All the Beautiful Lies(83)
He was about to get out of bed when his phone on the bedside table began to vibrate. He checked the screen. It was a Kennewick number.
“Harry, it’s Detective Dixon. Sorry to bother you so early.”
“It’s okay. What’s happened?”
“I was wondering if you knew where your stepmother was.”
“Is she missing?”
“She is, actually.”
“I don’t know where she is. I’m actually not in Maine right now. What do you mean, she’s missing?”
“Well, she never came home to her friend’s house last night, and no one can find her. Her car’s at Jake Richter’s condo, but she’s not there.”
“I’m sorry. I have no idea where she might be.”
“We’ll keep looking. I’m sure she’s fine, but call me if you hear from her, okay, Harry?”
Harry promised he would, and ended the call. The mention of Alice jarred loose a dream he’d had the night before last. Alice, naked, in the window of Grey Lady, Harry watching from the driveway. She was tapping on the glass, but it wasn’t making any sound. His father was there as well, changing a tire on his old Volvo, not paying a whole lot of attention to anyone. The house was stirring, and the dream disappeared. Harry sat for a moment longer in the bed, knowing, somehow instinctively, and with complete certainty, that Alice, despite what Detective Dixon had just said, was not going to be fine.
Chapter 35
Then and Now
Once Alice went back to her bedroom—after Jake had told her he’d seen her return from the beach the night Gina drowned—she knew she’d never sleep with Jake again. That part of her life, the part with Jake, was over. Life was restarts, one after another, and some were good and some weren’t. Her life had first restarted when her mother got the settlement money and they moved to Kennewick. It started again when Jake arrived, standing over her on the beach, and she could feel the way he was looking at her. It even restarted after Scott Morgan told everyone at school she was a slut, and she decided it didn’t matter, that whatever they said couldn’t touch her. And now she would have to start again, because Jake thought she’d had something to do with killing her own mother, or letting Gina drown, when both those things had happened accidentally. They’d happened to her, not because of her.
Jake, in the days following, tried only once to get Alice back. She was in her room, the door closed, rereading Tender Rebel, a dumb romance novel she’d read many, many times. Jake knocked, then half entered, standing in the door frame.
“What’re you doing?” he asked.
She held the book up. “Reading.”
“Thought you might like to read a little in bed with me. It’s lonely in there.”
“I’m fine here, Jake.”
“Okay,” he said. “Just checking.” She remembered what he’d been like immediately after her mother’s funeral, the way he’d taken control of her. He’d become a different man now that she didn’t love him, or trust him, anymore. Her indifference gave her the upper hand, a fact she decided to file away.
“Jake,” she said, as he was departing.
“Yeah?” he said, a hopeful look on his face.
“I’m going to look for a new job. And a new apartment.”
“Oh.”
“I thought I’d let you know. In advance.”
She gave her notice at Blethen’s Apothecary and got a job as an office assistant at a real estate company. She stopped taking classes, since she was working full-time, and rented a one-bedroom apartment in a stucco building not far from the real estate office. It was quiet in the apartment, and she liked it. She made simple meals, and watched television, and on the weekends she’d go swimming at the Y.
Coast Home Realty grew, relocating to a new, larger office in a strip mall off Route 1A. Alice coordinated the move, even working with Caroline, the big boss, to design the new office, and when the company was firmly established in their new plush surroundings, Caroline asked Alice if she ever thought about getting her real estate license. “I hate to lose you as our office manager, but you’d be a good agent, I just know it.”
Alice had never really considered this, partly because the real estate agents, at least the ones who made the most sales, all seemed to have big, vibrant personalities. Alice told Caroline that she didn’t think so, but Caroline insisted. “You’re the hardest worker I’ve ever had in here. It just seems a shame that we can’t get you making some fat commissions.”
So Alice got her license, and two months later sold her first property, a starter home for a young couple, both schoolteachers, who had moved down from Orono. She celebrated by getting a larger apartment and a new car. She began to spend more time with Chrissie Herrick, another Realtor at the agency, who’d gotten her license when her second kid began grade school. Chrissie, a talker, reminded Alice of Gina, but a Gina that had life all figured out. She was happily married to a dull and faithful man, and was basically content with her lot. Chrissie’s favorite activity was telling Alice how pretty she was, and how she wanted to set her up with some nice man.
Alice let her have her way just once, more out of curiosity than anything else, and Chrissie and her husband plus Alice and a local divorcé who worked in Portland in insurance all went out to dinner. At the end of the interminable night, the divorcé walked Alice to her car, one hand on the small of her back, his thumb making circular motions. She imagined sinking her teeth into that thumb, the surprised look on his piggy face when the blood began to flow. But she didn’t do it, just quickly slid into her car, shutting the door and cracking the window enough to thank him for the evening. That night she lay in bed, ignored the ringing phone in her house that could only be Chrissie hoping for an update, and slid gradually into sleep, wondering if her life would ever start again.