A Week at the Shore

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  To my readers. I am awed that despite the gazillion other distractions in the world today, you still read my books. For that blessing, you have my eternal thanks—and a promise to give you the best I can possibly write. Deal?

  Prologue

  I remember the smell of sea salt on my skin and the rolling tumble of the surf. I remember the brilliance of a sun that popped the colors of our towels, boogie boards, and bikinis. I remember my sisters’ impatient hands pulling me toward the waves, my mother’s appreciative laughter, my father’s guarded eyes.

  I remember burying body parts until an arm or a leg spewed grand eruptions of sand. I remember moon jellyfish and sea glass and wrack-line seaweed that hid the tiniest perfect spiral whelks. I remember a bonfire on the beach, the smell of singed hot dogs and salty chips, the glow of embers as the sky purpled from east to west over Block Island Sound.

  I remember fog, lots and lots of fog—and, cutting through it, the crescendoing growl of a motor when my father’s boat left the breakwater. I remember its ghosted image fragmenting bit by bit, like the world we had known, until it was gone. I remember the sound of a gun, at least, I think I did, but it may have been fireworks in Westerly or the slap of a screen door on our porch.

  I remember so much. But it is never enough. Nor is it the same as what the others recall.

  Chapter 1

  Every memory is real, but not all are based on fact. Time, forgetfulness, emotional need—any of these things can chip away at memory. But what if a memory is wrong from the start? What if what you think you saw, isn’t what was there at all?

  This is why I love my camera. It is never wrong. It captures facts and stores them. This frees me to live in the moment and move on to the next with the knowledge that the first is preserved. Since coming to New York, I’ve documented snowstorms and floods. I’ve taken pictures of strangers and friends, the streets where I walk, the markets where I shop. I even photographed my way through childbirth—well, until the very end, when my doctor banished my Nikon from the birthing bed. And recording my daughter’s life? I have thousands of photos of Joy. On the first day of school each year, we look back at what she wore on the first day of school the year before and the year before that. Inevitably we’ve forgotten. But there it is in vivid detail.

  That isn’t to say detail can’t be fudged. I do this every day, photographing real estate in a way that shows a home to potential buyers as something bigger, brighter, more alluring. Angles, lenses, creative lighting—these are the stock of my trade. Deceptive, perhaps. But much of marketing is.

  Right now, though, after spending my working day photographing a Tribeca condo from every imaginable angle in the shifting city light, I’m playing at home. It’s just past nine at night. The skyline isn’t fully dark, not this close to the longest day of the year, but the air is heavy and moist, as early June in New York can be, turning what might have been a purple sunset into elongated smudges of gray. Fog is on the move, enfolding my building like a hug from behind, before slipping on past. As I watch, it blankets the Hudson and mists around Fort Lee on the far bank, before drifting north to the George Washington Bridge like just another commuter heading home.

  My condo is on the fortieth floor overlooking Riverside Drive. I paid more for it than I should have, but a river view was a must. I’ve always needed open space, not a lot, just enough. As long as I have that, I can breathe.

  Swiveling the head of my tripod lower, I focus on the steady stream of traffic, which grows more vibrant with the deepening dusk. I’ve taken this same shot hundreds of times—maybe thousands—but it’s never the same twice. Like the tide leaving ripples on sand, I think as I wait, remote in hand, for the right second.

  Photography has taught me how to wait. It has also taught me how to focus on that single subject and ignore everything else. This doesn’t come naturally to me. As the middle of three children, I was born with peripheral vision—as in, an acute awareness of my sisters above and below, my parents, our home and friends, and my precarious place in it all. Limiting myself to one scene at a time, as my camera does, has been huge.

  The fog thickens on the street below. I wait until diffused headlights and taillights reappear, wait again when I hear a siren, then follow the blue strobe through the shift of vehicles. When I’m content, I turn north, wait for the best mix of fog, steel towers, and double-tiered lights, then shoot again.

  “What’s the bridge doing?” Joy asks from the far end of the sofa, and I smile. She would know what the Nikon and I see. We’re connected that way, my thirteen-year-old daughter and I. And this is a game we often play.

  “Floating. I can’t see its legs.” Leaving the bridge, I find her reflection in the glass. With the rest of the lights off, her tiny book light is little more than a faint glow on the pink baby dolls that were her new favorites from the vintage store in the Village. But that glow isn’t as warm as it would have been reflecting off paper.

  Suspicious, I slide in beside her, angled to see her book. She starts to close it, makes a small sound, and stops. She knows that I’ve already seen what she was trying to hide, that her book light is clamped to the edge of Great Expectations but that tucked inside the bigger book is her Kindle. Close up now, I see page forty-four of Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain.

  “But, but, but,” I stutter, tipping my face up to see her, “this was on our us reading list. We were supposed to read it together.” Read it aloud, actually. When Joy was little, I always read aloud with her tucked up close, and somehow I just never stopped. The books have changed, and the older she gets, the more challenged I am to make my voice fit different characters. I’d been looking forward to being a dog.

