Nantucket Nights (11 page)

“Does she have a job?”

“No,” Kayla said. “She hasn’t worked the whole time I’ve known her.” Kayla stirred the ketchup. She wasn’t about to bring up the divorce settlement or Antoinette’s money. “She seems to have her own life work to do. The dance, the reading. She takes a lot of walks, rides her bike.”

Their food arrived, and they were quiet as they ate. Kayla sipped her buttery chowder, trying to ignore the fact that it held thousands of unnecessary calories, wondering what else to say about Antoinette. She danced, she read—and she had a lover who made her pregnant. Pregnant! Kayla could really alarm the girl with that piece of news, although to Lindsey, who was Antoinette but a woman who’d once been pregnant?

“Your mother is a private person,” Kayla said. She stabbed a perfect coin of cucumber lying on top of her salad. “She had her heart broken a long time ago, when your father betrayed her, when she decided to give you up. Those losses hardened her. She built herself a life of inanimate objects, you know. Her life is her books, her wine, her bicycle. Things that can be replaced.”

“She loved my father,” Lindsey said.

“Obviously.” Kayla lifted two purple rings of onion off her salad and dumped them in her empty soup bowl. “But she’s never even told me his name.”

“Darren Riley,” Lindsey said. “They told me that at the location agency.”

“Giving you up broke her heart,” Kayla said. “Now she lives in the woods by herself.”

“Sounds lonely,” Lindsey said.

Kayla took a swallow of iced tea, added two Sweet’N Low packets, and stirred them in with her straw. The sweetener kicked up in the bottom of the glass like dust, and it reminded her of the dirt in Antoinette’s driveway as Raoul smoothed it with the edge of his work boot. In Kayla’s memory, Raoul was careful about this task. The detective had accused him of destroying evidence, and in her mind Kayla could see that Raoul
was
erasing something— footprints, tire tracks. While they were in Antoinette’s house, he’d cleared the whole area in front of the house. What was he clearing?
His
footprints?
His
tire tracks? Before coming out to Great Point, had he stopped at Antoinette’s and torn the place apart, removing any signs that he’d been her lover? Clothing, tools he might have left behind; maybe he’d even been hunting for the pregnancy test. Kayla spit a chunk of red pepper into her napkin. She was making herself crazy.

“She was lonely,” Kayla said. “Is lonely.” Except that Antoinette was having an affair, an affair even more secret than Val’s. Kayla wondered if that was why Antoinette danced away when Kayla accused her of sleeping with Raoul. She was caught! And pregnant by him, no less. That would have been quite a confession. Kayla pushed her plate and bowl to the side. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to use the phone.”

Heather Tsoulakis approached the table. “Are you ladies finished?”

Kayla brushed by her and bolted for the pay phone in the entryway, fumbling for thirty-five cents from her change purse. She wanted to take another Ativan while she was at it, but she couldn’t find the bottle of pills. The ceiling in The Brotherhood was low and die floors slanted. Kayla felt the restaurant closing in on her. Her stomach churned; her mind screamed out,
You fool! You idiot! You stupid, blind woman!

No one answered at home, and the worst came to Kayla’s mind. Raoul running away to meet Antoinette, taking Luke and Cassidy B. with him. And possibly Jennifer and Theo. Whisking them away to live elsewhere with a new mother, and their new brother or sister.

Kayla didn’t leave a message. When she turned around, she saw Lindsey plunk some bills down on the table and stand up. She came toward Kayla, a concerned look on her face.

“Are you all right?” Lindsey asked.

“Let’s go to Antoinette’s house,” Kayla said. “So you can see for yourself.”

On the way from the restaurant to Polpis Road, Kayla was too frantic for conversation. She turned on the radio for distraction—her semi-oldies station was playing the top three hundred songs “of all time” as a special thing for Labor Day. “Got to Get You into My Life,” by The Beatles; “Show Me the Way,” by Peter Frampton. Lindsey put her window down, and a warm wind filled the car. It was a gorgeous day, and Kayla had never felt worse. Her head was throbbing, her stomach engorged from too much food too quickly, and she reeled with her new theory, puzzle pieces that she feared would fit if she found the courage to put them together.

