Look Closely (10 page)

That’s what I should do, I realized, go running on the beach. I wanted to get back to the letters, but more than anything, I wanted to sweat out some of the alcohol.

I changed into running shorts and a T-shirt, trying to ignore my parched throat and the throbbing blood vessel in my temple. I trod lightly down the back stairs and out onto the beach, wanting to avoid Ty for the moment. I was sure I looked like absolute hel , and I was embarrassed about my drunken conduct last night. As I stepped onto the sand, the sunlight pierced my eyes like a thousand needles, almost making me turn around and scrap the run. Then a thought struck me—had I kissed Ty last night? Some slobbering attempt at comfort? Mental y, I scrol ed through the end of the night. He had walked me to my room, letting me lean on his shoulder after I stumbled twice on the stairs. Final y, he’d unlocked the door with my key, which he gave back to me, and told me he’d had a good time, that he would see me tomorrow. Then he left. Thank God. Thank God I hadn’t made an even bigger ass of myself.

I made my feet move over the sand, down toward the water where the sand would be packed and firm. I turned right and walked for the first few minutes, letting my muscles and my brain warm up. No clouds hid the absurd brightness of the sun, which had brought al types onto the beach for the first taste of summer—parents with armies of little kids, a few teenage girls in bikinis, their towels angled away from the lake but toward the sun.

This side of the beach housed the larger, grander homes, and they seemed to grow with each step. From Mediterranean vil as to Cape Cod clapboard houses, there was no set style requirement except for jaw-droppingly big. I forced my reluctant feet into a run. Every jolt of my heel sent an equal y jolting clang to my head, but eventual y, I found my running void. I watched the sand, the water, the homes, but I didn’t process much anymore.

I ran like that for at least twenty minutes before I made a wide turn and headed back. As I did, something familiar shook me out of my zone. An odd feeling like the one I’d had at the cemetery, the sensation that someone was watching me. A tingle of fear ticked its way up the back of my neck, making me light-headed and dizzy. Or maybe it was the hangover.

I jogged in place for a moment, taking time to breathe, to look around. There were no other joggers near me, and the closest person on the beach was a man a few hundred feet away, his head in a paperback. I glanced out at the water. A couple of boats bobbed in the distance, but they were so far away I couldn’t even make out what type of crafts they were. I turned my attention to the houses lining the beach. Immediately behind me, sitting high on a dune, was a massive, white contemporary home with flat roofs and wal s of glass that faced the beach. The boxy structure made it look cold and unappealing, but it had probably cost mil ions.

The reflective glare of the glass made it impossible to see if anyone was inside, and I was just about to begin running again, when an image snagged my attention. I continued jogging in place, squinting up at the house, until I could determine what it was. On the far right side, a figure stood at the corner of the deck. I couldn’t tel if it was a man or a woman. I could only make out a basebal hat, an orange windbreaker, and arms that were holding something up to the person’s face. I stopped running, and without the bouncing I could see that it was a pair of binoculars. And the binoculars were facing toward the lake and down to the beach. Right at me.

I looked both ways, but there was no one close to me, no one else that the person could be focusing on.
Doesn’t matter,
I told myself. It must be a home owner simply checking out the beach. But the person didn’t sweep the water or the length of the sand with the binoculars. Instead, the orange-clad arms held fast, the body facing mine, not wavering, frozen.

I took off running back the way I’d come. I was moving too fast, and the speed would soon tire me, I knew, but I had an irrational desire to get away from the house, from that person, quickly. Yet I couldn’t outrun the feeling of being under surveil ance, and when I stopped and looked back, I thought I could stil see the figure, turned toward me.

When I got back, I peeked in at the front desk. The housekeeper was on the phone taking a reservation. Ty was nowhere in sight. Then I remembered he’d said that he spent most Sundays at his parents’ until high season. He had told me that he would come back to the inn in the early evening to pick me up for dinner, a dinner where I would meet his father and, hopeful y, find out what the police knew about my mother’s death.

I was glad Ty wasn’t at the desk. I didn’t want him to see me right now, looking sweaty and smel ing as if I’d bathed in a pool of beer, but at the same time, I couldn’t stop the feeling of wanting him around, wanting that ease.

