Page 94 of Coram House

He sounds far away, like his mind is already somewhere else. I picture his face outside the police station yesterday, so tired and worried. The glint of silver in the stubble on his chin.

“Okay,” I say. “Talk to you later, then.”

The line goes dead.

For a second, I have the disorienting feeling that I’ve traveled forward in time and I’m looking back at myself sitting in this car, feeling confused and at a dead end. This used to happen to me sometimes with Adam, at the end. Memories would play out in my mind, as if time was no longer a straight line, ever moving forward. As if I could go back and change things.

Moving into our first apartment. How we used packing crates for a table. How grown-up we’d felt buying a brand-new IKEA couch instead of one we found on the street. The apartment had a fireplace, but I didn’t think to ask whether it actually worked. It’s New York City—of course it didn’t work. But Adam went to the bodega and bought two boxes of candles to put inside it. We kept them lit all winter.

Adam was forever coming home with things he found on the street. A hat stand. A single velvet dining chair. Swollen paperbacks no one wanted to read. We used to fight about it—how he was always bringing home strays that I had to put down. But I think it actually hurt him, to see those things abandoned on the street.

After Adam got sick, he brought home a horrible painting he’d found somewhere of children trick-or-treating, their empty eyes like ghouls. He’d grinned at me and said,A dying man’s last wish. And I’d laughed and then cried while he held me. I was always too hard on him for all the places he was soft and I was not. No one appreciates gentleness until faced with its opposite.

Our wedding. The months planning, the input from our families, all wanting something different. Different chairs. A church. Their name on the invitation. A longer dress. A different flavor cake. How much I hated all of it. Until Adam took my hands, and said,No, we’re not doing any of it. How we got married in a field outside a friend’s house upstate and ignored the grumpy looks on our mothers’ faces. How our friends brought fried chicken and tortilla chips and cheap wine and we stood in the tall grass and watched the sunset turn the sky electric pink.

How few truly perfect moments we’re given in this life. And those are the ones that rip the heart from your chest later. The ones to lock away the tightest. But something has broken and now I can’t.

I take deep breaths until I’m back inside my body. How can Adam still be dead? How can I have only been here, in this place, a month? How can the murder of a boy over fifty years ago feel this vital?

Time doesn’t mean anything at all.

It’s cold enough inside the car that I can see my breath. I shiver and start the engine. January thaw, my ass. There’s still time to call Xander and cancel, but then what? Sit alone inside my apartment, going over my notes for the thousandth time, trying to think of anything that doesn’t hurt.

No. If I leave now, I can make it to Xander’s only a little late.Ice sailing.As I pull away, I wonder what half-insane version of my past self agreed to this.Do the crazy thing. Lola, if I drown, I’m blaming you.But thinking about her hurts too, so I stuff the thought away, in the box in my head, though I fear the lock is broken.

25

The sun islow in the sky and too big, as if the earth is hurtling toward it. As I drive to Xander’s, my anger drains away, leaving frustration in its wake. I know so much—I’m so close—and yet I’m missing something.

Fifty years ago, Tommy Underwood drowned in the lake, while Sarah Dale watched. When she tried to come forward, she was locked in the attic. When she tried again twenty years later, her claims were dismissed.

Twenty years ago, Bill Campbell paid people off to settle the case. Ten years later, his company purchased Coram House and began building. Alan Stedsan knew about it all, but said nothing.

Fred Rooney received regular payments of $10,000 a year for at least the last ten years. Bill seems like a likely source, but why would he give him all that money?

Someone killed Sister Cecile.

Ten days later, Fred Rooney himself was also killed.

Bill had access to the canoe, but the rest—Bill hiding among the trees, bringing the rock down on Sister Cecile’s head, strangling Fred—it’s hard to imagine. By the time I pull into Xander’s drive, I’ve worn a groove in my brain going over and over the same facts.

My stomach sinks at the sight of the other cars parked in front of the house. A salt-splattered pickup towing a boat trailer, and another car, forest green with the aerodynamic lines of something built for speed. I instinctively dislike its owner. Xander hadn’t said anything about other people. I wonder whether it’s too late to turn around.

Just then, the front door opens. Xander steps out wearing an outfitthat looks like race-car-driver-meets-astronaut—a long orange jumpsuit, thick with insulation, and a silver helmet tucked under one arm. I look down at my own jeans, which I’d stuffed myself into over my only pair of long underwear, and feel deeply skeptical about this whole excursion.

“Alex!” Xander calls with a grin. I wave back, and force myself to take my hand off the key.

“You made it!” he says as I get out. He sounds both happy and surprised, like he doubted I’d actually show up, which makes me feel guilty for plotting my escape. Maybe it will be fun. Detective Garcia and Parker had told me to lay off, so here I am, laying off.

A shriek rends the air. A second later comes the deep boom of a man’s laughter. “You’re such an asshole!” yells a woman’s voice, but in a tone that suggests she’s flirting rather than being murdered.

Xander looks at me, nervous. “A couple friends dropped in for the weekend. Kind of a surprise.”

I force a smile. “That’s nice.”

“Come on,” Xander says, “we’re all headed to the boathouse.”

The path down to the water is solid ice, but he walks right over it without slipping.Magic, I think, until I realize he’s wearing some kind of cleats.

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