“Sure,” he says, looking up. “There’s a half bath right inside the door on the other side of the house. Here, I’ll show you.” He walks her around the house, past the wide porch that faces the water. The land dips and then rises again. There is a garbage can back here, and a large green recycling container, and a separate bin that saysblack earth composton the side. Danny points to a plain wooden door tucked inside a little nook and says, “Right in there.”
“You sure it’s okay?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll be quick,” she says.
She enters the bathroom and closes the door behind her and takes a deep breath. She’s here! She’s in the house. The bathroom is tiny—there’s just enough room for a sink and a toilet and a towel rack that holds a towel with lobsters printed on it. She can’t believe it, but she’s here.
There are handprints on the wall in primary colors, named and dated in black ink. Louisa, 1987, red. Matty, Abigail, Claire, 2016, in red, yellow, blue. Claire’s handprint istinyin 2015. Kristie knows she should hurry out of there before she’s discovered, but she can’t help taking a little longer to stare at the handprints; she finds them mesmerizing, all the lines and whorls in each palm, all thelifestamped there on the wall.
My mother has been in this house,she thinks.
She’s not sure if Danny is waiting for her outside, so she flushes the toilet, runs the water, and opens the door. What will she say if anybody sees her? She’ll say the truth—that she’s with Danny, and he told her it was okay to use the bathroom, that it was an emergency.
Kristie’s brain tells her to go right out the door she came in, but her heart—her heart tells her to turn the other way, into the kitchen. She sees wide, gleaming countertops and shiny stainless appliances. She sees a deep farmhouse sink. She sees a loaf of bread on a cutting board; she sees a wicker basket full of nectarines. Shesees no people. She listens carefully. She doesn’t hear anyone either. She sees a doorway that must lead to the dining room, and she sees one end of a wooden table. Before she can stop herself she’s walking into the dining room,and she sees that the table reaches the full length of the long room, all the way to the giant picture window that looks out on the rocks and the water. From here she can actually see the pier attached to Archer’s. There’s a pair of binoculars on the end of the table nearest the window, and her hands itch to pick them up and lift them to her face.
But, no, that would be going too far. Already she’s gone too far! Then she hears footsteps on the stairs, and a voice call “Anything else from Hannaford? Mom? I’m going right now.”Louisa.
Kristie hightails it back through the kitchen and out the door she came in, her heart hammering.
“You okay?” says Danny, coming around the side of the house. She jumps. He’s holding a trowel and grinning. “You look like you saw a ghost.”
I did,she wants to say.I saw ghosts everywhere.But, no, that’s not quite right. What she saw inside that house wasn’t so much a ghost as it was an outline, a sketch of everything she herself doesn’t have. Kristie’s feelings at this moment are so complicated, and their roots run so deep and spread so far, that she can’t possibly illuminate them to Danny even if she wants to, even if she tries.
She hurries back to the truck and waits in it until she sees Louisa walk out the front door of the house with a straw bag slung over her shoulder. Finally Kristie gets a good look at her. Louisa Fitzgerald McLean looks just like she looks on the faculty pages of the NYU website: thick dark hair, thin pale face, small frame. She’s frowning now, while in the photo she was smiling. Kristie watches from Gil’s truck as Louisa climbs into a minivan with New York plates and pulls out of the driveway. Thirty seconds later, Kristie follows her.
In Hannaford Kristie makes an art out of trailing Louisa without being seen. Kristie thought Louisa would be an organized shopper—she is, after all, a mother of three, and she has brought reusable grocery bags—but, no, she’s haphazard. No list, no apparent rhyme or reason to what she picks up: two lemons, four tomatoes, asparagus.
In the bakery section Louisa selects a baguette. Her phone rings, and she stops near the muffins, pulls it out of her bag and looks at it, then puts it back in the bag without answering. Louisa pauses by the seafood, staring for a moment at the lobsters clambering over each other in the glass case, but the smell here makes Kristie feel queasy so she has to take a detour into the pharmacy. She puts a couple of items in her own cart—she’s low on shampoo, and Danny has asked for razor blades, potato chips, and cereal—and by the time she finds Louisa again Louisa’s phone is ringing once more. The ringing stops and starts again.
Kristie thinks about the woman who worked in billing at UPMC Altoona, who’d shaken her head when Kristie went to see her two days after Sheila died.
“I can’t pay these,” Kristie said, holding out the stack of bills.
The woman had soft brown eyes and the pallid skin of a person who rarely goes outdoors. A tired smile. She had pictures of grandchildren on her desk, and a Big Gulp with a straw she sucked on as she looked at the bills. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do to help you. You can run, but you can’t hide. They’ll find you eventually.”
Kristie gets in the checkout line behind Louisa, and knows—she absolutelyknows—she shouldn’t do this, but she lets her cart bump into Louisa’s, and not gently either. Hard enough to spark a reaction.
Why? Why does Kristie Turner, formerly of Altoona, Pennsylvania, now of Rockland, Maine, by way of Miami Beach, Florida, wantLouisa McLean to turn around? Kristie wants what we all want—it’s one of the most innate, most human desires there is. She wants to be seen.
Louisa turns around. She’s annoyed.
“So sorry,” murmurs Kristie. “My mistake.”
“No worries,” says Louisa. She doesn’t smile, but she doesn’t frown either. Louisa McLean’s eyes, a very light blue with a dark rim around them, would have been startling had Kristie not known them so well: they are her very own eyes.
That evening Kristie is waiting to pick up her chowders for her three-top when Fernando comes up to her. He’s standing too close, his hip actually touching hers. She moves away, and he moves close again.
“Don’t forget to garnish the specials,” he says.
She looks at him. “I never forget to garnish the specials.”
She drops the chowders at the three-top and goes back for the entrées for her two-top. He’s there again, lurking near the silverware setups. Natalie is waiting to pick up her order too.
“You never stay for the shift drink,” Fernando says. “How come? Don’t you like us?”
“I guess I have better things to do,” says Kristie. Her elbow bumps the silverware tray.
