Page 56 of The Night We Lost Him

The Acres

When we hit the upper Hudson Valley, we are surrounded by farmland.

I tap out an email as we glide past creek bridges and post offices, American flags and steel trailers. Much of the landscape covered in old snow. I lower the window enough to let in just a little of that cold winter air, fresh and crisp, the sun streaming down despite it.

We’ve been making calls on the way out here, in the hopes of getting eyes we can trust on the police report and the autopsy. On Detective O’Brien’s incomplete investigation. I didn’t want to reach out to Elliot again, as if that would somehow remedy last night’s conversation with Jack. As if that will help realign my loyalty. So, instead, I reached out to a neuroscientist with whom I often collaborate to see if she could put me in touch with an expert she trusted. She put me in touch with a neurocriminologist, who steered me toward two forensic pathologists.

As Sam drove, I emailed the two forensic pathologists all the information I have—the autopsy report and the police report, the Windbreak property map, and the geology report on the cliff itself. I forwarded Detective O’Brien’s shaky investigative findings on which I hope they can shed an impartial light.

“Something’s been bugging me since last night,” I say.

Sam turns and looks over at me. “Just one thing?”

I give him a smile.

“Paul’s reaction to Cece was pretty intense,” I say. “It feels like it could be related to why Joe didn’t want us talking to her.”

“Meaning?”

“Uncle Joe was clearly worried she would tell us something we weren’t supposed to know about Dad. And I keep thinking that maybe Grace, at some point, told Paul the same thing… We need to keep that in mind when we get to Tommy’s.”

“Why? What does that have to do with Tommy?”

“I think that should be the first thing we ask him.”

Sam turns down a long gravel road still sporting a large sign for ROSE VALLEY APPLE ORCHARDS.

A much smaller wooden sign hangs beneath it, announcing itself in dark block letters. THE ACRES.

We drive past a working farm complete with an apple orchard and a large chicken coop, several hiking trails circling around it.

Sam pulls into a small roundabout, turning off the ignition. I step out of the car and take in the main entrance to the property with its beautiful gravel walkway and the enormous open-air porch house, a central meadow just beyond it.

The porch house is still midconstruction, but the bones are stunning: twenty-feet-high lofted oak rafters, wood-framed furniture, and large indoor trees, all organized around a central firepit.

But what’s most spectacular is the vista—the expanse of that central meadow and the ridge—the property dotted with steel and wood cabins, in varying degrees of completion. I can see the amount of work they are putting into those cabins, clad in reclaimed wood, offset gabled roofs. And, even midconstruction, they’re remarkable. They’re rustic and gentle, not disturbing the land but very much a part of it.

I’m struck by the entire build-out for that reason. It isn’t dissimilar to a project I worked on not too far from here in Woodstock, New York. It’s a family compound where the owners asked for a modern take on the eighteenth-century farmhouse on property. I created several vernacular buildings, a central communal firepit for family gatherings—a perfect and peaceful family retreat in the Catskill Mountains.

“Remind you of Woodstock?” Sam asks.

I turn toward him. “How did you know that?”

Sam hands me a hard hat. “Dad held up the photograph of your property in the Record at the first concept meeting. And he said, something like this.”

I put the hard hat on, feeling his words in my chest. In my gut. My father’s pride in me, in all of us, was immovable, even when we weren’t in the room to witness it. If I had been in the room, would I have figured out how to tell him that he deserved credit for anything he liked about what I built? That I became the kind of architect I did in part from watching him work? He took joy in building meaningful spaces. He took joy in making things work and feel right. I don’t think I’m the kind of artist I am without that influence. I never told him that. I gave that to my mother. Her attention to rhythm and to beauty. But it was him too. It was him. Suddenly, it feels like another injury that he’ll never hear me say that.

Sam motions toward a larger (and completed) cabin toward the side of the meadow, and we walk that way.

“That’s the Ridge House,” he says. “Tommy’s staying there.”

“You’re going to run out of time.”

“For what?”

“To tell me what’s going on with the two of you before we see him.”

He shakes his head, like there’s nothing to say. “Did I not mention that we haven’t really spoken in about six weeks?”

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