Page 15 of Dead of Summer

“Yeah, yeah, Jean, I get it.” Walter’s T-shirt strains atop his beer belly as he leans back in his barstool. He looks at Faith a beat too long for comfort, a strange expression coming over his face. “You’re familiar.”

Her heart thuds reflexively. “No, it’s my first time here. First time on Hadley Island at all.”

“Are you sure? There’s something about you. I swear I’ve met you before.” He is still gazing at her, when a young girl steps up to the side of the bar. She is wearing a green apron with a red googly-eyed crab embroidered on the front.

“How’s it going today, Gemma?” Walter asks. Faith notes the red flush that has crept into his cheeks from the alcohol. “Gemma is the only member of this fine new generation who seems to know how to work.”

Faith suppresses a smile at hearing this kind of criticism coming from a man who is drinking beer midday on a Tuesday.

“I like your dress,” Gemma says. She looks at Faith as though she might be some sort of celebrity. “It’s Celine, right?”

“It is! Good eye. You follow fashion?” The girl nods, smiling shyly.

Faith looks at her more closely, noting the on-trend bangs, the shirt that she has carefully buttoned up under her apron, the cutoffs with the patchwork.

The dangling silver earrings. It is all so deliberately styled it is obvious to Faith that she has an eye for it. “You look like you do.”

Gemma beams. “I love it. All of it. Not just the big-name designers, either; I love the small ones, too, the ones who do interesting and risky things. No one has any style here. You’re from New York, aren’t you?

You can always tell when a New Yorker comes in.

” Her eyes are wide and shining. She’s young and sweet, but also has a sharpness to her, a hunger.

She’s just like Faith must have been at her age. “I’m so jealous you live there.”

“Oh, don’t be. Really, it’s so pretty here? Appreciate it while you can,” Faith says before leaning forward and whispering conspiratorially, “But then get out. Was the best thing I ever did.”

“Gemma, don’t mean to interrupt your chitchat,” Jean says insincerely, dropping a collection of drinks on the rubber mat.

“When you’re done, take these to table thirteen.

” Gemma gives Faith a little eye roll as she loads them onto the tray.

When Jean has gone around to the other side of the bar, Gemma leans toward Faith.

“I’m going to move to Paris soon,” she whispers, her breath hot on Faith’s cheek.

“I’m saving up money at the Crab this summer so that I can go.

I already know people who are going to put me up there in the fall. Got it all planned out.”

Before Faith has time to respond, Jean comes around the side of the bar, her arms loaded with full beer glasses. “Gemma, I mean it. No time for dawdling.”

There is a startling clap from Walter. “I got it now! You know, but Jean, tell me if it’s true. Faith here is the spitting image of Alice Gallo!” he says. Faith’s entire body jolts at the name of the dead girl.

“Stop it right now, Walter,” Jean says, her voice thick with warning as she dries a glass. “You’re drunk.”

But Jean is studying Faith’s face now, too, and it seems she doesn’t like what she sees.

“This is only my second beer,” he protests. “You know you see it too.”

“Second beer and after two whiskeys, but it is striking,” Jean concludes. “Where’d you say you’re from?”

“I didn’t, but New York, well, via Oklahoma,” Faith admits, unsure how to process this new piece of information.

At this, Jean’s shoulders drop, relieved. “You see, Walter? Oklahoma. There’s no connection.”

Faith’s legs wobble as she jumps down off the barstool. The room has filled up with couples and tourists, their wet umbrellas collapsed at the sides of their tables as they settle in for an afternoon of drinking and eating.

“You take care,” Walter says. The way he waves at her, she knows he doesn’t expect to see her again.

“Nice to meet you,” Faith says, giving him a genuine smile. She digs inside her ludicrously expensive straw purse for her wallet and leaves three twenties on the bar. Her mom’s morals may have been mostly off-kilter, but she taught her daughter to always tip well, even if you’re broke.

“Think of it like an investment in your future, kiddo,” she’d said more than once on the drive home from the bar, her eyes red around the rims, a lit cigarette dangling from her fingertips. “You never know when you might need a friend.”

Outside the rain has stopped. The sky has cleared and is streaked with yellowy poststorm clouds as Faith returns to the Clarke property.

When she gets to the gate, she finds that the door she left from, straightforward enough on the inside that she paid it no mind, is only a sleek rectangular shape with no visible handle on the outside.

She skims the surface with her hand, prying at the edge with her fingertips.

She takes out her phone to text David and realizes she hasn’t heard from him all day.

Strange, as back in New York he was always checking in.

“Name.” A mechanical voice crackles ominously above her. Faith jumps back, startled, and looks up. A red light blinks high above the gate. It is attached to a sleek black lens of a camera. It pivots, focusing in on her.

“Hello?” she calls up to it uncertainly, feeling suddenly quite vulnerable standing there in her sundress.

She glances down the road, afraid for a moment that she’d wandered back to the wrong waterfront mansion.

But it says it right there next to the gate, chiseled into a hulking piece of decorative granite: Clarke Residence.

“Name,” the voice repeats without any intonation.

“I’m Faith, I’m staying here. I’m a guest of David’s?” Faith explains, becoming less sure as she talks if she is talking to an automaton or an actual human.

There is a pause long enough for her to think she might be left out there all afternoon, but then some mechanism inside the door pops and it glides open, framing a view of the Clarke mansion in all its white marble glory.

As soon as Faith walks through the door it slides shut and she can hear the lock closing.

She walks up the front drive with a shiver in her spine.

She glances up at the trees looking for more blinking lights, feeling like she is being watched.

Back inside, the house is still and quiet.

