Page 23 of Under the Stars

Meredith

Winthrop Island, New York

By the time Meredith reached the back door of the Mohegan Inn, a charcoal dawn had begun to thicken on the horizon. She knew where Mike kept the latchkey but she didn’t need it—the knob turned under her hand. People rarely locked up on Winthrop Island.

She opened the door to Mike’s bedroom and crept to his bed. She didn’t pause to consider whether he was alone or not—he was, as it turned out. She pulled back the blanket and climbed in next to him.

“What the fuck?” he mumbled. “Meredith?”

“Move over.”

“Jesus, you’re all wet! What happened?”

“Nothing. Nothing happened.”

“You’re shaking. Are you okay?”

“Just shut up and warm me up, okay?”

His arms came around her. She buried her face in his T-shirt and inhaled him.

“Was it that dick from last night? The fucker from Watch Hill? I swear to God I’ll murder him—”

“Shut up,” she said. “Please. Just shut up and let me sleep.”

—

When Mike shook her awake, she opened her eyes to a roomful of sunlight.

“Mair. The police are here. Your mom’s downstairs. Put some clothes on, okay?” He went to the chest of drawers and pulled out a T-shirt and a pair of boxers. “Here.”

She took the shirt and pulled it over her head. “What did you tell them?”

“What do you think I told them? You were here all night, screwing my brains out.”

“Thank God. You’re the best, Mike.”

“ You’re the best? What the hell, Meredith? What happened out there?”

She wriggled her legs into the boxers, rolled down the waistband a couple of times to hook them above her hip bones, and got to her feet. Mike stood in front of her, arms crossed. She looked up at him and said, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know ? What time did you climb into my bed, Meredith?”

“I don’t know. Don’t ask me, Mike, okay? I swear I did nothing wrong.”

“I need to know, Meredith.”

“No, you don’t. Seriously. You don’t need to know anything. All you need to know is you went upstairs with me after closing and screwed my brains out.”

“Meredith,” he said.

She put her arms around his neck until he uncrossed his arms and pulled her tight against him. His breath warmed her hair.

“So who called the police, Mair?”

“I don’t know.”

“Someone called the state police from the pay phone at the marina at four in the morning. Was it you?”

Mike’s T-shirt was dry and warm under her lips.

His arms felt so thick and strong around her, she thought maybe she could live inside them and never come out.

Just keep her head against his chest like this and listen to his heart thump forever and ever.

Take her meals through a straw underneath his armpit.

“Have they found him?” she whispered.

“No,” he said. “The divers are out there now.”

—

Her mother stood up when Meredith walked through the door of the kitchen half an hour later, showered and dressed in Mike’s T-shirt and a pair of her own sweatpants she’d found at the back of his closet.

Mike’s mother had been sitting at the table with Isobel, wearing a sympathetic expression, which probably annoyed Isobel worse than anything Meredith might have done.

The sympathy darkened to malevolence when Meredith appeared.

Mrs. Kennedy had never liked her. Probably she’d been expecting a scenario like this all along.

Isobel planted her hands on her hips. “Do you mind telling me what the hell’s going on around here?”

“I spent the night with Mike, all right? So sue me.”

“Meredith, the police are here. They want to talk to you. Some boy’s gone missing on his boat—”

“And you were seen leaving the bar in his company last night,” Mrs. Kennedy said triumphantly.

Isobel turned to her. “Would you just shut the hell up? My daughter’s done nothing wrong except sleep with your son. Which isn’t even wrong, just stupid.”

“Missing?” Meredith looked from Isobel to Mrs. Kennedy and back. “I don’t understand. Missing how?”

“His sailboat was found capsized off Little Bay Point,” Isobel said. “And no sign of the kid.”

—

Meredith had watched enough movies to know that you kept as close to the truth as possible.

“I wanted to see his boat, that’s all,” she said. “He kept bragging about how nice his boat was. And then he got all…I’m sorry.”

The police officer handed her a tissue.

“I’m sorry. I think he might have been on drugs or something. He got a little aggressive. He was coming on to me. So I…I told him to get lost. I hope I didn’t—I didn’t mean to upset him. I just ran off.”

“You ran straight here?”

“Mike’s a friend of mine.”

“A boyfriend?”

“I guess you could say that? I mean, not official or anything, but we have a thing going. And I felt bad for leaving with…with Cooper, I think he said his name was. I wanted to make it up to him. I didn’t realize…oh my God.” Meredith put her face in her hands.

Isobel patted her back. “Can she go now? She’s obviously very upset.”

