The Winters(82)

TWENTY-EIGHT


The rich have so much, but one of their most precious commodities is privacy. The gates to Asherley were closed. We were expecting no one. Max could move a body in broad daylight and not even God would be watching. We had the island to ourselves, and now, for the first time since I had arrived, I felt that I had Max to myself as well. I loved him, maybe even more so than before, because his life now depended on me and on my ability to keep all of his secrets.

With the sound of Max’s shovel stabbing the dirt in the background—tch, tch, tch—I made the first call, postponing the table and chair pickup, citing a scheduling conflict. Then I went upstairs. I dug into Max’s closet for his favorite nubby Irish sweater, smelling it. Max didn’t wear cologne, but he used a velvety sandalwood soap from France that became something new on his clothes, something musky and male. I grabbed plain belts, a wool scarf. It would be cool on the water, colder still the farther out he went. The sound was about forty-five minutes from here at forty knots. I would suggest to him that he round the point at Montauk and head due southeast for another hour at least. The Aquarama could go fifty, maybe sixty knots in open water. The motor was newer. I’d tell him to drop the body in the Atlantic, not in the bay or the sound. And to watch the gas tank. I wasn’t familiar with the boat so I didn’t know how quickly it drained. I planned to rough out latitude and longitude points, just so I could keep track of where he was and how soon he’d return. I knew the waters around the Caymans, where to dump large fish carcasses so they didn’t wash up near tourists, but I hadn’t yet learned the local currents.

In lieu of a blanket for the body, I opted for the garment bag Rebekah’s wedding dress had arrived in, now abandoned on a hook in my closet like a shed skin. I didn’t intend irony or even poetry with this choice. The bag was sturdy and long. It had strong handles on each end and a good metal zipper. This was a practical decision. I was thinking of Max, not Rebekah.

As I lifted it off the hook, a small piece of paper wafted to the floor—a business card that must have been lodged in the clear plastic pocket. At first I thought it was the one the police officer had handed to me. But this was from a place called Hannah’s Sew Fine, a seamstress with an address in Sagaponack. Ah. It must be where Dani had sent Rebekah’s dress for the alterations. I have someone good on Long Island. I debated letting it go; there were more pressing concerns that morning. But I was also curious how she had pulled it off. Did they take my measurements from the first pinned dress? How does a fifteen-year-old girl send in a wedding dress for alterations, no questions asked of the bride herself? Surely they’d be open by now. I dialed the number.

A woman, presumably Hannah, picked up on the second ring. “Mr. Winter! So nice to see your name pop up on my screen. How did it go? Did the dress fit okay?” I went to speak but the air had completely left my lungs. “Hello? Mr. Winter? Are you there?”

“Yes. No, this is . . . this is Mrs. Winter,” I said, my mouth dry. “I’m calling to . . . to thank you. For doing such good work on the dress.”

“Oh, you’re so very welcome, Mrs. Winter. You know, your husband didn’t leave us a ton of time, so I couldn’t do a really nice bound seam inside the bodice. I hope it wasn’t too scratchy.”

“No, no, it was fine,” I said.

“And it fit okay?”

“Yes. It fit . . . perfectly. Thank you.”

“You know, I never heard of a man surprising his wife with a wedding dress before. It was tricky to keep it from Dani, too, but it was the prettier dress, I must say. Man, people can be so creative nowadays. Were you surprised?”

“Yes, quite. Well, thank you again.”

“Must have been so beautiful—”

I hung up. My hands were shaking.

My fear felt eviscerating, like it was turning my body inside out. Who did I marry? What else had he done? I scanned his phone in confusion, looking for something, anything strange, when I came across the Instagram app, hidden within a miscellaneous folder on his home screen. I touched the icon, and there it was, the open end of the locked @rwinterforever account, solely following Dani. Through new tears I scanned the dozens upon dozens of Rebekah pictures, and read the replies from Dani begging to know who ran this account, who was doing this to her, and why.

I dropped the phone on the floor and thought of Maggie, another crime Dani passionately denied. The bumping and crashing, the overturned tables—Max struggling to contain the kitten before he killed it. How fast he had to move knowing we were mere yards away. How easily he lied to me when he shoved me away from the door, telling the doctor that the source of Dani’s distress was that gruesome discovery, telling the police the same thing this morning with such fatherly conviction he might have chased them away from Asherley for good. And how she begged me to believe her.

It was a lucky thing to find such a necessary prop at a critical moment, luckier still to have the stomach to pull it off. But a man that would kill a kitten and hang the deed on an unstable girl was nothing if not bloody-minded. He knew her mind was damaged and porous, had so little ability to discern between fantasy and reality, that she’d eventually own these crimes, too, filing them away like fresh pages of foolscap in a binder. He was tormenting his own daughter, a child. But why?

I looked around the bedroom we shared with growing revulsion, not just for Max but for myself. Everything he had told me so far had been beyond my comprehension, until it wasn’t. He had justified his crimes with a story about the murderous lengths to which a father would go to protect his child, and I had joined him there, wanting to prove I was worthy of his trust, and of Dani’s love. But his story was only true if Max actually loved Dani, something she denied. She knew. And yet how blind I was, how willfully, tragically naive. There are things you do when you’re desperate, things that would shock you.