Page 66 of The Family Plot
“I figured we should talk out here. Away from… everyone else.”
“Oh?”
“I wanted to know why you were talking to Charlie. But now I want to know what happened with Lyle. Ruby was here. She said you questioned him.”
Elijah leans forward, reaching past me to drop his green folder on top of his car. “I’m sure you know I can’t really say.”
The wind nudges the folder open, rustling the papers inside. I try to scan them quickly, but he slaps the folder closed before anything flies away. He pulls it back toward his side, eyeing me as he tucks it under his arm.
“I told you about Lyle,” I argue. “Don’t I have a right to know if you think he’s a suspect?”
“You know that’s not how this works.”
“What about Charlie then?” I try. “What were you talking to him about?”
He watches me for a few more seconds before he looks away. Shifting the folder to his other hand, he opens it to glance inside, then shuts it again before aiming his attention toward the woods.
“Will you take a walk with me?” he asks.
I blink at him. “A walk? I’m asking about Charlie.”
“I understand. But there’s something I want to show you.” Heconsiders my crossed arms, quivering in the cold. “It’s a bit of a walk, so you might want to grab your coat.”
“A walk to where?”
The corners of his mouth quirk up. “It’s a surprise,” he says. Then his expression eases, flattening into something more earnest. “You’ll be safe, I promise. And when we get there, I’ll tell you exactly what I asked your brother.”
I study him, weighing his strange proposition, how he’s assuring my safety when I hadn’t even thought to be concerned for it. But that phrase—exactly what I asked your brother—hooks me more than I’d like. It feels so specific, significant, and swirling beneath the words, I hear Elijah’s suspicion.
“I’ll get my coat,” I say.
seventeen
We head down BreakerLane, which ends at the beginning of the rest of the world. The road, paved with gravel, empties out onto the shore, the gray sea unfolding beyond it like a sheet of aluminum foil. Even with my mouth closed, I taste the brine of the ocean, salty as the broth in Dad’s stews. The wind is thicker here, like coarse fabric rubbed against my cheeks.
Standing at the edge of Blackburn Island, it takes more effort to breathe—and it’s impossible, I find, not to think of those women. Tate’s dioramas flip like flash cards through my mind: the angle of Amy’s leg, folded grotesquely against the hard-packed sand; Claudia’s red hair, snarled with seaweed; and the slit in Jessie’s dress, evidence of the rocks that battered her body as she washed onto shore.
I look to Elijah for direction. He stares at the water, gaze stretching toward a horizon filmed with fog.
“Is this what you wanted to show me?” I ask.
On the way down Breaker, all he offered was that he wanted to see if I could identify something.Something of Andy’s?I asked. But he shook his head, glancing at his folder.
I wondered, again, at its connection to Charlie, to this destination Elijah refuses to name. I didn’t tell him, then, that most of this coast isnew to me, that even growing up on the island, I hardly ventured this far. Andy hated the water, and that was enough of a reason to avoid it.
It’s strange, though—how he viewed the ocean as an obstacle to getting away. Dodging the foam that reaches toward my shoes, I realize that it seems like the opposite, like the water wants to suck me in, drag me out toward somewhere else. Shouldn’t Andy have seen it, then, as a means of escape?
But again—those women. They confirm, I guess, that Andy was right. The fact that their bodies were returned to our shore, spit onto sand instead of carried to another coast, is proof that the ocean wants us here, contained to Blackburn Island.
“It’s this way,” Elijah finally answers, and he sets off walking, gesturing for me to follow.
Water rushes toward our feet as we navigate the pebbled shore. We keep to the dryer side as much as we can, but even the beach grass here is wet, the giant rocks darkened by a recent tide.
“Your brother’s putting a lot of work into his museum,” Elijah says after a while. “What do you think of it?”
I stop for a second, but he doesn’t. He continues down the coast, oblivious to—or ignoring—my hesitation, and I step over driftwood to try to catch up.
“I’m not sure,” he says when I don’t answer, “that, if it were me, I’d be okay with it. Be careful there.” He points to a jutting log, waiting to make sure it doesn’t trip me. “Seems like it’s making a spectacle, don’t you think, of such a personal loss?”
