All the Beautiful Lies(3)

“The same,” his father said. “Too young for me, probably.” He paused, then added: “She’s a loyal woman. I’ve been lucky, twice, you know.”

The room—Harry’s room—was nearly the same as it had been when Alice had first decorated it, three years earlier. The major difference being that the empty bookcase she’d originally provided—“You can leave some of your favorite books here, Harry”—had been filled with a number of his father’s first edition crime paperbacks, and the top of the bookcase had been covered with framed photographs, probably selected by Alice. Most were of Harry and his father, but one was a picture of his parents that he’d never seen before, back when they’d first met, sometime in the early 1980s, sitting together on a balcony, each with a cigarette perched between their fingers. They were roughly the age Harry was now, and yet they looked older somehow, more sophisticated. Harry felt like he’d just barely left adolescence and knew that he looked that way as well. He was tall and very thin, with dark, thick hair that flopped over his forehead. Kim had affectionately called him “beanpole.” At parties, random girls sometimes told him how much they envied his cheekbones and eyelashes.

“Harry.” It was Alice, just outside the door. She had whispered his name and he jumped a little at the sound. “Sorry. I didn’t know if you’d want tea or coffee so I brought both.” She stepped into the room, a mug in each hand. “They each have milk and sugar. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Thank you, Alice. It is.” He took the coffee, not planning on drinking much, since what he really wanted to do was sleep. Being at the house had already exhausted him. “Is it okay if I take a nap? I didn’t sleep much last night.”

“Of course it is,” Alice said, backing away. “Sleep as long as you want.”

After shutting the door, he took a sip of the coffee, then removed his shoes and belt and slid under the plaid comforter, his mind filling with unwanted images of his father in his final moments. Had he died instantly without any knowledge of what was happening? Maybe he’d had a heart attack or a stroke, and that had caused him to fall?

Harry opened his eyes, giving up on the possibility of sleep. He could not bear to think of his father any longer and thought instead of college, the immersive reality of his last four years, and how it had suddenly ended. A surreal emotion came over him, the way you sometimes feel when you return from two weeks abroad, and the trip immediately seems like a mirage, as though it barely happened. That was how he felt now, thinking back on four years of college. Those years, his small group of friends, Kim Petersen, the professors he’d bonded with, were scattered now, permanently, like an ornate vase that shatters into a thousand pieces. His father was gone as well, leaving him with no family but Alice, and cousins he loved but with whom he had very little in common.

He stood by his bed, not knowing what to do next. Alice was vacuuming; he could hear the familiar hum from somewhere in the immense house.

His phone rang. Paul Roman, his best friend from college. He’d call him back; the last thing he wanted to do right now was talk. Instead, he walked to the window, cracked it slightly to let in some air. He looked out over the tops of the bright green trees. The steeple of the congregational church was visible, as was the shingled roof of the Village Inn and, in the distance, a snippet of the Atlantic Ocean, grey beneath a hazy sky. A young woman with dark hair held back in a headband walked slowly up the street. Harry watched as she noticeably slowed while passing the Victorian, glancing up at the windows. He instinctually stepped back into the bedroom. In the small, gossipy village of Kennewick, word must have gotten out.

His phone rang again. It was Gisela, another friend from college. Clearly, word had also gotten out among his friends at school. His father’s death had actually happened. He held the phone, knowing that he needed to call one of his friends back, but unable to get his fingers to move. The sounds of the vacuum were closer now. He sat down on the hardwood floor and leaned against the wall, rocking back and forth, still not crying.





Chapter 2





Then



Alice Moss was fourteen when she moved to Kennewick, Maine.

Her mother, Edith Moss, having finally received her check from the Saltonstall Mill settlement, took herself and her daughter from a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Biddeford to a single-family house in Kennewick Village. Her mother told Alice that now that they had money, and a house to call their own in a nice town, Alice would have to start acting like a little lady. Alice was just happy to be near the ocean. She claimed she had never seen it before even though Biddeford, less than twenty miles north of Kennewick, also bordered the shore.

“Of course you’ve seen the ocean,” her mother said. “I used to take you there all the time when you were a baby.”

“I don’t remember it.”

“Alice Moss, of course you do. You used to be afraid of the gulls.”

The mention of the gulls triggered a memory. Alice pictured her mother feeding them corn chips, laughing, as hordes of the dirty birds swarmed around them. She also remembered the prickly feel of her sunburned skin and the way the sand clumped to the side of her juice box. Still, to her mother she said: “I don’t remember any of that. That must have been some other baby you had.”

Her mother laughed, showing her crooked teeth, stained where they overlapped. “Well, now you can go to the beach all by yourself whenever you want. Show off that body of yours.” Edith darted out a hand toward her daughter’s breasts, probably thinking about twisting one of them, but Alice jumped back out of her reach.