We Were Never Here(54)

“And here I was about to boil them in tap water like a Neanderthal.” I refilled the saucepan carefully. “You didn’t answer my question. The friend I look like?”

“Jamie. I can’t believe Greta remembered her name. It’s been over fifteen years.” She passed me a Spotted Cow Ale. “You don’t really look alike. Other than both having dark hair.”

    “And she used to come up here?”

“Mm-hmm. We were best friends when we were kids.”

JR—the hacked-out initials in the carved heart. “You both went to that Presbyterian school?”

“Lutheran. Presbyterians are wild by comparison.” She took a sip of beer. “We went to school together, yeah. But we knew each other our whole lives. Our parents were friends even before I was born; they lived in the house between us and Nana and Bill.”

Aha, so Jamie grew up in the California-style house with the fat stone pineapples. But why was Kristen leaving out the biggest detail—the fact that Jamie was no longer alive? I kept pushing: “Are they still there?”

Her eyes darkened. “No, they moved away. Hey, did we remember to pick up lighter fluid?”

“We did, it’s by the door.” I gave her one more chance: “So what happened to Jamie?”

“Nothing good.” Kristen crossed to the wood-burning stove and swung its metal door open. I waited for her to go on, even out of decorum, as the awkwardness jelled. At last she sent the door squealing shut. “We’re low on firewood.”

“You know what’s weird? When I was checking out, Greta made it sound like Jamie had…died.” The word splatted into the space between us, so indelicate.

Kristen was almost to the door, and she froze. “Yeah. When we were kids. There was…an accident.” She tugged at the doorknob. “I’m gonna light the charcoal and chop up some wood for later. Watch the brats.” She snatched up a hatchet and some lighter fluid on the way out and let the screen door bang behind her.

When I carried the sausages out after her, she was swinging an ax gracefully, muscles taut, brow furrowed in concentration. There was something catlike in the way she kept dismantling the hunks of wood, slicing and rearranging and going back for more.





CHAPTER 23


The red drop hovered and then sank, dispelling into soft swirls like clouds in coffee. No, like blood in water. Like the matted clumps softening and slinking away from Sebastian’s skull in Tonle Kak River.

How did Jamie die? My mind kept returning to it, a kid’s tongue slipping into the wet hole of a lost tooth. But Kristen had made it clear she didn’t want to discuss it.

She gave the jigger another shake, then pushed the bottle of Campari aside. “People think you’re supposed to shake negronis over ice, but they’re wrong,” she said. “You just stir it.”

Kristen had taken up cocktail making in Sydney, a self-taught venture involving triple sec, homemade bitters, and not one but two kinds of vermouth. Fortunately, Nana and Bill kept a fully stocked bar in the cabin’s finished basement. We’d already sampled her old-fashioneds and manhattans and were feeling a bit loose. She dropped in the orange peel and handed me my cocktail; our glasses kissed, and I took a sip.

“You’re right—I love it.” Herbaceous and rich, like drinking rubies.

“I still can’t believe you’ve never had a negroni.” She flopped onto the sectional sofa next to me. “I thought Milwaukee’s, like, a world-class city.”

“Well, Barker Tavern is still serving the prix fixe.” A few bucks for a shot of Jameson, a can of PBR, and a loose cigarette tucked into the tab—a local staple.

“Got it. So there hasn’t been much of a reason to branch out.”

    The cheery demeanor, jokes tossed off like fluff in the wind: Less than twenty-four hours after we’d read the article, Kristen seemed to be doubling down on her insistence that everything was fine, that life was normal, that we had nothing to do with all that. Denial as a coping mechanism: It wasn’t how I’d handled my post-assault life, but at least I could understand it. Until yesterday, everything was fine—in the sense that no one was after us. But now? As Paolo’s wealthy father vowed to bring his son’s killer to justice?

Kristen slid her hands around the glass, leaving fingerprints in the dew. “It’s so weird to be up here without Nana and Bill. I feel like we’re teenagers sneaking illicit drinks in the basement.”

She kept doing this, too, introducing topics of conversation so I wouldn’t have time to bring up Paolo. But I knew distressing her wouldn’t help matters, so I angled for more info on Jamie: “You got to bring friends up as a kid, right?”

“Yeah, in the summer. My room had a trundle bed, which we thought was the coolest thing.”

“And you brought Jamie?” When she nodded: “It must have been nice having a friend here. I say that as a fellow only child.”

“It was so fun! We’d make up elaborate water ballets in the lake. Like, standing on inner tubes and flopping off in unison. Then we’d get mad when the other messed up the choreography.” A peal of laughter. “Or we’d take the canoe out. Me in the back, steering, of course. I’d get so bossy.”

I smiled. “That tracks.”