All the Beautiful Lies(46)

Before she fell asleep, though, Alice got up and slipped from her bedroom into the master bedroom she shared with Jake. The bed was still unmade. She pulled her clothes off and slid under the warm, familiar sheets. Maybe Jake would come up and check on her again.





Chapter 19





Now



Outside, the air was crisp and smelled of loam. The pink that had just suffused the clouds was now gone, the light draining from the sky. Harry walked through the village, noticing movement behind the big window at the bookstore, the silhouetted figure of John hunched behind the checkout desk. The police would probably be questioning John as well. He’d clearly known Annie when she’d worked at the store. Had he known what was going on with the two of them? He must have had some idea.

Harry almost considered popping in to see him, to ask him directly, but he wanted to see Grace first. He headed up the rise of the Old Post Road, passing the inn, then arriving at the house where Grace had rented the room. It was mostly dark, except for some dim light in one of the second-floor windows. At the front door he rang the bell. There was a chime inside the house. He looked at the door while he waited; ornate wooden scrollwork framed a circular piece of glass. Below it was a visible remnant of what had been a number attached to the door—22—and two nail holes where the numbers had been affixed. Harry looked to the side of the door where 37 Prospect had been stenciled in dark red paint. Either the street number had changed or the door had been moved from another house. He pressed his finger to where the numbers on the door used to be, then pulled his finger back as the door swung inward, Grace looking a little startled, as though she was surprised to see him.

“Sorry,” she said. “I forgot Mrs. Whitcomb isn’t here, so I didn’t immediately get to the door. Come on in.”

Harry followed Grace as she led him up the stairs, carpeted with a threadbare Oriental runner, and to her rented room. It was as large as she’d said it was, the wide double bed looking out of place against the far wall. It was as though the house had once upon a time been split into a two-family, and this had once been the upstairs living room. A couch and two wooden chairs made a semicircle around a fireplace; Grace sat on the couch and Harry took a chair.

“What’s going on?” Grace said, pushing her hair back off her forehead. Her eyes were bright, almost jumpy. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a striped black-and-white shirt. Her feet were bare, her toenails painted green.

Harry opened his mouth to speak, and surprised himself by saying, “I don’t believe that you only knew my father a little.”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“We just found out . . . I just found out that my father hadn’t been faithful to his wife, and, and I wondered what your relationship with him was.”

As Harry spoke the words, a deep flush of red spread across Grace’s face.

“What do you mean you just found out?” she asked.

“I just found out that my father was having an affair with someone here in town.”

She shook her head rapidly. “He wasn’t.”

“I think you need to tell me what’s going on.”

She exhaled, and rubbed at an eye with the heel of her palm. “I was involved with your father. Down in New York. Who told you he was having an affair here?”

“My stepmother.”

“Alice?”

“Right. She said he was involved with a married woman who worked at the store, and she thinks that the woman’s husband might have had something to do with my father’s death.”

Grace was shaking her head again.

“Look,” Harry said. “Just tell me what the fuck is going on. Stop shaking your head.”

Grace lifted her head and met Harry’s eyes. In the lamplight of the room her eyes looked more green than blue.

“Okay,” she said, and took a breath. “You know how your father used to come down to New York all the time to visit his old store?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I know Ron, the owner of the store. He owns the apartment I rent.”

Harry was about to tell her he already knew that, but let it go. He wanted to hear the whole story first.

“I used to help out in the bookstore a little bit. That’s how I met your dad, about two years ago. This was right after Hurricane Sandy, and the store’s basement flooded and wrecked a bunch of books. Your father came down to help out.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Harry said.

“I was helping out as well, and we spent a lot of time together. Ron was pretty useless—you know Ron—and two of the employees couldn’t even get into Manhattan that week, so it was just us. And, basically, I fell in love with your father.”

She paused, and Harry said, “Okay.”

“I know it sounds strange.”

“It’s just that the age difference . . .”

“I can try and explain it if you like, but the truth is, I don’t know if I can. I was coming off a shitty relationship with someone my age who turned out to be a worthless human being. Your father and I . . . it was almost instant, like when you feel you’ve known someone your whole life five minutes after meeting them. And he was kind, as you know. But he was married, and even if he wasn’t, he was nearly twenty-five years older than me, so it’s not like I thought there was potential. But I let myself fall in love, even became a little obsessed. I think he knew—no, I know he knew—and I think he decided to not take advantage of it. But whenever he came to the city he’d take me out to dinner. We had a place, a Spanish restaurant, that we always went to. We’d started going there when we first met because it was the first restaurant we’d hit when we walked out of the blacked-out portion of the city to where there was still electricity. And we kept going there. We even had our own special table, not that we always got it, but we usually did, and the owner and his wife treated us like we were a couple.”