I stared at her. The record ended. In the silence I felt as though I were slipping down the sides of the earth. “Tell me Grady killed his father.”
“Why do you want to believe that?”
“I don’t want to think the killer is somebody who wants us dead, too.”
“I don’t know what Grady did. He was here a few hours before his father died. His friends say he was on a sailboat that evening, when Mr. Harrelson was killed. Grady is probably telling the truth.”
“Let’s go to Mexico.”
“And do what?”
“Get married.”
“You need to go to college.”
“What for?”
“To be a writer.”
“I’ll be a writer and your husband. Let’s go upstairs.”
She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Can we do it another time?”
“Yeah, sure,” I replied.
“You don’t mind?”
I shook my head. “It’s not because of me, is it?”
“No, never.”
But I wasn’t convinced.
VALERIE CALLED ME at seven P.M. Her father had just gotten home and was in the shower.
“Is everything all right?” I asked.
“He said all this is going to pass.”
“What is he? Some kind of Tibetan holy man?”
“That’s not very respectful.”
I paused, trying to suppress my anger. “Want to go out for some ice cream? The sun doesn’t set until after nine.”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Then I guess I’ll say good night.”
“It’s still evening.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said.
IN THE MORNING I looked through the newspaper for stories about violence, bodies discovered in a ditch, a shooting by an unknown assailant at a business property owned by the Atlas family. There was nothing I might link to Mr. Epstein.
My mother’s greatest fear was that someone would look at her and see an impoverished little girl standing barefoot by herself in front of a house that was hardly more than a shack.
I was in the backyard when I heard her come home early from work. Through the kitchen window, I saw her trying to boil water to make tea, the pot shaking in her hand. I went inside, closing the door carefully. “You all right, Mother?”