That night, Will looked everywhere for Erin. The gym, the library, the studio where she danced. He drove every route he could possibly think of to get from Erin’s house to his. But it was dark out, and the pond was only a black abyss.
It wasn’t until early morning that a jogger spied the car’s fender sticking out of the ice and snow. Erin’s parents were notified first. By the time Will heard the news, more than twelve hours had passed since she hadn’t shown up for their date. Her parents were devastated, as was a little sister, only nine years old when she died. As was Will.
I push the book away from me. I don’t have the stomach to read it because I can’t see the book without thinking of the photo that was once tucked inside.
Where is he keeping Erin’s photograph?I wonder, but at the same time comes another thought:Why do I care?
Will married me. We have children together.
He loves me.
I leave my breakfast dishes where they are. I step from the kitchen, slip into a windproof jacket that hangs from a hallway hook. I need to go for a run, to blow off steam.
I head out onto the street. The skies this morning are gray, the ground moist from an early rainfall that’s drifted somewhere out to sea. I see the rain in the distance. Streaks of it hover beneath the base of the clouds. The world looks hopeless and bleak. By the end of the day, forecasters predict the rain will turn to snow.
I jog down the street. It’s a rare day off work. What I have in mind for it is a jog followed by a quiet morning alone. Otto and Tate have gone to school, Will to work. Will has no doubt caught the ferry by now, getting shuttled to the mainland. There he’ll catch a bus to campus, where he’ll rivet nineteen-year-olds about alternative energy sources and bioremediation for half the day, before gathering Tate from school and coming home.
I jog down the hill. I take the street that follows the perimeter of the island, moving past oceanfront properties. They’re not lavish, not by any means. Rather, they’re well-worn, lived in for generations, easily a hundred years old. Breezy cottages, rough around the edges, hidden amid the ample trees. It’s a five-mile loop around the island. The landscape isn’t manicured. It’s far more rural than that, with long stretches of backwoods and public beaches that are not only rugged and seaweed-swept, but eerily vacant this time of year.
I run fast. I have so much on my mind. I find myself thinking about Imogen, about Erin; about Jeffrey Baines and his ex-wife hiding in the church’s sanctuary. What were they talking about, I wonder, and where is Erin’s photograph? Has Will hidden it from me, or is he using it as a bookmark in his next novel? Is it something as auspicious as that?
I pass cliffs that inhabit the east side of the island. They’re precarious and steep, jutting out and over the Atlantic. I try not to think about Erin. As I watch, the ocean’s waves come crashing furiously into the rocks. All at once, a flock of migrating birds moves past me in a deranged mass as they do this time of year. The sudden movement of them startles me and I scream. Dozens, if not hundreds, of black birds pulsate as if one, and then flee.
The ocean is tempestuous this morning. The wind blows across it, sending the waves crashing to shore. Angry whitecaps assail the rocky shoreline, throwing upward a ten-or twenty-foot spray.
I imagine the waters this time of year are icy, the depth of the ocean deep.
I pause in my run to stretch. I reach down to touch my toes, loosening my hamstrings. The world around me is so quiet it’s unsettling. The only sound I hear is that of the wind slipping around me, whispering into my ear.
All at once I’m startled by words that get carried to me on the jet stream.
I hate you. You’re a loser. Die, die, die.
I jolt upright, scanning the horizon for the source of the noise.
But I see nothing, no one. And yet I can’t shake the idea that someone is out there, that someone is watching me. A chill goes dashing up my spine. My hands start to shake.
I call out a feeble “Hello?” but no one replies.
I look around, see nothing in the distance. No one hiding behind the corners of homes or the trunks of trees. The beach is without people, the windows and doors of the homes shut tight as they should be on a day like this.
It’s my imagination only. No one is here. No one is speaking to me.
What I hear is the rustle of the wind.
My mind has mistaken the wind for words.
I continue on my run. By the time I reach the fringes of town—a quintessentialsmall townwith the Methodist church, an inn, a post office, and a handful of places to eat, including a seasonal ice cream shop, boarded up with panels of plywood this time of year—it’s begun to rain. What starts as a drizzle soon comes down in sheets. I run as fast as my legs will carry me, ducking into a café to wait the storm out.
I swing open the door and scurry in, dripping wet. I’ve never been here before. This café is rustic and provincial, the kind of place where old men spend the day, drinking coffee, grumbling about local politics and weather.
The café door doesn’t have a chance to close before I overhear a woman ask, “Did anyone go to the memorial service for Morgan?”
This woman sits on a wobbly, broken-spindled chair in the center of the restaurant, eating from a plate of bacon and eggs. “Poor Jeffrey,” she says, shaking her head mournfully. “He must be devastated.” She reaches for a carton of creamer and douses her coffee with it.
“It’s all so awful,” another woman replies. They sit, a troop of middle-aged women at a long laminated table beside the window of the restaurant. “So unspeakable,” the same woman says.
I tell the hostess I need a table for one, by the window. A waitress stops by and asks what she can get for me, and I tell her coffee, please.