Kayla accused Antoinette of sleeping with Raoul. Antoinette disappeared. Kayla called Raoul and
told
him Antoinette was missing. He drove out to Great Point. Kayla racked her brain: Did he have enough time to stop by Antoinette’s house and tear the place apart?
Someone
had been there between the time they picked Antoinette up and the time they returned, and it wasn’t a house found by people who didn’t know of its existence. So, Kayla reasoned, it could have been Antoinette herself, or it could have been Raoul.

Once at Antoinette’s, Raoul had stayed in the driveway and systematically wiped away all the evidence of footprints and tire tracks, except for what they’d left themselves. Pretending it was a nervous habit. But Kayla knew her husband, and she recognized his face when he was at work on something. He’d even said,
Let Paul go in first,
because he wanted Paul and the detective to be distracted by the mess so that he could clear his tracks. But what about fingerprints? What about the other “forensic samples” the detective claimed to have found? Did Raoul have work gloves in his truck in the middle of summer? And then there was the troubling detail of Val wanting so desperately to talk to Raoul in his car. Talk to him about what? Was she in on it, too? It was possible; anything was possible at this point.

They turned into Antoinette’s driveway. “This is it,” Kayla said. “Your mother’s property.”

“Do you think she’ll be here?” Lindsey asked. She was gazing into a compact, reapplying her purple lipstick, like she was about to meet a blind date.

“No,” Kayla said.

Kayla turned to watch Lindsey’s reaction, and so she didn’t notice the car headed toward them. Lindsey saw it a split second before Kayla did, and she gasped and put a hand on the dashboard to brace herself,

Kayla slammed the brakes, and the Trooper bucked to a stop, stalled out. Lindsey’s compact and lipstick went flying into the windshield. Kayla had just missed hitting the front of John Gluckstem’s black Jaguar.
John Gluckstern.
Ugh. He was alone in the car. Val must have told him what happened. He backed his car into a clearing on the left, and Kayla pulled alongside him.

“Hi, John,” she said, as pleasantly as she could. “I guess you heard. Did Antoinette turn up?”

His voice was battery acid. “No,” he said. “She did not
turn up.
I can tell you one thing, though, Kayla. You and
my wife
are in some deep shit here. I don’t care if I’m the one who has to start shoveling it your way. This isn’t right, and it’s your doing.”

“What
is our doing?”

“Antoinette disappearing. It may look innocent to the police, but there’s no way a woman like Antoinette would let herself get swept away. That woman is tough. Physically and mentally.” He tapped his graying temple to emphasize the word
mentally.
Kayla wondered about John’s knowledge of Antoinette’s mentality. Of course, he invested her money, so Kayla supposed he had some right to be concerned. He was wearing a shirt and tie even though it was Saturday. But Saturdays for John meant work.

Kayla wrinkled her brow. “What are you doing here?”

“Taking a look, same as you. You won’t get too far. They have a summer cop guarding the house.”

Kayla glanced in the direction of the house and then at Lindsey, who was busy fixing her lipstick. “John, this is.. . this is Lindsey Allerton. Antoinette’s daughter. She just flew in this morning.”

John poked a finger out his window at Lindsey. “Be careful of this woman, and my wife, too, if you’re lucky enough to meet her. They’re to blame here.”

“Blame?”
Kayla said.

But John was finished. He revved his engine and drove off down the driveway, his tires leaving behind a brown cloud.

“Asshole,” Kayla said. “I’d like to know what his agenda is.”

“Who is that guy?” Lindsey asked.

“John Gluckstern,” Kayla said. “Husband of my friend Val, the other woman who was with us at Great Point.”

“And he knows my mother?”

“He’s her banker,” Kayla said. “Believe me, his only interest in her is monetary.” They pulled up to the front of Antoinette’s house, next to the police car. A kid of about eighteen sat in the driver’s seat reading
Rolling Stone.
He straightened when he saw the Trooper; then he put down the magazine and got out of the car.

“Can I help you?” he asked. He was dark-haired and had some sore-looking acne on his chin. His name tag said JONATHAN LOVE.
Officer Johnny Love.
Behind him, the house was aflutter with yellow police tape, like a badly wrapped gift.

“Has Ms. Riley returned?” Kayla asked, though anyone could see the answer was no.

“No, ma’am. The fire department is still up at Great Point on the recovery mission.”

“I see,” Kayla said. “Well, Officer Love, this is Ms. Riley’s daughter, Lindsey. I brought her by to see the house.”

Johnny Love took a long, appreciative look at Lindsey. “No one can enter the house, ma’am.”