  “Well, I couldn’t not read the first page, and then I had to read the second,” she reasons. “Isn’t that what you always say, that if you want to keep reading, it’s the sign of a good book? Olivia Mattson says this one’s dumb, like who wants to know what a dog thinks, but I’m not sure how she knows anything about it, because her totally self-absorbed mother doesn’t read—”

  “Joy.”

  “It’s true. Her mother makes lots of money and can afford to buy any book she wants—can afford to buy the bookstore—and she doesn’t read? And anyway, Olivia has the mind of a squirrel, and squirrels are afraid of dogs. Besides, when Olivia doesn’t like something, I do, and here was this book, just sitting in my Kindle library? I was practically crying on page three. You know what happens?”

  She isn’t really asking. She knows I know, but letting sentences end in the air started along with her period. Even beyond spoilers on Goodreads and the ardor of my friend Chrissie, there was the teary conversation about old dogs that we overheard at the Best Friends’ Animal Society in Soho.

  “It’s good, Mom,” she confides. “Omigod. It’s sooo good.”

  I want to talk about respecting schoolmates. But she happens to be right about Olivi
a Mattson’s mother, who spent the better part of fifteen minutes at a recent back-to-school night lecturing me on how to build my business into something big, how to make my brand the brand for real estate photography in Manhattan, which is the last thing I want, since it would mean hiring regular staff, relying on paid ads over word of mouth, and spending less time with Joy.

  But that’s all beside the point. “What about Great Expectations?” I ask. “Your final is next week.”

  “I’ll be ready, you know I will, but if you’re playing, why can’t I?”

  “Because I spent six hours working today to keep you in vegan lip balm, retro clothes, and pomegranate juice, and because I’ve already graduated from middle school. Besides, I’m the mom and you’re not. I get to play. It’s a perk of growing up.”

  I deliberately add the last. My daughter isn’t wild about the pressure that comes with being a teenager. Being precocious was cute in a child, not so in middle school, where social conformity is key. She wants to be either totally grown up already and able to speak her mind without being ostracized, or a child forever. We’ve had the Peter Pan discussion many times.

  Rather than take the bait now, she simply says, “Do I have to stop reading this?”

  I rub her shoulder with my cheek. Her fresh-from-the-shower curls, still damp and docile, smell of organic mint shampoo. “Nah. We’ll pick another to do together. Maybe one where I can be a cat,” I joke and, feeling a vibration, pull the phone from my jeans. The call is from the area code where I grew up. Just the sight of it brings a whoosh to the pit of my stomach. And at this hour? Not good. But neither my father’s name nor my sister’s appears, and I don’t recognize the number. Spam? Possibly. Or not. My father isn’t well, and given that my sister is ditsy, it could be one of his doctors. Or the hospital. Or neither.

  Suspicious of the last, I click into the call expecting a robo-silence, and jerk when my name hits me fast.

  “Mallory.” Not a question, but a statement in a voice that is deep and tight, familiar but not. The whoosh in my stomach becomes a twist. Rhode Island is a small state, the town of Westerly smaller, its villages even smaller. I tell myself that this voice could belong to any one of the dozens of people I’d known growing up. But my gut says something else.

  Standing, I move to the far side of the tripod and say a cautious, “Yes?”

  “It’s Jack.”

  I know that, I think, and I barely breathe. Jack Sabathian grew up on the shore, just like us. He was my best friend once, but we haven’t talked since I left, and while his voice is older now, I feel the force of memory fighting its way through the tangle of time.

  “We have a problem,” he barrels on. “Your father was just over here knocking on my door—banging on my door, like he’d break it down—and when I opened it, he let me have it.” He raises his voice to imitate. “You no-good bastard, you knew exactly what was going on, didn’t you. You probably planned the whole fucking thing with her—his language, not mine,” he puts in before becoming my father again. “You let me be investigated like I was a murderer, and you didn’t say one word, but we both know she didn’t die. Tell me where she is. I know you know. He had a gun, Mallory. He was waving a gun in my face. He swore he didn’t own one back then. So either he lied to the DA twenty years ago or he bought it after the fact, but a gun is the last thing a man like that should have. You do know that he’s sick—or are you just leavin’ the whole thing to Anne—who, by the way, is doing a lousy job, and not just with his care. The house is a mess and the bluff is falling into the sea, but unless she told you that, you wouldn’t know, because you haven’t been here to check. It isn’t your responsibility, is it? Well, hello, Mallory, it is. So here’s the thing. You need to step up to the plate. If he’s talking about that night to me, he’s probably talking about it in town. Bay Bluff may be only a tiny corner of Westerly, but the police love the coffee your sister serves in her shop. If he’s blabbing, they’ll hear—and hey, I’m all for it. He killed my mother? I want it coming out. Do you? ’Course not. So here’s a wake-up call,” the slightest pause before an accusatory, “Mallory. Either you do something about him, or they will.”