“Is he dead?” Meredith lifted her head. “Please say he’s not dead. He was a nice guy, he was just…I think he was on drugs. I don’t know. But he didn’t deserve to die.”

“We haven’t found a body,” said the officer. “We’ll let you know if we do.”

The other officer said, “Can I just ask you a question, Meredith? Do you know how to sail a boat?”

“Yes. I mean, with my dad. I’ve never sailed by myself.”

“That’s true,” said Isobel. “She’s really not a sailor.”

“Can I go now?” Meredith asked.

The officers looked at each other. One was a man, tall and a little pudgy; the woman was young and lean and muscular, with dark curly hair.

“You can go,” the woman said, “but don’t leave the island, all right? We have your mom’s number. We’ll call you if we need anything more.”

Meredith rose from the chair. Isobel put her arm around Meredith’s shoulders and guided her to the door.

“Wait a second.” Meredith turned. “I have to tell you something. You know how I said I thought he might have been on drugs?”

The male officer opened his notebook again. “Yes?”

“He had cocaine. I’m sorry, I didn’t want to…I mean, I know it’s illegal and I…I don’t want to get in trouble, okay? I don’t want to get him in trouble—”

“Honey, it’s too late for that,” the woman said gently.

Meredith drew in a deep breath. “Okay. Here’s the truth. He wanted me to do coke with him, and that’s why I left. He was kind of scaring me, to be honest.”

The male officer scribbled in his notebook. The woman said, “Are you sure it was coke?”

“I’m sure. That’s what he said it was, anyway. The powder kind.”

“You saw it?”

Meredith hesitated. “Yes. He took it out to show me. Am I in trouble?”

“No, you’re not in trouble,” said the woman. “As long as you’re telling us the truth.”

—

Isobel drove her home in the old Ford pickup, saying nothing.

The silence brooded so thick and deep between them, it was worse than talking because it could have meant anything.

Everything. As soon as the Ford rounded the crumbling fountain and jerked to a stop in front of the Greyfriars entrance, Meredith elbowed the door open and jumped to the gravel.

“Meredith! You wait right there!”

Meredith went inside and ran up the stairs to her room to collapse on her bed.

A couple of minutes later, there was a knock on the door. “Go away, Isobel,” she said.

“It’s Dad.”

Meredith closed her eyes and lay back on the bed. The door opened—there was no lock—and her father’s heavy footsteps tracked across the worn rug to stand so close, she felt the heat from his body.

“Pumpkin,” he said.

She opened her eyes, grabbed a pillow, and held it against her stomach. “I’m not your pumpkin anymore. Jeez.”

He sat at the foot of the bed, shoulders slumped. “I know that.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me what happened?”

“Your mother told me what happened. I just came to see how you were doing.”

“I’m fine.”

“Pumpkin,” he said again.

Meredith wriggled upright to lean against the headboard.

The room had belonged to her mother when she was growing up, and it hadn’t changed much.

When Aunt Miranda returned to Greyfriars in the late sixties, she’d used her money to fix things up, but the bones remained the same—the floral wallpaper, the chintz curtains, the heavy furniture now dented and dull.

As a kid, Meredith had put up pictures of her favorite movie stars, cut out from magazines with painstaking exactitude.

More recently, she’d added a Sub Pop poster and a couple of her favorite Warhol prints, which jarred against the wallpaper in a way that pleased her, mostly because it upset her mother.

To Isobel’s credit, she hadn’t tried to take them down.

Her father stared at her face and sighed. “I realize I haven’t been the best dad in the world,” he said, with an air of beginning a lecture.

“You were fine. Under the circumstances.”

“I don’t know if you know this, but when your mother told me she was expecting you, I offered to divorce my wife and marry her.

Actually, I insisted. But your mother wouldn’t have it.

” He ran his hand through his hair and looked at the wall.

“And Livy wasn’t having it, either. She made all these threats that…

anyway, that’s not the point. Water under the bridge.

The point is, when you arrived, and we fell in love with you—”

“Oh my God, Dad,” said Meredith. “You don’t need to go into all this. I get it. You wish you’d been there for me so none of this would have happened—”

“That’s not what I was going to say. I was going to say…

” He rubbed his forehead with his thumb.

“You’re so much like your mother at that age, it’s…

it just kills me sometimes. It kills me all over again, because your mother…

she was all I ever wanted, and she just never felt the same way.

I’ve been dancing on the ends of her fingers ever since.

I do what she tells me. Whatever she wants.

I don’t know any differently—I don’t know how to live any other way.

And she wanted to raise you herself. And what I want to tell you is… ”