Page 26 of I Know She Was There

I twisted the bottle top off with a loudpffftand poured the bubbly water into the glass. I crossed over to her and held out the drink. “It’s kind of crazy, really.”

“Try me,” she said, grasping the glass with both hands.

I supposed there was no reason for secrecy. Mary interacted with fewer people than I did. Even if she shared my story, she was unlikely to get a better reception for what surely sounded like a tall tale. Her age and incessant drinking wouldn’t add to her credibility.

“Okay,” I relented, sitting across the table from her. It took about five minutes to relay the events of the night at Matt and Melanie’s. I left out my suspicions about Jeffrey Trembly. Instinct told me to keep that to myself.

“So you think the woman you saw in the house was trying to kill herself or a murderer was inside too?” She replaced the glass on the table without bothering to drink from it.

I shook my head. “I have no idea, but since the police say the house has been empty... well, the whole thing seems ridiculous.”

Mary rubbed her chin, her eyes going softly out of focus. “Very interesting. Certainly, something to consider. Where is the house?”

“Over in Deer Crossing—21 Pine Hill Road.”

The way she sat forward in my chair, suddenly perky, I could tell I’d added a dimension to our relationship that would give her reason to drop by frequently. I’d shared a secret. A fact, in her mind, that bonded us. I stifled a sigh. It was going to be impossible to avoid her now. Her unannounced drop-ins, her neediness and, most of all, her loneliness. I envisioned myself in her same lemon-shaped body a few years from now. Once Emmy had grown and moved on. Here I’d sit, wishing, hoping, longing for my life to mean something to someone other than me. Knowing all along that, like Mary now, I was sadly delusional.

CHAPTER12

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 30

Determined to root out the truth, I passed 21 Pine Hill Road every evening now. It wasn’t lost on me that I was obsessing over Melanie the way I’d once focused on Jane—and Muzzy before her. The difference, of course, was that now I had a reason to be here. I was on the trail of a possible killer.

Of a possibly dead woman, said my mother.Or maybe not.

I paused in front of Melanie’s, squeezing my eyes tight against my mother’s voice and the events that had occurred in Deer Crossing. Or had they? PerhapsnothingI’d witnessed had happened. After all, I’d seen the injured woman right after passing by Muzzy’s house—the woman I suspected of having an affair with my husband. Had something in me snapped, prompting me to see things that weren’t there?

I opened my eyes and stared straight ahead. The Pine Hill house was still empty. The grass was cut regularly, but even its well-maintained length couldn’t mask the lack of life around the place. Each time I paused in front of the Cape, I’d search the dark windows and empty porch for any sign of life. I hadn’t contacted the police with my suspicions about Jeffrey Trembly. They wouldn’t believe me now if they hadn’t before. Time would only make my story less plausible. How could he be charged with a murder that didn’t appear to have been committed?

Still, I couldn’t let it go. I fixated on the idea that Jeffrey Trembly had killed the woman. I was frustrated by my inability to prove it but was equally determined to avoid him. I didn’t even venture near his house. The latest danger on Woodmint Lane. I stuck to the west side of Deer Crossing, fantasizing about tricking the killer into a confession but knowing full well I had no evidence.

As I stood on Pine Hill that night, exactly one year after my mother’s fatal accident, another layer of melancholy drifted onto me like pollen, settling into every crevice and making me itch. My memories of her were complex. She’d been a stickler for always displaying proper manners, which was difficult, at times, for my child’s mind to remember, but I’d never known her as a mother myself. I’d secretly harbored the notion that once I had Emmy, everything she’d ever said or done would automatically make sense to me. It hadn’t.

My face burning with shame, even in the dark, I recalled my self-mutilating phase at age nine, when I’d cherish every tearful presentation to my undemonstrative mom of skinned knees, painful bruises, and broken bones, the more serious, the better. When my hurts were exceedingly painful, she’d soothe me with gentle words and tender touches, cementing in my mind the idea that she loved me. At least a little.

As a result, I became known as the fearless kid in our suburban neighborhood. The girl who climbed to the tippy-top branches of trees and challenged the older kids to fistfights. The girl I thought I never would have evolved into had my dad still been alive.

I never had to ask Daddy to sing silly songs to me. He just did. In falsetto. And when I placed my tiny bare feet on top of his wide, flat ones, we’d walk as one through the tall, silky summer grass. He’d take giant steps that made my little legs splay so far apart, I’d have fallen into a painful split if not for his strong, solid hands holding mine way above my head. Lifting me up and away from potential pain.

I bit down on my lip, trying to recall his voice as we climbed into the rowboat that last day, but it wouldn’t come to me. I blinked rapidly, panicked. Why couldn’t I remember his voice? I thought about that light-infused morning; we’d drifted out to the center of the lake. A tremor passed through me; I closed my eyes. Disjointed images bombarded my brain like dodgeballs: my mother’s fearful face, the boat’s edge tipping precariously, the greenish-gray world of water, around me, in me, pressing its unseen mass down on me.

I opened my eyes, still living in the memory, expecting to see hazy daylight; the surge of black evening air filling my pupils made me think fleetingly of blindness. Instantly my mind recalibrated, catapulting me back to the present: 21 Pine Hill Road, bled of its bright red hue in the grainy darkness. This evening was darker than when I’d rushed inside to aid the woman. Now it was later, quieter. My mother’s voice now was nothing more than a memory.

You’ve killed him.

I could hear the echo of her words even now, amid the nighttime cacophony. Piercing as the blatant call of crickets in the side yard. Her voice had confused me the other night, in the house’s foyer, because it had seemed a palpable presence. I hadn’t expected to hear anyone but Melanie. Moaning, or the gargling sound a slashed-open throat must make, trying to take in air and let out a scream.

But that night, I had expected my mother’s words. It was an anniversary, after all. A time to not only remember but relive the events of our shared past. And that most vivid phrase, uttered to me by my shocked, desperate mother all those years earlier still clung to me as though attached by Velcro.

You’ve killed him.

I wondered if he blamed me. If my dad was in an alternate universe somewhere, watching. If so, would he judge me as lacking? As guilty?

How could you?

The other words. Accusing. Scathing. Not delivered by my mother but by Tim. Why would he say such a thing? I continued staring at the house, trying to puzzle it out. I was concentrating so hard I wasn’t even surprised to see him materialize alongside the building. A filmy figure gaining definition as he neared.

Why did you say that to me, Tim? Why?

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