I turned on the light in the small bathroom, glad to finally be able to see everything. I urinated, not bothering to flush because I didn’t want to awaken anyone and have to explain what I was doing downstairs at that hour. I turned off the light and quietly left the room. To my right, the hallway leading back to the living room looked dark and foreboding, so I stood by the screen door as I waited for my eyes to adjust again to the darkness.

Outside, I saw a flicker of light through the woods, somewhere near the road. I thought at first it was a firefly, but the tiny light burned bright orange and I quickly realized it was a cigarette. I watched the light arc and sway as the shadowy person carrying the cigarette walked along the dirt road in the direction of our house. I smiled in relief. Isabel. She was probably walking home from Pam’s or Mitzi’s, enjoying one last smoke before she had to come in. But how did she expect to get in with the lock on the door? I thought it was her good fortune that I happened to be there.

I lifted the lock with my finger and was about to push the door open when the shadowy image and its cigarette continued down the road, past our sidewalk, past our driveway. I slipped the lock back into the eye. It was not Isabel after all. I lost sight of the person, but the light of the cigarette continued to burn, making a sharp angle in the air as the smoker turned to walk up the Chapmans’ driveway.

CHAPTER 44

Julie

“It’s too dark to read it out here,” I said, carefully unfolding the small sheet of paper I’d removed from the front half of the giraffe. “I’m not even certain there’s any writing on it.”

Jim moved the lantern closer to my hands, but Ethan touched my shoulder.

“Let’s take it back to my house,” he said. “We’ve taken up enough of the Kleins’ time.”

I sensed his concern. He knew that a note written by my dead sister or his dead brother was sure to elicit emotions he didn’t want to share with his neighbors.

“Oh, but this is fun,” Ruth said, obviously curious about what we’d found.

“Probably just a love note from my brother to Julie’s sister,” Ethan said. “Not fit for the PG-13 crowd.” He got to his feet.

I tucked the paper back into the giraffe, holding the red and purple halves of the toy together as Ethan helped me up. Jim and Ruth stood, as well, but Carter remained seated next to the buried bread box, still peering inside it, although without the lantern light I was certain he could see little. I guessed he was thinking about the wonderful treasures he could bury there himself.

The screen door squeaked open as Lucy left the porch and rejoined us in the yard.

“Thank you so much for the tour,” I said to the Kleins. “And Carter, the treasure box is all yours now.”

“Awesome!” he said, getting to his feet.

“Thank Julie,” Ruth instructed him.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re very welcome.” I looked at Ruth and Jim. “And thanks for letting us dig up your yard.”

“Sure.” Jim grinned, his face ghostly in the lantern light.

“Please feel free to come over anytime,” Ruth said.

We walked between the two houses to get to Ethan’s front yard. I held on to Lucy’s arm.

“We found this old plastic giraffe in the Nancy Drew box,” I told her. “There’s a piece of paper in it. Ned and Isabel used to use it to send notes to each other. But the weird thing is, I am ninety-nine point nine-percent sure I never put it in the box.”

Lucy was quiet. As Ethan pushed open his front door, she whispered in my ear, “I remembered something about the night Isabel was killed,” she said.

“What?” I whispered back, uncertain why we were being stealthy.

She didn’t answer me.

“What?” I asked again, and she shook her head quickly.

“Later,” she whispered, and I knew better than to push her; she must have had her reasons for keeping her memory from Ethan.

We followed Ethan out to his porch, where he turned on the floor lamp, flooding the table with light.

“Let’s take a look at that paper,” he said, as the three of us sat down.

I opened the giraffe and the folded piece of paper fell out. Carefully I flattened it on the tabletop. It was a note, written on what looked to be half a sheet of pale pink stationery, its one edge ragged, torn on an angle. The writing had faded to a bleached bluish purple, but I recognized it instantly.

“It’s Izzy’s writing,” I said. Isabel had had a distinctive, rounded handwriting that had gotten her into trouble with the nuns in catechism class.

I read the note aloud.

“You are a decietful pig and I hate you,” I read. “I can’t wait to tell my father everything. He adores me and you can bet he will kill you.”

The three of us were quiet, letting the words sink in.

Ethan was first to speak, his voice a tired whisper. “Damn,” he said. “She and Ned must have been on the outs.”

I thought of telling him my suspicion about Ned’s involvement with Pam, but before I could speak, I realized that Lucy was crying.

“Oh, honey.” I put my arm around her, guessing that she was moved and shaken by seeing a note from our sister. But that was not it.

“I remembered something,” she said, to both of us now.

Ethan pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her, and she pressed it to her eyes.

“The night Isabel died,” she said, “I woke up alone in the attic. I was afraid and came downstairs, looking for you—” she spoke to me “—but of course, I couldn’t find you, since you’d gone out in the boat. I went to the bathroom, and when I came out, I happened to look toward the road and I saw someone out there. I saw the burning tip of a cigarette. I thought it was Isabel at first, walking home from one of her girlfriends’ houses. But then the person walked right past our house and up your driveway.” She looked at Ethan.

Ethan closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. We were all quiet for a moment.

“I feel sick,” he said finally.

“Did Ned smoke?” Lucy asked.

Ethan nodded without opening his eyes. “Like a chimney.”

“I’m sorry, Ethan,” I said.

“It still doesn’t make sense, though.” Ethan opened his eyes and looked at the note again as if he might be able to read between the lines. “What does this mean? How did he deceive her?” He shook his head with a stubborn resolve. “I still refuse to think that Ned was capable of killing anyone.”

