Page 36 of Dead of Summer
“I don’t know what you mean.” It comes out more gruffly than he intends. His mind is whirring, trying to recall the details of that night. The shadow on the road. “Lower your voice, please.” His eyes flick toward the bedroom. Henry puts the water on and fills the kettle, trying to drown her out.
“Was it her? Was it Gemma?” She is right next to him now.
“Jean, please stop.” He turns the faucet up higher. He is getting angry. What right does she have to barge in? Jean shouldn’t be here. This isn’t her day to come.
“Don’t think I don’t know, Henry,” Jean says quietly. “I’d have to be an idiot not to know after all these years.”
Henry grips the counter. The blood rushes into his face, fizzing at the top of his head, where his hair has started to thin.
“Know what, Jean?” He tries to laugh. He could never lie to her. Not outright. Not even by omission.
She snaps her palm up, quieting him. “I know that you spend your days holed up here spying on people. Now, I’ve never said anything. But you must know Margie and I never have had a secret.”
“Whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong.” He couldn’t let her think about him that way. His only friend.
“I—” Henry slumps over. He supposes he thought that his and Margie’s life was theirs alone, but he should have known better. The way she and her sister spent so much of their time together, ankle-deep in the mud offshore looking for clams or sitting out on the dock, bottles of beer in hand, their voices dulled by the wind so that all he could make out were the occasional sharp cackles passing between them.
He hears Jean behind him. She is leaving. Good. But her footsteps carry on deeper into the living room.Oh god. No.He turns back to see her marching across the room toward the table, where the thin tidal chart teeters precariously on top of his latest logbook.
“No! Stay away from those, Jean,” Henry croaks, running toward the table. Jean reaches it first, lunging for the tidal chart. Henry intercepts her and tries to cover it with his thin torso. Their arms tangle as they scramble. He is surprised to find that Jean is stronger than him, and nimbler as well. Her hand easily shoots under his rib cage and takes hold of the edge of the chart. There is a loud rip as she yanks the sheet away. There is a thundering of paper as it slides to the ground in two giant pieces, revealing the logbook below, still open to this morning’s observations.
Henry pants, watching in horror as she snatches it up and retreats with it to the far side of the table. She flips through the pages, something awful taking hold of her features. Her eyes narrow. How could he have let this happen? Henry watches helplessly as she examines a page.
“June fourteenth, Orla O’Connor returns,” she reads out loud. Her eyes snap up to look at him before she turns the page. “Guess you didn’t need me to tell you.”
“Jean,” Henry starts, his voice shaking. How can he make her understandthat it is just something he does, that there is no harm in it, none really? She is shaking her head.
“It was none of my business. I always thought it was a strange thing to do, this obsession you have with watching, but probably not harming anyone. Now I’m not so sure.”
Henry retreats, his shoulders hunched in shame. “Please, Jean. It’s only a hobby.”
“Oh, really, Henry? Spying on people is a hobby?” She turns the page in the logbook and points to her own name: “4:12 a.m., Jean leaves the Crab.” Jean lowers the book and gives him a look that skewers his heart in two. “Spying on me, too, then, are you?”
“It’s not so creepy as it seems. I swear. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“And if I’m not? What are you going to do, Henry? Jump in your boat and come for me?”
He stares at her startled. What is she implying? She draws closer to him. “Oh yes, I know abouther, too, Henry. The young girl. The other one.” She lowers her voice to a hiss. “Alice.”
Henry reels back. He didn’t think Margie would have told her that. He thought that it would have been a secret. He’ll have to tell her that there are things too dangerous to talk about with Jean. He stands up straighter now. “You weren’t meant to be here. This is our house.Ourthings. What right do you have to show up here unannounced and, and—?”
They are both breathing heavily now, eyeing each other across the table warily as though afraid to make the next move.
“I don’t care what you do, Henry. This—” She flaps a frantic hand at the corner of the table. “This is your business. But I swear to you, if you know something about that sweet girl and you don’t tell me? I will never forgive you, Henry Wright.”
Henry quickly does the calculation in his head. He can’t afford to lose Jean. She is their one thin tether to reality, the only person who cares. There is something else that is happening, filling him up with aweak, fuzzy feeling. He is relieved that he’s not the only one who has carried it all this time. That she’s been carrying it all this time also.
“I saw something,” he exhales.
“When?” she asks quickly.
He puts his hand out for the logbook, and Jean hands it over to him. He turns the pages until he finds the entry. “Wednesday. It was mostly a shadow in the streetlight. A woman walking down Harbor Street toward the Clarkes that night. And a man as well, coming from the other way.”
“And?” she asks.
“That’s it,” he says, feeling flustered. “They disappeared.”
“What do you mean?” Jean narrows her eyes at him.