“Excuse me, Elaine?” I said, stepping into the lobby.

The housekeeper looked up and gave me a smile. “Good morning.”

“I was wondering if you know who owns that big white house down the beach.”

“Down to the right, you mean? The one with al the windows?”

“Right.”

“Ah, probably just some summer resident. I can’t keep them al straight. Sorry.”

I thanked her and went to my room.

After a shower, two more ibuprofen and a raid of the minibar that included every bottle of water and miniature bag of chips, I felt somewhat human. I padded barefoot out onto the deck and again settled into the Adirondack chair with Caroline’s and Dan’s letters.

I began with the next few from Caroline. She had, it seemed, stayed at Crestwood Home for five years. Five years,
five years,
I kept thinking. Surely that was a hel of a long stay for inpatient treatment. I tried to think of every reason that a nineteen-year-old girl might be in a psychiatric clinic for that length of a time—anorexia, bulimia, depression, drugs—but did any of those require five years of inpatient treatment? I wanted to believe that Caroline had just needed some help, that she needed counseling and had gotten it, but my mind kept coming back to the same thought, that her stay at Crestwood had something to do with my mom’s death, what Caroline knew about it or what part she’d played in it.

I couldn’t stand thinking like that. I had to find her and figure out the real story. That was the simplest route to answering the nagging questions in my head. And it was time, after al , just as I’d told Del a. So I kept reading. Five years after that first letter from Crestwood Home, Caroline wrote Del a that she had left Connecticut and moved to Portland.

I’m crazy about this city. I have no money, but I don’t care. I’m going to school at some crappy community col ege to get an accounting degree. On the weekends, I head to Mount Hood or Til amook where I can hike or swim or just sit outside by myself. I final y feel like I’ve gotten past my problems. I feel like I can move on with my life.

A year later, Caroline wrote that she had gotten a job at an accounting firm.
They’re paying for part of my school, can you believe it? And they’ll hire me full-time when I graduate!

In November, a few years after that, she wrote that she was stil at the accounting firm, that she liked it very much, and best of al she’d met someone special.

His name is Matt Ramsey, and Del a, you would adore him as much as I do. He’s the kindest, most gentle soul you’ve ever met, and you know what? He loves me, too. He loves me like crazy. Sometimes I can’t believe it, and sometimes I think it wil al fal apart the way everything else did, but I’ve learned how to get myself past those thoughts, and so most of the time I’m just content. That’s a word I’d never think to apply to myself. But there it is.

The next letter on the stack wasn’t actual y a letter, but a wedding announcement that appeared to have been printed on a home computer.

Caroline and Matt Ramsey are pleased to announce that they made it official on August 12.

Below that, a new address was listed, and Caroline had handwritten:

Dear Del a, Sorry I didn’t tel you about this ahead of time, but it was just us and a few friends on the mountain. I’m sending you a picture.

Miss you, Caroline.

Nomentionofanyparents,Inoticed.Iwondered if my father had received one of these, if he had studied it, silently, while I was in the other room.

I flipped the announcement over. Fixed to the back with a pink paper clip was a photo. I unclipped it and raised it to my face, and there was Caroline, a little older but not much different than I’dremembered.Shewasstanding,holdingabouquet of wildflowers, wearing a loose ivory cotton dress.Thehairaroundherfacewasstreakedblond from the sun, the same way mine got in the summer. She was tilting her head to one side, and the man behind her, who must have been Matt Ramsey, had leaned in and put his face next to hers. They were both smiling broadly, with smiles in their eyes, as wel . Matt had longish, thick brown hair and brown eyes under bronze wire glasses. One of his hands was squeezing Caroline’s bare arm,hisnewgoldweddingbandglintinginthesun.

Matt looked kind, I thought, and very much in love with my sister. I felt a rush of happiness for both of them, for the sister who had gone off to boarding school alone and then on to some clinic. I continued looking at the picture, at Caroline in particular, silently asking, “Do you know what happened? Did you have anything to do with it?” But now, faced with the picture of Caroline’s adult face, rather than the vague image of her teenage self, I found it harder to place on Caroline the suspicion I’d been so quick to adopt.