“I think he was seeing Pam Durant on the side,” I said.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

I told him the reasons for my suspicions—George possibly spotting Ned and Pam together on the boat, Mitzi’s suggestion that they would start dating after Isabel’s death, and how Ned had turned to Pam for comfort.

“Isabel probably found out,” I suggested. “She wrote him this note. He met her on the platform at the bay and they argued and he…”

“Maybe it was an accident,” Lucy said kindly. “He didn’t mean to kill her.”

“Things don’t add up,” Ethan said. “I mean, to begin with, Ned told you to tell Isabel he couldn’t meet her that night.”

“But remember, he called her at Mitzi’s to say he might be able to.”

Ethan looked surprised. “I don’t think I ever knew that,” he said.

“How did the note end up in your Nancy Drew box, of all places?” Lucy asked.

“I have no idea,” I said. “They used me as a messenger, giving me the giraffe to pass between them, but I never realized it was a puzzle. Something they could hide notes in. And maybe I…I have no memory of this at all…but maybe I did stick it in the box and don’t remember doing it.”

“Or maybe Ned put it in there thinking you’d find it and realize what had happened and turn him in,” Lucy said. “Maybe he felt guilty but couldn’t bring himself to admit what he’d done.”

“Wait a minute,” Ethan said. “He had an alibi. He was in our yard with my father.”

“Ethan.” I rested my hand on his forearm. “Did it ever occur to you that your father was just trying to protect him? That he made up the alibi for him?”

Ethan shook his head. “He wouldn’t do that,” he said, but I thought he was only saying what he longed to believe.

I don’t think any of us slept that night. Next to me, Ethan tossed and turned. I was haunted, not so much by what Isabel had written or by the realization that Ned was probably responsible for her death, because this was not a surprise to me, but by seeing Izzy’s handwriting. By seeing that part of her, still so alive all these years later. Seeing the rounded a’s and the misspelling of deceitful. The misspelling made me want to cry. It humanized my big sister and made her seem so young and guileless.

Over breakfast the next morning, Lucy suggested we leave the shore early, drive home and pay a visit to our mother to tell her about the note before giving it to the police.

“I don’t think we need to tell her,” I argued. “You know she hasn’t been herself lately, and this would only upset her more.” I knew I was protecting myself, as well. I didn’t want to talk to my mother about Isabel any more than I had to.

“I know it’ll upset her,” Lucy said, “but that’s inevitable, and I want to keep her abreast of things. The less she learns from the police instead of from us, the better.”

“I think Lucy’s right,” Ethan said. “And as soon as the cops see this note, they’re going to want to talk to my father again. I can’t believe, though, that he would have lied about where Ned was that night.”

“Maybe he wasn’t lying,” Lucy offered. “Maybe he was just off on his timing. Give him a chance to explain.”

Ethan looked toward the canal and the heavy Saturday-morning boat traffic. “Damn,” he said, more to himself than to us. “I wish Ned were here to tell us what really happened.”

“Me, too,” I said.

I dropped Lucy off at her house in Plainfield, and we agreed to meet at Mom’s that afternoon when she got home from McDonald’s. By the time I turned onto my street in Westfield, I felt a mixture of deep sorrow and vindication. I had been right about Ned all this time. I wished George Lewis were alive. I wished I could hug him, tell him how sorry I was that I had not been more capable of proving Ned’s guilt when I was twelve years old.

I slowed down as I neared my house, surprised to see cars crowding my driveway, spilling out into the street. One of them was Shannon’s car. The rest were unfamiliar to me, and with a sense of betrayal and disappointment, I realized that Shannon had taken advantage of my weekend away to use the house for a party, one that had apparently continued overnight and late into the next morning. Perhaps she planned for it to run the entire weekend.

I had to park in front of my neighbors’ house, since there was no room in front of my own. I walked into the house, greeted by the overwhelming stench of stale beer and possibly marijuana, although that might have been my imagination. Teenagers were sleeping on my living room furniture as well as on the floor. One girl lifted her head from the sofa when I walked in.

“Where’s Shannon?” I asked, barely able to control my anger. I could feel my face and neck redden with it.

“Shannon who?” the girl asked. “Oh, the girl who lives here?”

“Yes,” I said through my gritted teeth.

“I think she’s upstairs.”

I marched upstairs and into Shannon’s room, where I found two blond girls sleeping together, one of them nude, their arms wrapped around each other. My fury mounted as I walked toward my own bedroom. I threw open the door to find my daughter and Tanner in my bed. Tanner was asleep, but the noise of my entry apparently awakened Shannon. She sat up quickly, pulling the sheet against her chest, her long hair tangled over her bare shoulders.

“Mom!” she said.

I threw my pocketbook down on my dresser. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” she said, clutching the sheet tighter to her chest. She was speaking softly, as though she didn’t want to disturb Tanner. “People just kept showing up,” she said. “I’m really sorry. We were going to clean everything up before you got home. Change the sheets and everything. And vacuum.”

I stared at her. Who was this child?

“I feel like I don’t know you,” I said. “What happened to the responsible girl I raised?”

“I am responsible,” she argued. “I planned to tell you what happened. About the party and everything. I didn’t expect you to come home yet.”

“That’s obvious,” I said. “You know what, Shannon? You are absolutely not moving to Colorado. I’m still your mother and I’m not going to let you live like this.” I waved my hand in Tanner’s direction. “And what kind of a man would sleep with you in your mother’s bed?” I asked. I couldn’t believe Tanner was actually sleeping through my tirade. He was probably awake and listening, but had decided it was best if he pretended otherwise.