The Winters(75)

This room, too, was in total disarray, clothes piled on the marbled island, some flung on the backs of chairs and over doors. When I opened the closet door, I was hit by the smell of Maggie’s litter box. My heart sunk again. Poor little thing, a victim of my misplaced trust in Dani. Hangers hung crooked in the closet, clothes barely holding on. I could still detect Rebekah’s perfume hovering in the air, musky and expensive.

Stepping over Maggie’s crusty food bowls, I spotted it, the cursed dress, the red sash like stray guts down its side, the hanger poking from the lace bodice like a broken collarbone. I knew what I needed to do while Dani was away; I would remove everything that had been coming between Max and me, and Dani and me, starting with that goddamned dress. Every curtain in the house needed to be flung open to the light, every side table emptied of her pictures and mementos, all the walls painted white, blank slates for new stories, our stories, every room purged of ghosts.

I went to the window overlooking the brown bay. Dawn was breaking over a sickly gray sky, yet from here it was clear enough to see all the way to Orient Point. A night of rain had begun to turn the lawns green and brought out the pink in the hydrangea bushes that edged them. I must learn the names of everything that lives and grows here, I thought, and of all people in the paintings and all the flowers in the gardens. We could open the pool soon, have parties. There should be so much more life here. A dog or two. Children, of course; I was ready. That would be my focus, that and caring for Dani, helping her get well again, in order for Asherley to thrive under her eventual watch. I no longer felt afraid of Dani, just for her. She was a damaged, angry child. She was the exile, not me. I was the one standing in the turret, overlooking the expanse of grounds, surveying the land, making plans.

Everything must go, I thought. I’m Mrs. Winter now.



* * *



? ? ?

I took a hot shower, threw on jeans and a T-shirt. As I headed downstairs, I could hear chatter in the foyer. There I found Max, who’d also changed into jeans and a T-shirt, a hand propped against the open door. He was speaking to two police officers, a man and a woman. He seemed relaxed. But when he turned to me, I saw that his eyes were bloodshot, his face drawn, his jaw tense. He had aged overnight. Even his hair seemed whiter, the lines on his forehead more pronounced. I wondered if the officers could tell that his affable voice did not match his dour expression.

“Ah, here is my wife now,” he said, extending his arm and draping it around my shoulders. My wife.

“I understand you got married yesterday. Congratulations,” the female officer said, handing me her business card.

“Thank you. Is this about Dani? Is she all right?”

“They’re explaining to me that apparently before they took her phone away at the detox, Dani managed to call the police to tell them what she told us, that she’d seen a dead body in the greenhouse. And they take these things seriously around here, no matter how ludicrous the claim or how young and drunk the claimant.”

“We do take that seriously,” said the female officer.

“Did you tell them what she might have seen?” I asked Max.

The male officer jumped in. “The doctor mentioned a dead kitten. But Dani said that’s not what she saw. She said the kitten was alive when she last saw it.”

“Well, you know Dani’s got quite an imagination. I think you’ve dealt with her before, haven’t you?” Max said to the female officer. “Was it shoplifting, or the fire she started on the Wolitzers’ dock?”

“Underage drinking.”

“Right,” Max said. “She keeps us all very busy.”

“We could take a quick look around,” she offered, like a favor. “Reassure her there’s nothing to worry about.”

I looked at Max. Why wasn’t he inviting the police inside? Let them go see for themselves, I wanted to say. Even if he’d buried the kitten while I showered, it wouldn’t be too difficult to dig her back up again and show them. Then we could close the chapter on this grim story.

But the way he gripped my shoulder, the tension I felt in his ribs, his lower back—somehow I sensed it was best to say nothing.

“I don’t want you to think I’m rude,” Max said, his voice low and stern. I gathered the back of his T-shirt in my hand to steady him. “And I do very much appreciate the job you do, and the fact that you take these things seriously. It’s reassuring to me as a citizen, and as your senator. But, for the sake of my very sick and very young daughter, if you want to step foot inside Asherley, you’ll need to return with a warrant, and assurances from you and your direct supervisor that you will not leak this sad incident to the press. Dani already had an embarrassing meltdown in front of some important people yesterday. This would send her over the edge before she even has a chance to recover.”

“Of course, Mr. Winter,” the male officer said. “We’re not implying—”

“Yes, you are. You’re implying that there might be some veracity to my daughter’s claims that she saw a dead body in the greenhouse—her late mother, if we’re going by what she said just before she was strapped onto a gurney and wheeled out of here ranting and raving and covered in her own vomit.”

“Max, it’s all right,” I whispered.

“Mr. Winter, we’re very sorry—”