I Love You More: A Novel (5 page)

“I was thinking the exact same thing,” Daddy said. “You’re so smart, just like your daddy.” He made his proud smile.

We dug the hole bigger and bigger until it was at least three feet wide in each direction. It was hard work, the digging, mostly because the water kept softening the sand and the side kept caving in, so periodically Daddy made a show of sitting back to rest, but what he was really doing was watching Mama swim, even though she was so far out in the ocean that she looked like a red dot. After a while, the dot turned into a spot, then a shape, and when it was almost to shore, I could make out Mama’s arms and hair.

“Isn’t your mother a vision, Peanut (the oval seed of a South American plant, widely roasted and salted and eaten as a snack)?”

Mama had swum in far enough to stand; she was pushing through the water in our direction. When she reached the shore, she grabbed the towel she’d left on her sunning chair, shook all her hair to one side, and wrung it with her hands just like she always did with wet washrags. Mama was always getting on me for leaving too much water in washrags. “Makes them smell when they dry, Picasso,” she’d say. Mama looked surprised when she saw Daddy and me, even though we’d been sitting in the same exact spot all morning. Mama is like that; she lives in her own world. Sometimes I’ll be sitting right in front of her, and she’ll walk right by me without noticing I’m there. “Lost in her head,” Daddy always said.

“Did you put on sunscreen?” Mama asked. She asked me that a million times a day—well, maybe not a million, but close. “You could get third-degree burns on a day like this.”

“Number thirty,” I said.

“Didn’t I bring some forty-five?” she asked.

“I didn’t see any.”

“Well, just make sure you put it on after every time you go in the water. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, even though I already knew to do that.

“I think this is the biggest sand castle yet,” Mama said. “It looks like a Gaudi.” Gaudi is an architect who made drippy-looking buildings. Mama said that about every sand castle Daddy and I made.

“We’re not done yet,” I said. “We haven’t even started the fortress or the drawbridge, and Daddy says maybe this time we’ll try to make a gatehouse.”

“That’s quite an ambitious undertaking. What are you working on now?”

“The keep,” I said.

“Keep?” Mama asked.

“The central tower,” I said. “You know, where the people in the
kingdom barricade themselves when enemy soldiers get past the moat.”

“Did you learn that in school?”

“No, Mama,” I said, wanting to add,
castle architecture isn’t exactly a school subject
, but that would be sassing. “I found it in my dictionary.”

For my tenth birthday, Daddy had gotten me the fourth edition
American Heritage
. In the introduction, it said it had “nearly 10,000 new words and senses that reflect the rapid pace of change in the English language today.”

Daddy put his hand on his belly to stop it from growling. “Should we take a break, Pineapple (a large juicy tropical fruit consisting of aromatic edible yellow flesh surrounded by a tough segmented skin and topped with a tuft of stiff leaves)? I’m feeling kind of light-headed.”

“I made tuna salad this morning before I came out for my swim,” Mama said. It was Mama’s second swim, her right-before-lunch swim.

Daddy looked at me. “We love Mama’s tuna salad sandwiches, don’t we?”

“Best in the world,” I said.

I’m almost to the unsmile part
.

Daddy and Mama left first. I waited for Mama to call me in for lunch, but after what seemed a long time, I started wondering if maybe I hadn’t heard her above the sound of the waves, so I decided to head on up. I looked around to make sure I didn’t see any bratty little kids that might wreck my castle, which had happened more than once in the past, but there wasn’t a soul on the beach, and only one house anywhere close, at least that I could see. That’s why Mama had chosen the place. She said she wanted total privacy. I remember sliding into my flip-flops so the bottom of my feet wouldn’t burn, and trudging through the sand and up the wooden stairs. I was just getting ready to rinse off at the
spigot when I saw Mama and Daddy standing inside the open sliding glass doors. They were kissing. I stood there for a while, watching them. It had been so long since I’d seen them kiss like that.

Daddy’s eyes met mine. “How long have you been standing there?”

“I … I don’t know,” I said.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

And then he made the unsmile
.