Faith wanders from room to room, hoping she’ll run into David.

The lack of communication is starting to make her feel strange, like she is an interloper here.

She goes from the foyer to a sort of lounge complete with a floor-to-ceiling humidor, peering down on a vast assortment of Cuban cigar boxes.

Even in here the design is austere, the gleaming enamel banquettes and stuffed leather chairs all surprisingly unused and devoid of any personal items. The next room has two walls that look out at the water.

It contains only a white grand piano in the center.

The rooms all have a sparseness to them, all deathly quiet except for the low hum of climate control.

Faith wanders into a spacious living room with low-lying furniture so pristinely white it would be nerve-racking to sit on it.

She stands up against the wall-size windows.

The ocean undulates just past the lawn. She presses her forehead to the cool glass, watching the water rushing silently into shore.

She gets the odd sensation she is watching it on a screen instead of in real life.

She turns and marvels at the built-in bookshelf that contains a sparse assortment of curated vintage books and sleek objects.

Faith is surprised to find a single photograph set on a shelf next to a minimalist blue glass orb.

It is black and white, taken on the front lawn of the house.

The house was smaller then, Faith notes, picking the frame up off the shelf.

The windows were far narrower and paned, and the veranda only stretched half the house.

A teenage David stands on the lawn next to his father.

Faith brings the picture up to her face to have a better look.

He looks uncomfortable. But it can’t be David, she realizes.

The image seems far too old, taken back when pointed collars and high-waisted men’s pants were in style.

It must be Geoffrey with his own father, she realizes, uneasily.

How strange that he and David could look so alike in childhood and so different from each other now.

Behind Geoffrey and his father, three very young women lounge by the pool in skimpy low-rise bikinis.

Geoffrey’s friends perhaps. Faith looks around the bookshelf for more evidence of his family, but there seem to be no photographs anywhere of David, or perhaps more pointedly of his mother, who she has always been curious about but who David is reluctant to speak of.

From what Faith has gathered online, she was once a famous socialite and model who left the family quite suddenly when he was barely a teenager.

“Addiction problems.” David had sighed heavily on one of the rare times his mother had come up, after a few bottles of wine had made him a bit maudlin and reflective.

“I’ve hardly heard from her since I was a kid.

Dad did what he could to help her out, but she was so far gone.

” The rest of the story Faith had gleaned from old tabloids she found online.

But she knows it’s something that has informed his life.

How could it not? Faith thinks how lonely it must have been for him growing up shuttled from place to austere place.

There is nothing cozy about this house. It is all glossy surfaces and sharp edges, no place for a child.

For the first time she almost pities him.

For all her flaws, her mother was a presence in Faith’s life, whereas David, from all she has gathered, was just alone.

A clock is ticking somewhere. Faith looks at the bar in the corner, running her hand along the top-shelf liquors, most of which she’s never heard of.

She lingers for a moment, tempted to make herself a drink.

Her buzz from earlier is already starting to wear off.

She turns instead back to the hallway. Farther on, it leads down into another wood-paneled section of the house.

Faith marvels that there is so much house for so few people.

What could you possibly do with it all? There is something clinical and almost dead about it.

Faith remembers again how Elena had once told her that the way to gauge the value of a rich person was to notice how much empty space they created.

Faith stops at the vibration of male voices behind a large wooden door.

She recognizes the sound of David’s first, muffled.

She is initially relieved and steps closer, raising her hand to knock.

“The girl, the girl.” Geoffrey’s voice cuts in, his baritone assertive and angry. “I’m sick of hearing about her.”

Faith moves in closer and holds her breath, leaning up to the crack in the doorframe.

David’s strained reply is clearer now. “You might be tired of hearing about it, but you can’t erase things just because you want to. That’s not how it works.”

“Don’t you tell me about the way things work.” Geoffrey’s voice is a warning rumble of thunder. “You owe me. I have always done only what’s best for you.”

“I’m sorry, Dad. I appreciate all you’ve gone through to make things good for me—” David’s voice is quieter now. Faith strains to listen. “You know this isn’t something I want to revisit.”

“Good. It’s over then. There is nothing else to discuss.”

Faith glances once again down the empty hallway. She should not be listening to this. But she doesn’t move.

“And what about the other thing?” David’s voice wavers so uncertainly Faith almost doesn’t recognize it.

“What about her?” Geoffrey growls, dismissively.

“I wanted to know what you think. That’s why I brought her.”

Faith’s stomach drops. They are talking about her.

She hears Geoffrey grunt in response. “I said my piece already about that situation. It’s not right. Keep looking.”

Faith’s neck prickles as she waits for David’s reply. But no more is said. Finally, there is a wooden thump, the rattle of a drawer as it slams shut. The heavy scrape of a chair on the floor sends Faith jumping back and rushing up to their room.

Faith says nothing when David returns several minutes later. How could she when she isn’t supposed to know anything?

“How was the rest of your day? You said you went into town?” he asks. Is she imagining the flash of guilt on his face? “Sorry I didn’t text you right back. I was immersed in business chatter. So incredibly boring and tedious. I wish I could have been with you.”

“Didn’t do much, just walked around a little and came back,” she says, omitting her time at the Crab and the overheard conversation.

Why tell David anything when he has secrets of his own?

But he doesn’t seem to notice her withholding anything.

He is distracted by something on his phone.

The togetherness she has felt leading up to this trip has dissolved.

Faith feels like she might start to cry.

She is waiting for him to say something else, but when she turns her head back toward him and opens her eyes she can see the glow of his phone like a halo over his head.

She closes her eyes and tries to picture Alice Gallo.