hundred years.”

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve been poking around the house, as you know, digging through closets, and I found some more pictures you might be interested in. And I noticed, not that it’s any of my business, but the only pictures I’ve found of your sister are when she was very young.”

“She died very young,” Jonathan said. “I didn’t tell you that?”

“You told me she was dead, but, no, I didn’t know when or how it happened.”

“She died when she was ten years old and I was twelve. That was a long time ago.”

“Still, I’m sorry to hear that, Jonathan. What was her name?”

“Faye.”

“How did she die?”

“She drowned. In Maine. We’d gone as a family for one month to a resort in Kennewick. There was this stone jetty at the beach, like a breakwater, and at low tide there were all these tide pools to explore, little caves where the granite blocks didn’t perfectly meet up. She got trapped in one when the tide was coming back and that’s how she drowned.”

“Oh, that’s terrible.”

“It was,” Jonathan said, and something in his voice made Alison think that he was done talking about this particular subject.

Back at the house they had a nightcap in the living room, and Alison stood looking at the oil paintings of Faye and Jonathan above the fireplace.

“She was pretty,” Alison said, almost to herself.

“She was,” Jonathan said. He was standing by the drinks table, a carafe of whiskey in one hand.

“Where did you pose for those pictures?”

“Not here, I’m pretty sure. In West Hartford, where we grew up. I don’t remember much except that my mother insisted on the sailor suits, and I was old enough to be mortified by that.”

“Well, you both look cute in your sailor suits. Little Jonathan, or little Johnnie … What were you called then?”

“Jack, mostly.”

“Oh. When did that change?”

“When I changed it, I guess.”

“When I was growing up everyone called me Ali. Everyone but my father, who always called me Alison, which made me feel grown-up and sophisticated. When I got to college, I told everyone that I was an Alison, and now that’s who I am.”

“That’s similar to what happened to me,” he said, “but I actually made it legal. After my sister died, neither of my parents handled it well at all, but my father, in particular, decided that the best thing would be to pretend she never existed. I never really forgave him for that, for his weakness, so as soon as I was able I actually changed my last name to Radebaugh, my mother’s maiden name. These days some people know me as Jack Radebaugh, and some, like you, as Jonathan Grant. I don’t care about my name anymore. I guess enough water has passed under that bridge.” Jonathan put the carafe down on the table. He hadn’t filled his glass.