Page 42 of Dead of Summer
“No,” Henry said. “It was you.” The truth of it was, Henry didn’t know what he saw, not exactly.
“And he’s delusional as well. I wasn’t even on the yacht, Henry. I was at the party. Ask anyone here. They all saw me.” There were low voices as the attendees conferred among themselves. They had seen him, hadn’t they? Geoffrey had been in rare form that night, shaking hands, slapping backs. You couldn’t miss him.
“No, you were there,” Henry protested. “I saw you and others too. Not kids, grown men.” But his words were lost in the voices of the crowd. Henry could hear Margie’s voice trying to defend him. He strained his eyes trying to find her.
“Do you like to watch people?” the newscaster prodded him.
“That man”—Geoffrey waved his hand in Henry’s face—“was looking at children through a telescope. He says himself he does it all the time.”
An outraged murmur rippled across the auditorium. As they jeered at him, Henry became less sure of himself. What if it really wasn’t Geoffrey he’d seen, but his son? “Please, Geoffrey, let’s let the law decide all this,” Ed begged, but he was losing steam against the crowd, who were growing louder and more disgruntled by the second.
Henry finally found Margie in the far back of the room. She was standing along the wall, her face pale under the fluorescent lighting. Her eyes wide with fear. Margie had been the one who suggested they leave.These provincial people, she’d always complained,I can’t bear it here anymore.
“Why you are protecting him?” Geoffrey boomed at Ed Robertson. “You have no other credible suspects, and you have a witness. Unless you are trying to hide something also?”
“That’s a disgusting lie. I’m protecting the law. Not him.” Ed was growing visibly nervous as the murmurs from the islanders grew louder and angrier.
At this Geoffrey Clarke spun back on his heels and raised his eyebrows, addressing the room again. “My son, David, came forward and told the police right away, but they ignored him. That man is strange, we all know it. We give him a pass, but look at him. Who goes and lives on a tiny little island like that unless they have something to hide? Why else would a man move his wife out there, so far away from the rest of us, unless he was disturbed?”
Ed cut in. “We found nothing at the Wright residence to suggest—”
But Geoffrey had found his footing now. The crowd was his. He turned on the officer.
“How long did it take you to get a warrant? See, he can’t even answer? Well, I will, it was hours. I say that gave him plenty of time to do what he wanted with her. And to hide the evidence.”
The crowd gasped at the implication.
“God no, I never—” Henry had tried to defend himself, sickened by the very nature of the accusation. The jeers of the crowd grew louder and the overhead light suddenly became very hot on his face. He had one clear thought then: If only he had written it all down, he could prove it.
“If my son isn’t a good enough witness for you people, he isn’t alone. The girl saw him too.” Geoffrey pointed at Orla O’Connor. Her head dropped to her chest.
“It’s okay, dear, you can tell us,” the reporter said, his voice dripping with performative empathy.
“I saw him,” she said through the hair that had fallen in front of her face. When she looked up, her eyes were red from crying. “We went to look, and she was gone.”
“And then what? What did you see, dear?”
“Henry Wright was in the water. And I saw Alice in his boat.”
At this the roar from the public had been so intense the police had become visibly nervous. They whisked Henry away from the blur of angry villagers and out a back door to a police car.
We’ll never be able to leave now, Margie had said after that night. The terror of their predicament was all over her face.Unless it’s for good.Butboth of them knew that wasn’t an option, not really. Hadley was all either of them had ever known. It was home. And they weren’t the types to start over. They were creatures of comfort. Homebodies. They had each other, though; that was what mattered.
“Ed was the only one who stopped them from hauling you off like vigilantes,” Margie, shaken, had repeated later. The fear in her voice had turned to anger when they were back in their chairs, safely on their little island and settled in for the night. Henry hadn’t wanted to think then about the people he’d known all his life having it in for him.
“We don’t know what they would have done,” he’d said, turning his attention toward the water, ready to put the whole thing behind him. But Margie wasn’t ready to let it go. She shuffled angrily in her chair.
“I do,” she’d said, pulling the blanket tightly around her and shuddering. “Geoffrey would have had them tear you limb from limb. You, or anyone else that threatened to expose his terrible little secrets.”
ORLA
The liquor store is set in a tiny strip mall next to a launderette right in the center of Port Mary. Orla walks toward it. She’d walked into town in a fearful trance, the painting in the closet forcing her out of the house and onto the road.
Her fingers fumble as she pulls open the door. A quick search on her phone showed that all the hotels on the island are booked through to July 5. Not that she could afford it even if they weren’t. She’d debated calling the police. But what could she show them other than a mess of childish drawings? She can’t even be sure. Itisdark in the closet, she tells herself. And Orla hasn’t slept more than a few hours a night since she arrived. The humidity, it could do things to ink, couldn’t it? Make it slide. Make it run down walls. Black out eyes. Her back quivers with the memory of it.
But the idea of being questioned by the Hadley Police Department makes her feel nearly as sick as the paint dripping down the closet wall.
There is only one way out of this nightmare and that is to sell the house and leave Hadley as quickly as humanly possible. Coming here was supposed to heal her, but it has brought nothing but pain.
