“Tell me.”
He was quiet a moment. “It’s because you’re Italian,” he said finally.
“So what?” I said defensively. “And I’m only half Italian.”
“Your mother came over on the boat, and to them, that’s…I don’t know.” He shook his head. “My parents have antiquated views about things.”
“You’ve known all along I was Italian,” I said angrily. “That hasn’t stopped you from making love to me when you feel like it.”
“I don’t care what your background is,” he said. “You know that, darling.”
“Then why are you letting them dictate who you can see?” I asked.
“Dad said he won’t pay for me to go to Princeton if I continue seeing you.” He blurted out the words.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “He wants you to go as badly as you want to go. Do you think he would actually follow through on that threat?”
“I have no doubt at all that he would,” he said grimly. “I’m so angry with him right now that I could—” He shook his head, unable or unwilling to finish the sentence.
The tears began trickling down my cheeks, and when I spoke, it was hard for me to get the words out. “But we’ve been friends forever,” I said. “Does he expect us to stop being friends?”
“We’ll always be friends, Maria,” he said.
We were in front of our houses again, back where we’d started our walk. And we were in front of the lot with the blueberry bushes as well. Standing there, we looked at each other a long time, the darkness no barrier to seeing the longing in each other’s eyes. He took my hand again, nodded toward the bushes.
“One last time,”he whispered, as he led me onto the sandy lot.
I was certain we both knew he was lying.
CHAPTER 17
On Wednesday afternoon, I drove down the shore. I’d told Ethan I would arrive at his house around four, and although it was little more than an hour’s drive, I left Westfield at one o’clock. I was afraid that once I reached Point Pleasant, it would take me a while to find the courage to drive to our old Bay Head Shores neighborhood. And I was right.
I found a parking place in the huge and crowded lot across from the Point Pleasant boardwalk, but it was a moment before I got out of my car. Even with the windows closed and the air conditioner blowing, I could smell the ocean. People, some of them sunburned or deeply tanned, walked through the parking lot in their bathing suits, carrying towels and beach chairs or pushing cranky toddlers in strollers. I looked straight ahead of me at the merry-go-round I’d ridden on dozens of times as a kid. It had been a ritual in my family to visit the boardwalk at least a few times a month during the summer. We’d go on the rides and eat sausage sandwiches at Jenkinson’s and frozen custard at Kohr’s. I’d lived for those family outings back then; now I was afraid to get out of my car.
Ethan had called on Monday afternoon. I was rushing in from the car, bags of groceries in my arms and dangling from my fingers when the phone rang. I saw his name on the caller ID and felt both relief and trepidation. Dropping the bags on the counter, I grabbed the receiver.
“Ethan?”
“You sound breathless,” he said.
“I just got in the house,” I said. “Any news?”
“A few things,” he said. “They’re really moving on the investigation. They interviewed me this morning.”
“Oh.” I sank onto one of the kitchen chairs. “What was it like?” I wondered how hard it had been for him. “What did they ask you?”
He hesitated. “They want to interview you next,” he said, not answering my question.
I shut my eyes. I supposed I’d been hoping the police would somehow be able to pin Isabel’s murder on Ned without the need to question me again.
“When?” I asked.
“This week, most likely,” he said. “And I was going to suggest you come here. Stay at my house. I have loads of room and—”
“Next door to the
“Is that a problem?” he asked.
I was quiet for a long time. “I haven’t been down the shore since Isabel died,” I said. “I’ve avoided it. It’s painful to me to even think about being there.”
It was his turn to go quiet. “Are you saying that you haven’t been to the beach…to the ocean at all in forty years?”
“I’ve been to other beaches,” I said, thinking of my honeymoon in the Caribbean. Trips to California. “Just not the Jersey Shore.”
“Well,” he said, “you’ll have to come down here to talk with the police. Of course, you don’t have to come to Bay Head Shores or spend the night at my house, but I thought it might be good for us to put our heads together. There were questions they asked me about Ned’s old friends, you know, that sort of thing, that maybe we could help each other remember. You could stay in a motel somewhere and I could meet you for dinner.”
That sounded like an excellent compromise. “All right,” I said. “I’ll wait to hear from the police, and then I’ll make reservations and—”
“You’ll have to go inland,” he interrupted me. “The beach motels will be booked.”