Now remember what I said before when I was describing Daddy’s five smiles? About the unsmile disappearing as fast as it came and me sometimes wondering if I even saw it? Well, that’s what happened. The unsmile was gone by the time Daddy added, “Why don’t you go back down and work on your sand castle, Peeper.” I never did look up that word.

Now back to where I started: me waiting for Detective Kennedy to come get his tour while trying not to think about Daddy’s dead eyes
.

Here’s the thing. First of all, I’d never seen dead eyes before, not even on a cat or a dog (Mama is allergic). Second of all, I was stunned by how similar Daddy’s dead eyes looked to his unsmile eyes. They were the same kind of empty, like even though they were staring right through me there was nothingness behind them, which was creepy enough with dead eyes, but living eyes? Third of all, I realized I had never really thought about Daddy’s unsmile eyes until I saw his dead eyes, and now I couldn’t stop thinking about them. I wondered how Daddy had been able to make his eyes look dead when he wasn’t and, most of all, what that meant about Daddy. Did Daddy feel dead inside when he made his unsmiles and that’s why his eyes looked that way? Or was it the opposite? Were Daddy’s unsmiles the real him? Had he always been dead inside and the other four smiles were him trying to make himself alive?

I was thinking about all this when I saw Detective Kennedy walking down the beach-house stairs.

“Nice keep,” he said when he got to me.

Detective Kennedy wasn’t very handsome, not like Daddy anyway. He was a little pudgy in the belly like me, and his nose was bent toward one side of his face, which made him look a little sinister. He had friendly eyes though, and thick, wavy, light brown hair. I wasn’t exactly sure how old he was, but I figured around Daddy’s age. He was wearing a suit and tie when he walked into the beach house; he’d taken off his jacket, but he still looked silly wearing his white shirt, tie, and trousers on the beach. I thought he’d just stand there trying not to mess up his shoes, but he didn’t. He reached down, untied them, and kicked them off, and then he loosened his tie, rolled up his trousers and sat down next to me. I saw that his shirt was wet under his armpits.

“God, I hate wearing suits.” He looked up at the sky. “It’s an oven out here. I’d much rather be in my swim trunks. I burn though.”

“Me too,” I said, surprising myself. I hadn’t meant to be conversational right off. Being that he’d said he made a lot of sand castles, I decided to test his credibility. “Do you know about castles?”

“I do actually. I won a blue ribbon for one once at the county fair.”

“Not sand castles,” I said. “Castles.”

“A little, I guess. I went to Ireland once—that’s where my ancestors are from—and I went to see some ancient castles.”

“What do they look like? Inside I mean.”

“Oh, you know, lots of red velvet and pictures of stiff-looking old men.”

“No armors?”

“One or two.”

“How’d you keep it from falling apart?”

He looked confused.

“The sand castle,” I said. “You said you won a blue ribbon. I’ve never seen sand castles at fairs.” Not that I’d been to any, but he didn’t know that.

His smile was slow and crooked. One corner of his mouth went up higher than the other. “We took pictures. And I don’t know about all fairs, but you can win ribbons for sand castles at this county’s fair. I grew up here. Right down there.” He pointed down one side of the beach, but I didn’t see any houses.

“You lived on the beach?”

“Not on the beach,” he said. “But not too far. When I was a kid, we went to the beach every day after school, and we practically lived on it during the summer. We probably made a gazillion sand castles.”

“There isn’t any such thing as a gazillion,” I said.

“Sure there is,” he said. “There’s a gazillion stars in the sky, aren’t there?”

I didn’t know how to answer that question because I wasn’t exactly sure how many stars there were in the sky.

“This sand castle is better than any one I ever made,” Detective Kennedy said.

“Better than the one that won the ribbon?” I asked.

“Much better,” he said. “Our standards aren’t all that high here. Must’ve taken you and your daddy a long time to build this much.”

“Only a couple of days,” I said. “We started the day we got here.”

“Did the two of you work on it this morning?”

“Just me. Daddy slept in. He and Mama were up late.”

“Where was your mama when you were working on the sand castle?”

“Swimming,” I said. “She swims three times a day here: first thing in the morning, right before lunch, and in the late afternoon before she starts making dinner. That’s one of the reasons why we come. She likes the ocean better than pools.”

