Page 37 of Dead of Summer
HENRY
Despite all that has happened, Henry feels like joining the party, even if it is from afar.
It feels proper to mark the occasion. He’s taken his time shaving with a fresh razor blade.
He goes to the closet and takes out his nicest shirt, the one Margie always said brought out the green of his eyes.
As Henry dresses, he allows himself to imagine her standing in front of him.
Now hold still , she’d have said, her fingers fumbling with the top button.
Back then he might have brushed her away and said, Don’t be silly, I can manage on my own .
What he wouldn’t do for the warmth of her so close again.
He should have appreciated it more. If he had only paid more attention. Maybe then he could have saved her.
Henry touches his wrist, looking for the comforting shape of the bracelet, and finds it missing.
The bracelet should be enough to tie him to her.
There’s been no further sign of the police officers, but Henry suspects it is only a matter of time until they return with a search warrant or possibly even one for his arrest. He has no real alibi, after all, no one to vouch for him.
And there was the blood. It won’t be a match.
But it will take a while for them to verify that.
He has been replaying their visit in his mind, lying awake at night staring up into the skylight with worry gnawing at his chest. Henry shouldn’t have said the thing about the girls.
There are no other suspects, that much was clear to him from the bloodthirsty way the younger cop looked at him.
And then what will happen? Jail, he supposes.
Henry knows he should be panicking at the thought of it all, but something has changed inside him these last two weeks.
Ever since Orla O’Connor returned and the whole shameful business of fifteen years ago got dredged up again, Henry feels like he’s been broken open.
He wonders if part of him will be relieved when he is finally hauled off the little island and forced to reckon with everything.
Without Margie here things have been unbearable most days anyway.
The visit has shaken her loose from his mind as well.
He’d been able to conjure her up so clearly before Jean had called him out.
He could pretend she was still there. But now she only appears to him in pieces, her memory so transparent he is afraid to blink, or she’ll be gone.
His heart can’t take it out here alone anymore.
He swallows the lump forming in his throat and goes into the kitchen, where he pulls a dusty bottle of port from the back of one of the cabinets.
It is the lone bottle of alcohol he could find in the house, still there from back when Margie was alive and liked to have an occasional tipple after dinner.
He pours the rest into a small, chipped juice glass and takes it with him out onto the deck.
It is a clear, balmy night. Warmer than normal.
The perfect night for a soiree. He brings his telescope outside and positions it, moving across the sound until he finds the edge of the Clarkes’ lawn.
Through the telescope Henry watches as the guests begin to arrive at the Clarke estate.
He focuses in on the men in their pressed linen suits, groomed within an inch of their lives and the women, their tan limbs peeking through slits and spilling from the tops of sleeveless dresses.
They trickle in until the lawn vibrates with color.
Rows of cocktail glasses sparkle on the tables waiting to be filled.
Waitstaff in fitted black suits crisscross the lawn holding aloft trays with tiny crudites.
People greet one another, but their raucous laughs and slaps on the back are all silent to Henry, swallowed up by the expanse between them.
He takes a moment to sip from his drink.
The port is bitter, the liquid long gone rancid.
He gags a little, disgusted, wishing he’d had the foresight to ask Jean to bring him something better.
Jean. He hadn’t seen her this past week.
She’d brought his groceries, anyway, leaving the sagging bags on the end of the dock one morning.
Inside were a bunch of his staples. There were no special treats, no ice cream bars or brightly colored packages.
He wonders if the police have gone to her yet.
She would tell them the blood was hers. She’d back him up, wouldn’t she?
At the Clarkes’, partygoers begin to shuffle en masse collectively turning their bodies toward the center of the lawn.
By the time Henry reaches the white-framed gazebo with his telescope, Geoffrey Clarke has come to stand in the center of it.
Henry’s throat constricts at the sight of him there—a king observing his subjects.
David Clarke stands next to him, clutching a champagne glass.
His shoulders are slightly hunched, a grim smile frozen on his lips.
Geoffrey begins to speak. Henry wishes he could hear what he is saying.
Whatever it is, the crowd seems enthralled.
They lower their drinks from their lips and lean forward, hanging on every word.
Henry pans right, and his telescope lands on a face buried in the crowd. He focuses in on it, taking in the shape of it, the dress, astonished. The glass falls from his hand and shatters, the dark red liquid spilling through the cracks in the deck and dripping into the rocks below.