I read the last of Caroline’s letters. There were only a few more, and they were usual y brief, tel ing Del a about her job at the accounting firm or how she and Matt had gone rafting or skiing or camping over the weekend. The return addresses on the last letters were al the same, on Northeast Jarrett in Portland.

Caroline could be at her home in Portland right now.Thelastletterhadbeenwrittenoverayearand a half ago, but she could easily stil live there. She might be sitting in the sun, too. She might be in her backyard,herhusbandatherside,andshemightbe pleased,excitedeven,tohearfromthelittlesistershe hadn’t seen in over twenty years. Or she might not.

I went back and forth, reminding myself how miserable Caroline had seemed in her letters until she’d moved to Portland and married Matt, until she’d gotten past her problems, as she put it. And so maybe she didn’t want to be reminded of any part of her old life. Maybe it would cause some kind of setback in her mental condition, and I didn’t want to be responsible for that. Yet at the same time, I found it harder and harder to be stil , knowing a phone sat only twenty feet away. If I couldn’t find the number from Portland Information, I could search the Web, or I could get databases of addresses and phone numbers from my Internet clients and search those, as wel .

I took the letters and photograph inside and sat down at the smal desk. I picked up the phone, the plastic of the receiver cool against my hand. The line seemed to ring interminably. I stared at the pile of letters on the desk, Caroline’s tiny handwriting blending into a series of smal loops and slashes as I gazed unblinkingly. Final y, the pleasant voice of a woman answered, and I gave her the names of Caroline and Matt Ramsey in Portland, Oregon, on Northeast Jarrett Street.

“Checking,” the woman said.

There was a long pause, during which I heard the clicking of a keyboard through the phone.

“Yes,” the woman said at last. “I have an

M. Ramsey on Northeast Jarrett.”

In the middle of the first ring, the phone was answered, snatched up it seemed, and a gruff male voice said, “Hel o?”

I was startled by the quick answer. “Um…is this Matt Ramsey?”

“Yes. Who’s this?” Again, the man was abrupt, and this surprised me. I glanced at the picture of Matt and Caroline that I held in my hand. I had expected someone kind, someone gentle like the man my sister had written about.

“This is…” I faltered for a second, wishing I’d takenmoretimetoplanwhatIwouldsay.Itseemed ludicrous to say,
Hello, this is your wife’s sister who she hasn’t talked to in at least twenty
years.
But there was no easy way, so I just said my name.

“Excuse me?” It was Matt who sounded startled now.

“I’mHaileySutter.AreyoumarriedtoCaroline?”

“Yes.”

I ran my finger over the photo of Caroline as if I could smooth the fold of my sister’s dress where it creased at her shoulder. “I’m her sister. Is she there? Could I talk to her?”

Matt let out a laugh that sounded bitter. “She was making you a quilt.”

“What?”Icouldn’tbesureIhadheardhimright.

“She was making you a quilt. She’s been going to these lessons for years. It takes her forever to get a square right, the way she wants it.” He laughed again, and it came out softer, more genuine this time. “I didn’t know if she would ever finish it, but shealwayssaidshe’dliketogiveittoyousomeday.”

“Oh.” I was struck by an image of Caroline, the grown-up Caroline from the picture, sitting on a couch, legs curled under her, stitching a quilt square by lamplight. For me. That was the truly

striking part.

“Can I speak with her?” I said.

Matt cleared his throat. “She’s not here.”

“Wel , can you have her cal me? I live in New York, but I’m out of town right now. I could give you my numbers.”

“I wouldn’t know where to reach her.”

“Excuse me?” I had the sensation of fal ing backward, zooming far away from that dream of Caroline on her couch.

“Look, I can’t say much else. I don’t even know if you real y are her sister, and even if that’s true, I…” He trailed off.

“Has something happened?”

“You could say that.” The gruff tone had returned. “You haven’t heard from her, have you?” He said this last bit as if the thought had just occurred to him.

“No, I haven’t talked to Caroline since I was a kid. If you could just tel me where she is. I don’t mean to bother her. I just want to talk.”

There was a pause, as if Matt was thinking. “Look. I’l be honest with you. Caroline is missing. And I have no idea when, or if, she’l be back.”