  I’m spared having to respond by a decisive click, not that I could have spoken, I’m so shaken. That quickly the past is here and now. And the lump in my throat? Huge. Of the many things I’ve avoided thinking of since leaving Bay Bluff, John MacKay Sabathian is a biggie, but his angry voice brings everything back. I stand unmoving, looking at the foggy city night but seeing the ocean, the bluff, my father’s boat leaving the dock and taking with it so so so much more than just Elizabeth.

  “Mom,” Joy prods with an insistence that says she has called my name several times. My eyes fly to hers. “Who was that?”

  I refocus. “No one.”

  “No one was shouting. He was using your name. He even said bastard. I heard it from here.”

  Leaving the window, I switch on a lamp. I don’t want to see the ocean, the bluff, the boat. Jack is right. I’m leaving it all to Anne.

  But my daughter is mine. I’m raising her to be different from my past. And she isn’t a baby. “It was one of your grandfather’s neighbors.”

  “He only has one. Anne was saying that—remember, when she was here last time with Margo?”

  Oh, I remember. We were arguing again about that night—about whether Elizabeth had jumped, fallen, or been tossed off the boat by heavy gales, and whether she could have possibly survived. Joy had already known the basics, but my sisters were full-on into bickering about infidelity, deception, and abandonment. And murder. Murder was the conversation stopper, the horror issue, the visit-breaker.

  Since Joy heard all that, I figure she’s old enough to hear more. “The guy who called is Jack Sabathian. He’s Elizabeth’s son.”

  Her eyes go wide. “What did he say?”

  I thumb in Anne’s cell, knowing my daughter will listen in. The phone is approaching its fourth ring when my sister picks up.

  “Mal?” Her voice was always higher than mine, perky and bright to my down-to-earth sensible, but here she sounds out of breath. I wonder if she was outside chasing after my father.

  “What’s going on?” I ask as casually as I can.

  “Uh … now? Not much. You don’t usually call at night. What’s up?” She seems innocent enough, but then, my sister is always innocent, thirty-seven going on twelve. I swear, Joy is more savvy.

  “Jack Sab just called.”

  Chapter 2

  Anne is silent for a beat before sighing an exaggerated, “Oh, God. Jack Sabathian is a pain in the butt. He is such an alarmist, you know? He’s always telling me what I need to do to the house, and if it isn’t about the house, it’s about Dad. What’s he saying now?”

  I relate the conversation, minus the imitation of our father’s voice. By the time I’m done, Joy is leaning in, ear to my ear.

  “A gun?” Anne echoes. “I have never seen Dad with a gun. Why would he need a gun?” A mumble in the background tells me she isn’t alone. I’m quickly annoyed, then as quickly contrite. My sister has a right to be with friends.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I thought maybe you would. Where is he now?”

  “He was reading in the den.”

  When I left, she doesn’t say, but that’s what I hear. So she’s out with friends. A housekeeper comes mornings, I know that much. But this is night, and apparently Dad is alone. If I ask, Anne will insist—as she’s done whenever I’ve asked—that he’s fine, that he doesn’t need a babysitter, that he likes having time to himself.

  To avoid an argument, I ask, “Is he able to read?”

  “Of course he is,” she scoffs. “Well, maybe not for the long periods he used to, but his nose is always in some law journal.”

  We all know—at least, Joy and I do—that a nose in a book doesn’t necessarily mean reading. But that isn’t the issue now. The issue is the phone call I just received. “Would he have gone to Jack’s?”

 
; “He could have,” she allows, and my mind sees a shrug, like it’s no big thing dropping in on a neighbor. “I mean, I don’t lock him in when I leave the house. Can you imagine if I did that and there was a fire and he couldn’t get out? I’d never forgive myself. The poor guy has gone through so much. He’s earned the right to a little dementia, you know?”

  Dementia versus Alzheimer’s—Anne and I are on opposite sides, but I’m not touching that now either. “Have you heard him talk about what happened that night?” That night was a euphemism for what the rest of Rhode Island called the Aldiss-MacKay affair.

  “No,” she insists. “I told you. He doesn’t talk much.”

  “You said he goes off on rants. What about?”

  “Old cases.” She brightens. “It’s amazing what he remembers, Mal. He can’t tell me who came to see him yesterday, but those old cases? He’s a gold mine of legal history.”

  Tom Aldiss had once been a respected judge on the Rhode Island Superior Court. He resigned from the bench six years ago—“resigned” being the word Anne uses, though given his mental decline in the years since, I suspect he was forced out. At seventy-four now, he is often confused. I see him when he and Anne come to New York for the theater, but I don’t go to Rhode Island, and he no longer travels well.

  “He remembers everything,” Anne is saying, “lawyers’ names, defendants’ names, charges, findings. When he rants, it’s in that tone, like he’s wearing his robes up there on the bench and is charging the jury on a critical case.” Wistful now, she adds, “He was the best judge. These cases haunt him.”

  The case of the disappearance of Elizabeth MacKay haunts us all.

  Hearing that thought, Anne says, “No, Mallory, he doesn’t talk about Elizabeth. With all the ranting, he does not. That’s why I have trouble believing Jack.” Her voice lifts. “Dad comes to the shop a lot now, did I tell you?”