“So Mr. Gluckstern, the gentleman who was just here—he didn’t go into the house?”

“No. Mr. Gluckstern wanted to look in the window, and I did allow that.” Johnny Love pointed to the back deck. “If you stand on the deck, you can see into the bedroom. But no crossing the police tape. I would be in hot water if I allowed you to cross the police tape.”

“We don’t want to get you in trouble,” Kayla said. “But I think we’ll have a look. Did Mr. Gluckstern say what
he
was looking for?”

Johnny Love picked at his chin. “Something about his wife being a friend of Ms. Riley’s and her telling him to come out here and see for himself if he didn’t believe it. I figure there’s no harm in
looking.”

“Yes, we just want to look,” Kayla said.

She and Lindsey stepped onto the deck, and Kayla ushered her toward the bedroom window. “Go ahead,” she said.

Lindsey cupped her beautiful hand around her eyes and peered in. “Ransacked,” she said. “As reported.” She straightened up and looked at Kayla. “Okay, so now what do we do?”

“What would you like to do?”

Lindsey turned toward the woods and took a deep breath. Her shoulder blades protruded through her pink T-shirt. “I’d like to know what’s going on here. I prepped myself for a lot of shit, you know, but not this.”

“I understand,” Kayla said.

“No,” Lindsey said, “I don’t think you do. I have a space, you see, right here—” she tapped her breastbone “—and that space needs to be filled. I need to see my mother. Only now I’m beginning to think this dream isn’t going to come true for me. Not today, maybe not ever.” She pronounced
ever
“evah,” and this small bit of street accent caught Kayla’s interest. She studied the girl. Lindsey was trying hard to keep it together—makeup, hair, clothes. Until now, she’d been acting like seeing Antoinette was simply a choice she’d made, rather than a burning desire. A way to fill a weekend, rather than a life-defining moment. But Kayla recognized her desire—no, her
need
—to see Antoinette. Just to meet her for a moment, to stand face-to-face, say hello, and touch—God,
touch
—the person who had given birth to her.

“You’re right,” Kayla said. “I don’t understand. I’m sorry.”

“Can we go to Great Point?” Lindsey said.

“That’s what you’d like to do?”

Lindsey pulled a clump of hair into her fist and held it so that it strained the skin of her forehead. “Yes,” she said. “Take me to the place where she disappeared.”

And so, fourteen hours later, Kayla made the same trip she’d made the night before: first to Antoinette’s, then to Great Point. It wasn’t a bad idea— the police might have missed something in the dark that would be clear now that it was two in the afternoon.

Because it was Labor Day weekend, the parking lot by the Wauwinet was crowded with happy beachgoers: rental Jeeps and trucks crammed with children. Someone else was playing her radio station loudly; Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight.” Kayla wanted to separate herself from their frivolity, but she had to let the tires down. She jumped out of the Trooper with the gauge. She saw the tires were plenty low—they hadn’t been refilled from the night before. One good thing. But then the gatehouse attendant motioned for her to stop.

“I have a sticker,” Kayla said. “And my tires are already low.”

Another teenager, with a brown ponytail and bangs, serious looking in her dun-colored uniform with her clipboard. “I need to advise you that the fire department is conducting a recovery mission off the end of the Point,” she said. “We lost someone last night.”

Lost someone.

“We know,” Kayla said. “Thank you.”

Even under the circumstances, it was impossible to find the ride out to Great Point anything but beautiful. The white sandy beach, the
Rosa rugosa
in its final bright pink bloom, the harbor on one side dotted with sailboats, and the ocean on the other, the seagulls, and the distant figure of the lighthouse. Kayla wasn’t surprised when Lindsey caught her breath and said, “Wow.”

“There’s a map in the glove compartment,” Kayla said. “I’ll show you where we’re going.”

Lindsey pulled out the map, and Kayla pointed to the spit of land sticking out into the sea. It was daunting to see how isolated Great Point was—
surrounded
by water.

“Why did you go swimming out
here?”
Lindsey asked. “It seems kind of reckless.”

“It was your mother’s idea,” Kayla said defensively. “A long time ago. Twenty years ago. We drove out here in the middle of the night, and it’s been a tradition ever since. It’s not reckless because we’re careful. We’re good swimmers and we understand the water. And Antoinette is the best swimmer of the three of us. How she got swept away,
if
she got swept away, is a mystery to me.”