“That makes sense. Do you come a lot?”

“Every summer since I was born.”

“And you always stay here?”

“No. This is the first time. We used to stay someplace else.”

“Different house?”

“Different island.”

“Which one?”

“Bodie,” I said.

“I went to school on Bodie when I was a kid,” Detective Kennedy said. “Busier over there, huh?”

“How’d you get to school?”

“I took the ferry. You ever seen a sunset from a ferryboat?”

I shook my head.

“Most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. When the sun dips into the sea, for a split second the water breaks into so many prisms of color it looks like the inside of a kaleidoscope.” He looked at me. “You don’t believe me? Well then, I guess I’ll have to show you sometime.”

I wondered why he thought he’d be knowing me long enough to show me sometime.

He fidgeted around, like a dog trying to make a comfortable spot, and then he laid his back all the way down on the sand, sprawled out his legs, stared into the sun, and closed his eyes. “Don’t tell anyone,” he whispered.

I figured he’d fallen asleep, he stayed like that for so long.

“Picasso—do you mind if I call you Picasso?” He turned on his side, propped himself up with his elbow.

“Why would I? That’s my name.”

He chuckled. “True. I’m wondering if you remember what time your mama went for her swim.”

I knew that was it; his real questions were coming. I was a little nervous, but not as much as I thought I’d be. “It was still dark out. She always goes when it’s still dark out.”

“Do you know what time it was when you came out to work on your sand castle?”

“Not exactly, but pretty much as soon as it got light.”

“Which door did you use?”

“The side door.”

“Why the side door?”

“I’m not allowed to go in and out through the sliding glass doors because I might get the carpet dirty or wet.”

“Do you remember if the sliding glass doors were open when you left?”

“No,” I said.

“No they weren’t open, or no you can’t remember.”

“No I can’t remember.”

“And when your mama comes back in after her swim, does she usually use the sliding glass doors or the side door?”

“She doesn’t have a usual way. She hasn’t swum here that many times.”

“Let me see.” He counted on his fingers. “Eight times, right?”

“Seven,” I said. “She didn’t swim the day we got here.”

“How many of those seven times did she go back in through the side door?”

“Two, I think.”

“So today and one other time?” He didn’t wait for me to respond. “Why do you think she used the side door this morning, instead of going through the sliding glass doors?”

I bit my lip. “Because the sliding glass doors were locked?”

Detective Kennedy chewed on this for a while. He rose to a sitting position and looked into my eyes. The back of his shirt was covered with sand. “You seem like a brave kid, Picasso. The next few questions I’m going to ask you might be hard for you to answer, not because you can’t but because they might make you sad. Do you think you’re up to it?”

“I guess.”

“Okay, then. Do you know about how long it was after you’d come out to work on your sand castle before you heard the shot?”

“It was right after I saw Mama starting to swim toward shore.”

“What made you look at the ocean? Didn’t you have your back to it like you do now?”

“I check a lot because Mama gets mad when I get sand all over the house. When I see her swimming back, I know I need to finish up pretty soon so I have enough time to rinse off real good at the outside spigot.”

“Where’s that?”

I pointed at the standing faucet at the top of the stairs.

“Does your Mama rinse off there too?”

“Sometimes.”

“What happened after you rinsed off?”

“I went inside.”

“And that’s when you saw your daddy?”

Instead of looking at Detective Kennedy, I started smoothing out one of the castle walls. I figured that was a good time to do what Mama does when she doesn’t want to answer questions, like when I asked about Jewels and she pretended she was fiddling with her zipper. I could feel Detective Kennedy staring at me. I stopped working and looked at him.

“
Yes
, that’s when I saw Daddy.”

“I’m sorry, Picasso. I know this must be hard. Just a couple more questions, okay? Are you absolutely sure your mama wasn’t there when you saw your daddy—I mean found him like that?”

“You mean dead?” I said. “No. She wasn’t there. She was still swimming.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Where were you when she came in?”

“Over by Daddy. I didn’t know that he was dead at first.”

“Was he?”

“Yes.”