‘What then? You were so absorbed you forgot all about our date?’
Hollis hesitated. ‘That’s pretty much the size of it, I’m afraid.’
Mary glanced back at the files. ‘First Lillian Wallace, now Lizzie Jencks?’
He could see what was coming and he wished it wasn’t.
‘I said there might come a time when I’d ask what you’re up to. Now’s that time, Tom.’
He hesitated. ‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t know for sure, not yet.’
‘Enough to sneak a bunch of papers home.’
‘I didn’t sneak them home.’
‘Come on,’ said Mary. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Doing what?’
‘This cloak-and-dagger stuff. I thought the whole idea was to leave this kind of thing behind you. Isn’t that what you said? A quieter life?’
‘It’s probably nothing.’
‘A drowning and a hit-and-run?’ She paused. ‘Are they connected?’
‘Mary,’ sighed Hollis.
Now she was hurt, stung by his refusal to trust her. And he realized then that he’d seen that look before, in Lydia’s eyes, the first time he’d shut her out, laying the foundations of the wall.
‘Okay,’ said Mary.
She headed for the door.
‘Mary…’
‘No, Tom,’ she said as the door swung shut behind her.
For a moment he thought he might run after her and tell her all, but a sterner voice in his head questioned the wisdom of doing so. With the investigation so precariously poised, what good could possibly come from confiding in a person he cared for, but who, when it came to it, he hardly knew?
Besides, there was a lot to be done, much to be thought through, not least of all: how best to obtain samples of paintwork from all the vehicles at the Wallace residence.
Twenty-Nine
Conrad checked his watch. Ten o’clock. Time to make himself scarce.
He allowed his eyes to adjust to the darkness outside, then headed for the beach. He walked west along the shore, the sky dirty with stars. He searched for distraction, but it was hard to find. The night, after all, had been theirs, the only time when they could roam freely, without fear of being seen together.
They had never discussed the need for discretion, it was a given from the first, the way things had to be. The world wasn’t ready for them yet. The secrecy wasn’t without its satisfactions, though. It added a spice to their encounters, an edge of illicitness.
At Lillian’s suggestion they had sometimes met openly in public, as customers in a general store or as moviegoers obliged to sit next to each other. On these occasions they rarely spoke, except to apologize as they brushed past each other, or to exchange pleasantries about the weather under the unsuspecting gaze of a counter clerk. One time, Lillian had ‘dropped’ her purse while paying for some goods, obliging Conrad to crouch at her feet and gather up the scattered coins. And she had made no attempt to deny him the lingering view up her linen skirt of her nakedness beneath.
The anticipation that went with these encounters was maddening, too maddening on one occasion, and they’d been unable to wait till later, Conrad’s hand delving beneath Lillian’s jacket, strategically folded on her lap, during a night sequence in
There was another side to the clandestine nature of their affair that they both welcomed. There was never a wasted moment, no time-consuming introductions to each other’s friends, no social gatherings where both were present yet not together. It seemed that they had somehow managed to distill a year, more, into a few brief months. They were never lost for things to talk about, arguing for argument’s sake about books and ideas, trading stories about their lives. She told him about her dream of becoming a theater actress, and how it had slipped away from her with the onset of war and the death of her mother, her ally. She said she had moved up to East Hampton for the winter to recover from the split with her fiance—one part of the truth, he now suspected; her claim that Penrose had left her for another woman probably a lie.
They felt no compulsion to remain indoors once darkness had descended. Sometimes they would swim in her pool, then make their way across the sandhills to the beach, where they’d cook up whatever fish he’d brought with him that evening over a driftwood fire. Other times, when she visited him, they would strike out on foot, heading north over Montauk Highway, crossing the railroad, disturbing the snakes warming themselves on the tracks in the cool night air. Napeague was his world, and he shared it with her as they wandered. He pointed out the spot where he and Billy used to gather coal from beside the tracks during the early years of the Depression, big bituminous lumps tossed from the tender by sympathetic railroad men. He drew her attention to the best cranberry bogs and to the osprey nests, platforms of sticks and bone and rope and other debris, perched precariously atop the telegraph poles. They strolled the skirts of the salt meadows, and they pulled blue-claw crabs from the channels with scoop nets.
